>>4196857

Our scientists sent back home and analyzed the records of the meeting and the diagrams of the machinery the Triklorians gave us. It was determined it was a field emitter of some sort, projected to fit on the hyperdrive ship we have shown to the Triklorians. After careful considerations, our leaders decided to build it. It took us about a decade to figure out the intrincacies of the manufacturing process, even with detailed instructions, but we finally managed to build a working prototype at a secret experimental shipyard on a fringe system.

When we turned the thing on it sucked all the free power from the reactor and projected a forcefield mere inches away from the ship. Radiation all along the spectrum was deflected in all directions, cutting off the ship from communications. Even our most powerful military laser cannons were unable to pierce through the shield.

We discovered that living creatures sent into hyperspacial travel in the prototype while protected by the "hypershield" as the scientists dubbed it would not die nor become crazy. Soon we sent the first human successfully.

Our scientists minds were racing. We scrambled to put a second prototype together. We activated them both and made them touch to see what happens.

On the spot where the fields touched, the fields disintegrated and the disintegration quickly spreaded before the fields slowly regrowing back to their former shape.

From then on we began experimenting with all sorts of things - different designs of ships, shaped charges, nested hypershields...

After a bunch of trial and error and some lost lives we discovered that although our sensors before when we sent unmanned vessels were "blind" on hyperspace, when we sent manned vessels with humans inside a nested hypershield (humans inside a hypershield nested within another hypershield with a "hole" for the sensors) some data about the surrounding hyperspace could be gathered. The key to the process seems to be that there must be a "sufficiently sentient" creature inside the hyperspacial vehicle for the data to be gathered (rats and fish don't seem to trigger it for instance; monkeys don't trigger it every time), however if the creature is exposed to hyperspace it will either die or go mad so it must be nested inside a hypershield within the outer hypershield protecting the rest of the structure.

Our tests concluded that there are objects with energy signatures compatible with stars within hyperspace; so we programmed one of our testships to deccelerate in hyperspace so that we could get better readings.

>>4196859


However, what happened wasn't pretty. Our ship did indeed return but it was completelly filled with what could only be properly called demons. They spread all over the experimental installation and killed everyone.

You and your crew are the sole survivors of the experimental installation. You got on one of the prototypes and jumped away and now you are traveling through hyperspace for the next six weeks.

The last news you got from the rest of the galaxy before you jumped into hyperspace was that they are about to begin the initial testing of a revolutionnaire new transportation system, a series of static quantum entangled portals through hyperspace connecting every major human star system in the galaxy...


You are:

> Major Austyn Zaxson of the 33rd Covert Battalion, specialist in explosives, demolitions and heavy weapons platforms
> Captain Barreth Rodderick of the 13th Space Wing, specialist in piloting military spacecrafts, over 1000 hours on experimental craft simulators
> Doctor Misah Saedi, specialist in quantum computation, applied quantum physics and experimental force fields
> Adit Canrad, janitor extraordinaire, specialist in staying out of harms way and fixing the maintenance robots when they bug
> Private Alyce Zarina, specialist in small arms, heavy weapons, martial arts, juggling, binge drinking and breaking hearts.
> Doctor Abrahan Goldberg, specialist in food engineering, cryptozoology and linguistics.
> Kaya Avalon, specialist in fund-raising, (mis)allocation of resources and having all the security clearance Alpha-9 (and above) passwords.
> Write in

>>4196861
> Adit Canrad, janitor extraordinaire, specialist in staying out of harms way and fixing the maintenance robots when they bug
We are gonna wipe the floor, literally

>>4196861
>Private Alyce Zarina, specialist in small arms, heavy weapons, martial arts, juggling, binge drinking and breaking hearts.

>>4196861
>Adit Canrad, janitor extraordinaire, specialist in staying out of harms way and fixing the maintenance robots when they bug

>>4196861
>> Private Alyce Zarina, specialist in small arms, heavy weapons, martial arts, juggling, binge drinking and breaking hearts.

>>4196861
>They spread all over the experimental installation and killed everyone.
>You and your crew are the sole survivors of the experimental installation
Wait what? I thought they killed everyone.

Also:

>>4197029
Supporting

>>4197051

maybe the narrator is unreliable, maybe I forgot to type almost

you decide

>>4197063
Never attribute to malice etc. etc.

>>4196871
>>4197029
>>4197035
>>4197048
>>4197051


"Fuck! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!!", says Private Alyce, removing the helmet of her power armor revealing her full head of blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, now on the verge of tears; smoke is still coming out of her chaingun as she leans on the powerarmor from the inside, which becomes stiff in place. "Whatafuck was all that shit out there? I mean, sir. Whatafuck was that shit, sir?"

"The hell if I know! They just kept coming and coming. I barricaded myself in the drone room and activated all the heavy weapons platforms, but the things just wouldn't stay dead. Then Kaya showed up with the eggheads and the pilot from who knows what secret passage and told me to follow her and I just had my babies cover our retreat.", says Major Austyn, lifting the thin head mounted display from his face and still with his multicontroller in hand, now with lots of red dots indicating that he lost signal of the heavy weapons platforms.

"Yeah, Kaya passed by the labs and just yelled follow me if you want to live and I was like, what is going?", says Misah, her disheveled greying hair and sobbing face giving her an air of helplessness.

"Oy, it was very strange indeed, I never heard Kaya saying something like this before so I followed.", says Abrahan, literally shaking, as he opens up a bottle of pills and swallow a couple.

"I was at the simulator and Kaya showed up, opened it up and told me "Training is up, come on, let's get out of here.", and then we headed straight into this whole mess.", says Barreth, strapped to his seat while checking some settings on the cockpit various panels.

"I was just checking a malfunctioning bot on floor 7-C when I heard screaming, saw people running and decided not to stay to see what it was all about. I keep moving away from the screams and ended up on the launching pad.", says Adit, with a similar setup as the one Major Austyn is using, but his still shows a whole bunch of things within range, the maintenance bots of the ship.

"This is highly classified but I guess it doesn't matter now. We sent a ship through hyperspace and had them decelerate to see what would happen. I managed to get hold of the log from the ship remotely. Watch it closely.", says Kaya, a young brunette in a metamaterial dark suit with heels.

>>4197077


The ship projector shows an image of an amorphous mass moving back and forth around the ship.

"What is that?", asks Adit. "Looks like a bunch of goop."

"It looks like a bunch of angry bees.", says Alyce.

"From this image it seems that the entirety of hyperspace is filled with the sort of creatures that have invaded our ship.", says Kaya.

"Wait, do you mean there is a whole endless hell full of those demon?", says Alyce.

"Precisely.", says Kaya.

"Then why they never got the cargo we been sending all these years?", asks Barreth.

"Oh God... we just zip past them faster than they can catch us!", says Misah.

"Good assessment. Still, without a shield, they can presumably still "graze" on us and get us mad or dead.", says Kaya. "But if we slow down, they can "climb" into the ship and wreak havoc - and even be transported back into "reality". That's what happened at our facility."

"So this is what the Triklorians were worried about?", says Barreth.

"What is a Triklorian?", says Adit.

"Triklorians are aliens we met years ago who taught us how to make the hypershields that allow for safe human travel through hyperspace. They haven't contacted us again since. We estimate that using hyperdrive we could reach their homeworld in about seventy years.", says Kaya.

"Seventy year? Wew, I'll be retired by then.", says Adit.

"They will probably intercept us long before that.", says Kaya.

>>4197084


"On another note, wow, so aliens are real! Cool!", says Adit.

"Hold on, so they taught us how to do this? So they knew about these creatures? Were they trying to get us killed?", says Alyce.

"I think... I think they were trying to save us.", says Misah, "We've been working on a series of quantum entangled portals to connect all human colonized systems through hyperspace. Theoretically they should work just fine, but building just one or two might disrupt the pathways we'll need for building the whole network. If we want it to be able to connect any point to any point due to the nature of the entanglement we would need to test as much of the whole system at once as possible to minimize the amount of side tunnels we would need to employ. We would be opening portals to hyperspace in nearly every system inhabitted by men! It will be a massacre!"

"Can't we stop this somehow?", says Alyce.

"I've sent an emmergency broadcast message before we boarded the ship.", says Kaya, "but the system was scheduled to be tested soon. Even if someone hears it in time and dispatch a freighter with a message to warn neighboring systems, I don't think they will stop the tests because a handful of systems got the alert and switched off their portals."

"We're so screwed! Do you think those aliens would help us? The Triklorians?", says Alice.

"I don't know.", says Kaya.

"Well, we need a destination, we can't just keep accelerating forever in hyperspace.", says Barreth.

"And to think I must discuss this with these people...", mutters Kaya, "...well, I guess I have no choice. I have a few other destinations in mind that we could go but I'm not entirely sure which one should we head to."

"Tells us all about it.", says Austyn.

>>4197085


"Computer, security clearance Alpha-9, Kaya Avalon. Read files on Kelpolus-5."

"Kelpolus-5. Earthlike planet. 174 light years away (24 jumps). Official status: Uninhabited. Homeworld of Project Prometheus. Description: Project Prometheus is a classified supersoldier experiment that consists in a cloning facility, a genetics engineering laboratory, a training center for supersoldiers, an automated factory for equipment and supplies and an orbital shipyard to build experimental spaceships for deployment. Status: 83% operational."

"Computer, security clearance Alpha-9, Kaya Avalon. Read files on Maya-3."

"Maya-3. Earthlike planet. 46 light years away (7 jumps). Official status: Uninhabited. Ruins of alien civilization with aesthetics resembling mesoamericans found spanning the entire planet. Artifacts Maya-3a and Maya-3b found on site. "

"Computer, security clearance Alpha-9, Kaya Avalon. Read file on Artifacts Maya-3a and Maya-3b."
"Artifact Maya-3a. Moon sized artificial satellite in orbit around Maya-3. Purpose: weapon of mass destruction. Lethality estimated: capable of earth sized planetary destruction. Available energy: estimated of two full charges and one partial charge. Estimated charge travel time: hyperspeed (about 1 light year/week) Estimated range: estimated 1,000 light years. Maya-3b. Advanced alien spacecraft in pristine conditions capable of hypertravel. Origin of hypertravel technology on earth. Research facility built around it to study it. Operations estimated 14% understood. Remote aim system for Maya-3a present on Maya-3b. Operations of remote aim system estimated 87% understood."

"Computer, security clearance Alpha-10, Kaya Avalon. Read files on Aleph-3."

"Aleph-3. Earthlike planet. 346 light years away (49 jumps). Official status: Inexistent. Homeworld of the "Cenokyans", a race of advanced humanoid sentients capable of space travel. Contacted in more than one occasion, only through robots and holograms. They have not yet developed hypertravel, relying on primitive fission based nucleardrive generation ships to colonize nearby systems. They have colonized three systems so far. Projekt Khronus found on site."

"Holy shit! More alien! Cool!", says Adit.

"What is Projekt Khronus?", asks Misah.

"Computer, security clearance Alpha-10, Kaya Avalon. Read files on Projekt Khronus."

"Projekt Khronus. Stockpiles of thermonuclear weapons in automated hyperspacial freighters one jump away from each Cenokyan colony. Directives: upon command, enact nuclear option. Effectiveness: 99%. Enemy countermeasures: Ineffective. Deployment time: 6-18 weeks after receiving order. "

"So we find an alien and the first thing we do is plan to bomb it all the way back to the stone age? Classic humanity.", says Alyce.

"Well, I still haven't got a destination folks, where are we going?", asks Barreth.

> Kelpolus-5
> Maya-3
> Aleph-3
> The nearest system
> Triklorian space
> Write in

>>4197088
>> Maya-3
Closest populated system, several research facilities where we can study the aliens more and warn people about this threat.

>>4197113


"With all due respect, sir, let me chime in! I think we should go to Maya-3.", you say.

"You say this because you think the special weaponry from the site will be useful against the aliens?", says Kaya.

"Maybe, but mainly because it is the closest populated system, it has several research facilities where we can study the aliens more and warn people about this threat.", you say.

"Seems reasonable. If the fate of mankind is at stake then the best course of action is to learn as much as we can about the threat to formulate an appropriate response.", says Misah.

"Fine. Captain Rodderick, set course to Maya-3.", says Kaya.

"Ay ay.", says Barreth, adjusting the ship's course.

"Guys, why do the maintenance drones on this ship have mininukes?", asks Adit.

"Because... wait, what?", asks Misah, visibly confused.

"It says here, you see, battery, water, cleaning fluid, mininukes 1/1. All the drones have them.", says Adit.

"In case of an emergency we wanted to be able to blow up the ship from the inside so we filled it with explosives. The drones have mininukes, every room has loads of explosives, the engine is rigged to blow up.", says Kaya.

"Why?", asks Barreth.

"Safety measure.", says Kaya.

"Didn't help much with the other ship did it?", you say.

"The attack was probably too quick for the crew to react.", says Misah.

"It does take quite a bit of resolve to blow yourself up.", says Abrahan.

"It is not safe for you to be handling drones with mininukes Adit. Reroute them all to Major Zaxson's console.", says Kaya.

"Hey, I wouldn't know what to do with a bunch of cleaning bots. Just disable the nukes and let him do his thing.", says Austyn.

Kaya looks very disatisfied, you think she even pouted.

"Fine, but keep an eye on him. We can't have one of these things blowing up by accident or we're all dead. Computer, lock the cleaning bot mininukes under Delta-3 clearance.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <Cleaning bot mininukes disabled>

"There you go major, now you can activate the mininukes if we need them.", says Kaya.

You remember that your own clearance is Delta-1, so you couldn't activate the mininukes. If you remember right the most widely used clearances go Alfa, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Gama, Lambda, Omega, Theta, Zeta with Alfa being administration, Beta being officers, Delta being combat personnel, Epsilon, Gama and Lambda being scientists, engineers and assorted technical personnel, Omega being the lowest for civilian active personel, Theta being assigned for civilian visitors and Zeta being for prisoners.

"Hey, what's your clearance Adit?", you ask.

"Mine? It's Omega-9.", says Adit.

Omega-9? That high? Well, maybe it ain't that weird. He has to enter all sorts of places to clean them after all, he needs to access a whole bunch of different systems to turn on automatic maintenance subroutines, but you guess that's about it - he probably can't download system specific data or input most other commands.

>>4197206


"Well, if there's nothing else to do I'm gonna go stash this power armor somewhere, I'm getting all sore from wearing it.", you say.

"Are they really that uncomfortable?", asks Misah.

"Well, more or less, it's tolerable enough to wear one, but you certainly end up spent afterwards, specially if you wear it for an hour or more. It's like you took a beating.", you say.

"I see.", says Misah, filling the data on her datapad. "Thanks for the feedback."

"Where is the food reprocessor of the ship? I wanna see for myself on what kind of thing we'll have to subsist for the foreseeable future.", says Abrahan, walking to a machine that looks pretty much like a food vending machine.

"These eggheads...", says Barreth.

"Can it make booze? Please tell me it can make booze.", you say.

"Indeed... I hope you like Flavored Unspecified Distilled Beverage™!", says Abrahan, pulling out a couple bottles of the stuff out of the machine.

"Unspec, my favorite, gimme a bottle of the stuff!", you say, reaching to grab a bottle.

"Get out of the power armor first, you shouldn't drink and pilot heavy machinery.", says Abrahan, taking the bottle out of your reach.

"Alright, mom!", you say, getting out of the power armor.

You finally manage to get out of the power armor and leave it at the cockpit. It is currently persona locked, in the barracks they usually tell you to unlock the power armor once you're done with it and retrieve it to the armory but hey, you're not retrieving it to the armory so you won't bother unlocking it. Not like anobody else here could use it nearly as well as you could anyway.

You grab a bottle of the good ol Unspec and chug it down! Ah! Nothing like it in the whole galaxy!

But drinking alone is boring. Who are you going to drink with?

> Austyn, the man needs to chill, he has seen some serious shit on the battlefield today
> Barreth, he can put the damn ship on autopilot for awhile and come party a little bit
> Misah, she is shaken to the core with the whole think, maybe she needs to talk things through
> Adit, he sounds like a fun guy, if a bit too cowardly, but hey, it got him alive so far so there's that
> Abrahan, it is not often that you find a true connoisseur of quality booze
> Kayla, the bosswoman sure needs a drink after her whole operation went kaput
> Write in

>>4197208
>> Austyn, the man needs to chill, he has seen some serious shit on the battlefield today

>>4197208
>> Adit, he sounds like a fun guy, if a bit too cowardly, but hey, it got him alive so far so there's that

>>4197208
>> Austyn, the man needs to chill, he has seen some serious shit on the battlefield today

>>4197225
>>4197241
>>4197377


You decide to go drink with Austyn. You find him and kick him in the butt playfully with six bottles of Unspec on hand.

"Austyn, get your fat ass over here in the lounge, let's get hammered!", you say.

"Now you're talking!", says Austyn.

You two get comfortably seated at the lounge.

"I hear you had it pretty rough today with all those... things.", you say.

"Yeah, I mean, I was just doing routine maintenance on the drone room when I started hearing the screams. I actually saw a person's head come flying through the corridor's turn and hit the wall while another was gutted with blood splashing all over the place just around the corner. I reentered the drone room, activated all drones, engaged battle mode sent them into that corridor and started shooting and shooting but the things... no matter how much I shot at them... they just wouldn't stay dead!"

"I hadn't it nearly as rough. I was doing patrol by the spaceship. Lacey, my partner, had just left to check what the screams were all about. Then I heard her chaingun going off. When I was about to go running after her you all arrived and told me to get into the ship.", you say.

"Damn, that's real rough.", Austyn says.

"Yeah, I mean. It totally could have been me going out to check on the screams and I'd be dead right now. We never know when fate gonna give you a breather. Sometimes you survive by luck alone.", you say.

"Hey, you wanna see something fucked up? I still have drone footage of the demon things while I was shooting them. Wanna watch?", Austyn asks.

"Sure, lets see it.", you say.

He takes off his headgear and place it on your forehead, lowering it over your eyes. The whole thing lights up and you see the display.

You see a blur of what looks like a mass of misshappen spiked claws and maws with far, far too many eyes.

He then pauses the stream. You get a good look at one of the things. It looks like a core mass of disform eyeballs surrounded by concentric rings made of dozens of misshappens limbs. Under the varied types of ammunition used, the whole thing was on fire, but kept going.

"It sort of looks like an angel...", Austyn says.

"This monstrous thing? An angel? Are you drinking something different from what I'm drinking?", you say.

