NationStates Jolt Archive

A star was dying.

What was called a coronal mass ejection had been going on there for years. The sun had become more like a giant engine than anything else, spewing most of its energy in one direction. That same energy could one day have nurtured an entire race, but now the small protozoa that made up the system’s life had been purged by catastrophic global warming.

The cause of this behaviour, the broken starship that orbited the star, did not care. It was merely pleased that it was at last regenerating. If you were to stare through the thick haze of stellar gasses that were torn from the abused photosphere of the sun, you would see, minute by minute, hour by hour, the ship – a dark shape against the tortured sun behind it – grow. It had lacked both of its ‘wingtips’ and had sported far more extensive damage when it had arrived, but as it tormented the star, the stellar gasses fed it with the energy and matter it needed to rebuild itself. Soon, very soon, it would be operational once more, for it had at last repaired the damage to its huge fabricator areas.

Of course while space is big, the effects of this obscene mechanical parasite on the star – not too far from several civilised worlds and outposts which, while not directly imperilled by the star’s death, would soon be in serious trouble when the ship became fully active once more.

Of course, no one but the ship’s inhabitants, whatever they might be, yet knew of the horrors it planned to inflict on those around it. Instead, interest in the ship was purely small scale, from those who thought that it might be possible to gain by the discovery – circulated among unofficial channels, of course – of such a vessel.

Around the ship, hydrogen and helium flowed with almost water-like consistency. It was the environment of Bussard-engine users dreams. Of course, it meant that while one could see the ship from a vessel far away – it was a vast dark shape against the infernal brightness of the writhing star, one couldn’t see smaller ships unless they were within a few kilometres – thermal, optical, gravitational, ‘power’ all forms of sensor were effectively reduced to being able only to see threats or opportunities that were a few hundred meters away.

A strange derelict ship waited for the unwary in a storm of titanic proportions, surrounded by what could only be called the space going equivalent of the thickest, most visibility impairing fog. What avarice-arousing treasures and unspeakable horrors lay within remained to be seen…

The Unknown System
A small probe, no larger than a compact car, dropped out of the warp, on its final leg of a recon mission. As it had done hundreds of times before, the probe pinged the star system.
The only difference was, this time the ping returned something interesting. It send out several more pings, and finally scanned the area that was returning the most non-stellar energy. It logged the data it recieved onto the AI web of LNI, and dropped back into the warp.
The AIs ensured that the right generals recieved the data, decisions were made, and a vessel was picked to investigate the apparent ghost ship.
That vessel was, of course, the Hospitaler

The Hospitaler, SO-1342, System in the Tora Sector,
All around them, Irish ships cracked, shuddered, and burned. Planetary defenses rained fire among them. Some of the smaller vessels were already retreating, or crashing towards the planetary surface. Within the chaos, the Hospitaler fought, MAC guns blazing, tubes hurling torpedoes towards enemy vessels.
After nearly an hour of heavy combat, the Irish line broke, and orders to retreat were recieved. The Irish fleet threw themselves into the warp, to lick their wounds in their home sector.
The Hospitaler however, was to take another path.

Barracks, Hospitaler
The marines had started a wake, to drown the sorrows of lost friends and battles in alcohol. Ivan sulked in the corner of the barracks, nursing a bottle of ale while watching the younger marines. Emma was one of the crowd, drinking far more experienced soldiers under the table. Music blasted out of a pair of speakers.
Within an hour of the wake's beginning, the music cut off. Soldiers groaned and looked towards the speakers. They realised that Captain Akita had pulled the plug.
"Get cleaned up, get sober, and get ready to fight. We have new orders."

The next day, the Hospitaler arrived at the unknown system, and the marines prepared to board the derelict.

The landing bay that the Hospitaler’s drop ships could land in was subtly alien somehow. It was its slightly ‘off’ dimensions. There were some shapes and sizes that appealed to humans, as expressed in the ‘golden ratio’ and its use to create beautiful architecture and art. The alien minds that had designed the ship they were in had a cultural heritage that expressed its beauty differently. The design was a little unsettling to many other races, including humans, its angles seeming forced and off, and the structural bracings that held the ship’s bows were also strange, it was difficult to put one’s fingers on, but there was a feeling that they shouldn’t be there; not conscious, but an unsettling subconscious sensation.

The bay was airless, and heaps of machinery lay against its floor, for it yet had artificial gravity. No amount of searching could locate controls within the bay, but the machine creatures that lurked, evidently dead, would perhaps be of interest.

They were uniformly insect-form, and they varied in size from small enough to crawl into a thimble to ones large enough to crush a man beneath them. All showed no signs of life. The most common of the larger variety had three pairs of legs and two three-digit claws, each spiked claw resembling nothing so much as a sword.

At the rear of the bay was an area where the wall was depressed inwards, the wall thinner there. On either side of this doorway, cylindrical columns of vertical glass, or at least, what seemed like it set into recesses in the walls flashed intermittently and irregularly with bile-green light. When one stepped between them, a sound could be heard, carried through the floor. Sound spacers often learnt to fear instinctively. The hiss of escaping air…

But it was not a lethal suit leak, instead, one could see small jets of air from behind each cylinder - air with oxygen and nitrogen, and little else.

Sergeant Dakan Ansu stood in the cockpit of the Oya'Karir, staring at the silver crescent form of the alien ship. It's surface was punctuated with massive ziggurats and weapons towers of ancient design. It had taken months of sifting through information, thousands of creds in bribes and payments. Three sentients had died for him to know the wherabouts of this ship, and now the 'Star Harvester' was before him, ripping the remaining energy from the nuclear heart of a young star.
Dakan activated his commlink.

"<Strike team,>" he said. "<Load up.>"

"So you're telling me theres a ghost ship. An honest to god ghost ship, waiting out there? Is that what you're trying to tell me, Alexis?" Marius giggled softly, raising a metal cup to his lips; lettting the alcoholic flavor pool and flow across his taste buds; drinking deeply.

"That is exactly what I'm saying Mar." Alex grinned, slumped in his command chair, indicating various charts and diagrams. "The old sources ain't never wrong; this ship, its been sitting there for ages, but no ones ever been able to actually get a salvage."

"And why not?"

"No one ever returns; its a ruse man, legends around the ultimate treasure. But I've finally found it. The ultimate haul; I'm telling ya; the thing'll be worth god-knows how much"

"You'd better be right, man. Whats the ETA?"

"We'll be leaving the warp within the hour; I'm telling you, little brother, trust me" Alexis winked. "This will change everything."

The vessel was on its way, sleek, black, it was the glorious embodiment of the shadowy death-strike of the Black Corsairs; feared across space as pirates and vagabonds; led by the Brothers. Alexis was the calm and collected leader; the warrior of gun and blade; the determined and successful king of thieves whose experience ranged across the void.

At his side, Marius; the hulking, reknowned and famed Experimenter; molder of steel and flesh; a master of the macabre art of Chronosian science. Together they had come, drawn by irresistable lure and ancient rumor; by sources and by circumstance towards the forboding hulk of the Nightacre.

OOC: My last post for a few hours...

Launch Bay Of The Hospitaler
The soldiers arrayed themselves into their four platoons, suited up, and waited for the launch order. They were tense, but the had at least managed to sober up and prepare for the mission.

Meanwhile, Ivan and Lt. Hacker were busy with the boarding torpedo. As unit pathfinder, Ivan was to land ahead of the rest of the company, and search the area out, before giving the OK for the rest of them.

