23 - Contagion - Part 2

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.