"No, like, traditional judao-christian mythology angels. Concentric rings of eyes on fire. Do you think the sages of old could see those things? Like actually see into hyperspace?", asks Austyn.

"Dude, I have absolutely no idea. I don't even know what you're talking about anymore.", you say.

>>4197396

"And you two didn't see any of this.", Kayla takes off the piece of equipment from your forehead. "This is classified information. In fact, nothing that is going on in this ship ever happened."

"This never happened ship. My kind of ship.", you say.

"Well, it is getting late, imma gonna hit the sack.", says Austyn.

> Might be the booze talking but you really wanna have sex with Austyn right now. But it is like a one time thing. Yeah, right.
> Probably the isolation in this tiny ship, but you sure could use some company in these cold nights. Something, like, official or something. Guess you gonna keep an ongoing affair with Austyn now.
> Resist your urges to throw yourself on the arms of the first available man. You might just end up throwing yourself on the arms of the second available man though.
> No, no, no! You got this figured out Alyce! You just gonna go to sleep! Yeeesh! Just sleep! With nobody! You just gotta find an empty bunk you can lock yourself into...
> Write in

>>4197398
>> Might be the booze talking but you really wanna have sex with Austyn right now. But it is like a one time thing. Yeah, right.
>> Probably the isolation in this tiny ship, but you sure could use some company in these cold nights. Something, like, official or something. Guess you gonna keep an ongoing affair with Austyn now.

This is pretty good.

>>4197618
Support

>>4197790
I second this, good sir.

>>4197618
>>4197840
"Austyn!", you say in an annoyed voice, getting up and walking up to him.

"Huh? What is it?", he says curious.

"You gonna fuck me or what?", you say, jumping on his back.

"Well, off to the bunks we go!", he says, carrying you on his back to the bunks while you hold steady on his neck with one arm and keep drinking with the free hand.

***

On the morning after, you're getting dressed in the bunk as Austyn lays in bed.

"So... what does this makes us?", says Austyn.

"Well... it's sort of complicated... I'd say we definitelly have a thing going on now. ", you say.

"A thing?", says Austyn.

"Yeah, I'm not too good at name things, so let's just call it a thing. Just enjoy the little things of life as they come I guess.", you say.

"Well I suppose we can't ask much more than that out of life.", says Austyn.

"That's the spirit.", you say, leaning in to kiss him.

You two head to the bridge holding hands. When you arrive there you see Kaya discussing with Barreth over a trajectory projection.

"...time, let's go straight through hyperspace to Maya-3, skip all the systems in between, that should save us at least a month.", says Kaya.

"Nobody ever stayed longer than two months in hyperspace at a time and you expect us to stay nine months straight in it Kaya? It could be dangerous, there could be all sorts of unknown side effects.", says Barreth.

"C'mon, we tested everything we had! Nothing can go through the hypershield! Besides we couldn't really stop at every planet, they would all require us to stay in quarantine in orbit, they would consider us a biohazard just because we have been on the same site as the anomalies. No planet in the galaxy will allow us to dock without a very long quarantine and very throughout examinations.", says Kaya.

"I think we should at least reenter real space at every jump point, broadcast the emergency signal with the news, then jump out into hyperspace again. It would give more people the chance to survive this.", says Barreth.

"I don't know. The whole galaxy seems to be doomed, I'm not sure what difference a handful of fringe planets would make. It would delay us in a whole month, maybe even more.", says Kaya.

"It's hundreds of millions of lives Kaya!", says Barreth.

"I'm not so sure, the galaxy is far more sparsely colonized than you think, most ark ships only take a few tens of thousands of people to start colonies and then we have to grow our populations from there. Let's see what planets really are in our path before we decide. Computer, give us a list of inhabited planets in our route towards Maya-3 and their population.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <Wei Xiu-3, mining industrial colony, population: 3 million colonists>
Computer voice: <Arietis-2, Arietis-7c, Arietis-7k, research colonies, population: 300k colonists>
Computer voice: <Leonis-3, urban colony, population: 47 million colonits>
Computer voice: <Carinae-3, garden colony, population: 5 million colonists>

>>4200546


"What is a garden colony?", you ask.

"Ah! Good morning, miss Zarina. A garden colony is a special type of agricultural colony focused on biodiversity. They plant vast forests and cultivate vast open fields of many different kinds of crops all over the planet to try and create a self sustaining ecosystem. They also clone various species of animals from earth and set them loose on these environments, including seeding the oceans with fauna and flora from earth. The cities themselves try to keep a small footprint and are linked by railway systems and protected by walls. The goal is to make the whole planet into a big zoo and the resident humans into, well, zoo keepers. They are projected to never go above a certain population threshold so as to not put too much strain on the system so people who want to colonize planets on these terms are instructed to keep stricter family planning policies. So far no garden planet went above their projected populations, most aren't even close.", says Kaya.

You know what an urban colony is, you came from one, Ticia-3. It is an earth-like colony with focus on urbanization and quick growth. It exploits what local resources are there, farms useful crops, raises useful livestock and expands as necessary. The goal is to cover the planet in a network of interconnected cities to maximize human resources. Universities and barracks are built in every city so that people can get educated and trained to contribute to the ongoing efforts of space colonization. Most of the production is automated so the people receive an universal basic income based on the yearly productivity of the machines "to make sure nobody gets more nor less than their fair share of the resources". The best people are selected to the space force, the others are assimilated into the local economy mainly in the corporations that fuel the innovation and whatever other jobs are available, those who are unfit for economic activities receive psychological counseling in order to cope as needed. A good chunk of people without jobs tend to choose to spend the majority of their time hooked on virtual reality. People are encouraged to have large families in most urban colonies, although in some cases the local authorities want a more "organic" pace of growth and just encourage families to have about three kids instead of really large numbers. In any case their populations tend to grow quite large over time. Eventually they have to halt the population growth trend when it gets unsustainable, but urban colonies tend to be the most populous.

To think everyone you ever knew will soon be killed by those... things...

Not only that but nearly everyone else in the galaxy also...

>>4200548


Barreth's voice takes you out of your thoughts.

"As I was saying, we gotta warn these people. We can't just let them die! Maya-3 isn't in any immediate danger, it's not like they have a portal built to them, being a secret facility and all.", Barreth says.

"Actually, they do have a separate network of portals built to them but they were scheduled to test at a later date, after news from the main tests reach them.", says Kaya.

"You see? They won't activate their portal. There is no rush in getting to Maya-3. We must warn these people.", says Barreth.

Kaya seems rather angry.

"I must give my Alpha-10 transponder code every time I broadcast one of these transmissions. I don't have access to a powerful enough computer to generate a different key every time. It must match the local frequency using a secret encoding pattern that cannot be guessed if used only once, but can be deduced if used repeatedly in different places. Someone could crack it and have access to the whole database.", she says.

"Do you think someone is following us listening to your transmissions? Don't be silly, we are the only prototype ship which escaped from the facility. I think it is just your pride stopping you from saving these people!", says Barreth.

"My... what?", says Kaya raising an eyebrow.

"Your pride! You just don't want the whole galaxy to know that it was in your facility that this whole thing began! If you could you wouldn't tell anyone!", says Barreth.

"You bastard! The first thing I did was get the information out! If there was a way to warn the whole galaxy I would! Information doesn't just magically travels everywhere.", says Kaya, visibly enraged.

"Then let's save these people! Let's stop at every place and broadcast the signal! This way we'll save millions of lives!", says Barreth.

"It's simply not safe! With access to just a couple more broadcasts a competent hacker with a powerful enough computer could crack the code and download the entire database of classified files. With five broadcasts they could do it with a portable computer!", says Kaya.

"Are those damn files worth the lives of millions?", says Barreth.

"The secrets there protect the lives of trillions.", says Kaya.

"Well, look at the splendid job they did! We can't let what could be the last few human populated planets in the galaxy die because there might be a small chance someone will crack your database Kaya!", says Barreth.

> Side with Barreth
> Side with Kaya
> Stay out of this
> Write in

>>4200554
>Write in
Maybe we can broadcast only at the garden and urban colony?

>>4200582
This has to be it for me as well. +1

>>4200582
Support

>>4200582
>>4200674
>>4200753


"Maybe we can broadcast only at the garden and urban colony?", you say.

Kaya grumbles a bit.

"Fine, it is unlikely anyone following us would have access to powerful enough computers to crack the code with just two or three instanced of the code anyway. Set the course to Leonis-3 captain Rodderick."

"Ay ay.", says Barreth.


The days pass on largely uneventfully; you drink the ever replenishing stocs of Unspec (the ship was projected for a crew of fifty after all, but you do manage to put a dent on it), doctor Misah took a keen interest in your childhood on Ticia-3 (turns out she was born in a research planet and doesn't know how life in a urban planet is) and out of sheer boredom you even let doctor Abrahan teach you how to play 4D chess; your nights are filled with lustful delights with Austyn.

You noticed that Barreth and Kaya do argue all the time about the most triflling things; but on a night when you got out of your bunk to go grab some booze you saw Barreth heading into the security room, where Kaya stays all the damn time watching everyone. So you're not the only one having fun in the 'this never happened ship' after all, huh?

One day as you're in the lobby chatting with Austyn and Abrahan about whether it would be feasible to build a printer that prints food Adit shows up with a worried expression.

"Well, you see, if we could put all the materials like carbs, proteins, flavorizers, pigments in ink-like packets and make a proper delivery system I think we could actually make a food printer.", says Austyn.

"The modern reprocessors sort of work like that, they break down the waste molecules and use biochemical agents to recycle them into new edible foodstuffs that are stored according to their categories, but the recipes must be pre-programmed, if we could make something where the recipes could be arbitrarily created by people we could make a food printer.", says Abrahan.

"Uh, guys. I've just been in the medbay and when I was cleaning stuff over there the surgical waste fluids was filled with blood. Did anyone performed a surgery recently or something?", says Adit.

"No, not that I know of. Maybe it was from before we boarded the ship?", says Abrahan.

"Well, let's ask Kaya. Hey Kaya! Are you listening! Adit found some blood in the medbay!", says Austyn.

After awhile Kaya shows up.

"Well, that is weird. I don't have any records of anyone using the medbay recently. Computer, perform DNA analysis on the blood from the surgical waste fluids on medbay."

Computer voice: <performing DNA analysis>

...

Computer voice: <DNA analysis complete. Dalton Zemke, security technician, clearance Lambda-9>

"Lambda-9? Well, that explains it. He's probably tampering with the camera feed so I don't see him. Computer, revoke Dalton Zemke clearance to Zeta-1, undo all data feed changes he made since we boarded the ship and show the unadultered feed to me."

Computer voice: <processing changes>

>>4200873


The computer shows the feed of a badly wounded technician entering running into the ship. He tries to order the ship to take off but he doesn't have clearance to do it. He then shouts orders to the computer to dynamically erase all records of his presence in the ship. He then runs to the the reprocessor, grabs a large amount of food and runs away, throwing the food in one storage bay. He then uses the medbay to patch himself up, enter the storage bay where he stashed the food, and locks himself in there. He then manually disables the cameras inside the storage bay. The feed ends.

"Well, let's go meet our friend mister Zemke. Miss Zarina, please wear your power armor, just in case. Barreth, Austyn, grab the emergency rifles at the cockpit.", says Kaya.

"Can do, sir.", you say, heading out to the cockpit where you stashed your power armor to get suited up.

You take a few minutes to get into the thing. Barreth and Austyn grab the emergency suitcases in the cockpit and assemble the laser rifles inside of them.

"All systems nominal!", you say, in a distorted computerized voice, after you put in your helmet.

You, Kaya, Austyn, Barreth and Adit head to the storage bay door. Barreth opens the door, you step in with chaingun spinning pointing inside.

You see Dalton Zemke inside the room, with its back towards the entrance, curled in a fetal position, its clothes ragged and bloodied. The whole room is in disarray, things tossed around all over the place.

Austyn was about to sidestep you and enter the room when you stopped him.

"Something is very wrong.", you say, standing in front of him.

Then you see it. "Dalton Zemke" turned around.

Gazing at you is a headless torso with a very large amount of eyes all over its body. Taking up its whole abdomen is a gigantic maw, which opens up. Its legs spring up and the creature jumps towards you impossibly fast.

You fire your chaingun, which has quite some stopping power and keep the creature at bay. You scream "Close the damn door!"

Barreth and Austyn slam the door shut. The creature starts to slam against the door, bending it.

"Computer, seal all entrances to storage room 87.", says Kaya.

Blast doors descend in front of the storage room entrance; blast walls spread alongside it. You can still hear the creature slamming against the door, but you no longer see any deformations.

"Whatahell was that thing?", you ask.

"Seems like direct contact with the anomalies causes some sort of contagion.", says Kaya.

"No shit.", says Barreth.

"What I really wanna know is where did the head of that thing went.", says Adit.

"The head... yeah, the head of that thing was missing.", says Abrahan.

"Alyce, upload the feed from when you entered the room.", says Kaya.

"Alright. Computer, uploading data feed.", you say.

"Computer, project the feed. Zoom in on the ventilation ducts.", says Kaya.

The computer projects a hologram of the attack, zooming on the ventilation ducts on the room.

>>4200880


"Look, the entrances to the ducts are busted. They're too small for the whole thing to go through, but the head might fit.", says Austyn.

"You think that thing ripped off its own head and tossed it into the ventilation ducts?", says Abrahan.

"That's a possibility.", says Kaya.

"Well, we need to find that thing as soon as possible. We should stick together.", says Barreth.

"Yeah, we're all here... except for...", says Adit.

"Oh God... Misah!", says Abrahan, running away.

"Wait, doctor Goldberg! You're not even armed!", says Kaya, running after him.

"Neither are you Kaya!", you say, running after them.

We all run after Abrahan and Kaya.

We find Misah at the lounge eating a sandwich, drinking coffee and reading something at her datapad.

"Thank God you're alright Misah!", says Abrahan, almost in tears.

"Why wouldn't I be, what is going on?", says Misah.

"We found a stowaway. He had been attacked by the anomalies and turned into an anomaly himself. We locked him back in the room where we found him, but we think his head might be wandering through the ventilation system.", says Kaya.

"Oh my god, that's horrible! Does that mean we're all contaminated since we're breathing the air?", says Misah.

"Well, I certainly hope not.", says Kaya.

"Can the computer find where the thing is?", asks Abrahan.

"Usually there are motion sensors on the ventilation systems, it should be possible.", says Adit.

"Computer, give us the location of anything moving inside the ventilation system.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <no data>

"Computer, give us the data of anything that moved inside the ventilation system in the past week."

The computer gives a projection showing a line going all the way inside the engine room.

"Fuck! The damn thing is inside the engine room! If the engine malfunctions the hypershield will flicker and we all gonna die!", says Barreth.

"What should we do?", says Adit.

"It is too late to barricade the engine room to keep it out, the thing is already inside it. We could try to go there and kill it before it breaks the engine or we could jump out of hyperspace already and deal with it somewhere where there isn't a chance of us dying a horrible death.", says Barreth.

"Wait, can we jump out of hyperspace like that? I thought we could only jump out near a star.", you say.

"Well, it is theoretically possible to jump out of hyperspace at any point in space time, we just never tested it before because it would land us in the interstellar space and we wouldn't be able to jump back in - we would need to fly at sublight speed until we reach a star and then jump back into hyperspace. There might be other issues we aren't currently aware of too.", says Misah.

"If we do that it will take years to get to the nearest star!", says Abrahan.

>>4200884


"The engine room is too valuable to just lock that thing inside of it, if it trashes the engine we all gonna die. There's no option, someone has to bait that thing out of the engine room and into some other less important room so we can lock it away in it.", says Kaya.

"Which room?", says Abrahan.

"The zero gravity nanoassembly room. It is the only room with two entrances near the engine room. Just lure the thing into the room, jump towards the opposite exit and get out before the thing catches you, then we seal the room shut.", says Kaya.

"Bear in mind that the engine room itself is also in a zero gravity room, as it is outside the spinning area of the ship. It can be dangerous to go in there without proper propulsion.", says Adit.

"The ship has ten emergency propulsion suits. I'm not sure how fast they are though.", says Kaya.

"Maybe we should try simply killing. How hard could it be to kill just a head?", says Barreth.

"Well, the things back on the planet were totally unkillable. If this thing is like them at all it won't matter that it is just a head, it won't go down with just bullets or laser fire.", says Austyn.

"I don't think that small head gonna be able to destroy our engine anytime soon. We probably have plenty of time. That if the thing is actually targetting our engine. Do you think it actually is smart enough to do that?", says Abrahan.

"Who knows? Maybe.", says Misah.

"Maybe we could test on the big guy. Whether it is smart. Whether it can be killed with bullets or laser fire.", says Abrahan.

"Do you wanna try to face the big guy again Abrahan? And what happens if it is unkillable? We seal off the whole corridor? What if someone is wounded? What if someone dies?", says Barreth.

"Well, we could try setting off the charges on the room, blowing up the whole thing. That should kill the thing, if it is killable at all.", says Abrahan.

"Would the blast walls contain it?", says Kaya.

"Well, the blast walls were projected for controlled demolition of the ship, there's enough explosives there to melt some layers of the walls but not enough to melt all the layers of the blast walls. They would contain the explosion. We would need some laser cutters to open them afterwards though as they probably would no longer respond to the computer.", says Austyn.

What should we do?
> Suggest jumping out of hyperspace
> Volunteer to go with your powerarmor to go shoot the head thing at the engine room
> Volunteer to go with your powerarmor to go shoot the headless thing at the storage room
> Volunteer to go with a propulsion suit to bait the head thing out of the engine room
> Suggest blowing up the storage room to see if the headless thing is vulnerable to damage
> Write in

>>4200888
>> Suggest blowing up the storage room to see if the headless thing is vulnerable to damage
if the headless abomination can be destroyed then the head can be as well

>>4200888
>Suggest blowing up the storage room to see if the headless thing is vulnerable to damage

>>4200971
>>4201310
"We gotta know if the headless abomination can be destroyed, if it can then the head can be as well. We have to blow up the storage room!", you say.

"That's right, that's the only thing we can test without risking our lives too much pointlessly. I say we blow that thing up and check it.", says Austyn

"Are you sure it won't effect the structural integrity of the ship?", says Kaya.

"Let me review those explosive and blast shields data.", says Austyn.

"Computer, display explosive and blast shields data for the storage room and surrounding rooms.", says Kaya.

The holograms shows a whole bunch of engineering data that flies a bit over your head.