The opened the hatch of the landing torpedo, and he lay down inside it. Even for his small frame, the thing was cramped. There was barely room for his rifle.

"You ready, Ivan?" Cpt. Akita's voice came in over his helmet radio.

"Oh, sure thing, Cappy," he struggled to make himself comfortable in the torp.

They closed the lid, sealing him in darkness. He felt the tube move around, and, after a few minutes, the explosive whump of the torp firing. The next time he would see anything, it would be on an alien vessel.

"<There's a hole in the side of the ship,>" said the pilot, "<about the size of a docking ring. It could do with a little adjustment with a plasma cutter, but that won't take long.>"

Dakan grunted his agreement, "<Take us as close as you can, and send someone out of the airlock with a cutter. I'm going to join my team.>"

"<Aye, sarge.>"

-----

"<All done, sarge,>" said the crewman, his armour sealed against the minimal vacuum. "<It's about seven feet tall, and four wide. Mind the edges, they're still hot even though they don't look it, and they're not perfectly airtight.>"

"<Thanks for the warning,>" said Dakan, peering into the interior of the alien ship. He stepped over the airlock threshold, motioning for his squad to follow.

The deck below, where the mandalorians entered the alien ship, was quiet, silent as the grave. The corridor was claustrophobia inducing, simply because it lacked light. The gasses from the star outside were in there, too and the illumination from their ship was the only light, reflecting over and over off polished metal surfaces. Futher illumination would reveal that this top deck contained blackened metal walls that were arranged in a wide circle conforming to the crescent shape of the ship. There was nothing there, no movement, no air-ducts, no containers, nothing. There were only three ways to go, forward, aft, or home.

Nevertheless, in that deathly silence there was something else to be heard, if one were to press one’s helmet to the floor, slow noises akin to a distant heartbeat. More accurate instrumentation would trace the pulse as two separate pulses, the first echoing down from the bow section of that ‘wing’ where the point of the crescent had been broken off, the second much closer, yet still bow-ward, and weaker.

---

Meanwhile, the Chronosian ship slipped into proximity with the vessel from a different direction. On the ship’s underside was what could only be called a small ziggurat. Around it lurked more of the constructs that were to be found in the landing bay, and inside its confines, the same bile-green lights flickered.

---

Ivan landed with a crash in the docking bay, displacing numerous ancient machines, sending them skittering around madly in the airless chamber.

The Tzen Kor dropped into realspace, its main drive rattling, and waded through the murk. On board the battered ship, half a dozen scavenged sensor system pieced together a rough picture of the area. It was, to say the least, impressive.

"There's something you don't see every day." Saril Velem noted, his fingers dancing across the scanner control panel.

"Understatement of the week." replied Jardra Mirsol, the vessel's captain. "That monster looks pretty smashed up, but there's clearly something pretty powerful on it that's still operating. I've never seen anything that could do something like this to a star."

"If anything, it looks like rumors understated the situation." added Relth Nevok.

"Well, there's only so much we're going to find out in this mess. Looks like there's an opening over there." Saril said, pointing at the screen. "Maybe we can get in there."

Jardra tapped the controls, bringing the little ship skillfully up against the surface of the derelict. Crude though the Tzen Kor might appear, its air lock was well designed for boarding damaged vessels. Assorted anchors locked carefully into place, metal and plastic parts unfolded to form an air tight seal, and close range sensors scanned the surface within this new tunnel. After this operation was complete, the Hjari set quickly to work turning the jagged opening they had found into a reasonale entryway.

"Hey Sharria?" A voice echo'ed from the cockpit.
"WHAT?" Was the growled reply, unusual from the female throat that originated it, that came back from the galley.
"There appears to be something happening to the star in the Goharina sector, was thinking of checking it out cause if nothing else we can get a bit of cash from some scientists somewhere."
"Fine, let's go then." He called back as he set the ship into course for the system before heading back to get some food.

A short while later, the Bounty arrived in the system to notice a large something in the sun without being combusted, which was unusual to say the least.

Heading inward, the sensors noticed that there were a few 'docking' points appearently already occupied, and that a docking port which was illuminated, but also partially sheltered from the sun, was open and Jason took the ship in to dock.

The area at the aft of the ship where the Hjari entered the derelict was twisted and buckled with damage, but it was composed of the same smooth dark metal as the rest of the ship. Unlike elsewhere, though, the metal glowed from within with a strange green light that emanated from a network of leaf-like veins that throbbed with a strange pulse just beneath the surface.

Another door was here, with a pair of cylinders on either side of it that gave off a whickering illumination in the gloom, Unlike the forward section, where the hull was dead, and could be easily sliced through, the ship’s metals didn’t react well to the cutting tools of the Hjari, instead of yielding easily, the metal glowed brighter and brighter – as ordinary steel would, and then flashed when it became white hot, illuminating the whole area around it as the energy was super-conducted away from the jagged rip through the hull.

It would seem that the only way in that they had would be to risk the jagged hole. Fortunately, it was wide enough to pass even a burly man through with ease, but one couldn’t get much heavy equipment through.

The gap in the hull was in fact a gap in a massive armour plate. The armour was fully fifty meters thick, but the docking area was small enough, and in the deeps of a vast crater to accommodate a ship like the Tzen Kor. The hydrogen inside the empty chamber beyond was hot, but it was easily pumped out. Pure air trickled through a crack in one of the small room’s far walls.

---

The Bounty meanwhile, got a prize place – a fully functioning airlock. The outer door opened smoothly when the ship docked, without any form of provcation, the metal just disappeared, with no obvious signs of motion or moving parts, instead, it was as though the metal itself had slid into the ceiling, though that was obviously impossible due to the shape of the components…

Beyond was a chamber about two meters long, with more of the same glassy rods set into alcoves providing flickering green illumination, and also hand-holds. When the crew of the bounty stepped inside and moved towards the other door, it would open in the same impossible manner, into a corridor beyond. This had several doorways in it, thick blast doors so thick that it took several seconds to walk under each.

This room at the end of the corridor was one that was somehow unsettling psychically, a troubling sensation that long ago, terrible things had been done there. It was a double cube, four meters high, four meters wide, and eight long. What seemed to be a golden altar lay in the centre of one of the divisions of the floor, and a circular pit lay opposite it. The pit had perfectly smooth walls, and no light shone down it was reflected. Warm air drifted up it.

At either end of the room with the strange diamond-encrusted altar, more doors, of the same design as were being encountered elsewhere in the massive derelict, stood, silent and waiting.

Ivan punched the hatch release button that hovered inches from his nose. Explosive bolts fired, and the entire hatch flew upward several meters, before crashing down next to the torpedo. Ivan got up, worked the bolt on his rifle, and slowly moved forward. His stomach was unsettled by the alien architecture. After a few minutes of scouting, his eyes fixated on the insectoid machines...

"Captain, are you reading this?"

(OOC: Will the hull effect communications with the main ship?)

Sharria and Jason stepped in throught the airlock, one in a skin-suit, a space suit that was quite durable and fit with the snugness of a wet suit, as they observed the unusual occurances of the ship. Each had two F-guns and Jason had a few extra tools on his suit's belt.

Once the atmosphere was tested, and if it turned out clean, Jason would deactivate the bubble that served as the suit's helmet. Travelling along the corridor, Jason winced as he felt something unpleasent in the room with a strange alter type thing in it.

