A contingent of warships decorated with red-and-green patterns moved
swiftly before a star spangled background dominated by a feeble red
sun. In the distance, the Cloud Ring nebula spanned across the whole
galactic region bearing it's name. Had an observer been present to
follow the trails of ionized particles left in the wake of the small
fleet, and then draw the curve of that trajectory further across the
starscape, that observer would have noticed the dark, tapered
disk-shape which occluded the stars many tens of kilometers further
along the flightpath of the ships.
Like the fast
smaller vessels, that vast object transmitted a signature which
identified it as a starship. A Nyx class supercarrier in that
particular case. It carried neither name nor number, just like the
pod pilot who steered the Gallente-designed craft. The only
identification, available by deciphering the transmitted positioning
signal, was a pilot license issued to the capsuleer alliance known as
The Hive. The squadron of warships which approached their mothership
were as nameless as the supercarrier itself. The pod pilots at their
helms - members of the same collective – carried no individual
identification either. Pilots of The Hive did not have an identity,
they only had their function in the fleet. Individual distinction was
considered unnecessary, even undesirable, according to the philosophy
of those nomadic capsuleers.
While the humans
aboard the ships had been stripped of all care for individuality, the
swarm of microscopic machines they carried with them unknowingly were
motivated by nothing else than their quest for a single individual.
After the raiding party had entered the docking bay of the nameless
carrier ship, the nanomachines insinuated themselves into the
molecular structure of the mothership. They began to course through
the systems that guided the massive vessel, it's internal sensors and
communication lines, the bulkheads and walkways and transport
elevators, even the bloodstreams of the crew and the very air that
they breathed.
Just like the
capsuleers and crews of The Hive, this multitude of infinitesimal
machines had a collective purpose. Theirs was to find one particular
human, and once they found her, they would re-dedicate themselves to
a new purpose according to their programming. Until then, they would
proliferate and replicate themselves by using the materials available
in the microcosm they inhabited. They would spread like an infection
through the ships they were designed to target, and keep on doing so
until they had fulfilled the mission they were meant for.
***
'Shadow Leader,
this is Shadow Scout.' Cedrien received a fluid-router communication
from Alira. 'I have a positive. Yrton Constellation. System
designation QXW-PV. According to the starmap that's 7.34 lightyears
from target.'
Cedrien smiled
inwardly but his face remained impassive inside the capsule his body
floated in. Only when he willed the immense bulk of the
Thanatos-class carrier to turn in space and align itself to the
outgoing wormhole, his arms rose slightly and he twisted subtly at
the waist due to residual impulses traveling through his nervous
system.
'Will the wormholes
on the way to your location take the mass of our fleet?' The Gallente
commander asked.
'Easily.' Alira
replied. 'Also, my recon squad confirms that there is no activity in
any of the three systems in the chain.'
'Copy.' Cedrien
confirmed. 'Alira, move to the target system and report any potential
hostiles you see on the way. I need you to get into range with the
ship we are tracking. Move as fast as you can.' he ordered and then
switched to fleet broadband. 'Shadow Sword, Shadow Pivot, lock on to
my signature and follow me in warp. We have a clear path and a
positive on destination. The faster we go, the higher the chance that
nobody will catch on to us.'
'Finally.' a voice
with a distinctive Intaki accent replied. 'This place makes me
nervous, having no local signature transmission coverage and all.'
'Sword Leader.'
Cedrien addressed the Intaki wing commander. 'I am transmitting
navigational data from my scout to you. Can you give me an ETR for
Mace fleet.'
'Stand by.' Tenshin
Noy answered while Cedrien sent the mental command to his ship to
spin up the warp drive.
'They say they will
have to activate a number of dormant assets in a few points along the
jump route but expect to be ready for deployment in T minus 8
minutes. Full jump sequence to target destination will take 40
seconds from initiation.'
'Copy.' Cedrien
replied. 'I am entering warp, follow me to the transmitted
coordinates.' he added as his carrier was enveloped by it's subspace
warp-bubble and carried away by imaginary-mass quantum streams at
supra-light speed.
***
'Who are you?'
'My name is Agenine
Favrausse.'
Of course that was
not what they wanted to hear. So she was rewarded with a new wave of
unspeakable pain as the drilling implement she was impaled upon
twisted and tore the flesh of her insides.
A deeply
sequestered part of herself marveled at the amount of damage a body
could sustain without dying. Of course, she would be dead already if
they wouldn't keep her inside this capsule and have the nourishing
fluid replace her lost blood. She wondered whether anyone on the
outside would even be able to see her inside the pod which she
imagined to be opaque crimson by now. She didn't know for sure,
though, because they had taken her eyes rather early during this
whole ordeal.
How long had this
been going on? She didn't have the slightest idea.
Obviously she
wouldn't need her eyes to be suitable as a pilot, so they had just
become a source of agony and anguish. She wouldn't need her arms or
her legs or her breasts or her lips or her teeth either to fly a
ship. So they had taken those too. Not right away and not all at
once, of course. They wouldn't waste any possibility to inflict pain.
If she would still have a face to smirk with, she would have done so
as she cynically wondered how much of her body they could destroy and
still keep enough of her intact to become what they wanted her to be
again: One of them, a capsuleer flying ships for The Hive. A
non-entity with only the desire to serve the collective.
She was determined
to endure much longer than that. As long as it took for them to
concede defeat and finally kill her.
'Who are you?'
'My name is Keitu.'
The result of the
answer was the expected one. Even with the pain amplification turning
everything into an overbearing surge of torment, she imagined that
she could feel how something major ruptured inside of her and spilled
out most of the contents of her pelvic cavity.
She reckoned that
the instrument which ravaged her would start to wrap the small
intestine around itself next. That part inside of her which had
become strangely detached from the whole experience, the part which
had become a tempered hidden core so long ago on a grimy bunk aboard
a Hive ship like this one, morbidly entertained the notion that her
intestine would jam that bladed drill and overload the servo motors
until they burned out.
'Who are you?'
'My name is
Sandrielle Jaunes.'
The thought had
been fun while it lasted. She had to let go of it it in the face of
the next wave of tortuous pain, though.
Good to see that your imagination is still as sick as it always was :D
ReplyDeleteDisturbing scene? Mature content? Where? :-)
ReplyDeleteI like the Rasen Zoku's feelings about being ins W-space. Sooo null-sec-like.
Btw, is the mixed use of Rasen Zoku and Rasenzoku intentional in your previous chapters?
Yes, that's intentional. Rasen Zoku is what they call themselves. It means Spiral Tribe (which is a reference to something from my younger days). Most people who are not members of that alliance will draw the two words together as if they were one, which is not technically correct. So when they refer to themselves they use it as two words, when others refer to them they use it like one word. If I didn t mess up, then this should be consistent throughout the stories.
DeleteI modeled the feelings of the nullsec guys about W-Space on the sentiments of my friend Kamar Raimo who always complained how the lack of local creeps him out.