"Yes Kaya, the blast shields should hold. There will be no lasting structural damage. We would need to set off charges on the whole corridor at once or have the blast shields offline to cause any lasting damage to the ship.", says Austyn.

"Alright, then lets do this. Let's head to engineering and grab a couple laser cutters to open the door with once we're done exploding this place.", says Kaya.

We get the laser cutters, Adit and and Abrahan hold them.

"Computer, set off charges on storage room 87.", says Kaya.

We hear a big explosion rocking the room.

"Computer, open the blast doors on storage room 87.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <error: door jammed>

"It was expected. Mister Canrad, doctor Goldberg, cut an opening for us. Private Zarina, Major Zaxson, Captain Rodderick, stay alert for if the creature survived you may need to provide cover fire for our retreat. Me and Misah will stay on the security room monitoring the operation since we aren't currently needed in the field.", says Kaya.

Adit and Abrahan start cutting an opening on the blast door with a pair of laser cutters as Kaya and Misah leave the area.

When they are finally done and kick the door in a bunch of smoke start coming out.

"Are you guys seeing anything?", says Adit.

"Stay back!", you say, readying the chaingun which starts spinning.

When the smoke starts to disperse a little, you notice that the nightmare isn't over.

There's a lot of gore splashed on the walls. Wherever the gore splashed, tiny tentacles with eyes formed and are wiggling back and forth.

In the ground there are some small chunks of meat full of eyes which have grown spider like limbs and are crawling around the room. They seem to notice us and come crawling in our direction very fast. There are about a dozen of them. There's also a snake full of eyes thing that seems to have been an intestine slithering in our direction.

"Oh shit! Run!", you say as you shoot at the things.

>>4202400


You all run away from the abominations as you, Barreth and Austyn shoot at them. Austyn manages to shoot the snake thing in half with the laser rifle, but the snake just becomes a two headed snake with thinner heads and continues advancing. You shoot a couple of the other things till they are but pulps, which seems to trigger them into becoming more slender and spawning more limbs - they seem to be losing some mass with all the shooting but you don't quite manage to actually kill anything.

Once we get to the end of the corridor the blast door shuts, sealing the things inside it off.

"Well, they are... sort of ... vulnerable to damage... but they don't seem to ... die at all...", says Austyn, offegant.

"They're just changing shape and losing some mass but don't seem to be dying at all.", says Barreth, "It doesn't give me much hope about killing the head thing."

"Maybe we could cut it up or smash it into small enough chunks that it would stop moving. The splashes on the walls seemed to be unable to move around and go after prey.", says Abrahan.

"Yeah, but it took a huge explosion to do that.", says Adit, "We can't really blow up the engine room."

Kaya and Misah show up.

"Is everyone alright?", asks Kaya.

"Yeah, we're alright.", says Barreth.

"Look at this quick model here.", says Misah, showing a hologram of the various parts of the creature which were crawling around compared to the one of the monster we saw before, "The explosion seems to have inutilized roughly 64% of the creature's mass. Your shooting in the corridor inutilized an additional 2%. The creature is definitely vulnerable to damage, albeit very resistant to it."

"Then there is a chance that we can actually destroy the head thing after all.", you say.

"Well, let's have a good look at that thing then. Computer, show us the engine room.", says Kaya.

The computer projects a hologram of the engine room.

The place is covered in goop; a bunch of panels are destroyed. A heavy duty power cable is coming out of the engine and going into the mouth of the head thing, which is very deformed and covered in scars. Its cranium seems to have greatly expanded, its brain almost bursting out. Scattered around the room along the ground, ceiling and walls there are a bunch of round, fist sized balls of goop, which look like there are something floating inside of them. There are over a hundred of them. We see the head thing shit out another ball of goop, glueing it into the ceiling and crawling around a little bit to some other place and staying there, with its massive veiny head pulsating slowly.

"Is that shit laying eggs?", you say.

"Is that thing eating electricity?", says Misah.

"Holy shit, we're so screwed.", says Adit.

"What are we going to do?", says Austyn.

"Well, we can't let that thing keep laying eggs inside our engine room!", says Barreth.

"What do you propose?", says Abrahan.

"I say we lure it outside, trap it somewhere else and blow it up.", says Barreth.

>>4202403


"I don't think it will abandon its source of food and its eggs.", says Kaya.

"I think Kaya is right, why would it abandon a perfectly good lair just to chase one of us?", says Abrahan.

"Then I guess we have no choice. We'll have to fight it in its turf.", you say.

"We don't have nearly enough firepower to kill that thing. How much ammo do you even have?", says Barreth.

"About 40% and an extra barrel.", you say.

"These laser rifles can keep firing for about three minutes before they overheat.". say Barreth.

"We'll need more firepower. I could probably print a heavy weapons platform or three in the nanoassembly room, I have a bunch of schematics with me. With enough time, I could strip the explosives from a few rooms and repurpose them as ammunition for the drones at the nanoassembly.", says Austyn.

"How much time do you need?", says Kaya.

"Uh, I guess I could make one small drone in 40 hours or so, or a big drone in about 160 hours. So one small drone every couple of days or one big drone per week until I run out of materials.", says Austyn.

"That's too long! Let's just strip some explosives and throw them inside the engine room instead.", says Abrahan.

"Are you mad? If the engine malfunctions we'll be dead!", says Misah.

"If all those egg things hatch we'll be dead also!", says Abrahan.

"We could at least sever that cable that the thing is using to feed itself, maybe it will stop laying eggs. Maybe it will even get angry enough to follow us out of the engine room.", says Adit.

"Now that could actually work.", says Abrahan.

"Should we go all guns toting towards it or move in and out as fast as possible?", says Misah.

"That's a good question.", says Abrahan.

What do you want to do?
> We need more firepower, have Austyn build some small drones
> We need more firepower, have Austyn build some big drones
> Volunteer to enter the engine room with your power armor to try to kill the head thing
> Volunteer to enter the engine room with your power armor to try to sever the cable
> Suggest you go with your power armor and Austyn and Barreth go in propulsion suits with laser rifles into the engine room to kill the head thing
> Volunteer to enter the engine room with a propulsion suit and a laser rifles to try to sever the feeding cable
> Suggest you and someone else (who) enter the engine room with propulsion suits and laser rifles to try to sever the feeding cable
> Write in

>>4202405
> We need more firepower, have Austyn build some small drones
>> Suggest you go with your power armor and Austyn and Barreth go in propulsion suits with laser rifles into the engine room to kill the head thing

>>4202511
I'll do the same. We definitely need the extra firepower. The drones can multiply our force, while we do our part with the lasers to pewpew everything in our path.

>>4202511
>>4203064


"We need more firepower. Austyn should build some more small drones. Then I will go with the power armor into the engine room to get rid of the creature and Austyn and Barreth will give me support going in in propulsion suits with the laser rifles.", you say.

"Seems like a solid plan.", says Austyn.

"Alright, get to work then Austyn. I'll keep monitoring the creatures.", says Kaya.

"I wanna get some samples of the creature's slime to analyze at the medbay lab.", says Abrahan.

"Do you want to get into the engine room by yourself? Are you crazy?", says Misah.

"No, no, no. Didn't the think crawl through the tunnel all the way there? There should be some goop along the tunnel. I'll go with Adit get some.", says Abrahan.

"Well, fine, but be careful.", says Misah.

"Kaya, can you show us the path of the creature again?", says Abrahan.

The hologram of the path appears again.

"I'll go with you, just in case something weird jumps out of the tubes.", you say.

"Well, hopefully that won't happen, the motion sensor ain't picking anything moving inside it.", says Adit.

You all go to a section of the ship where the ventilation tubes are exposed.

"Here, let's disassemble them.", says Adit.

Adit and Abrahan start disassembling the tubes.

"Here you go!", says Adit, opening a section of the tubes. There's a little bit of slime inside of it.

Abrahan collects some of the slime in a bunch of test tubes, then we close the ventilation tubes back.

"Now I'm gonna go analyse this stuff! Thanks for your help!", says Abrahan.

"I'm here to help.", says Adit.

"Hey, don't mention it!", you say.

"Hey Alyce, have you been on the zero gravity part of the ship before?", says Adit.

"No, not yet.", you say.

"Have you been on zero gravity at all?", says Adit.

"Well, yes of course, I've received plenty of zero gravity training aboard the SS-Dominus.", you say.

You lived on Ticia-3 until you were 14, then you passed a test and enrolled on the space academy program and embarked on the SS-Dominus where you received your training as a soldier. When it stopped at Kaya's secret facility you were assigned a permanent position there and stayed on planet.

"Great, then you won't have problems maneuvering around in the engine room. The big problem seems to be that there won't be many places where you'll be able to touch any surface that won't be covered in goop or in alien eggs.", says Adit.

"Are you worried about me Adit?", you say.

"Well, yeah. I mean, you're part of our crew. I would be sad if you got hurt and stuff.", says Adit.

"Aww. Everything will be fine, you'll see. I mean, most of the galaxy will still die. But we'll be alright.", you say.

"How do you cope? I mean... everyone we ever knew is going to die...", says Adit.

"I just get very drunk and try not to think about it. Wanna get hammered?", you say.

"Well... sure!", says Adit.

>>4203238


You get off of the power armor then the two of you get to the lobby and start drinking.

"So where do you come from Adit, how did you end up in the mystery planet Shupa-3?"

"I was actually born here, my parents are low level technicians in the facility. My father builds some obscure piece of landing equipment for the experimental crafts and my mother is a food specialist who works on the reprocessors. I tried technical school but my memory for technical stuff is just too bad, I can't remember things, my mind just doesn't consider the stuff important and it slips out so I kept failing it. I got a job as janitor and I can actually remember all the subroutines and patterns I need to move through to do the job properly for some reason, plus most people don't stay in the job for very long. Then I started learning how to fix the bots when they bug so I ended up being promoted very fast. It's actually a pretty easy job, and it has its fun sides too."

"Had you ever met Kaya before?", you say.

"Well, I mean, I clean her office every sunday so yeah. But I had never exchanged more than a few words with her, like good morning and stuff. How is it to live in a urban world Alyce?", says Adit.

Great, another research world kid wanting to know about the glories of shopping malls and corporations.

"Well, it's nothing special. You do have a bunch of corporations that are allowed to sell all kinds of different types of products and services to people so people don't live such strict lives as in a research world. You don't get a designated type of datapad for instance, there are like dozens of different types. You get a lot more flavors of food available. Lots and lots of designer clothes. Designer everything really - anything whose shape or color isn't regulated by the government you can get on some clever design made by some corporation. You can get by alright with just your basic income, but everyone wants the latest device, the fashionable clothing, the fad designer brand, so people want to work for the corporations so they can get more money to spend on stuff. Occasionally some corporation invents something that isn't just a cosmetical variation of something that already existed and then they expand off world, but for the most part corporations are intraplanetary entities, while the space force organizes interplanetary affairs. We also have elections every few years to pick our representatives and our president instead of just being ruled by the highest ranking administrator.", you say.

>>4203241


"Wow, that sounds fun.", says Adit.

"Yeah, it kinda is. But some people say it isn't really a sustainable model. That we are "repeating the same sins of old Earth" and therefore we'll end up the same way - with disease, famine, wars and such. I think they are exaggerating a little bit. So long as we keep the population under control we'll be fine. Protests and riots do happen on occasion, but they are rare. There isn't really any poverty so people don't really have any serious complaints.", you say.

"But you can't eliminate human misery you know? You can only change the focus of the pain, there always will be something to agonize us. Stop people from starving and you'll soon find there's a range of new agonies: people start to suffer from boredom, greed or intense melancholy that they haven't been invited to the right party.", says Adit.

"Now that's a truth if I ever heard any.", you say, chuckling then chugging some more booze.

> The booze is doing its thing again, Adit is sounding more and more sexy with every word, you wanna get into his pants!
> This is so wrong, Austyn is over there working and all you can think is sex, sex, sex... so long as he doesn't know about it...
> No! You have a thing with Austyn now, it is wrong to do it with other people! Yeah, you ain't a cheating skank!
> C'mon Adit probably ain't even in the mood, it's just you and your hyperactive sex drive, get your shit together Alyce!
> Write in

>>4203245
>> No! You have a thing with Austyn now, it is wrong to do it with other people! Yeah, you ain't a cheating skank!
>> C'mon Adit probably ain't even in the mood, it's just you and your hyperactive sex drive, get your shit together Alyce!

>>4203245
> No! You have a thing with Austyn now, it is wrong to do it with other people! Yeah, you ain't a cheating skank!
> C'mon Adit probably ain't even in the mood, it's just you and your hyperactive sex drive, get your shit together Alyce!

>>4203279
>>4203521
You doze off having an internal struggle about whether or not you should fuck Adit.

On the one hand you're really in the mood, but on the other hand you do remember that you have a thing with Austyn now so it is kind of wrong to do it with other people you guess, that would make you a cheating skank and you ain't a cheating skank. Besides Adit probably ain't even in the mood anyway, it's just you and your hyperactive sex drive, you really gotta get your shit together...

"... so you see in life whatever you do you regret it, whether you choose to do one thing or choose not to do that thing you will regret it.", says Adit.

"Excuse me? Say that again.", you say.

"I was saying that whatever choice you make in life you're going to regret it, no matter whether you choose to do one thing or choose not to do that thing. There's no way to have no regrets in life.", says Adit.

"Now that's rather depressing.", you say.

"Yeah, a little bit. We can only understand our choices when we look at them backwards, but we must live our life and make our choices forward. It is truly maddening.", says Adit.

"Where do you learn all this stuff?", you say.

"I like to read about ancient philosophy. The old thinkers knew a lot about the human condition.", says Adit.

"Philosophy huh? So what is the meaning of life?", you say.

"Whew, that's a hard one... I don't now... to live in the mystery, and to find purpose and to live in the now?", says Adit

"Good enough I guess.", you say.

"I've had too much to drink, I'm gonna go sleep it off. See ya.", says Adit.

"See ya...", you say.

You drink some more and end up falling asleep on the lounge. You wake up with Misah carrying you to your bunk.

"...shouldn't drink until you pass out... come, get into your bunk...", says Misah.

You wake up the next day with a big hangover and thinking about what Adit told you - whatever choice you make in life you're going to regret it. You decide to try not to think too much about it.

You spend the next day nursing your hangover, and the night after getting drunk again, this time with Misah. She doesn't let you drink nearly as much as you wanted to and you go to sleep early. She even forces you to drink a lot of water!

You wake up with less of a hangover than last time and go check what Abrahan is up to. You head to the medbay and find him running a bunch of data analyzers.

"Any luck with the samples?", you say.

>>4203549


"Oh hey Alyce! I was going to tell everyone once I found something conclusive, but I did found some weird things already. Check this out. This is the DNA sample of Dalton Zemke as found in the surgical waste bin."

He shows you a regular human DNA hologram.

"This is the DNA sample of the goop we found in the ventilation duct."

He shows something that looks like DNA but has several more helixes into it.

"What does it mean?", you say.

"This thing is exponentially more complex than regular DNA! While we don't even encode our full helix it encodes the full helix of DNA and then several more helixes! It stores a massive amount of information in its DNA! It is unbelievable! I've been trying to sequence it, but the ship's computer simply isn't powerful enough to do it.", says Abrahan.

"And... what does it mean?", you say.

"It means that that thing might have some sort of genetic memory - maybe it remembers what its ancestors have learned, maybe it already comes with a full highly complex set of survival instructions encoded in its every cell the moment it is created so it doesn't actually need to learn anything new at all, maybe it has cellular instructions to switch between different kinds of energetic sources, maybe it has blueprints for building a whole civilization built in its cell tissue, I don't know, there's no way to tell without observing a bunch of them interacting.", says Abrahan.

"So those things are smart and adaptable... got it.", you say.

"I'm analyzing how exactly does the infection occurs at a molecular level... how does this", he points at the human DNA,"turns into this", he points at the alien DNA. "Within 24 hours very little molecular change occurs in infected DNA. I'll keep monitoring to see how long the change takes to become catastrophic.", says Abrahan.

"You do that. I'll go check on Austyn.", you say.

You head to the nanoassembly room. You see a bunch of machines working on producing the drones.

"Hey, what's going on Austyn.", you say.

"Oh, hi there. I've just finished the first drone and I'm testing it. I've made it a floater drone since we're going to go into a zero gravity room. A flying drone would have trouble in zero g and a walking drone would be even worse so it was a no brainer really. The nanoassemblers are building the second drone. I'm packing in it enough propeller for five minutes of acceleration, should be more than enough.", says Austyn, while testing the propulsion of the drone which is held by a bunch of cables.

"What kind of gun does this drone has?", you ask.

"I printed a pneumatic launcher for it with adapted plastic explosive ammunition sabots. The rate of fire isn't stellar but the explosions should be consistent and powerful enough to deliver solid blows. It has 30 sabots total, should be enough."

>>4203556


The drone ain't even that small, it is about the size of one of those ancient oil drums.

You hear Kaya's voice on the ship intercom:
"Please come meet me at the lounge everyone.", says Kaya

"Sounds important.", you say.

"Well, let's see what Kaya wants.", Austyn says.

You two head to the lounge.

When you arrive there everyone is already there.

"Good, now that everyone is here I can show you this.", says Kaya, showing a hologram of the engine room.

You can see that dozens of the egg things have filled up with some snake like thing that is swimming inside of it.

"As you can see these things are growing at an alarming rate. We do not know if they will remain at their egg stage much longer but considering their rate of growth they might emmerge from their eggs within a week, two max. We might be running out of time.", says Kaya.

"I have finished one drone, I'll have it ready for deployment within two hours.", says Austyn.

"And the second one?", says Kaya.

"Still being manufactured, will take at least 30 hours.", says Austyn.

"Well, if we're going to nab those fuckers before they hatch we gotta do it now.", says Barreth.

"What if those things jump out of the eggs and attack you guys? Alyce might be somewhat better protected in the power armor but the propulsion suits are rather flimsy. You guys could get wounded or dead. Might be a better idea to just send the drone to cut off the power cord so the head stops laying eggs.", says Abrahan.

"And what do we do with the rest of those fuckers?", says Barreth.

"Well, once the head stops laying eggs we can figure out something to deal with them. If they prove not to be an immediate threat to the engine we can just barricade all entrances so they don't get out and sort of ignore them for awhile until we figure out a solution.", says Abrahan.