Once Sharria marked the location of the alter type thingy on the map she'd been 'drawing', they continued toward the blast door to find more about the ship, as they looked for a computer terminal or something that would have writings on it.

"<Atmosphere's unbreathable here,>" crackled Jokin, over the squad comm. "<there's a lot of crap coming in from space, and I'm getting quite a bit of radiation with it. The ship is probably radiation-shielded, so the further we go the safer we'll be. In theory.>"

Dakan nodded an acknowledgement, "<Then that's what we'll do. Two teams - three with me and five in the other. Callsigns are 'A' and 'B', Moran leads team B ten metres behind team A. Glow rods out, form up.>"

The Mandalorians split into two groups, and began their advance into the darkness of the ship, the only source of light the glow rods held by their team leaders.

OOC: I am choose teh aft corridor.

The chamber beyond the altar room lacked that same malevolent feel. Instead it was more of a surprising area. A circular room about thirty two meters across, one couldn’t see the other side too easily, for except for a meter wide ledge around the edge of the chamber, there was only another pit leading into the depths of the ship. This pit was filled with light, so much light that the other side could barely be discerned even by Sharria’s mechanical eyes. A lectern stood opposite the door, on a single step, and on its surface were hundreds of letters, or pictograms, made from a three-by-three square grid. One letter, for example, consisted of two horizontal bars about three centimetres long, with different coloured squares between them like a sandwich filling.

This lectern, however, seemed to be either ornamental, made of the same metal that made up the walls, completely solid, and touching it had no effect. On the wall, just above waist height, there was another set of symbols. These ones were even harder to read, made up of various sized golden circles and semi-circles linked by a multitude of straight lines on a background of lapis-lazuli.

There were two doors in the chamber, one opposite the one by which they’d entered, beyond which lay a room identical to the one they’d come from, beyond which lay several more, after which, the doors stopped working.

The door that lead deeper into the ship was somewhat harder to operate. Just above head height on the door, there was a raised section, with more of the square script. Here, it was in a three by four grid, and distinctly button-like. The letters on each square button were different from the other symbols in that they seemed to have been rotated through ninety degrees.

---

The lifeless eyes of the construct stared back at Ivan. There were dozens of such eyes in the front surface of the creature’s head, each one was a jewel, a diamond, of unimaginable and obviously artificial optical perfection. There was, thus far, no interference with Ivan’s signal, and it reached his craft without any problems whatsoever.

---

Working their way aft, the mandalorians could find little of interest in the ship’s corridors. They were barely wide enough to allow three men to stand abreast, and about as tall as they were wide.

Every now and then, there were what seemed to be other corridors leading off the one they were in, junctions, but they were shut, in each case, leaving only one path. The curving corridor led for about half a mile before anything changed. Suddenly, the corridor changed, and instead of leading off towards the main body of the ship, their way was blocked by one of the doors. A guess would put them close to the area that looked as if a bite had been taken out of the ship by some form of pterodactyl.

On the floor lay a small object the size of a box of cigarettes, made of stamped steel, it had had several nozzles, the largest of which one could fit a finger into, on the top of it. It was a power-pack of some sort, completely expended. The other corridor led off into the distance, towards the circular ‘forward section’ of the ship.

"<Construction's solid,>" said Jokin, "<I reckon it'd take detonite charges to open it up.>"

"<They're not on our manifest,>" replied Dakan. "<We'll have to turn back, and try the other corridor near where we came in.>" He paused as Moran knelt on the floor.
"<Found something, corporal?>"

"<Aye, sarge,>" she muttered, getting to her feet. She held up a small object, little bigger than a power cell. "<This.>"

"<Keep it,>" ordered Dakan. "<We don't know what it is, so we'll find out. Moran, keep your team going along that corridor, we'll pick up the Gargantuans.>" He turned back to Team A. "<Squad, march!>"

-----

On their way back to the docking ring, Dakan activated his comm again.

"<Oya'karir, this is Strike Team. Area seems clear, Team B is continuing on, and Team A is coming back. Send a message to the Gargantuan science team, and tell them to dock.>"

"<Ay...ergean...>" crackled the reply, it's signal distorted by the size of the ship.

Ivan stared into the eyes of the construct.
"We see it, Ivan. What's your status?" The Captain's calm voice snapped him out of his reverie.
Ivan forced himself to turn away. "Fine, Captain. I see no immediate threats, it should be safe to land the dropships. One problem, though: The Mag-Con field in this hangar isn't working."
"That's fine, Ivan," the Captain's voice was muffled for a second. "Hang on, the company's on it's way. See if you can find a way past the blast doors."
Ivan paused to look out of the landing bay. The four dropships that were nestled in the cruiser dropped away, and vectored for the landing bay. Ivan moved towards the green light and the hissing gas leak. The back of his neck prickled as he walked.

Sharria walked over to the lectern, noting it was covered with pictograms, which she began working on translating them, or at least finding a viable pattern to begin the process of translating.

Jason walked around the room, studying it, and opened the one door to see an almost carbon-copy of the room they were in, while the other door was more unusual and locked.

The signal came through, and Lu'ukren, a new generation of science vessel for the Gargantuans to replace their old transports, acknowledged.

"Sun's hot," Rickard, the lead scientist said, as he monitored the hull temperature. The others in the small group of scientists chuckled at the joke. "The crystaline skin is helping to deflect a fair bit of heat, but, pilot, you'll have to leave once we're safely inside."

The pilot nodded, concentrating on the docking procedure with the alien vessel.

"Lycon, Gerry, and Uluf, get your gear together, and suit up. Meet me at the airlock."

The four scientists gathered together an array of powerful handheld scanners, backpacks to carry any artifacts they might find, and some simple pistols that they had traded for back in the Republic. They weren't much, but then the Gargantuans weren't big on fighting, and they had been planning to travel in with the Mandalorians, who were very much moreso into combat. This would be a good chance for a cooperative effort between the two nations who now headed up the Republic.

Rickard was confident that the pairing would be fruitful.

The squad-comm burst into life, signalling the arrival of the Gargantuan ship.

"<Stri...Team, th...is the Oya'karir. Prepare for immedia...depressurisatio...in one minute.>"

Dakan Ansu stopped his marching, and faced his squad.
"<Mag-clamps out!>" he ordered. "<No slack, or you'll dislocate your arms!>"

The eight Mandalorians each unclipped a circular electromagnet, three inches across, from a small power-unit/holder on their upper arms. They affixed the magnets to the walls of the corridor, connected by a thin steel cable to the power units. They gripped the cables and signalled the ready signal to Dakan.

"<Patience,>" said Dakan.

The seconds ticked by, until a gradual rumbling could be heard coming from the direction of the docking ring. Suddenly, the squad was buffeted against the walls of the corridor as the minimal atmosphere inside the ship was sucked out into open space. For a few long seconds they held tight, and gradually the vacuum calmed.

"<Squad,>" ordered Dakan. "<Detatch mag-clamps.>"

They cut the power, and the magnets dropped to the ground in total silence before being wound back onto their holders. Dakan waited until they all stood facing him, then gave the order to continue.

OOC: GCS, the docking 'ring' if free, and my squad are moving back towards it.

"Rickard, the docking ring is free, and I'm coming into position. Brace for docking."

Rickard nodded to the other scientists, who each grabbed a handhold in the airlock, all sporting clean white suits, which were not too bulky, but not too tight. It felt like another day at the office, and that was the idea behind their design.
With a sudden shunting, the scientists nearly lost their balance as the ship came up to the hole.

"Sorry. Having a tough time with all the heat and radiation. One second... okay, feel free to open up the hatch and walk in."

Pushing a red release button, the hatch opened up, and Rickard led the expedition into the same area the Mandalorians had started in.
Opening up a comm signal, Rickard sent a greeting to Dakan, to let him know they were safely aboard.

"Copy that, Rickard," said Dakan, in Basic. "We're coming up to the docking ring now from your left side."

In the Stygian gloom of the corridor, Dakan saw the distant hatchway illuminated in yellow artificial light. Four figures, garbed in perfect white, stepped from the docking ring.

It certainly wasn’t magnetic, but some form of containment came online as Ivan stepped up to the doorway. The hissing continued, a veritable torrent of air filling the bay and displacing the mysteriously cooled solar gasses from the bay. The lights flared, crackling energies leaping and dancing within the glass pillars, and the door sighed open before him, the air pushing him a little way backwards. Beyond, there was only darkness.

---

The lectern had distinct patterns. Which way the grid was to be viewed was difficult to tell, it seemed that it might well be read up and down, or side to side in any direction. There were some characters that recurred often, and as the android watched, the coloration of each grapheme on each glyph slowly changed. Blues faded, turning to reds, oranges, yellows, and ultimately blackish greens. Still, hot reds and oranges were the most common colors, followed by blazing blues. Assuming that the derelict vessel had been built by an organic race, and that the lectern was some kind of status display, one might assume that they were blue blooded, but from a world with blackish-green vegetation, if their minds were like those of humans, anyway. Which it would seem that they were not.

On the other hand, the sequence on the door was surprisingly easy to translate. The progression of symbols could be seen quite clearly. Simplified from its blocky, engraved form, it would have looked rather different.

http://www.necrontyr.plus.com/images/nightacre/keypad.jpg

The vertical lined symbols would seem to be numbers, in base ten, and the other two letters. But there were no repeated characters on the lectern. A solitary button, not matching that pattern, apparently an ideoglyph, blazed with gold and white light (from different parts of it) as, miles away, the pumps in the hangar bay activated. A second shone a white color showing an inverted U a moment later.

---

The cycling hurricane that whistled through the corridor as the mandalorian ship removed itself subsided, and more glowing, refractive gas poured into the corridor, scalding temperatures meeting airtight, body-gloves and achiving nothing.

OOC: Clan Ansu, see the OOC thread. As I said there, the aft-corridor didn’t actually come to an end, it just turned left. “The other corridor led off into the distance, towards the circular ‘forward section’ of the ship.” As you had two teams before, I suggest we say that one team went ahead, and the other returned to pick up GCS’ people.

OOC: Clan Ansu, see the OOC thread. As I said there, the aft-corridor didn’t actually come to an end, it just turned left. “The other corridor led off into the distance, towards the circular ‘forward section’ of the ship.” As you had two teams before, I suggest we say that one team went ahead, and the other returned to pick up GCS’ people.

OOC: Oh, damn. I assumed it was just DOOR. GO BACK.

That sounds a good idea, B Team goes on, then.

"This damn thing doesn't follow any set sequence or pattern." Sharria cursed as she studied the lecturn's glyphs.

"Then come help see if you can figure out this." Jason called out as he stared at the lined symbols. Seeing one that was breaking the pattern glow, he reached up to press it, hoping that it would open the strange door.

Deeper into the craft, team B could see the dark corridors leading off at regular intervals. They were making progress towards the bow of the ship, and as they did so, things became rather more interesting. Deep scoring on the walls could be seen here and there, that seemed as if it had been machined.

Further down the corridor, a spindly limb, three-clawed, its claws like bone, but far harder. The flesh and strange, clearly organically-deposited yet somehow metallic carapace around it seemed rotten, and shrivelled, and the stump of the severed limb, cauterised by what seemed like blaster fire.

---

The glowing button on the lectern wiped all the other symbols, showing a diagram of the ship, sculpted to the surface of the lectern, made of a shape-shifting metal. Thousands of tiny specks shone on the design, and comparing it with Sharria’s internal map, it seemed to display every door, including the ones into the room they were in. Three more buttons had materialised, two from the door control, and a third one that was the next logical progression. It seemed that they had accessed the controls to all doors throughout the vessel.

(OOC: You can just punch buttons at random. One opens all the doors (except the ones that have been overriden by safety algorithms) one cancels the command, and one locks them all. Just punching buttons until the doors open will work. I won't be on tomorrow, most likely, so, see you on Monday folks.)

"Sweetness." Jason and Sharria commented in unison as they realized that, provided it was accurate, something they didn't have any reason to doubt, they just scored an unlabled map of the entire hulk. As both Sharria and Jason recorded the diagram, Sharria in her memory banks, Jason on a mini-comp, they noticed the three new buttons.

Jason looked over at his companion, then hit the first button, and saw nothing happen, and repeated the process for the other two with similar results.

Trying the door, he realized it was locked, and figured out that he'd found the door controls. Pushing one, he tried the doors and found them unlocked. He then checked the third door, the one that had been locked before, hoping it would open.

Rickard moved ahead, and offered a loose salute to the leader of the Mandalorian team who had waited behind for them. "If you don't mind, I'm going to leave Uluf back here to run full metallurgical scans of the halls, and hull. Since this area appears secure enough, I don't think we need to leave any of your soldiers behind. Besides, leaving scientists at important markers will allow me to form a chain of communication to the outside. I noticed the signal breaks up, so hopefully we'll be able to communicate with our ships with this method."

"What in Jerthan's* name is this thing made out of?" demanded Tomas, setting down his cutting tool.

"No idea." replied Jervin Gilvan, the ship's technician. "It's nothing we've got in the records, though, I can tell you that much."

"Well, whatever it is, I don't think we're going to get it cut - not without better tools than we've got here."

"I suppose we'll just have to make do, then." Jardra concluded. "Everyone, get the tools you want to have availlable! Nothing too big; we're going to have to carry them all ourselves. Saril, stay here and guard the ship."

"Aye, Captain." He was the best pilot in the crew aside from Jardra herself, and usually received this duty, especially in potentially dangerous situations.

A few minutes later, the other six Hjari filed through the jagged opening and began examining the space beyond, taking measurements and recording information. They wore breathing masks, not yet certain if the air within the derelict was safe.

"Tlath, it's hot in here!" grumbled Relth.

"What do you expect? We're right next to a star!"

*One of the Hjari gods of smithing. There are literally thousands of dieties in the Hjari culture, and any given individual is likely to be a follower of several dozen.

OOC: Please forgive me for my absence. There will not usually be this much of a delay between my posts.

OOC: What is that, a 'nid claw?

IC:

"<Halt!>" hissed Moran, her fist held at head-height. Behind her, the four Mandalorians ceased their march and took what cover could be had.

"<Carbon scoring on the walls, Moran,>" said Zarin. "<Looks old.>"

"<I saw that,>" she snapped, "<look up ahead, on the floor.>"

"<I can't see it from here,>" said Zarin, "<give me cover fire.>"

"<Cover fire on three,>" ordered Moran. "<One... Two... Three!>"

A burst of blaster bolts fired off into the darkness of the corridor, illuminating the sides with crimson light before smashing into the wallsand protuberances. Half-crouched, Zarin scuttled forward under the fire, snatched the object, and returned to his position.