> Let's go kill those fuckers today
> We don't have enough firepower yet, wait until the second drone is ready
> Send just the drone, there's no point in risking our lives
> Write in

>>4203562
>> Send just the drone, there's no point in risking our lives
I'm thinking, we minimise the risk to our lives WHILE ALSO assessing how effective a drone can be and receiving data or whatever on how it performs in combat. If the drone is a decent option, we build a few and send them in to clean up. If not, back to the lab and think of a new plan.

>>4203562
>> We don't have enough firepower yet, wait until the second drone is ready
We should send the drones first to take hits when we come to kill them

alright we have a tie, I'll wait a little for a tiebreaker otherwise I'll roll

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>4203603
>>4203704

1 - Send just the drone, there's no point in risking our lives
2 - We don't have enough firepower yet, wait until the second drone is ready

>>4204807
>>4203704
>>4203603


"There is no point in risking our lives, let's just send the drone.", you say.

"Yeah, I don't like the look of those things. I bet I can blow that cable just fine with the drone, maybe even get rid of a good chunk of those egg things.", says Austyn.

"Well, get that thing ready then!", says Barreth.

"Yes, sir!", says Austyn, heading to the nanoassembly room.

When he is done preparing the drone, you get in your power armor and Barreth in his propulsion suit grabs his laser rifle and stand by near him, watching the holographic projection of the drone feed.

"You all geared up?", asks Austyn.

"Precaution.", says Barreth.

"Alright, let's get this baby floating!", says Austyn.

He sets the drone loose and it goes floating towards the engine room.

"Kaya, open the door."

Kaya opens up the door of the engine room, displacing a bunch of eggs that fall to the ground, splashing the goop around and letting loose some of the snake things that immediately begin wriggling around. You notice that at least one of them slip out of the room.

"Close the door Kaya."

"One of them snake things slipped out of the room!", you say.

"Let's go hunt it down.", says Barreth, readying his laser rifle and floating towards the engine room. "Computer, keep tracking the snake things that got out of the engine room and showing us where it is."

A hologram of the position of the snake thing keeps following us around, shifting from projector to projector along the corridor as we float by.

You finally find the snake thing slithering around. When it notices you, it comes in your direction. Your chaingun begins spinning then starts raining death on the horrendous thing. As the thing starts being pierced by bullets, it starts spawning more appendages, trying to cope with the damage. Barreth also starts shooting it with the laser rifle. Under sustained fire the thing spawns a multitude of legs, like a spider and crawls around faster; then eventually it fall to the ground upside down, curling around itself like a dead spider. You and Barreth keep shooting until there's but a carbonized husk left, then shoot some more just to be sure.

"Is it dead?", you ask.

"I don't know.", says Barreth.

"Well, at least it isn't moving anymore. Let's go check on Austyn. Computer, when we leave seal this area.", you say.

You return to the nanoassembly room. You find another carbonized thing in the corner.

"One of these fuckers sneaked on me. I got him good.", says Austyn.

"Damn, are you alright?", says Barreth.

"Yeah, I'm fine. The thing almost got me, but I jumped out in time. They aren't too tough, I nabbed it with the laser rifle.", says Austyn.

"Good to know you're alright man. What about the thing in the engine room?", says Barreth.

>>4204887


"I blew up the cable then started shooting up the head thing. It stopped moving after about a dozen blasts. I think it is dead. Then I shot it a couple more times just to be sure. After that I dumped the rest of the ammo on the eggs. But it didn't go as well as planned. Look.", says Austyn.

You look at the engine room hologram. It has hundreds of those snake things everywhere, some floating around, some with developed legs crawling on the walls. You see the drone just floating there in the middle of the chaos.

"Is this live?", you ask.

"Yes, it is. The creatures don't seem interested in the drone at all. A few of them pounded at it a few times and sent it flying around the room and smashed it a bit but for the most part they are ignoring it. I ran out of ammo by now so I can't do anything with the drone anymore.", says Austyn.

"We should probably get rid of this thing from the nanoassembly room. Let's get some body bags from the medbay and toss this thing into an empty storagebay and seal it.", you say.

"Sure, better than have it clogging my work area.", says Austyn.

>>4204891


We all meet together at the lounge to discuss the mission.

"This is a live feed of the engine room.", says Kaya.

She points at the hologram of the engine room filled with hundreds of the creatures floating around.

"We did stop the egg layer but we haven't neutralized the threat yet. The spawned creatures seem to be more easily destructable than their parent creatures for whatever reason so there might be a chance that we can cleanse the area yet. The creatures seem capable of destroying the engine, as shown by them being able to damage the drone, but they don't look interested in doing so. We must now brainstorm what should be our next step.", says Kaya.

"Well, I think we should just let them be for now.", says Abrahan, "stirring the wasps nest will only cause us more trouble. Every time we try to enter that room we gonna contaminate more areas. Better to just let them there for now, until we can figure out a definitive solution."

"I could build a big spider drone, equip it with our two lasers rifles, strip the capacitor bank of some spare machines in the nanoassembly room, modify the rifles to be more powerful, and set the drone loose on those things. Would probably be the last drone I'd be making though, as it would take most of our finer spare parts.", says Austyn.

"Can't we like flood the room with something nasty to get rid of those fuckers?", says Barreth.

"What do you suggest?", says Abrahan.

"Fill up the room with plastic or metal or some other stuff and freeze those things in place or something.", says Barreth.

"Well, the nanoassembly isn't very far. We could come up with a way to hook up a tube from the nanoassembly into the engine room and fill the engine room with some metamaterial or another to encase the creatures in it. I just don't see what good that would do.", says Austyn.

> Let the anomalies be
> Build the big drone
> Encase the creatures in metamaterials
> Write in

>>4204895
>Build the big drone
Get in armor be ready to murder anything that sneaks out.

>>4204948
Supporting

>>4204948


"I think we should build that big drone, I don't like the idea of letting those things be.", you say.

"You really think so? Hmmm. Well, we don't really know much about their behavior. They might really be up to something. Might be worth a shot.", says Abrahan.

"Do you all believe this drone would be effective at erradicating the anomalies?", asks Kaya.

"Well, look at the ones they shot.", says Misah.

She shows the hologram of the room where the one we have killed lay dead.

"It looks pretty dead to me.", says Barreth.

"Let's keep it under observation for awhile, I don't want any surprises.", says Kaya.

"Alright, so I'm gonna start building the drone.", says Austyn.

"I'll resume working on the analysis of the molecular structure of the anomalies. I'll have some results soon.", says Abrahan.

A couple days pass and you are at the lounge talking with Misah about the details of the electoral process when Abrahan shows up.

"Kaya, get everyone in here please!", he says out loud.

A few moments later you hear Kaya's voice on the intercom.

"Everyone, please meet me at the lounge, doctor Goldberg has an announcement to make.", says Kaya.

In a few minutes, Kaya, Adit and Austyn show up.

Doctor Abrahan then begins to say:

"I have been studying the molecular behaviour of the anomaly and have determined that it behaves in a way consistent with a retrovirus - the infected cells produce a large amount of RNA packets that they then send out to infect healthy cells and turn them into new infected cells. In vitro it takes over a week for the infected cell to go from a healthy human cell to an aberrant multihelix anomalous cell, the virus trigger specific stages of the mitosis process several times over but instead of separating the chromossomes to form new cells it bundles them together in a new, more complex multi helix structure. I have prompted the computer to test every antivirus and antivirus cocktail we have available against the anomaly and I have got three potential candidates. The drugs are all very potent, highly toxic, somewhat carcinogenic, have a whole bunch of collateral effects, but if taken together preliminary tests show they have an efficacy of over 98% in halting the spread of the virus in molecular samples. Now, what I need to know is if any of us is actually contaminated by the anomalies, since we've been exposed to air that might be contaminated by them and we've been fighting them lately. If you all would be kind enough to come with me to the medbay so I could get some samples from you it would be great.", says Abrahan.

>>4205070


You all walk to the medbay and take turns getting taken samples by the machines.

"I'll have the results in a few hours.", says Abrahan.

"Do you think anyone is infected?", asks Misah.

"I don't know.", you say.

"Maybe everyone is infected. Maybe the goop in the ventilation got us.", says Barreth.

"I certainly hope not. If that was the case we would have turned into those things by now.", says Kaya.

"Yeah, I mean, that guy who turned was wounded by the creature right? So I guess there needs to be some contact with bodily fluids or something like that right?", says Adit.

"Sounds about right. Not many retrovirus are airborne after all.", says doctor Misah.

"You look worried Austyn, is anything the matter?", you say.

"It's nothing, really. I just have a bad feeling about this.", says Austyn.

"Relax, everything gonna be alright.", you say.

"Yeah, I hope. Anyway, I'll go back to the nanoassembly room, see you guys later.", says Austyn.

You resume chatting with Misah and after a few hours doctor Abrahan summons everyone again, this time directly to the medbay.

"I have grievous news.", says Abrahan.

"What is it? Is everyone infected?", says Adit.

"No. I ran the tests a couple times, just to be sure. Everyone is clean, except for Austyn who has shown a very early stage infection.", says Abrahan.

"How did that happen?", says Barreth.

"Must have been during one of the fights, either against the headless thing or against the head thing. One of the creatures must have grazed on you. A scratch would have been enough.", says Abrahan.

>>4205072


Everybody looks at Austyn.

"I'm done for am I not? Am I gonna turn into one of those things?", says Austyn.

"I'm going to give you a course of the antiretrovirals to halt the spread of the anomaly, but we don't know for sure if there will be a cure. Maybe in a fully equipped hospital with state of the art equipment for genetic therapy the doctors could figure out something, but right now the drugs are the best we can do.", says Abrahan.

"I'll have to confine you for security's sake. Would you prefer to stay confined at a storage room or at the nanoassembly room?", says Kaya.

"... at the nanoassembly room, at least I'll be able to keep working on something so I don't go mad...", says Austyn, storming out of the room.

"I recon you and Austyn have been... together. Doctor Goldberg, I request you perform periodic tests on miss Zarina to check for potential infection.", says Kaya.

"Alright, can do.", says Abrahan.

"Adit, can you go deliver the pills to Austyn? He forgot to take them.", says Abrahan.

"I'll take them.", you say.

"Alright.", says doctor Abrahan.

You take the pills and head to the nanoassembly room.

You arrive there and find Austyn working on that huge spider mech, wearing protective facemask.

"You forgot to take your pills.", you say.

"Leave them over that counter over there.", says Austyn.

"Oh Austyn...", you say.

"What?", he says, lifting his facemask. You notice his tears. "What do you want me to say? I'm gonna die Alyce! I'm gonna become one of those... things! And there's not a single fucking thing I can do about it! It is maddening! And to think... I might even have contaminated you... fuck!", he throws a power tool to the ground making a lot of noise.

"We'll get through this... we'll find a cure... we're going to get to a planet soon, they have hospitals with good gene therapy, they'll figure out something!", you say.

"We're not gonna stop on any planet and you know it Alyce! Even if we did they would put us on quarantine because we are a huge biohazard. We are a ship full of alien goop that turns people into monsters! What planet would want us? What sensible leader would let us in their planet?", says Austyn.

You don't know what to tell Austyn so you just hug him and you cry.

You both cry.

>>4205074


The drone finally gets ready. You are in your power armor. You put in the fresh barrel of ammunition since the other one was in its last legs. The drone is really big, taking over the whole corridor, barely being able to pass through the doors of the nanoassembly and the engine room. Despite its size, it is very maneuverable, having a rotating turret top where the lasers are mounted in two independent turrets and six legs which are very agile. It has electromagnetic locks on its legs so it can stay on the floor or climb on the walls or ceiling instead of float around on zero g.

You stay in the corridor in front of the engine room, with the drone in front of you, right before the door to the engine room.

You hear Kaya's voice on the intercom:
"I'm going to seal the corridor behind you so the creatures don't escape."

"Go for it.", you say.

You hear the sound of the blast doors sealing behind you.

Then the blast doors in front of the drone open up. It immediately enters the room and starts shooting at the creatures, which storm around it. Lots of creatures get out before the blast doors can be closed again.

Now that's on you.

Your head mounted display counts 11 targets.

You begin shooting at the creatures as they approach you. You bring a couple down but there are simply too many. You start running away.

"Open the blast door Kaya!"

The blast doors begin opening at the end of the corridor. You jump out of the opening, screaming.

"Close them! Close them!"

The blast door begin to close, but three creatures come out. You start shooting at them from a prone position and bring one down.
When you think it is over and one creature is about to jump at you, it is hit by a fist sized projectile that then explodes. You get back up and finish the last creature.

You see Austyn from the nanoassembly room wielding a makeshift bazooka. He makes an ok sign to you with his hand.

You then head to the nanoassembly room where you find Austyn sitting crosslegged on his chair, his bazooka still smoking near him, manning the controls of the laser drone, frying the things inside the engine room.

The arteries in his face and arms look distinctly black.

"You shouldn't be here, you can get contaminated.", says Austyn.

"I just came to thank you for saving my life.", you say.

"You'd do the same for me.", says Austyn.

"Still, it's really important to me. Listen, I...", you begin saying.

"Alyce, get out of here, please...", says Austyn. You can't see his eyes behind the headgear but you think he's crying again.

You leave the nanoassembly.

>>4205076

You meet everyone at the lounge. Everyone but Austyn, who is present as a hologram.

"The mission was a partial success. When the things noticed that the drone was killing them off they started hitting it back. The things are deceptively strong, being able to bend even the metamaterials the drone is made off after enough hits. They eventualy disabled the drone turrets and made it non-operational. We greatly reduced the amount of creatures inside the chamber though. From the feed we estimate that from the previous 150 we're down to 40.", says Kaya.

The hologram of Austyn says.

"We don't have enough materials to build another big drone. I could finish one small drone, but that's about it.", he says.

"Could you make more of that bazooka you made earlier?", you say.

"That thing? It was the pneumatic launcher I made for the small drone. Yes, I could make more of those. A whole bunch. There are plenty of plastic explosives to go around in the ship.", says Austyn.

"What if we equip everyone with that stuff and go finish the job ourselves? We can use the blast doors to let out a few of the creatures at a time and shoot them with the bazookas.", says Barreth.

"Doctor Saedi and doctor Goldberg aren't trained in the use of heavy weapons, they would be more of a liability than an asset, we cannot risk the possibility of friendly fire.", says Kaya.

"Doesn't sound too hard, I mean, you just point and shoot right?", says Abrahan.

"What about you Kaya, do you know how to handle heavy weaponry?", you ask.

"High ranking administrative personnel are required to take courses on weapons handling so I'm not completely unexperienced in firing heavy weaponry.", says Kaya.

"Well, so what will it be? Will we take everyone?", says Barreth.

"There's also the issue of Austyn being in confinement.", says Kaya.

"He's one of our best shots, we need him.", says Barreth.

"We can't risk it.", says Kaya.
> Let the anomalies be
> Finish the small drone and send it to attack the anomalies
> Make bazookas and attack the anomalies with everyone
> Make bazookas and attack the anomalies with everyone except the doctors
> Make bazookas and attack the anomalies with everyone except the doctors and Austyn
> Make bazookas and attack the anomalies with everyone except Austyn
> Write in

>>4205080
>Make bazookas and attack the anomalies with everyone except the doctors

>>4205106


"C'mon Kaya, Austyn is a really good shot, if it weren't for him I'd be dead by now. You gotta let him help us.", you say.

"Oh, alright. Let's hope I don't regret this.", says Kaya.

Austyn makes a bunch more bazookas and soon we get ready to storm the engine room.

Everyone gets in propulsion suits, except you who gets in your power armor. We get our bazookas, and a bunch of spare ones preloaded piled up near us.

"Alright, we are going to let them out a few at a time and we're going to shoot them. Everyone in position?", says Kaya.

"Yeah, we're ready. Open the gates.", says Barreth

"Computer, open the corridor blast doors.", says Kaya.

The blast doors open and a bunch of creatures come out. We shoot them with the bazookas a few times and they die alright. Seems like the plan is going fine. We reload and get ready.

"Alright. Computer, close corridor blast doors. Open the engine room blast doors then close it very quickly.", says Kaya.

"Show images of the corridor.", says Kaya.

A hologram of the corridor is projected for us. A bunch of creatures got trapped into the corridor.

"Second wave!", says Barreth.

"Computer, open corridor blast doors.", says Kaya.

The 'second wave' goes alright also. And so goes the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, and the seventh. By then there are too few creatures in the engine room so that they no longer flood into the corridor when we open the door.

We then enter the engine room and finish the job, shooting them all up.

The whole engine room is covered in alien goop.

"Man, cleaning up this place gonna be hell.", says Adit.

"Let's leave this place sealed for now. Try not to touch anything.", says Kaya.

>>4205180


We leave the engine room and seal the place back up. Then we go meet with the rest of the people.

"Well, we did this. We killed the things. Now we just gotta kill the stuff on the storage room and our ship will be alien free.", says Barreth.

"Maybe we should keep those for analysis.", says Abrahan.

"You kidding? You can analyze them all you want after they are dead.", says Barreth.

"If memory serves me right those are much harder to kill than the egg spawned ones we just dispatched, let's not get too cocky.", says Kaya.

"Yeah, but if we let them out of the corridor and into the next corridor and concentrate fire on them we should be able to kill them.", says Barreth.

"What if we aren't? Then we lose another whole corridor to them. That's a big chunk of the ship already.", says Kaya.

"We could just blow up the whole corridor.", says Austyn.

"Wouldn't that compromise the structural integrity of the whole ship?", says Kaya.

"Yeah, a little bit. I mean, we lower blast shields all around the corridor and blow it up, all the rooms at the same time. Cracks might spread around along the ship, but nothing too big.", says Austyn.

"Won't that leave us not space worthy?", asks Kaya.

"A bunch of rooms might require repair after that, we can fix them as needed, we got power tools and tons of spare metamaterials. We just go from room to room with the injectors fixing them.", says Austin.

"Won't that effect the hypershield?", asks Kaya.

"The hypershield will only be effected by structural damage if the topological shape of the ship changes, then the whole quantum field calculations will be thrown off. If the changes are too drastic, "holes" in the topology of the hypershield might appear and we would end up very dead. But so long as the topology of the ship doesn't change significantly, it will stop anything from going through it. In fact it will even prevent any loss of atmosphere while it is active. Nothing seems to go through it at all.", says Misah.

"If the ship get a big crack in it somewhere, is it a significant topological change?", asks Kaya.

"Only if the crack is deep enough to bisect a whole section of the ship, or make a hole through it.", says Misah.

"Ah! Then we should be safe. It won't be that bad.", says Austyn.

> Kill the things in the storage room corridor
> Leave the things in the storage room corridor be
> Blow up the whole corridor
> Write in

>>4205182
>Kill the things in the storage room corridor

>>4205225


"Let's kill those damn things already!", you say.

"I'm gonna finish the small drone, give it legs instead of propulsion packs, just so we have something between the creatures and us in case, you know, they don't actually die when we shoot them and we need to run for our lives.", says Austyn.

"How long it's gonna take?", aks Kaya.

"Ten hours maybe.", says Austyn.

"Alright. We'll deploy tomorrow then.", says Kaya.

The next day everyone is ready with big piles of the bazookas positioned at a good distance from the door to the corridor where the abominations lurk. You're there with your power armor.

"Is everyone ready?", asks Barreth.

"Ready!", says Adit.

"Let's get it over with!", says Austyn, lowering his headgear.

"Let's do this!", you say, aiming with the bazooka.

"At my signal! Computer, open the corridor blast door.", says Kaya.

The creatures were scattered around and begin rushing towards us when we open the blast door.

We begin shooting them over and over again. We do seem to have killed a couple of the creatures, but nearly a ten of them keep moving towards us.

"Dammit, we're not gonna make it! Fall back!", says Kaya.

We run back abandoning most of our gear behind.

As we're running back, Austyn stops.

"Argh!", he screams, holding his head and slumping to the ground.

"Austyn!", you scream.

But you're a long way ahead of him already.

"Leave him, we don't have time!", says Kaya.

You all run out of the corridor and Kaya say the words.

"Computer, seal the corridor.", says Kaya.

"Let me see it.", you say.

"Alyce, you shouldn't...", says Kaya.

"I must see it.", you say.

"Computer, shows the feed from the corridor we just left.", says Kaya.

The hologram displays. You for a brief moment are afraid of opening your eyes.

Then you hear Adit saying:

"No fucking way!", says Adit.

>>4205319


You open your eyes and you see that the creatures are just sort of ignoring Austyn. They move past him and near him and don't do anything to him.

"Give me the intercom.", you say.

"Computer, give intercom privileges to Alyce.", says Kaya.

"Austyn, can you hear me?", you say.

Austyn moves a little bit.

"Yes, Austyn! I know you can hear me! Get up babe. It is me Alyce.", you say.

Austyn gets back up. He looks around and sees he's surrounded by the creatures.

"Whatahell is going on?", says Austyn.

"You had some sort of sudden attack and fell down when we were fleeing remember? For some reason you are invisible to the things. Now get your butt out of there right now.", says Alyce.

"Wait. If these things can't see me then maybe I can blow them up.", says Austyn.

"Austyn babe, don't push your luck. Maybe they're just neutral neutral, not neutral stupid. If you do attack them they might attack you back. Now walk to the door on the opposite end of the corridor and get out of there.", you say.

"No, really. I could grab these bazookas and shoot them all dead. Look, they don't react at all.", says Austin, while picking up a bazooka and pointing it straight at one of the creatures. However, he is too close to the creature, if he actually shot at that distance he would blow himself up.

"You're talking nonsense Austyn, drop this stuff and get out of there.", you say.

"Look, I can pick this thing up, it is harmless! Hahaha!", says Austyn, picking up one of the multi eyes spidery piece of meat things. It squirms in his hands and moves its legs in a very creepy way, struggling to get free. But it does so in much the same way a pet would do - with no visible intention of harming the person holding it.

"Are you out of your mind Austyn? Don't hold those things!", you say.

"Say, what if I throw them all into a room and we blow up the room?", says Austyn.

"No, just get out of there right now!", you say.

"Well, let's not be too brash. He does have an ability we could exploit.", says Barreth.

"Look at how docile those things are near him. Just like... cats. He could totally throw them into a room and them blow them up.", says Abrahan.

> Tell Austyn to get out of there right now
> Tell Austyn to shoot the anomalies with the bazookas
> Tell Austyn to throw the anomalies inside a storage room
> Write in

>>4205322
>Tell Austyn to throw the anomalies inside a storage room
inb4 we're pregnant with those things

>>4205337


"You guys are crazy!", you say.

"Crazy enough that it might work.", says Barreth.

"Yeah. Tell him to do it.", says Abrahan.

"Alright Austyn, listen. Grab those things and throw them in one storage room. But be careful.", you say.

"Hahahahaha!", laughs Austyn, as he goes around grabing the things like someone runs around the house catching fleeing housecats.

The one which struggles the most is the snake one, which he grabs by one end and which actually keeps kind of "hissing" to him while he drags it towards the room.

After about half an hour he tosses all the creatures into a storage room.

Kaya promptly orders the room sealed.

"That was easy.", he says.

"Now get the hell out of there.", you say.

"Now now, there's no rush anymore.", he walks out, whistling a tune.

He gets out; you felt the urge to hug him, but he's all covered in goop.

"Better not kitten.", says Austyn.

"Well, let's blow the place up then.", says Barreth.

"Computer, activate the explosive charges on storage room 43.", says Kaya.

We hear a loud bang.

"Well, how can we know for sure the things are dead?", says Misah.

"We'll have to saw off the door and check.", says Barreth.

"Well, let's do this then.", says Abrahan.

"Can I go take a decontamination shower before? I'm kinda of covered in alien goop.", says Austyn.

"Well, if the things aren't dead we were going to ask you to toss them into another room and repeat.", says Abrahan.

"Fine, I guess I can wait then.", says Austyn.

Abrahan and Adit use the laser cutters to open the doors.

A bunch of smoke comes out of them.

Inside we see some splatter wiggling on the walls, but for the most part everything seems inert - nothing is getting up and coming after us. Seems like we killed the things this time around.

"So I'm going to go get a shower. See ya'll later.", says Austyn.

>>4205394


With all the aliens gone, we just wait for our travel to consumate itself. The days pass on and you make your final approach to your first stop and as you get out of hyperspace your ship sensors are flooded with data; you are now in the Leonis system, dominated by a yellow star, and ahead you can detect the Leonis-3 planet.

Barreth and Kaya are busy at the cockpit readying the emergency signal to send it to the planet below.

Kaya then gives the order.

"Computer, send the emergency signal under Alpha-10 clearance to Leonis-3 with all the data about the incident.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <broadcasting signal>

About an hour later we get a message. A hologram light up showing a council room with ten people in suits, mostly men.

"Greetings, Kaya Avalon. This is President Jack Kennedy of the United Leonis Federation, Alpha-10 clearance. These are the elected governors of the various provinces in the globe, Alpha-9 clearance. This is an encrypted channel, you may send messages in this frequency with the provided encryption key freely. We have received your message and reached the conclusion that the portal project should be immediatelly terminated. We currently have three jump freighters available so we are going to use them to warn our neighbouring systems about the threat so they too can shut their portals. We have a military patrol ship close to your position that could rendezvous with you to deliver some supplies or extra personnel if necessary."

"What do you guys think? Should we rope in more people into this mess?", says Barreth.

"We do not know what other surprises these aliens have in store for us. I'll get any help I can.", say Kaya.

"Computer, record a message.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <starting recording in 3...2...1>

"Greetings, President Jack Kennedy. This Kaya Avalon, Alpha-10 clearance. As the files indicates, we have with much effort neutralized the threat within our vessel but we do not know what further menaces these anomalies may pose in the future, so I'll take on your offer of assistance. We have confirmed that the creatures are vulnerable to damage, but they have proved incredibly difficult to destroy. End message."

"Computer, send the message to Leonis-3 through the encrypted channel.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <broadcasting message>

About an hour later we get our answer.

"Greeting, Kaya Avalon. This is President Jack Kenney, Alpha-10 clearance. We are sending the warship Pegasus-VII on an intercept course towards your position, estimated time of arrival in 58 hours. We're sending in an attachment the list of heavy weaponry on board of the vessel for you to choose whichever ones you think will be of use. We're also sending a list of non-essential combat personnel from the Pegasus-VII that you could recruit for your own mission if you have the need. Awaiting confirmation on the equipment and personnel list so that we can message the ship to prepare what you need."

>>4205398
"Computer, open the equipment attachment.", says Kaya.

The computer shows a bunch of holograms.

Hand Mounted Laser Cannons - A power armor with a massive backpack with state of the art supercapacitor technology and a couple hand mounted laser cannons. The battery pack is only good for a few minutes of operation, but the whole setup can be hooked into a ship sized power source for extended operation. 6 units available.

Military spider drone, big, chainguns and lasers - A military spider drone sporting chainguns and laser. 3 units available.

Plasma Swords - A power armor with a pair of oversized plasma torches. 4 units available.

Standard Power Armor, Chaingun Mount - A standard power armor with a chaingun attached to it. 50 units available.

Military tracked drone, small, chaingun - A military drone that moves over tracks sporting a chaingun. 10 units available.

Military floater drone, small, chaingun - A military drone designed for zero gravity sporting a chaingun. 20 units available.

Military spider-floater repair drone, small - A military spider drone with fallback zero gravity propulsion equipped with injectors for repairing the hull of a spaceship. 10 units available.

Military flying drone, small, chaingun - A military flying drone sporting a chaingun. 10 units available.

Experimental plasma rifle - A experimental rifle that shoots accelerated plasma bolts. Has ammo for 30 shots. 5 unit available.

Standard laser rifles - A standard laser rifle. Can shoot for about three minutes straight before overheating. 100 units available.

Standard laser pistols - A standard laser pistol. Can shoot for about a minute straight before overheating. 20 units available.

"I was expecting really hightech stuff. I guess a frontier world just doesn't have the best tech. That stuff is a bit basic, but I guess it can be effective.", you say.

"Well, let's see what people they have for us.", says Misah.

"Computer, show us the crew list attachment.", says Kaya.

A bunch of holograms of people show up for us to see.

> Sergeant Xavier Tian. Drill sergeant in his thirties, looks like a no fun allowed type of guy.

> Squaddie Taylor Jammer. Tall and handsome, his bio says he has a technical background in electronic warfare.

> Private Britt Weyer. He has a brooding face, the sort who looks serious all the time and appears older than really is.

> Private Xerxes Yueh. Has a weird face, hard to tell his background exactly but definitely some kind of asian.

> Private Megara Arleth. Double Ds and a symmetrical neotenous face to match, shaved hair and a bunch of tattoos. Go figure.

> Private Lyssa Galven. Almost too short to be a soldier, also has big boobs and a kid face. What are they feeding these women?

> Private Karina Lavigne. Doesn't have big boobs nor a kid face. Has a bunch of sharpshooting medals. Is a musician.

> Liutenant Amelie Belmont. A medical doctor. Aren't common with robots doing everything but doesn't hurt to have one you guess.

>>4205399


"Well, sounds like they're sending us a bunch of goofballs.", says Barreth.

"Well, they did say they were sending us 'non-essential personnel'.", says Misah.

"I like them, they look chill. Except that Xavier guy.", says Adit.

"Well, who are we going to get into our merry failboat?", says Barreth.

"Well there is one more thing that needs to be addressed.", you say.

"And what is it?", says Kaya.

"We gotta get Austyn to a proper hospital! We don't know how long he will survive with just the drugs we can source in here!", you say.

"Alyce's right,", says Abrahan,"we can only delay his transformation, he needs proper gene therapy or else he will turn into one of those things."

"Do you guys seriously want me to ask the president of that planet to let a biohazard like that into his planet?", says Kaya.

"That biohazard has a name, his name is Austyn!", you say.

"You're being sentimental!", says Kaya.

"Well, in any case we must decide whether or not we want to do this.", says Barreth.


Please list what equipment and which crew members you want.

>>

Do you want to ask the people of Leonis-3 to take in Austyn?
> Yes, ask them to take in Austyn
> Yes, ask them to take in Austyn and go with him
> No, we will keep Austyn aboard our ship
> Write in

>>4205403
> Yes, ask them to take in Austyn

Make sure they have the proper facilities first.

>>4205445

alright, and what equipment and crew members do you want?

>>4205403
Take all equipment offered and everyone except Xavier, Megara and Lyssa

> Write in
Ask for a gene therapy machine instead. Critical mission supply. Tell them they'll be repaid well later.

>>4205445
>>4205454


"They have to take Austyn, he's sick, he needs help! Ask them if they have the proper hospitals to help him.", you say.

"They would need a biosafety level 5 gene therapy facility.", says Abrahan.

"Alright, I'm gonna ask. Computer, record a message.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <starting recording in 3...2...1>

"Greetings, President Jack Kennedy. This is Kaya Avalon, Alpha-10 clearance. We have a crew member infected with the anomaly disease. He's currently stable and being medicated with antivirals, but we do not know how long those will be effective. We request his transference to a biosafety level 5 gene therapy facility, if you have any available. End message."

"Computer, send the message.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <broadcasting message>

About an hour later we get our answer.

"Greeting, Kaya Avalon. This is President Jack Kennedy, Alpha-10 clearance. We do have the requested facilities available on planet. We'll take in your crew member and provide treatment to the best of our capabilities."


"We should ask for a gene therapy machine, that seems like a critical mission supply.", you say.

"If those were simple to ship into space they would be standard fare into spaceships. They are very precise machines extremely susceptible to any radiation interference. It wouldn't be practical to try putting a bunch of those in orbit. Besides, we're going pretty fast. The other ship is only catching up with us this fast because they were already also going pretty fast on a nearby orbit, otherwise the rendezvouz could take weeks or even longer.", says Misah.

"Well, about the crew, who should we get?", says Barreth.

"I say we get everyone except Xavier, Megara and Lyssa.", you say.

"Well, I can see Xavier standing out somewhat, but any particular reason to kick out Megara and Lyssa?", says Kaya.

"I know Megara's type, she's urban world trash, nothing but trouble. And I just plain don't like Lyssa, something about her... face.", you say, making a gesture with both hands in front of your chest.

Barreth has a hearty laugh.

"Well, not a very professional statement but you do have more experience with urban worlds than I do so I'll take your word for it. And the equipment?", says Kaya.

"Well, I see no reason not to take everything. We don't know how long we gonna stay on this bathtub, the stuff can come in handy.", says Barreth.

"Very well, I'll send the message. Computer, record a message.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <starting recording in 3...2...1>

"Greetings, President Jack Kennedy. This is Kaya Avalon, Alpha-10 clearance. We have decided to accept all the equipment that has been offered us. We have decided to accept the following crew members: Taylor Jammer, Britt Weyer, Xerxes Yueh, Karina Lavigne and Amelie Belmont. End message.", says Kaya.

>>4205582


After about an hour comes the reply.

"Greeting, Kaya Avalon. This is President Jack Kennedy, Alpha-10 clearance. We have received your requests and processed them. Be ready for rendezvous. Please have the crew member to be extracted wear an EVA suit for maximum safety."

At the scheduled time the Pegasus-VII approaches our vessel. The ship is larger than our own, a fast attack intrasystem interceptor patrol ship sporting a very large payload of nuclear ordnance. It approaches our ship and extends its boarding tube.

When the connection is made we are greeted by the people from the other vessel in their shiny EVA suits. Robotic arms from the ship start unloading the stuff from their ship into ours, where the single pair of robotic arm that handles our storage units haves a hard time handling all the stuff being loaded. After a couple hours, and filling several storage units worth of stuff, the robotic arms finally finish their task.

Austyn enters the boarding tube, he waves to you one last time and you wave to him, then he is taken to the other side by the crew members.

Then the five crew members we selected get into our ship, all wearing EVAs.

The entrance is finally closed and the boarding tube disconnected.

One of the people steps forward and takes off the helmet, a woman carrying a big medkit.

"Liutenant Amelie Belmont, medical doctor. Pleasure to meet you.", says Amelie, shaking Kaya's hand.

"Kaya Avalon. This is my crew, captain Barreth Rodderick, Doctor Misah Saedi, Adit Canrad, Private Alyce Zarina and Doctor Abrahan Goldberg.", says Kaya

"These are my people. Squaddie Taylor Jammer, Private Britt Weyer, Private Xerxes Yueh and Private Karina Lavigne. Hopefully soon enough they all will be our people.", says Amelie, with a big smile.

"It's nice to have a medical doctor to share notes with! Come, I'll take you to the medbay and show you my work so far!", says Abrahan, leading Amelie away.

"Hey, let me get out of this EVA suit first!", she says.

The people start getting out of their EVA suits.

"Your log said you're a musician, what kind of music do you do?", Adit asks to Karina.

"Well, I'm a singer and multi-instrumentist. My favorite instrument is the theremin. I brought one with me, it's stashed somewhere in one of those storage bays.", says Karina.

"Theremin? That instrument that you play without physical contact? That's really cool. I'm a percussionist myself but I hardly ever have time to play these days and since we got in here in a hurry I didn't bring anything with me...", says Adit.

"No way! I did bring an electronic drum set too, we could totally play together and see what we can come up with.", says Karina.

"That sounds like a plan!", says Adit.

"You all must have went through a lot.", says Taylor.

"Yeah, it has been difficult. We wouldn't have made it without Alyce.", says Misah.

"Me? I just kept getting drunk all the time.", you say.

>>4205584


"Don't downplay your role on it all. You were on the front every time. You kept a level head through all this. Once it's all done I think you should get a medal or three.", says Misah.

"If anybody should get a medal that someone is Austyn. Without him we wouldn't be here.", you say.

"Austyn is the guy who we sent down to the planet right? Don't worry, he will be alright. Our hospitals are great.", says Xerxes.

"I'm not worried about him. I'm worried about us without him.", you say.

"Yeah, he kinda had a very useful skillset. We don't really have anyone with any expertise on explosives and drones now, and we have a whole bunch of drones and explosives.", says Misah.

"Well, let's hope we don't need to use them. We have plenty of other guns. Besides, you all killed the alien things right? So the threat is gone.", says Taylor.

"Yeah... right.", you say.

Adit and Karina found their musical instruments.

"Hey everyone, we're going to set these babies up at the lobby and play some songs for ya'll, come enjoy the party!", says Karina.

"That's what I'm talking about!", says Britt.

You all head to the lounge and start drinking.

Adit and Karina are really good, the Theremin and drums combo really makes some really unusual and catchy tunes.

"Damn, she has talent!", says Misah.

"I know right! I'm always impressed.", says Britt.

"So since when you guys know each other?", asks Misah.

"Well, me and Taylor have done basic training together so we gone the long haul. We were on ground during the civil war three years ago and then we've been sent to the outer rim. Kind of a big change really, but with the space force you never know. They kept the both of us together for some reason, that's also not very common.", says Britt.