"<Cease fire!>" yelled Moran. "<What have you got?>"

-----

"Good idea," said Dakan, returning the salute. "I'd noticed that too. We've got two options; one, we follow the corridor I took my team down earlier, and catch up with the troopers still there, or two, we take the opposite corridor on our own. It's your decision."

"I'll send Lycon down the corridor to catch up with your other team, and Gerry and I will follow your team," Rickard answered, eager to see more of the ship.

"Alright," agreed Dakan. "Let's get moving"

OOC: Ctan, we're taking the other corridor from Location 2.

The Chronosian vessel slid from the warp like an eel from its crevice; the vessel dwarfed by the sheer size of the Nightacre; gasps echoed across the command bridge from all but Alexis and Marius; who watched, taking in every beautiful detail of the ship. A smile began to cross Alexis' lips.

"Big, ain't it?" Marius whispered, leaning forward, grinning. "Looks old too; pre-humanity?"

"Probably; just look at the detail, the intricacy! Divine...Simply...Ready a team; I want a Thunderhawk taking us onto that thing ASAP." he gestured "There; looks like a docking bay. I want full atmospheric suits; lasguns, nothing else; if theres anything that needs handling; you have us" He grinned; gesturing to his brother. Now lets move!"

OOC: Of course! Why have a deserted necron hulk when you can have a ‘Stealer infested necron hulk?

---

Blaster fire splashed off the walls of the ship’s corridor, sound echoing along the empty umbral corridors, light of small explosions of plasma impacting against battle-armour flashing with staccato whiteness that illuminated the entire area. Around the same time, elsewhere in the ship, Jason pressed a button that unlocked all the vessel’s doors. Even far from the first mandalorian team, the loud echoing, rolling noise was still loud enough to wake almost any creature.

Zarin came back holding a forearm from some alien creature, its three claws forming a roughly equilateral triangle…

At this precise moment, they managed to trigger a reflex action in the ship – one of the walls they were near to, because of the movement, and the recent command issued by Jason, opened. It revealed a narrow stairway, small enough that only one person could fit down it. Flickering white illumination came from beyond it.

---

The room the Hjari entered contained a single door, it was almost as if it were a storage cupboard or something, although there was noting in there. Beyond the door, which opened easily, there was another chamber, but this one was far different. A thin companionway clung perilously to a sheer wall fifty meters high, and twice as wide, and it was onto this companionway they came. There were no handrails, per se, but every meter there was a wide vertical bracing.

If one were to fall off this companionway, it would take almost two seconds to hit the ground below. And it was spectacular. A veritable garden of metal stalagmites and stalactites covered the floor and ceiling, azure lightning and green flames flickered between them, both horizontally, and in tremendous bolts of lightning and flame from the floor to the ceiling. Here and there were more doors leading off the companionway, but in other places, the walls appeared solid. Two of the four walls were covered in machines, strange artifices that moved soundlessly back and forth, performing tasks that could not be understood simply by observing them.

A single bridge (or rather, many bridges directly above one another) lead across this cavern towards the forwards section of the ship, and like the companionways stuck to its walls – of which there were many – it lacked hand-holds. The vertical bridges were linked by more structural supports wide enough that a man could barely clasp his hands around them, but the Hjari were on the topmost level, where there was no such means of comfort of support. The bridge was wide enough to walk comfortably on, of course, but a mis-step would send the unfortunate crosser tumbling into the spiked abyss below.

---

The door opened for Jason, and he could feel, in a single gut-wrenching moment, a wave of horror. Like a thousand voices shouting in his mind at once, it was impossible to tell what precisely was the cause, but it was as though someone had wrapped up distilled despair in a sock and clobbered him over the head with it.

The doorway itself was quite mundane. It lead to what could only be called a lift shaft, it was clearly such, glimmering walls could be seen leading up several floors, controls set into the walls were clearly ‘up’ and ‘down’ and a small panel, wide enough for two people to stand on with ease, made up the ‘floor’ of the round shaft.

The ziggurat where the chronosians had chosen to dock had dozens of yawning openings, some of them large enough to hold the snout of the thunderhawk gunship with ease. Inside, a maze of corridors of several sizes, some so small that only a ferret could pass through them, others wide enough for five men to walk abreast, lead to its central, vertical shaft. At the top of this shaft, a circular doorway, composed of eight pie-slice doors, could be seen, the only way to access the interior of the vessel. In the crevices and crannies of the Ziggurat, glimmering green lights reflected off metallic sufaces.

---

In the other direction, the corridor lead on for some distance.

OOC: The other stuff is more 'urgent' than the second corridor, and getting to see anything of interest down that way will take a while.

OOC: Then it'll give me some time to concentrate on the 'nid area.

IC:

"<Whatever it was,>" said Zarin, "<it was big, and it was a predator.>"

"<Keep your eyes open,>" ordered Moran, "<there might be some alive.>"

A deep rumbling began in the bowels of the ship, and soon permeated every corridor and floor. The Mandalorians ducked back into cover, their blasters searching for a threat. The rumbling noise eventually passed, though the group was still wary.

"<Hull stress?>" murmured Rhyric.

"<Maybe,>" said Jorek, "<This close to a star.>"

The sudden, hissing noise of the opening hatchway took the squad by surprise, and all weapons were sighted upon it within a second. For a few moments, noone spoke.

"<I'm checking it out,>" said Moran, as she padded forward. The panel had revealed a narrow flight of stairs, illuminated nearer to the bottom. "<On me, team. Weapons free, shoot to kill...>"

"What in the black hells happened?" He cursed as he stepped back after getting psychicly assaulted by the horrorified cacophony of mental noise and dark emotion. He rubbed his forehead while Sharria looked around, worried at what was affecting her friend.

Straightening, he braved the corridor again and they headed down the hallway to an appearent lift. The two got into the elevator and Sharria reached over to push what was obviously the up button.

It certainly wasn’t magnetic, but some form of containment came online as Ivan stepped up to the doorway. The hissing continued, a veritable torrent of air filling the bay and displacing the mysteriously cooled solar gasses from the bay. The lights flared, crackling energies leaping and dancing within the glass pillars, and the door sighed open before him, the air pushing him a little way backwards. Beyond, there was only darkness.
OOC: Damn, I'm falling a bit behind...

Ivan braced himself against the rush of gas. Once it was over, he looked at his pressure readings. They fell within human tolerances.
Ivan got on the radio. "Jesus Christ, HQ, the bay just repressurized. I don't know what's keeping it in, but the lights turned on, the door opened and air started rushing into the bay."
"Hold tight, soldier, we're sending in Beta platoon."
Ivan voice shook as he spoke. "Sir, something knows we're here."
"Relax, Petrov. Wait for reinforcements."
Ivan looked out the bay with relief. The Alpha Platoon dropship was vectoring to land in the bay. He looked towards the gaping maw of the door, trying to see into the darkness beyond.

After Beta's dropship landed, Ivan linked up with Emma and the rest of Third Squad. As the second dropship vectored in, Third Squad recieved orders to enter the doorway. The marched through, into the darkness.

Uluf, back near the recently vacated entrance, was running his scanner up and down the walls, hoping he would be able to figure out exactly what metals were used. He was also hoping to get past the metal, and take a look at some of the electronics that he guessed were behind the walls. Sure, it wasn't his specialty, but the data could be returned for further analysis.
(OOC: Anything interesting he can pick up from the scans?)