"Civil war?", you ask.

"Yeah, three years ago there was this faction on Leonis called the Hydras who wanted to change the way we govern our world. They had this warped view on politics and wanted to try some new untested developmental philosophies, they lost the election so they tried a coup, the space force was mobilized to curb them. Their leadership were arrested and sentenced to the reeducation centers.", says Taylor.

>>4205588


Reeducation centers. Urban worlds, and all others as far as you know, dealt away with prisons as such. The concept of crime is considered outdated. They say people only commit crimes out of necessity or ignorance. Take these factors out of the picture and crimes won't be commited anymore. So if someone is caught breaking the governmental guidelines of behavior, they are sentenced to attending mandatory lectures, or mandatory psychological counselling. If the offense is bad enough, they must be tutored by a certified professional who will become their legal guardian for the duration of the reeducation. In the worst cases, they are taken to the reeducation centers, where they receive behavioral training full time by certified professionals, so that eventually they may be reintroduced into society. Some say it is "brainwashing", but the government says it is far more humane than the ancient and cruel methods employed by pre-spacefaring Earth.

"What about you Xerxes?", asks Misah.

"Me? I've been on the Pegasus VII since its christening. It was my first assignment since I got into the space force and they didn't move elsewhere since. Well, not until now.", says Xerxes.

"You look asian. Where are your parents from?", you ask.

"It's not polite to ask stuff like that Alyce!", says Misah.

"It's alright. The colony ship that came to colonize Leonis was clearly of european descent, but another colony ship on its way to a system not too far from here slowed down a bit and a bunch of passengers disembarked and went on to live in Leonis. This ship had people from asian descent from various different backgrounds. That's why there are a bunch of asian looking people in Leonis nowadays. The asians descendants tend to marry amongst themselves.", says Xerxes.

It is getting late... the thought of going back to your bunk alone is giving you existential despair...

> Invite Taylor into a more private conversation
> You think you're starting to fancy Britt
> Something about Xerxes sparks your imagination
> You'd drink until you pass out but Misah won't let you... gotta be creative...
> Write in

>>4205591
>> Invite Taylor into a more private conversation
How large are our own boobs?

>>4205603

>How large are our own boobs?
C cup

>>4205626
That explains the jealousy

>>4205603
>>4205626
>>4205658


You decide to invite Taylor into a more private conversation. You two walk around to the reprocessor to get more booze and you lead him away from the rest of the people.

"Tell me more about that Hydra thing.", you say.

"Well, I don't know much more about it. What I do know is that they wanted to create some kind of superman through genetic engineering and put everyone on a breeding program so instead of having babies the usual way you'd go to a fertility clinic to get one of their superbabies implanted. People didn't like their idea and they were voted out. Their corporation still operates though, selling designer babies to whoever wants to have them. ", says Taylor.

"Designer babies?", you ask.

"Yeah. If you want your kids to have eyes a certain color, or have a certain specific traits, they have a big list of genes they have isolated that they can splice and put into your kid. The kid will still be yours, just augmentated.", says Taylor.

"Are you one of those designer babies?", you ask.

"Well, yeah. My parents got some stuff like perfect eyesight and a bunch of other minor things.", says Taylor.

"So it is pretty widespread.", you say.

"Yeah, a good chunk of the population use it. I'd say maybe a third. But people don't like the idea of it being obligatory. People like to be able to choose you know.", says Taylor.

"So this hot body of yours is all made in a lab?", you say.

"Well, it might have been seeded in a lab but nowadays it is mostly made in a gym. And in a food reprocessor. And in a bunk bed.", says Taylor.

"You do have a very thorough approach with things.", you say.

"Yeah, when I do something I like to go all the way.", says Taylor.

"I've been thinking...", you say.

"Yeah...", says Taylor.

"What about we get out of here and go back to my bunk so you can show me how thorough can you really be with this designer dick of yours?", you say.

"My pleasure.", says Taylor.

***

You wake up with a strong cramp. You never felt anything like it before - it isn't a stomach ache and you're pretty sure it isn't a menstrual cramp either because you have had a subdermal implant for years to get rid of that. Still your lower belly hurts like hell and it is a bit swollen, so you decide to go to the medbay to get it checked. Weirdly enough neither Abrahan nor Amelie are there so you just sit down at the examination chair and is soon met with the medical personality AI which asks: "Hello, what can I do for you today?".

"I have a strong cramp in my lower belly region. I didn't eat anything strange and I have a subdermal hormonal implant.", you say.

"Alright! First lets collect some samples. Please place your finger in the indicated spot for blood collection."

"Alright! While we analyze your samples, let's do some imaging of the area to figure out what is going on inside of you shall we?"

A probe arm reaches for your lower abdomen and starts doing imaging of your internal organs.

>>4205744
"Congratulations! It seems you're going to be a mother!"

"Error! Unknown sex."

"Error! Unknown gestation period."

"Whataf...?", you say in utter terror as you look at the screen.

Some weird multi limbed abomination is growing inside of you. Maybe your eyes are tricking you, but you think you can see it grow with every heartbeat.

"Abortion. Enact emergency forceful cesarean section abortion. Now."

"Alright! Proceeding with emergency cesarean section abortion."

The examination chair holds you in place while laser cutters make precise incisions on your abdomen. Mechanical arms grab the little abomination fetus and yank it out from you then place it on a table nearby. The many eyed fetus immediately begins flailing about; the machine staples your wound closed and you get up and crawl out of the medbay with the fetus coming after you and find the strength to shout to the computer to close the door as the fetus bashes agains the medbay door, bending it out of shape.

You find the strength to tell the computer to seal all access to the medbay and you hear the blast door shutting close.

You run towards the cockpit looking for your powerarmor... you gotta kill that abomination... but then you faint.

You wake up in the lounge surrounded by doctor Misah, doctor Abrahan, doctor Amelie and Kaya.

"She lost a lot of blood but she'll be alright.", says doctor Amelie.

"What about the DNA test? Is she infected?", asks Kaya.

"Of course she's infected Kaya! She birthed an alien baby for fucks sake!", says Abrahan.

"We gotta get rid of that thing in the medbay before it trashes everything in there, we need those equipments to make more antivirals for her, just the stuff in Amelie's medkit won't get us going for long.", says Misah.

"How the hell this happened?", says Kaya.

"Kaya, you're clearly not in your best day... She fucked Austyn who was infected then infected baby was born.", says Abrahan.

"Is that even possible?", says Kaya.

"Well, since it just happened it clearly is.", says Abrahan.

"Here Alyce, take some antivirals.", says Amelie, giving you three big pills and some water to swallow them with.

Taylor enters the lounge wailing.

>>4205748


"What is wrong tailor?", asks Amelie.

"What have you done to me you witch?", says Taylor.

"What are you talking about?", says Abrahan.

"My fucking dick fell off!", says Taylor, raising his hand and showing his dick and balls.

A bunch of eyes appear in his dick and a maw opens up in its dick head and it jumps on doctor Abrahan's face.

"Aargh!", screams Abrahan as Taylor's dick starts eating his face.

Amelie, Kaya and Misah run away in panic and Taylor's dick runs after them.

Taylor falls on his knees naked screaming in frustration and pain, a black rot spreading around his dick wound.

Doctor Abrahan lies in a pool of blood in the middle of the lounge.

You feel barely strong enough to move.

Somehow, you manage to get up.

You walk to the storage bay.

You have a whole armory available to you.

It is time to hunt anomalies.

What equipment do you want to use to go catch some anomalies?
> Just your classic power armor and chaingun, never gets old
> You wanna try those hand mounted laser cannons
> You wanna try those plasma swords
> A standard power armor plus a experimental plasma rifle
> A standard power armor plus a laser rifle
> +Take a laser pistol just in case
> Write in

>>4205752
>You wanna try those hand mounted laser cannons
Well this is fucked up. I guessed right that we're pregnant though.

>>4205803


You decide to wear the power armor with the hand mounted laser cannons. That's some serious devastating power right there, but only for a few minutes. If you can find a high voltage power plug you could keep shooting for longer. You think there are some at the engine room, at the cockpit and at the unloading area near the storage bays if it comes to that.

Now you just gotta find your foes.

"Computer, show me where is the anomaly that killed Abrahan.", you say.

A hologram appears showing a map of the ship with a red dot near the security room.

It must have followed Kaya and the others there and they barricaded themselves inside.

"Kaya, can you see me? I'm going there. Tell the others to go get weapons, this can get nasty.", you say.

You start walking to the security room. But when you pass by the lounge room you don't see Abrahan's corpse anymore.

"Computer, show me the feed of where is Abrahan.", you say.

A hologram is projected. You are filled with horror.

You see the body of Abrahan distorted, his face open like a big maw, his arms extended like big whips covered in eyes.

How the hell did he turn into that so fast? He's by the bunks, whipping the blast doors which are lowered. He doesn't seem to be damaging the blast doors but he seems enraged and doesn't seem to care that his efforts are being wasted.

"Computer, show me where is Taylor.", you say.

You see taylor's corpse inside one of the storage bay - not the one you just left, but one very close by. He must have taken nearly the same path you took, but by the corridor at the opposite side of the ship to reach that storage bay.

He lays on the floor, his brains splattered all over the place; seems he somehow managed to commit suicide with a chaingun.

Still, his body finds no rest. Tentacles with eyes are sprouting from the very lethal wound that got him killed, and a gigantic maw has appeared in place of his dick wound. Multiple eyes are sprouting all over his body. You watch as his body convulses in place, seemingly not sure if it is dead or alive.

>>4205881


Then it seems to reassure itself - it is alive. It gets back up and starts walking again, with uncertain gait.

"Alyce, are you there?", you hear Kaya's voice in the intercom.

Then something strange happens.

The Taylor creature and the Abrahan creature hologram look up at the same time. As if they could somehow... recognize Kaya's voice.

"I'm here Kaya. I'm at the lounge.", you say.

"I'm with Misah and Amelie at the security room. We're barricaded inside. Most everyone else in in the bunk section. Except Adit. He is at the back of the ship, in the zero gravity area.", says Kaya.

"Whatahell is Adit doing back there?", you say.

"He sometimes go there for no apparent reason, I think he just like zero gravity. There aren't many places to hide in there so I'm telling him to stay in the nanoassembly room for now and closing the blast door there.", says Kaya.

"Got it.", you say.

You notice that the Taylor-creature hologram started to head to the zero gravity area... could these creatures... could these creatures understand speech?

> Go after the fetus creature in the medbay
> Go after the dick creature in the security room
> Go after the Abrahan creature in the bunks
> Go after the Taylor creature in the zero gravity area
> Write in

>>4205885
>Go after the fetus creature in the medbay

>>4206356


You decide to go after the fetus creature in the medbay.

You head there, only being able to move because the advanced actuators of the power armor do all the heavy lifting for you.

As you arrive in front of the medbay you prepare yourself mentally for what you're about to face.

"Computer, open the medbay door.", you say.

With a hiss, the blast door unseals.

You see the fetus thing ahead, which was busily thrashing the medbay; it tilts its tiny head in your direction.

Oh god! It's head does looks like a deformed baby's head covered in eyes, but now it has an elongated body with a retarded amount of thin arms covered in eyes ending in tiny human hands. Looks like it has grown a lot ever since it has gotten out of you, measuring nearly a meter. What could it possibly been feeding on?

The continues thrashing the console as it was doing before; you notice it is feeding on something, some sort of fluid that is leaking from one of the consoles behind one of the big machines. It must have breached one of the chemical storage pods of the drug synthesizers and is feeding on that.

For the most part, the creature seems not to mind your presence at all.

You get out of your initial shock and discharge a laser blast on the creature with both laser cannons. The entire room gets bathed in blinding light as you burn the creature with the precise petawatts laser. You immediately vaporize whole chunks of the creature, which finally acknowledges you as a threat and begins to flee, getting under one counter.

You move the beam after the creature, vaporizing the whole counter which explodes, filling the room with smoke.

You search the room for the creature and can't quite find it.

Then it jumps on you, knocking you prone. The head mounted display shows a bunch of failures in the power armor as the creature begins pounding at you with its many very strong limbs, its half melted form reshaping, its many eyes falling off and dangling about by the optical nerve before falling to the ground as it cries blood through all its eye holes, new eyes regrowing in the eye sockets in place of the burnt eyes.

You bend both your legs and kick the creature away from you, jump back on your feet, then start blasting it again.

You concentrate fire on the creature and split it in two. The two halves run in opposite directions, so you follow each with one hand.

You continue blasting them, destroying a lot of furniture and damaging a bunch of machines as they seek shelter behind them to try to shield themselves from the deadly beams.

After a couple minutes little is left of the creature but a pile of burnt material.

>>4206819


The medbay however is fucked beyond recognition - nearly every machine broken or damaged in some way, most storage units breached, all the furniture vaporized.

You check the battery pack - you spend a little over half your batteries killing this little shit.

"Computer, show me the other anomalies.", you say.

A nearby holographic projector tries to display the hologram but flickers and explodes.

A different projector, farther away, then displays the hologram.

It shows the Abrahan creature by the food reprocessor gorging itself with food. It keeps pressing the button for it to dispense more food and eating it. It now has a huge abdomen, like an ant queen, and is laying egg after egg the size of big melons, which roll around and stick to the walls. You can see snakelike things floating inside the eggs. There are dozens of the eggs already.

The Taylor creature has found a chemical storage room and pierced a chemical storage tank in zero gravity. Kaya sealed the door and locked it inside. It has since swollen and got hugely fat, absorving most of the liquid from the tank. It has developed some kind of corrosive vomit and keeps barfing at the blast gates, eroding it slowly. The computer estimates it will become inoperational in a few minutes and will be breached shortly after.

The dick creature is eating Xerxes's corpse near one of the storage rooms and growing bigger. You ask the computer for the logs on how did that happen and apparently when the Abrahan creature got away from the bunks Xerxes decided to get out of the bunk by himself to try to get to the storage rooms to grab some weapons.

Before he could get there the dick creature caught up with him and killed him.

> Go after the Abrahan creature by the reprocessor
> Go after the Taylor creature by the chemical storage room
> Go after the dick creature by the storage rooms
> Write in

>>4206821
>> Go after the Taylor creature by the chemical storage room
The ship's fucked. We might even have to abandon it.

>>4206928


You decide to go after the Taylor creature by the chemical storage room.

You run towards it and then push yourself floating around when you get in the zero g area of the ship.

You arrive there as the creature has breached the blast door and is pulling itself out of the chemical storage room, its big swollen head full of eyes with cracked pustulent lips sticking out of the storage room while its arms which have been snapped open in a longitudinal midsection and now are distributed in two pairs with the bones visible with a very large amount of cracks and mendings elongating them trying to pull the rest of its horrendous eye covered form out of the hole it carved into the blast door, its fat body disgusting overstretched body with a sickening yellowish greenish coloration getting stuck in the hole.

You point your hand cannons at it and begin shooting.

The Taylor creature bursts like a balloon and liquid splashes every which way, most of it keeps floating around in large blobs.

Some liquid splashes on you. Your head mounted display flashes a bunch of error messages showing your power armor has been damaged. One of your hand cannons malfunctions.

You keep blasting him with the other handcannon. The creature, now significantly thinner, slithers by and flees through the opposite end of the corridor.

You consider following it, but the corridor is filled with corrosive liquid floating around, so you hesitate and the creature gets out of view, turning a corner.

Weird... it fled? You thought it would try to kill you. But then thinking again about those creatures that Austyn met before and tossed into the room to be exploded... they did act like pets... maybe the Taylor creature is just behaving the same as a pet would if you shot it with a gun. You wonder how it will react when you find it again. Will it keep fleeing? Will it attack you immediately? Will it remember you attacked it?

>>4207191


You could try to vaporize all these acid blobs and go pursue the Taylor creature. Though your power armor is in a crappy state, you only have one functional hand cannon, the metaplates are cracking and the actuators are giving out. Maybe you should go get a new one. Heck, maybe you should go get some help, doing this alone is killing you. You'd need to escort some people from the bunks into the storage room so they could get armed.

Your mind races from one thing to another really quick - should you go after the Taylor creature? Should you go stop the Abrahan creature from shitting out tons of eggs at the lounge? Should you go stop the dick creature near the storage room? By now it must have eaten Xerxes body and got bigger, or more likely turned it into another of those horrible things. You could just take a step back and talk to the computer, check the holograms, talk to Kaya - maybe she has some good idea, because you're tired and you don't have any. All you know is the ship is fucked. We might even have to abandon it. Does the ship even has a lifeboat?

> Vaporize the acid blobs and pursue the Taylor creature
> Try to find a different path towards the Taylor creature
> You can get to it later, go after the Abrahan creature
> You can get to it later, go after the dick creature
> Ask the computer where the anomalies are and talk to Kaya
> Your power armor is fucked, you need a new one, head to the storage room
> Go to the bunks and escort the people to the storage room so they can get armed
> Write in

>>4207193
>> Your power armor is fucked, you need a new one, head to the storage room
>> Go to the bunks and escort the people to the storage room so they can get armed
I think we should go back to Leonis-3 and check on Austyn and the people there cause they're probably fucked as well.

>>4207215


Your power armor is fucked, you need a new one so you head to the storage room. When you pass through there you don't find the dick creature nor Xerxes corpse, what you're not sure if is a good sign or a bad sign.

You enter the storage room and command the computer to lock you inside. Then you get out of the half destroyed power armor and into a new one. Game on, fuckers!

Now the priority should be to get the rest of the crew equipped. You head to the bunks to escort the people in there back to the storage rooms. You take a path avoiding the lounge so you don't meet the Abrahan creature.

As you're almost getting there you find a thick elongated creature with many eyes and a gigantic maw slithering about - that must be Taylor's dick. You shoot at it but it quickly gets out of sight, slithering towards the unloading area. You have a feeling you'll meet it again pretty soon.

You reach the bunks.

"C'mon people, I'll escort you to the storage rooms so you can get armed! Let's go kill these fuckers!", you say.

The bunk doors open and you are met by Barreth, Britt and Karina.

"Let's go! We're too exposed in here! Those dumbass Xerxes ran out on his own and got killed!", says Barreth.

"This shit is way too fucked up, I didn't sign up for this shit, I'm not going out there to die!", says Britt, panicking and running back into the bunk room.

"Fuck you Britt, you sack of shit! Let's go people!", says Karina.

The bunk room closes back and the blast doors seal shut.

"Let's go, move, move, move!", you say, taking point.

As you're moving, a blast door closes to your left.

"Go right, now!", you hear Kaya's voice on the intercom.

"Do as the lady with the map says.", you say.

As you move, you hear something bashing against the blast door. This time however, the blast door actually bends.

"Whatafuck!", says Adit.

"Just run! Keep running! You'll have to go through the lounge, but Abrahan is too fat and too busy eating, he won't notice you.", says Kaya.

"Kaya, this is crazy!", says Barreth.

"There's no other way, all other path's are suicidal!", says Kaya.

"This path is suicidal Kaya!", says Barreth.

"This will work! Just do it!", says Kaya.

You all keep running and all the paths you're not taking have the blast doors shut. Often, as soon as we go past a path, we hear something slamming against the blast door and it bending.

We then get to lounge. Abrahan is busy eating, lifting his head and motioning to move towards us, but luckily his heavy abdomen makes him too slow. There are hundreds of eggs pilled over all over the place, with snake things swimming inside of them.

"Avoid the eggs! Run!", say Kaya.

You all start running. As you run past the eggs, a bunch of them eclode and dozens of the snake things come slithering after us.

We run as fast as we can and a blast door closes right behind us. A couple snake things slither in before the blast door closes.

>>4207450


You take one hand out of the cannon slot, open the casing of the laser with the protective gear and hand protection glasses for everyone, while still running away.

"Quick, wear those. Stay behind me.", you say.

The snakes keep slithering towards you all while everyone puts the protection glasses. You then shoot the two snakes with the lasers, illuminating the whole room with blinding light, vaporizing the creatures.

"C'mon, let's go.", you say.

You arrive at the storage room.

"Gear up everyone.", you say.

"Is this laser cannon suit good?", ask Barreth.

"It is great.", you say.

"Well, there are enough for us all, so let's go all out on those.", says Karina.

Karina and Barreth wear hand mounted laser cannon power armors.

"Alright, let's go get those things.", you say.

"The Xerxes creature caught Britt on the bunks! Oh God! It is coming for us in the security room next! Come, quick!", says Kaya.

The Xerxes creature? So that's what was breaching the blast walls?

"Computer, show me the Xerxes creature.", you say.

The hologram shows a hulking abomination some three meters tall with a huge spiked multi eyed right arm.

"What could have caused this transformation?", you say.

"Doctor Amelie hypothesizes it might have been a hormonal implant Xerxes have in his right arm.", says Kaya.

A hormonal implant? You do have a hormonal implant yourself, it is a subdermal one, in your lower abdomen. Maybe it could have had something to do with Taylor's ... dick incident? But why wouldn't you mutate horribly? Different hormones, maybe?

"Hurry up!", says Kaya.

"Alright, let's go!", you say.

You all start running towards the security room, taking a different path, this time avoiding the lounge.

When you arrive at the security room you find the Xerxes creature pounding at the blast doors, nearly opening it.

You all begin blasting it with laser fire.

The creature begins screaming in pain, all its eyes blinded by the lasers. The creature flails around disoriented while new sensory organs form trying to adapt to the new circumstances. However, they too take damage too fast to adapt and are destroyed. The creature falls to the ground as we get closer to it, incinerating it with our laser beams. In a minute or so, only a husk remains.

Through the partially busted security room you can see Kaya, Misah and Amelie.

"Kaya, it isn't safe for you to stay there anymore!", you say.

"Take us to the cockpit then.", says Kaya.

"And to go past the Abrahan creature like this? Do you have a death wish?", says Barreth.

"I think we should go back to Leonis-3 and check on Austyn and the people there cause they're probably as fucked as we are as well.", you say.

"Well, pretty weird moment to drop that on us Alyce. I engaged hypertravel while you were asleep, if we dropped out of hyperspeed now we could fly back to Leonis-3 in three or four months of sublightspeed flight.", says Barreth.

"Doesn't the ship has a lifeboat or something?", you say.

>>4207453


"Well, actually it does. It is in the zero gravity area, below the engine room. It's very barebones, it has a mini reprocessor and a small nuclear rocket. If we dropped out of hyperspace and boarded the lifeboat it would take us a couple years to get to Leonis-3 on it. It has been projected for only 5 people.", says Kaya.

"Why even put a lifeboat for 5 people in a ship for 50 people?", says Karina.

"It is a prototype ship, we never actually flew it with 50 people. We usually test it with 3 or 4 people.", says Kaya.

"Maybe we should take you and Misah to find Adit and take the three of you to the lifeboat then. If we can't clear out the ship, you should order the computer to drop out of hyperspeed and you three take off to Leonis-3. With or without us.", says Barreth.

"Barreth, that is...", says Kaya.

"I think he is right, you civilians should be ready for evacuation.", says Karina.

"Maybe we could get into power armors too, I mean, we do have a whole bunch of those laying around...", says Misah.

> Barreth and Karina are right, let's get Adit and put you three in the lifeboat
> Tell Kaya and Misah to just stay in a corridor with both sides blocked by blast doors and wait
> Go get Adit and take the three of them to the storage room to get power armors
> Write in

>>4207455
>Go get Adit and take the three of them to the storage room to get power armors
Can't that thing just turn back in hyperspace?

>>4207498
That thing as in the ship of course

>>4207498
>>4207501


"Hey, can't the ship just turn back in hyperspace for us to head back to Leonis-3?", you ask.

"That would be good wouldn't it? But when you enter hyperspace you generate a topological interference field that expands 'behind' you. You're not really free to move in every direction you please - theoretically if your speed decreases too much you'd even drop out of hyperspeed automatically too, although we haven't been able to test that with the whole aliens entering your spaceship if you slow down thing. You can think of it a bit like building a railroad as you go with just straight tracks. To go backwards you'd have to stop, turn the locomotive around, and start again. Except that to actually start again you need to be within the topological gravitational pool of a star or some other major object, otherwise you can't generate enough energy to cause the rift between real reality and hyperspace and you won't be able to transition into it. So the locomotive can only start again from the station so to speak. You can change the direction slightly over time, but you can't really do an U turn in the middle of nowhere and you can't jump back into hyperspace from the middle of interstellar space.", says Misah.

"Yeah. The best we could do is 'bounce back' at the nearest star. Jump out of hyperspace, reallign, accelerate, jump back in. Would take two or three months.", says Barreth.

"I think I get it.", you say."Well, let's go get Adit and all of you into power armors, we gotta retake this ship!", you say.

Kaya, Misah and Amelie crawl out of the security room and you hand them protective eye gear. The three of you go through the areas with the various destroyed blast doors heading towards the zero gravity area of the ship.

As you are about to enter the area you see the blobs of corrosive substance floating about.

"Dammit, I had forgotten about those. The area is flooded with corrosive liquid.", you say.

"What are we gonna do?", says Barreth.

"We could vaporize them with the lasers.", you say.

"Huh, wouldn't that turn them into corrosive gases?", says Misah.

"Guess I didn't think things through.", you say.

"Don't we have a robot that can scoop up liquid or something?", says Karina.

"There are some cleaning robots for doing just that. I just don't know how well they would handle corrosive liquids.", says Kaya.

"Well, we gotta ask Adit.", you say.

"Computer, give me intercom and Adit feed.", says Kaya.

"Adit, are you listening? It is Kaya. We need you to use the liquid scooping cleaning bots to clear out the zero g area from corrosive liquid. You think you can do that?", you say.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can do that. Might take a few hours.", says Adit.

"Good, we'll be back for you. Hang in there buddy. Over!", says Kaya.

"Let's head back to the storage rooms.", you say.

>>4207639


"Watch out!", says Kaya, as the dick creature jumps out in our direction.

We blast at it with our lasers and it flees away.

"Not a very brave one this dick thing.", says Karina.

We head towards the storage bays surprisingly with no further incidents.

Misah and Amelie get into the last remaining Laser Hand Cannon power armors.

Kaya gets into a standard power armor with a chaingun, grabs a experimental plasma rifle and a laser pistol.

Everybody stares at her.

"What? Gotta be prepared.", says Kaya.

"Alright, let's go!", you say.

"Computer, open the blast door.", says Kaya.

We head outside. The silence is eerie.

"So... what should we go kill first?", asks Karina.

> Let's go hunt the dick creature
> It is time to face the Abrahan creature
> We have to destroy the Taylor creature
> We haven't seen what happened to Britt
> Write in

>>4207647
>> We have to destroy the Taylor creature

>>4207695
This is the biggest threat.

Also, did I just stumble into a quest that said "dick monster" unironically? What is this quest?

>>4207450

Alright, I think I saw a small mistake, Adit wasn't with you group and I wrote he said whatafuck when the creature was bashing the blast doors, it should have been Barreth. Just so you don't think Adit is teleporting around.

>>4207695
>>4208349


"We have to destroy the Taylor creature.", you say.

"Computer, give us data feed on the Taylor creature.", says Kaya.

A hologram shows the creature inside the AI core, trashing the data racks. The hologram shows the creature in black and white.

"Fuck, we gonna lose a ton of data if this thing keeps destroying those cores!", says Misah.

"C'mon, let's go shoot that thing up!", says Barreth.

We run towards one of the alternate entrances of the AI cores; to avoid the area with the acid blobs we have to take a tiny maintenance tunnel with a ladder.

We get into the AI core; the place is freezing cold. We can hear the creature but we can't see anything, the room is barely lit by lots of little blinking light on the various data racks.

"Computer, turn on the lights.", says Kaya.

The lights are turned on and we see the creature on the opposite side of the room, knocking down some data racks.

It turns towards us and come running, with multiple spider like legs, its body covered in eyes, its four bony arms raised menacingly, its pustulent maw spread open.

Kaya shoots it with the plasma rifle right in the mouth, making a hole through the head of the creature. The creature squirms and convulses and its head begin to mutate. We don't allow it time to adjust and start blasting it with laser beams. Its multiple eyes burn off and it starts running away, getting cover behind data racks. We keep burning at it, destroying a bunch of data hacks in the process, which explode noisily with a puff of smoke within moments of being exposed to the lasers.

We continue shooting at the Taylor creature which continues running away around the data core whenever we get an angle; the destruction is immense, racks upon racks are destroyed with every blast, many catch on fire. The room begins to be flooded with anti flames gases from the automated system and soon we can't see anything anymore.

"Where is it?", you say.

"I'm not seeing it.", says Barreth.

"Aargh!", you hear Misah screaming.

"Aargh!", you hear Karina screaming.

"Computer, disperse the antiflames gases.", says Kaya.

We hear the ventilation system coming to life and the antiflame gases being pumped out, many racks still on fire, things exploding in the backgrounds. In a few moments we see what is going on.

We see Misah impalled by two of the Taylor creature's bony arm appendages which ripped right through her power armor. She's struggling trying to get out and shooting at it.

We see Karina on the ground, a burnt line on the floor all the way from Misah to her, the right cannon and most of the forearm of her power armor melted by the blast from Misah's laser cannon.

We immediately begin shooting at the creature again.

>>4208716


Kaya takes aim and gets a plasma shot at one of the creature's arms, severing it. It screeches in pain, unstick the other arm from Misah and run away.

Amelie runs to Misah and rips out the gigantic bony arm from Misah's abdomen and toss it away. It starts wiggling around, a bunch of eyes sprout on it.

"Oh no you won't!", says Barreth, shooting it until it becomes a pile of cinders.

Amelie opens her medkit takes a plasterskin spray and seal Misah's wound stopping her bleeding. Then she opens Misah's power armor face helmet and give her a bunch of pills.

"Take it, those are antivirals so you won't turn into one of those things.", says Amelie.

All the while we keep shooting at the Taylor creature, which keeps circling us, sometimes running away, other times trying to approach.

Misah close back up her helmet and stand up.

"Thanks doctor Amelie, now go check on Karina, I think I shot her accidentaly.", says Misah.

"Hey, don't sweat it.", says Karina, shooting with the other arm at the creature.

"Let me take a look at this thing. This looks bad. Gonna take awhile to disentangle this mess from your arm.", says Amelie.

"Just give me something for the pain, I'm about to pass out.", says Karina, kneeling down.

Amelie takes a subdermal anesthetis implant and injects it on Karina.

"Ah, that's the shit! Thanks doc, I ain't feeling shit anymore.", says Karina, getting back up.

"Uh, guys, I'm almost out.", says Barreth.

"Shit, me too.", you say.

"Well, so we gotta kill it fast then.", says Karina.

"Easier said than done.", says Misah.

"This fucking shit keeps running away. Stay in place, you fucker!", says Kaya, switching the experimental plasma rifle to automatic and emptying all the ammo on the thing. Kaya tosses the empty plasma rifle away and grabs hold of the chaingun.

The blasts are super effective, destroying the whole upper half of the creature. It stays wriggling in place, a bunch of tentacles sprouting as the thing tries to get into a new shape.

"Good shot Kaya! It's our cue everyone!", you say.

Everyone focus fire on the creature. Kaya also shoots at it with the chaingun.

Soon the Taylor thing is reduced to a pile of cinders.

"Computer, assess extension of damages.", says Kaya.

Computer voice: <computer AI core integrity: 43% and degrading. Stability expected at 34%."

"Damn. What does this means to us?", you ask.

"We should expect the AI to be considerably dumber and the hyperspace calculations to take far longer - think weeks or even months.", says Misah.

"I have barely any charge left.", says Barreth.

"Yeah, I think none of us have much charge left. We really should go get some other gear.", says Karina.

>>4208719


"These laser cannons are great though. We could still give them one last spin against the Abrahan creature. If we take the maintenance tunnels under the cockpit and attach the high power cables to these things we could keep on shooting all day. I think there are only a couple of those cables by the cockpit though, and they aren't very long so we would only be able to walk a little bit past the door of the lounge.", says Barreth.

"I have to look into this wound on your arm carefully Karina, though without the medbay doing the surgery manually will take several hours.", says Amelie.

"We could leave Amelie and Karina at the nanoassembly with Adit. I think Adit might have cleared the path enough for us to make it to the door at least by now.", you say.

"We could also leave them by the lifeboat. Things aren't look so good, with the computer busted we gonna have a hard time even steering the ship. Might be a better idea to just prepare for the worst really.", says Misah.

> Lets go back to the storage room to get new gear
> Lets leave Amelie and Karina at the nanoassembly
> Lets leave Amelie and Karina at the lifeboat
> Lets go hunt the dick creature
> Lets go finish off the Abrahan creature
> Lets find what happened to Britt
> Write in

>>4208723
>> Lets leave Amelie and Karina at the lifeboat
>> Lets go hunt the dick creature

>>4208738


"Maybe you're right Misah... Karina does need medical attention and there doesn't seem to be anywhere safe in this ship anymore.", you say.

"Let's head to the lifepods them. Computer, guide us to the lifepods, avoid any areas with liquids floating around.", says Kaya.

The holograms start showing the path. But it did had a little lag, a few seconds, between the command and the moment it showed the path, so the computer did got a bit dumber.

After moving around the ship for a few minutes without incident, taking some maintenance tunnels, we reach the lifeboat.

We help Amelie and Karina get inside it.

"The thing really is small, and to think five people are to spend years inside what is basically a single room with a bunch of reclinable chairs and a reprocessor is truly maddening. It does have a bunch of distendable blinds to make cubicles for people to create a resemblance of privacy though. It was designed to accelerate at 1g until it reaches cruise speed, and after that people would need to exercise regularly to prevent muscle mass and bone mass loss because this thing isn't big enough to be made to spin to generate artificial gravity.", says Misah

"Alright, let's hunt the dick creature now.", you say.

"Computer, show us the dick creature.", says Kaya.

The computer takes quite sometime to process the request. Finally, it begins projecting a hologram of the creature around the storage area.

"Let's go.", you say.

We keep following the creature, which moves around somewhat, going into the loading bay area. We finally find it there. At first it doesn't seems interested in us, but when we get close enough it suddenly jumps in our direction. We direct our blasts towards it and start frying it with laser beams.

The creature is fried with surprising ease. We approach it to check if it is dead, still shooting it with the beams, Kaya shooting at it with the chaingun.

But it isn't! It springs back to life, like a snake shedding its old skin. It bisects into two and struggles to remain alive.

"Damnit! I'm out!", says Barreth.

"Also out!", you say.

"I'm in my last legs here.", says Misah.

"Hold on, there's a power cable in here somewhere.", you say, as you kneel near the nearby console, take your hands out of the power armor cannons and go rummage through the high voltage cables.

"Found it!", you say, as you plug it into you battery pack, your cannons springing back into life. "Ready to rock and roll!"

You resume blasting the creature. It seems disoriented and unable to regrow its tissue fast enough to respond properly. You continue blasting at it for a few more minutes until it is dead, just a burnt husk.

>>4209549


"Well, we do need more weapons now. Let's head to the storage room.", says Barreth.

You unplug the laser cannon and we head to the storage rooms.

"We need to strategize. We now only have the Abrahan creature to deal with.", says Kaya.

"And Britt, don't forget Britt. We don't know what happened to him.", says Misah.

"Yeah, Britt. Computer, show us Britt.", says Kaya.

The computer takes awhile to process the information. It shows Britt at the destroyed medbay. He's gorgins himself with all sorts of substances in there and has grown even bigger than the Taylor creature.

"Oh now! Another goliath!", says Barreth.

"You calling him what now?", you say.

"You know, the giant dude from the bible.", says Barreth.

"We gonna load up on fresh chaingun power armors and grab the experimental plasma rifles. Let's hope those are enough to bring down that big guy.", says Barreth.

"Yeah, but then what we gonna do about the Abrahan creature?", says Misah.

"He's close to the cockpit remember? We can hook up a couple laser cannons and shoot him up with them.", says Barreth.

"Will that be enough?", asks Misah.

"It better be.", says Barreth.

"So which one should we go tackle first?", asks Misah.

> Go get the Abrahan creature at the lounge
> Go get the Britt creature at the medbay
> Write in

>>4209552
>> Go get the Britt creature at the medbay

>>4209564


"We gotta kill the Britt creature before it wreck the ship in half.", you say.

Everybody gets into pristine powerarmors with chainguns and grabs the remaining experimental plasma rifles.

The team is assembled - Barreth, Misah, Kaya and you.

"Set these things to automatic fire, we want to absolutely destroy the Britt creature as fast as possible.", says Kaya.

We go on moving towards the medbay.

However, when we are getting near there we find a bunch of those creepy crawling creatures coming our way.

"What the fuck? Did more of those hatch from the lounge?", you say.