***

Lycon wandered down the halls. The noises around had startled him a little, but they'd passed, and so did his initial fear. Moving further down the hall, he could see the lights from the Mandalorians, and he radioed ahead to let them know he was approaching.

***

Rickard and Gerry followed behind the Mandalorians. For the two scientists, this was still exciting, despite it being a rather dull walk down a long hallway. They weren't bothering to scan, since they had someone covering that aspect of the ship design already, so they passed the time with idle chatter.

The Hjari stood for a moment in silence, gazing across the vast chamber with its strangely active floor. Finally, Relth broke the silence with one word.

"Wow!"

"You said it. This place is impressive, all right. I'm not sure I like the looks of those bridges, though..."

"Well, enough gawking." Jardra commanded. "Let's get to work!"

They began taking what measurements they could with the simple hand-held equipment available - images of the chamber, energy level estimates, distances from their point of entry, and other information. Once they had gathered what data they could, Jardra led the way along the narrow walkway to the nearest of the scattered doors. Though the crew would have been more comfortable with a less perilous looking perch, none of them were exactky strangers to high places.

The yawning deck that the steps lead out onto was about three meters high, and it continued in all directions for a considerable distance. A great gallery that included infrequent vertical supports as wide as three men, with similar stairways built into them.

---

The lift that Jason and Sharria used lead them up a level with each push of the button. It was clearly a clunky mechanism, and rails set into the shaft suggested that there was a better people-transport mechanism available that used the same shaft. Nevertheless, the next level’s door opened, and answers lay within.

The room beyond was like the one the mandalorians were exploring, with the same pillars splitting a barely illuminated chamber that could barely be seen. The chamber was strewn with human corpses. They were all intact, desiccated, but not decomposed, for there had been no way until recently for bacteria to live in that chamber of suffering. There were dozens visible in the wan light of the lift shaft, pale bodies and hooked fingers huddled together in their dying moments.

---

The doorway ahead of Ivan and his squad was dark and narrow. The walls all around read as solid for sixty meters into the hulk, more of the same thick armour that was encountered before, then they opened out into a narrow series of smaller, lower chambers that taller members of the team had to stoop to enter. There were more strange machines there, in greater quantities. Some of them splayed out on the floors, as if they had collapsed and died of exhaustion.

---

Scanning the metal of the corridors was interesting, but ultimately frustrating. The metal had an annoying tendency to absorb emissions directed at it, but that tendency couldn’t mask a few facts. It wasn’t that much denser than iron, and had astonishingly high structural capacities. It was non-ferrous, and yet probably a conductor of electricity on a level that rivalled pure gold.

---

The energies running through the room the Hjari were in were on the order of ten to the power twenty watts. Around a millionth of the star’s power flowed through that chamber alone! At the far end of the causeway, the doorway opened to reveal a massive chamber not entirely dissimilar to the previous one. This one was covered on all surfaces by strange machines. This chamber also had a similar, if wider causeway. Dozens of yards below the doorway.

Fortunately, there was no gravity in that chamber…

OOC: There seems to be a database error on this thread that prevented me accessing the second page. This is a test post to see if it'll clear up the problem.

EDIT: Yup. :D

Uluf saved what data he could get. The metal was fascinating, and completely unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He had absolutely no idea how one could create such a material, but he knew he would likely spend the rest of his life trying to unlock the secrets of it.

Shutting down his scanners, and creating a data stick with the information, he packed away the equipment, and headed down the hall, hoping to catch up to one of the teams and find some more interesting things to scan. Although the metal appeared to be multipurpose, he was willing to bet there were other materials on board, as well.

As the two examined the room, they saw the corpses. "What in the hell happened, why are there so many bodies?" Sharria asked, puzzled.
"Guess there was a battle and the winners managed to evacuate, not before the ship disappeared, and there were not enought survivors to rescue the ship." Hason commented as they continued to explore, looking for anything unusual, bodies not withstanding.

Ivan led the squad, staying several meters ahead and keeping his rifle ready. As they paused in one of the chambers, Emma examined the machines, searching for psionic emanations...

"Copy that," replied Moran to the Gargantuan scientist. "<Hold your fire, team.>"

Staring back the way they'd come, she could just make out a white-suited shape. A few seconds passed, and the man strolled into view.

"Corporal Moran Ansu," she said, holding up a hand. "You're coming with us?"

"Yes I am," Lycon responded. "They decided it would be best to split up the scientists to gather as much different information as possible. Anything of interest, yet?"

The energies running through the room the Hjari were in were on the order of ten to the power twenty watts. Around a millionth of the star’s power flowed through that chamber alone! At the far end of the causeway, the doorway opened to reveal a massive chamber not entirely dissimilar to the previous one. This one was covered on all surfaces by strange machines. This chamber also had a similar, if wider causeway. Dozens of yards below the doorway.

Fortunately, there was no gravity in that chamber…
It was probably just as well for the Hjari that the causeway was lower. Were it not for that, they might not have discovered the absence of gravity until one of them, stepping through the doorway, soared off in uncontrolled flight across the room. As it was, the length of rope that they tossed out simply floated at the level of the doorway, instantly revealing the situation.

"Will the mags work on this thing, d'ya think?" Jardra wondered.

"One way to find out." Producing a small but powerfull electro-magnetic handgrip, Jervin placed the end of the short tube that held the magnet against the wall and activated the device.

((Assuming it doesn't work, since the metal of the corridors was described as non-ferrous - if the magnets will do, just tell me and I'll cancel this last part.))

The technician sighed as the magnet came away from the wall without resistance. "No luck."

"That's a nuisance, then. Relth, Tomas, go fetch a few grav-packs!"

These portable artificial gravity devices could serve as a more versatile replacement for the magnetic hand grips, but they were considerably more bulky, and had not been brought on this scouting expedition. While the two who had been named headed back to get the equipment, the remaining Hjari began taking what measurements they could from the doorway. Jardra herself looked across at the distant end of the causeway.

OOC: You know what I hate? Getting logged out by Jolt while I'm typing...

The doorway the Hjari were at was like the others they had encountered. It lacked any mechanisms or moving parts, instead seeming to be composed of a metal that could shift its shape at will. Aside from this and the crackling green bars on either side, whose purpose seemed to be some kind of power relay, there was nothing extraordinary about it.

As the team worked their way back for the grav-packs, the feel of the air began to change, sparks flying from some of the machines and lightning bolts increasing in their frequency. Outside the ship the storm increased its intensity once more, soon becoming a raging torrent of gas tearing from the seething roiling surface of the sun and pouring out towards the ship.

If the Hjari ship’s crew were observant, they would also notice a change in the hull material their ship was wedged into. It was glowing a dark sea green colour, and as the explorers passed back, the veins, seams of light previously evident on the surfaces of the ship pulsed at a rate too fast to be seen by the human eye.

---

Emma’s scan of the dead things that waited in the forwards section of the ship was fruitless. They’d never been alive. They were no more than machines, it seemed. But her sense could give another impression. An impression of something vast waiting just beyond the horizon of sensation, as though she was in a mist shrouded road in the depths of night, and she could hear the movements of something or someone, but not see it. Whatever it was lurked at the edge of perception, and the best she could get from it was that it was injured, and confused. There seemed to be no definite direction from which the sensation came, it suffused every particle aboard the ship, even her own body. There was a premonition in her bones that to invite contact with this malign entity would be to court disaster – nevertheless, the mind that lurked had a certain allure to it. It was clearly something of immense intelligence and knowledge, and it was in distress, terrible, not pain, but frustration and something that was not quite despair…

Ahead, like the flicker of a reflected copper-blaze, a green light briefly flickered against the walls, but Ivan and his squad could not yet see the source.