"Yeah, probably. A bunch of blast doors are destroyed all over the place so we can't even seal the place properly, they must have escaped.", says Kaya.

"Do we shoot them?", says Misah.

"We can't waste the plasma bolts. Use the chainguns.", says Kaya.

We stow away the plasma rifles and shoot at the crawling creatures with the chaingun.

One of the creatures knocks down Kaya. She struggles and pushes the creature away, shooting it with her laser pistol. We continue shooting it with the chainguns.

We hear a very loud growling noise then we hear bangs on the walls of the ship that get louder and louder.

"What is going on guys? I don't like the sound of this...", says Misah.

The wall to our left then is breached by the Britt creature who bursts through and comes running after us, screaming loudly.

"Fire at it, fire!", screams Kaya, grabbing her plasma rifle and starting to shoot at the Britt creature.

We all grab our plasma rifles and start to shoot at the Britt creature.

Our attacks are fairly effective against the creature, destroying its head, most of its torso and its whole left arm. It falls to the ground as we run out of ammo and switch to chainguns. However, we are unable to deliver enough damage with the chainguns to stop it from regenerating fast enough to prevent it from getting back up. It regeneras again, becoming a slightly smaller 'goliath' with just the giant right arm and a wriggly deformed body made out of semi humanoid mass of eye tentacles. It screeches and comes running after us.

"Oh shit, run!", says Barreth.

We start running, and Kaya keeps ordering the computer to close the blast doors behind us, but the creature just bursts through them.

"Fuck. We'll have to split!", says Misah.

"What... no! We got to...", says Kaya.

"No, she's right. If that thing doesn't follow you, head to the lifeboat.", says Barreth.

"But...", says Kaya.

"No but Kaya. That also applies to you Barreth. Ideally that thing should come after me. I'm infected after all, I shouldn't be on that lifeboat.", you say.

"Then in this case neither should I.", says Misah.

"Don't forget to grab Adit before you all leave.", you say.

Everyone splits in all directions. You lag behind a little bit.

>>4209688


"Hey, you big fucker! I'm here! Come after me!", you say, shooting at him with the chaingun.

The Britt creature screeches and comes running after you.

"Oh shit.", you say, running around in the ship.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Think, think, think. Ah! You got an idea!

"Computer, give me intercom privileges."

"Kaya, give me explosives clearance, I need to blow up stuff in the ship to kill some aliens."

"Clearance granted.", you hear Kaya's voice on the intercom.

"Computer, blow up the explosives on every room that the Britt creature enters when it is inside it.", you say.

You then start running through every room of the ship. The creature enters, there's a massive explosion, it regenerates smaller. Rinse and repeat.

After you destroy most of the ship there's very little left of Britt. You do it one last time. Britt is no more.

Computer voice: <warning ship structural integrity critical>

"Kaya, drop out of hyperspace and get the hell out of here, I'm going to get rid of the Abrahan creature now.", you say.

"Alright.", says Kaya.

You hear the hissing sounds of the ship losing atmosphere indicating that we lowered the hypershield. We dropped out of hyperspace.

"We're leaving.", says Kaya.

"Good luck.", you say.

"You too.", says Kaya.

"Wait! Give me full clearance over the ship.", you say.

"Already did.", says Kaya.

"So we killing Abrahan or nay?", you hear Misah saying.

You two wear back the laser cannon power armors and sneak into the maintenance tunnels that lead into the cockpit.

"Alright where are the power cables... here they are! Lets connect them and lets rock!", says Misah.

You two then get as far into the lounge as the cables allow it and begin shooting at the Abrahan creature that by now is a hulking abomination, taking over a good chunk of the lounge.

You two have to keep shooting and shooting for nearly twenty minutes in order to kill all the things in the lounge... and the ship is still infested because a whole bunch of creatures did flee everywhere since pretty much all the blast doors are busted... and the ship is completely fucked up... and you are stranded in the vaccuum of interstellar space with a broken spaceship that is leaking all the air... and you may even be about to turn into monsters yourselves...

But somehow you feel you accomplished alot.

So you and Misah grab a few bottles of Unspec in the reprocessor, sit back in the lounge and relax... shit, we may even figure a way out of our shit situation somehow...

>>

So, what do you guys think?

Did you like it the story? The setting?

Wanna keep going?

>>4209692
I love it. It's an interesting take on space and body horror. Let's keep going. We need to find a gene therapy clinic and another man to fuck asap.

>>4209708
"Alright, so we can't jump anywhere because we are in the middle of nowhere, got it. But we can keep accelerating normally right? What is the top speed of this boat?", you ask.

"Forty something percent the speed of light. Takes over four months to get to top speed, same time to slow down. But we would die without air if we keep losing atmosphere like this with all these holes in our hull.", says Misah.

"How long would the two of us take to repair it all?", you ask.

"Too long. Our best bet is to just stop the airflow and live in EVA suits to save air.", says Misah.

"Damn, that's harsh. Computer, stop the airflow to conserve the supply of oxygen.", you say.

You two retrieve four EVA suits, leave a couple spares at the lounge and wear two.

"Sleeping on this thing gonna be ridiculous.", you say.

"Now that we got ourselves a little breathing room where exactly could we go?", you ask.

"We could head back to Leonis-3. We are accelerating the opposite way so we would have to turn around, deccelerate then accelerate then deccelerate again so it would take a year and a half to get there. Or we could keep the momentum and keep going towards Carinae-3. It would take over four years to reach Carinae-3.", says Misah.

"Well, why is this even a question, we go to Leonis then.", you say.

"Well consider this. Both alternatives assume our somewhat long term survival. If we are going to survive one year infected by alien disease we gonna survive five years infected by alien disease.", says Misah.

"What are you trying to say?", you say.

"I'm just saying that we may not survive long enough to make it even to Leonis you know. Our main priority is to fix the medbay because without the antivirals we're going to be very dead very soon.", says Misah.

"Do we have what it takes to fix it?", you say.

"Well, we don't need to fix everything, we just need to fix the molecular synthesizer and the pill maker. Luckily the nano assembly wasn't destroyed so we should be able to print those machines within a couple days.", says Misah.

"That's great news!", you say.

"We should hunt down all the anomalies in the ship and kill them all before they spread and mutate further. We do not know what further stage of life exists beyond the worms that come from these eggs. Maybe they mature into some big butterfly of doom.", says Misah.

"Yeah, right, we gotta kill those snake things. We do have tons of laser rifles and chainguns and they aren't too tough, we should be able to kill them all.", you say.

"Alright, so let's go over it again... kill snake things, rebuild medbay, decide whether to go to Leonis or to Carinea then start fixing the structural damage all over the hull so we can repressurize the ship.", says Misah.

"Damn, that's a lot of work.", you say.

>>4209768


You all spend the next several days killing the snake things, rebuilding the medbay, manufacturing a bunch of antivirals, and readying the injectors to begin fixing the breaches on the hull. Living all the time on EVA suits is rather tiresome, so sometimes you repressurize a room or two and stay inside of it without the EVA suit for awhile - particularly for sleeping.

One day you catch a radio signal. It is a random encrypted transmission between a generation ship and a planet. These sorts of transmissions are made just to report data on the mission - no answers are expected, by the time any answers arrive they are probably pointless. Still, you managed to pinpoint the general direction of the transmission. Considering the strength of the radio signal the source can't be too far away, certainly less than a light year, and seems to be in the general direction you're accelerating towards. Maybe you could rendezvous with them?

> Set course to Leonis-3
> Set course to Carinea-3
> Set course towards the unknown generation ship
> Write in

>>4209769
>> Set course to Leonis-3
We don't know the ship's capabilities

>>4209789
Actually changing to this
> Set course towards the unknown generation ship
If they can fix up our ship it'd be helpful.

>>4209789
>>4209796


"Let's set course to that generation ship. If they can fix our ship that would be helpful.", you say.

"Alright, setting course. Let's send a message to them to let them know we are coming.", says Misah.

She then has the ship start broadcasting our identification, position and our intention to rendezvous to the generation ship, asking for their identification and position.

"Well, now we just gotta keep fixing the ship while we wait.", says Misah.

We manage to activate some of the military repair drones we had in store to help with the hull repairs, what speeds them up considerably.

"We might be able to have this boat ready to be repressurized by the time we meet up with the generation ship.", says Misah.

The two of you get a bunch of symptons over the course of the following weeks. The most notable is that the arteries all over your body get visibly dark through your skin.

"We should start repairing the rest of the medbay so we can properly diagnose what is going on with us. I'm not sure if the computer still has everything on the memory, we lost a lot of data, but we gotta print as much of the medbay as possible and reassemble it. First order of business is reassembling the robot arms in the medbay. After they are in place, they can reassemble everything else, we'll just have to haul the stuff from the nanoassembly into the medbay. Fixing eveything gonna take a few months, but we probably have time.", says Misah.

We work long hours everyday, fixing the ship, overseeing the automated construction of the delicate machines at the medbay. It is all so tiresome.

After a few months we get a message from the generation ship, stating its identification, position and mission. It is the SS Harmony, on a mission to colonize the earthlike planet Scuti-3 which is 36 light years away from their current position. Their cruise speed is 20% of light speed so they are expected to arrive there in 180 years. Their population at the time of transmission was over 32 thousand people, roughly 82% of projected capacity.

"Now that's a long ass mission.", you say.

"Well, they aren't called generation ships for nothing. I've seen longer missions. They always try to keep the missions shorter than 200 years, but in some cases they can go up to 400 years.", says Misah.

"Do you think they could fix our ship?", you say.

"Well, I'm not too sure if they would be willing to spare stuff to fix our ship. Hydrogen is easy enough to gather as you fly around space, but everything else is nearly impossible. I know I wouldn't.", says Misah.

"Do you think they have a gene therapy facility on board?", you ask.

"Maybe. The generation ships are well shielded against radiation, they have to be to ship people through space, it is reasonable to expect them to have one.", says Misah.

>>4210865


"How long do you think we can survive this alien disease?", you ask.

"Well, if it behaves anything like a retrovirus, while we are taking antivirals it will just keep spreading slowly, infecting us a little bit at a time, until it emmerges with full force at some point when our immune system is too weak to fight it. Maybe a year, maybe ten years. Hard to tell.", says Misah.

"Well, let's check how long would it take to get to the Harmony then.", you say.

Our computer plots an intercept and we should be able to rendezvous with then within a year.

There is however a tiny brown star nearby that we could travel to, we would get to it within a year and a half. It only has a couple inferno planets and a gas giant orbiting it, nothing we could actually land on but that's besides the point - we just need its gravitational pool so that we can hyperjump somewhere else.

"Since the brown star is so tiny we would need to fly close to it to jump out, what's a bit risky, but doable." says Misah.

Of course we still could set course to Leonis-3 or Carinae-3 too.

Decisions, decisions...

> We're sure, let's rendezvous with SS Harmony
> Head to the tiny brown star so we can hyperjump instead
> We've changed our mind, set course to Leonis-3
> We've changed our mind, set course to Carinae-3
> Write in

>>4210867
>We've changed our mind, set course to Leonis-3

>>4210867
>We've changed our mind, set course to Leonis-3

>>4210885
>>4211221

We decide the generation ship can't help us. It would take too long to get anywhere and can't spare materials to help us. We set course to Leonis-3.

We work. We wait. We hope.

But it was to no avail. Our skin starts to change. Little dots at first. Then pustles. Then eyes start to emmerge from within the pustles, all over our bodies. It is interesting to get 360 degrees vision, but not so much when you have fever, headache and strange delusions all the time - delusions of impossible worlds, filled with monstrosities with oh so many eyes...

We figure out that at some point we won't be able to keep taking the antivirals so Misah makes the computer create a new type of implant for us, one that will dispense the antivirals in our bloodstream directly. It is a pretty big thing. We implant a few of those on ourselves, for good measure - you know, if we mutate a lot and our bodies spit out a few of them.

When we can barely function anymore we tell the computer to restrain us at the medbay. Afraid of turning into bloated monstrosities we instruct the computer to feed us intravenously only the bare minimum to keep us alive.

Then comes the delirium... you don't know how long you been at it. You also think you sprouted an extra pair of arms, to try and get yourself out of the restraints, but didn't manage to get out, they were well built.

Your mind was ravaged by visions of the aliens. You saw their worlds. How they live. Their most basic emotion is... fear. They fear something. Huge predators... the... the... "Devourers"! They must spread everywhere so they can survive - every creature can become Queen if it needs to be, can specialize into any kind of role, we are endlessly adaptable. There's no other way to survive. You saw billions of worlds infested, the warmth of a trillion stars turned into fuel for their reproduction... and still, they kept spreading... they needed to spread further and further, for the "Devourers" gave them no rest. The "Devourers" consumed them endlessly and in the end just exploded, killing trillions, and seeding space with more "Devourers", who would go on eating, growing, then exploding and starting everything again. Tried as you might you couldn't get a name for the creatures that spreaded everywhere to survive... to them... to us... we are just us... we just are.

You see something different one day. Men in space suits. Must survive. Must spread. You attack them. You infect them. You spread... us! They didn't kill you though. They take you somewhere. They do lots of experiments on you. "Patient K2" they call you. They ask your compliance. You don't comply. They cut you, shock you, blind you, burn you, rip you apart. They feed you. You have babies, lots and lots of babies. They take your babies away.

>>4213333

Eventually, after awhile, the deliriums start to pass. You delusions start to go away. There is no more us. They got rid of your extra eyes. You only see forward again. No more extra limbs either. You look at yourself in a mirror on the wall. You're wearing a full body restraining suit, like those of mental patients, only your face is visible, and it is covered in tiny scars. You're sure they've done the best they could to get rid of the eyes. You're in a white padded room. A door hisses open and a man in a white coat enters.

"Patient K2, I'm doctor Edison Sonoda, chief gene therapist of the biosafety level 5 Doctor Zephyr Vanlith gene therapy facility on Leonis-3.", says the man in the white coat.

"Alyce...", you say."... my name is Alyce..."

He smiles.

"Alyce. The government have found you aboard a classified vessel and have instructed us to study and treat your new disease. I must confess that it was at times extremelly... challenging.", says Edison, with a puzzling expression.

> Ask where is Misah
> Ask where is Austyn
> Ask where is Kaya
> Ask what they have done to your babies
> Demand to be released immediately
> Write in

>>4213336
>> Ask where is Austyn
>> Ask where is Kaya

>>4213371


"Kaya...Austyn... where are they...?", you ask.

"My records show nobody named Kaya related to your file.", says doctor Edison, checking a datapad."As for Austyn... oh! Patient K1...", says Edison.

"Our syster facility the Doctor Winona Rhyne gene therapy facility at Mekso, the eastern continent, received Patient K1 when it was first brought in from off planet. We didn't knew what to expect back then and our protocols weren't good enough to contain the anomalie. Patient K1 breached containment and his progeny went on to contaminate several cities all over the eastern continent. The government have since called several orbital bombardments on the eastern continent but the creatures continue to spread. For the time being they have been restricted to a small area of the Mekso continent but we have been unable to erradicate them, probably because of their deep underground lairs which keep recontaminating the environment after each orbital bombardment. Patient K1 is believed to still be located at the site of the Winona Rhyne gene therapy, since he was housed at the lowest level of the facility which has forty underground levels.", says Edison.

"Austyn... no...", you say.

"Before you ask the other person you came here with, Patient K3 is still undergoing gene therapy. Her case was worse than yours and her body was older and more frail so she is responding slower to the treatment. Our genetic analysers have shown that our nanodoctors have been able to repair your tissues with 99,8% of accuracy to its original state. We tried sequencing the alien's genomes but it proved futile as it keeps changing seemingly at random - it seems to be encoded in some sort of fractal pattern which even our best computers have had trouble analyzing and reconfigures itself according to necessity. Still, after breaking down the aberrant anomaly DNA directly with radiation and trying dozens of different strains of specifically tailored viruses to infect your cells to rewrite your DNA we have finally managed to erase all traces of alien DNA from your body. And to think we accomplished all this in under ten years!", says Edison.

Ten years? You've been tripping balls for ten years?

"The government of Leonis-3 have asked us to present you to them once you have finally recovered from your disease, and the day has finally came. You are the first person ever to recover from the alien infection. The treatment is still completely experimental, but we are closer to a more general cure.", says Edison.

"Am I immune to the alien disease?", you ask.

>>4213654


"What? No, of course not. That thing is highly infectious and mutates way too fast, there's no way to become immune to that. Don't even think going anywhere near those things.", says Edison.

You've been ten years under experimental treatment and you could just get reinfected in an instant... this is crazy!

"So let's go meet the President shall we? Can you walk?", says Edison.

You get up and follow Edison out of the room and into a large conference room. The President is not there, just a bunch of holograms. Of course.

"Hello there Alyce. I'm Alayna McLaren, President of the United Leonis Federation. It pleases me greatly that you have recovered expediently and fully. We are now prepared to integrate you in your new life as an honored member of our...", she says

"Cut the crap. Where is Kaya?", you say.

The president pauses for awhile and talks to other people with the hologram muted. She then resumes talking.

"Administrator Kaya is in the orbital shipyard around Leonis-3 overseeing the repairs of the classified vessel you arrived in. Our planet lacked the facilities to build and repair such an advanced craft but it was deemed a high priority by the previous government so she was given a very large budget for what is essentially a black project since it was never announced to the public.", says Alayna

> Ask the president to put you into contact with Kaya
> Ask the president to take you to Kaya
> Ask the president for a team to reach Austyn
> Tell the president you wanna help fight the anomalies
> Tell the president about the "Devourers" you remember from your dreams
> Write in

>>4213656
>> Ask the president to put you into contact with Kaya
>> Ask the president for a team to reach Austyn
>> Tell the president you wanna help fight the anomalies
> Tell the president about the "Devourers" you remember from your dreams

maybe ask the doc about what happened to our progeny later

>>4209692
It's like Dead Space but more difficult. I'm late but I'm always reading this thread. Keep it up!

Oh, hey!
I got busy with some irl stuff lately so I didn't update, but I will probably have time later this week.
Since this thread is rather old already I will probably start a new thread when I resume running. I cant really run daily, I think I will have time to run two or three days per week, posting a few big updates a day, so the threads in the future will probably be very small.

I was going to end the quest and call it an one shot but since there's interest I will keep going. I found some difficulty in figuring out a way to justify why should you or the whole planet for that matter should still be alive but I think I came up with something interesting.

Still, I will probably keep running this if you guys keep voting.
See you next thread!

>>4228847
That's what I like to hear. Good shit, qm. Return soon.