---

Sharria and Jason, meanwhile, were to find nothing but more corpses of the long dead, though hundreds of other doorways led off from the vast charnel house wherein they found themselves. Something was obvious from the bodies, too, they were no starship crew; Passengers perhaps, but they had been crammed into the vessel like sardines. The very lack of anything one could call acceptable housing indicated one of two things. Either the people, all human, had been confined In some ill preparedness, or that the ship was very fast to allow for any kind of interstellar journey to be undertaken in such conditions.

---

It’s surprising how far even quiet sounds carry in silence. A soft ‘click’ could be heard by the mandalorian team and Lycon from somewhere neaby. It was an innocuous sound, the sound of a plastic bottle cap being snapped open, or of a penny dropping. Yet it had a different, chilling resonance there, simply because it came from the deck below.

OOC: Ctan! You're finally online! Good reply, by the way.

Ivan crouched and squinted, looking for the source of the light. He swept his rifle from side to side, anticipating an attack...
"Fireteam Alpha, move up." Ivan and three others moved ahead, searching for the source.

Meanwhile, Emma and the rest of the squad remained in the chamber. Emma was chilled, but interested in the emanations that she felt from the ship itself... She sat on the deck, and slowly tried to reach out for the mind that lurked in the ship. Who are you? Why are you frustrated? She tried to ask these things of the entity. The rest of the squad watched her, entranced as she tried to make contact.

"Man, this is grisly." Jason commented with a note of disgust. "The poor bastards, packed in like this."
"Yes, and it doesn't seem like anyone was very full of foresight, these refugees, prisoners, slaves, what have you would have been wallowing in shit and disease so very quickly." She agreed

They quickly got sick of seeing bodies and began checking the doors for a clean corridor.

"Back so soon?" Saril asked as the two entered the ship.

"Need some grav-packs." Relth replied. "We've found a section where the gravity's out, and nothing convenient for hand holds, much less ties. Magnet's no good, either."

"Huh.."
Saril moved back into the hold with the other two, helping unpack a few of the devices from a storage crate.

"The instruments are picking up a pretty substantial increase in the stellar wind out there." he commented. "I've gotta say that this whole situation is beginning to make me just a bit nervous."

"Know what you mean." Relth replied. "There's something crazy about the metal in those hallways. The hull's glowing, and I'd swear there's some sort of flicker or something in it. Wonder if the activity's related to the rising wind..."

"I'll set up some equipment and see what I can find out. We can't bring much out of the Tzen, but we can at least examine the spot we're connected to."

As Relth and Tomas headed back to the waiting exploration team with their burden, Saril began assembling a few larger devices at the ship's lock.

Lycon looked at the stairwell. Looking at the configuration of the Mandalorians, he doubted they had sent anyone down. "We should go check that out," he said with a soft voice, feeling a little apprehensive, but his curiosity drawing him towards the sound.

The intellect of the ship was aware of something… odd. It wasn’t quite sure what. It had lost a lot of knowledge and information – it knew it had once known a lot more than it did now, but it didn’t know precisely what. Parts of its mind, which permeated every molecule of its form, had been completely vaporised, and its knowledge had been lost.

It was sure it knew what this was, how to react… It felt like another mind – it knew it should be able to communicate in some way, perhaps more of its kind were attempting to communicate with it.

But no, that did not make sense, the source was close, very close indeed. It put forth its will, twisting and turning through barely repaired corridors of the mind. It thought it had a rough idea what was happening, but it was still unsure. An army of deactivated constructs lay all around, and its vast mind flitted through them, most in no condition to do anything. Then it found one, and another, and a third. Each was about the size of a man, drones sporting a variety of lethal looking blades that actually functioned as molecular assembly units – and consequently a weapon that could absorb the matter of anything it touched. Nevertheless they weren’t armoured, for what it was worth. Clambering over the inert shells of others of their kind on a variety of chassis, crystal eyes glowing with a bile green luminescence, they began moving towards Emma and her marines.

At the same time, the doorway that Ivan’s group had advanced past slid to a shut, thick metal seeming to simply materialise with a clap of displaced air.

---

Jason and Sharria eventually found such a corridor, free of the remains of people who’d once lived and died there. But it had other things there.

Descending into the depths of the ship by the use of an anachronistic ladder, they could find strange growths that clung here and there to damaged parts of the chamber. Organic, they seemed, but far from normal organic chemistry. Instead, they seemed unnaturally resilient. It wasn’t certain what they did, or why they were there, but two doors led out of the chamber, one surrounded by the strange growths.

In the centre of the room, another altar, not unlike the one they’d first found, had been altered. Its jewels were gone, but the gold remained.

---

Aboard the Hjari craft, a strange creak could be heard, and as they left the craft again, it would seem that the route into the ship was even harder than it had been before. Tighter, smaller. And elsewhere, near the front of the ship, there were other sounds than the howl of the tormented stellar wind. Sounds that would be familiar to any submariner, the sounds of pressure from the outside of a craft.

---

It didn’t take long for them to find the source of the sound. Passing with inhuman swiftness between pylons and pillars, the shape revealed itself as faintly humanoid, alive, if the infrared spectrum was to be trusted, but with more arms, and fast moving, far too fast moving for anything even remotely human.

OOC: Hey, Ctan, why does it always take you so long to reply?

Emma's eyes finally snapped open. "Something's coming..." The Marines looked at each other uncertainly, and cocked their rifles.
"Which way?" asked Corporal Tanner.
"I don't know, but whatever it is, it's dangerous..."
The marines crouched in the small room, and listened to the noise of metal clanging against metal.

Ivan looked back. "What the hell was that?!"
"I don't know, the doorway just shut itself!" said Private Malakhov.
"Well get it open! Roadkill, cover me."
Private Roadkill worked the bolt on his rifle, and he and Ivan slowly continued moving down the hall. Behind them, Malakhov and Langenbrunner worked to open the door, banging their rifles against it, and looking for a control mechanism...

"Finally." Jason commented
"Agreed, all those bodies were depressing." Sharria agreed as they headed down the clear corridor.

Arriving at the ladder, Sharria went first, and they both used 'skid' methods to reach the bottom. Looking around, the spotted the pseudo-organic deposits.

"Wonder what these are." He commented as he took a probe, essentially a piece of metal designed to poke at things, and poked at the organic somethings, while Sharria looked around the room.

"Seems to be somewhat similar to that other room." She commented while she waited for Jason to finish his probing.

0OC: Oh you know, laziness. And sometimes waiting for multiple people to respond so I can keep groups progressing at roughly the same pace.

---

The door Ivan’s marines were attacking was, like all other doors aboard the ship, formidable in the extreme, and far too thick to be dented or adversely affected by human hands. Or human rifle butts, for that matter. While the door had the same vertical columns on either side of it that shone with crackling, dancing inner light, it didn’t seem to have any obvious controls.


Meanwhile, on the far side, the machine creatures advanced on the remainder of the first squad, shuffling forwards in the manner of zombies and cheap horror flicks, claws raised menacingly.

The only way they could be a greater cliché would be if their eyes were red.

---

As the explorers poked the growth, it reacted almost imperceptibly. If the poking stick contained advanced equipment, it would reveal that the growth was composed of alien genetic material, along with some human matter.

---

Meanwhile the other Mandalorian group found something else towards the front of the ship. Among the endless narrow corridors built into the void-spaces of the ship’s dorsal armour for one reason or another, there was only one thing of real interest there.

Bones protruded from the wall, twin desiccated tibia and fibula, protruding from the metal of the wall, with the remnants of the hand bones lay on the corridor before them.

After poking it a few more times, Jason gave up and began looking around the chamber with Sharria. "Should we go through the growth door or the other one?"
"Why don't we look down each to see what's down them?"
"Sounds good." He replied and so saying they went to each door in turn to look down the respective corridor.

OOC: Oh, OK...
IC:

Ivan turned back and told the other soldiers in his fireteam to keep quiet. Ivan continued to lead them down the passage.

Meanwhile, the rest of the squad looked uncertainly as the machines advanced...
"Uh, Corporal, what should we do?"
"KILL 'EM!" the Corporal shouted as he hit the lead machine with a burst from his rifle. The other soldiers followed suit, aiming for center of mass...

If drama teaches anything, it’s that there’s a long list of things one should never say aboard a derelict spacecraft. On that list are such gems as “nothing can possibly go wrong” “it’s just a rat” and “let’s split up.”

‘Let’s split up’ had always been one of the more dangerous ones. Fortunately, thus far, Sharria and Jason had not split up, and so nothing particularly dramatic happened. Two more similar rooms could be seen through the junction that the door Sharria looked on to. Meanwhile, heading aft, Jason could see a new type of room. On three of the walls, there were darkened alcoves the contents of which the contents could not be discerned by sight, each one reaching two and a half of the three meters to the ceiling. A growth that was like a small volcano of flesh and some form of liquid sat in the centre of the room, with tendrils snaking out from it across the floor.

---

The first of the creatures shuddered as the bullets ripped into its chromed carapace, sparks flew in fountains from rapidly spreading spider-webs of cracks spread across its body as bullets propelled by terrible force smattered into it. Overbalanced, it fell onto its back. There was a flash and the air stank of ozone as the animating force of the construct flew into the floors of the craft.

Another, shuddering, stepped over the first and clicked its claws impatiently, as it willed its four legs to work faster, reaching towards the nearest of the marines, the air around its open claw glowing faintly.

"Interesting, bunch of nothing in one corridor, bunch of organic looking crud in the other." She commented after they'd both looked down the two corridors.
"Yep, let's examine the organic one, but it might be better to be prepared." He replied as he drew his F-lance, with Sharria mirroring his actions.

Walking into the corridor, Sharria paused a few feet from the goo as she took out a probe, different from the type Jason utilized, to get a small sample of the fluid.

OOC: Is anything happening to Ivan and his fireteam?
IC:
The marine screamed as the indomitable blades of the machine sliced into him.
"Jesus Christ, hammer it!"
Tanner reloaded his rifle and sprayed the advancing machine, trying to find a weak spot...

The fluid inside the mound seemed to react adversely to the contact, bubbling and frothing around the probe. The sample of the viscous blue liquid did likewise, boiling for no apparent reason, and then breaching the small container as it evaporated into the thin space, cracking the cylinder lengthways, the un-boiled fluid dripping out onto the floor.

---

The creature’s claws flexed, and the part of the man – armour, muscle, bone and all, between them exploded into vapour, a torrent of volatilizing tissue boiling out to fill the room with a force that would be lethal were it not for the armoured suits the boarding party wore. The creature’s head snapped around and then snapped back as a bullet hit it, cracks splintering across its featureless ‘face.’

ooc: Which group of Mandalorians found the bone sticking out of the wall? Sorry for the delay in response. RL kicked in, and I've been busy/not in the mood.

ic: Seeing the bony structures, a hand scanner immediately came out, and readings were taken to see what they could make of this latest discovery.

"Hey, I think this hole's gettin' smaller!"

"Some sort of self-repairing material, maybe?"

"That would explain the power running through it. If this keeps up, I might have to find another opening somewhere. Best tell the others about the situation."

"Right you are. Thank V'rellan for directional receivers. We'd best get moving - keep us updated if anything else happens."

Noting the distinctive sounds, Saril brought up a graph monitering the exterior pressure on a convenient viewscreen. This was another potential problem that might force him to move the ship. The hull could take more pressure than its appearance might suggest, but there were limits, and it was best not to even get near them if possible.

The other two hurried back to the waiting group, moving as quickly as they could without risking a fall on - or off of - the dangerous path.

OOC: ARGH. I thought I’d already posted this. Bah. It’s the group of mandalorians that are not near to the 'stealer.

---

A scan of the bones revealed something interesting. They extended deep into the thick hull armour. Frozen in a pose of desperate, fast running. The skull was buried close under the surface of the metal hull, as though it were a drowning man gasping for air. The bones were rotten and yellowed around the ends where they emerged from the wall. Solidly human, the genetic material within them, if one were to analyse thoroughly, they would prove to be female, mid twenties. Beyond, inside the wall, there were void spaces that suggested some other things had been imprisoned there. It was as though the walls had closed around people, struggling to get past.

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The walls meanwhile, were closing on the Hjari craft. Second by second, the pressure on the outside of the hull increased, creating the same grinding, metal-moaning noises throughout its body. Soon, Saril might realise, the pressure would become such that the ship couldn’t disengage from the alien hull, or even trapped within it, like an insect splattered under mud.

"Odd." She muttered as she watched the strange goo do it's thing. "I wonder if the organicy stuff responds likewise," She commented as she reached down with the same probe she'd used on the goo to prod the growth.

Meanwhile Jason had been examining the walls for any signs of symbols. This ship was getting annoying, by being an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, topped with a liberal coating of mystery


ooc: 'pologies, missed your response

Jason found the alcoves along the walls quickly enough, of all of them, a figure of darkness four armed, stood in one, and no matter how much light was shone into it, became no clearer. It remained there, immobile. Meanwhile, the 'goop' in its container began settling down. The growth didn't react in any special way, it was moderately 'fleshy' and seemed to lack an endoskeleton. Fleshy 'wires' and tubules spread across the floor and into the walls, where they seemed to grow into the very metal like a canker...

"I don't likes the look of this area." Jason commented
"Agreed." Sharria replied as the growth looked like it was trying to assimilate the ship, and she wanted to be nowhere near it if it reach critical mass.

Once they reached the door, Sharria decided to see how the growth and goo reacted to being shot. Turning back she fired a round at each and being ready to step into the 'bland room' they'd come from in case anything unpleasent happened.

Cursing to himself, Saril closed the airlock and sent the vessel forging back through the murk, away from the opening. Turning to parallel the hull of the enormous ship, he began searching for another possible entry. ((Pick whatever direction you want.))

Meanwhile, Tomas and Relth rejoined the rest of the scouting team.

"Got the grav-packs." Relth announced. There's a bit of trouble back at the ship; looks like the hull's trying to rebuild itself. Saril said he might have to look for another opening."

"Another nuisance."
Jardra sighed. "This thing's impressive, but it sure is a lot of trouble. Tomas, see if you can get a line across this place."

Tomas applied one of the grav-packs to the floor near one side and set the intensity near maximum, then gave the device a tug to check its hold.