Re: Ghosts of the Federation
Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2016 8:57 am
I love how this is still going on for several years after the fact.
Official Forum for FTL: Faster Than Light and Into the Breach
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DarkPhoenix141 wrote:I love how this is still going on for several years after the fact.
SmoothPapaJ wrote:Brant checked their sensor. The survivor aboard the freighter was slowly on the move, and had just entered what seemed one of the cargo holds. She targeted the transporter for the corridor he’d just left, hoping to avoid getting a belly full of plasma; even if this was an engi, it was a needless risk to appear out of nowhere and open herself to startled gunfire.
“Transporting in three…two…” she said to her crew.
“…one,” and she activated the teleporter. And everything went straight to hell.
“Captain, we’ve got a…!” Toh shouted.
Brant’s breath hitched and her mind reeled, but she had no time for any thought more coherent than “Of fracking course” before everything became light and haze.
She materialized a second later into near darkness, the steely corridor lit only by the orange emergency lighting. She lost the signal from Toh, but an alarm blared in her earpiece. She breathed in and out, and a primitive part of her brain screamed the same warning that she saw now on her wrist console: there was atmosphere in here, but almost no oxygen.
She took that primitive part of her brain and clapped her hand over its mouth. Panic would speed up her breathing, and in this atmosphere that would kill her. What was happening? The sensors hadn’t indicated any hull breaches, and the life support systems were functioning. But the air was bad, this was bad, this was very fracking bad, she…
She calmly approached the closest door and opened it, and the gust of air that blew out felt better on her face at that moment than any lover’s caress ever had done. She strode in to the adjoining room, a mess hall by the look of it, and sealed the hatch behind her.
Something weird with the life support system, she thought. Sabotaged, maybe. Or they powered them down temporarily and weren’t able to turn them on again. There weren’t a lot of reasons why a ship with undamaged life support would have a dead atmosphere. Was the engi just running from one room that still had oxygen to another, then?
A great PLONK echoed through the ship. This was a commercial craft; chances were, its shields were specialized for exactly this kind of situation, and would be nearly worthless in combat. Hopefully, that meant the freighter was safe for at least the next five minutes.
Next problem. “Toh, I lost you in transit. Report.”
“We’ve got a…oh, Shaper…” Toh never let emotion into his voice. This was bad. “…oh, Shaper and Preserver, I didn’t actually think…”
“Ship consistent with refugee reports has decloaked,” 78 said, calmly but quickly.
Her breath caught in her lungs. It had nothing to do with the atmosphere. “Are you saying…?”
“Get the hell out of there, Charlotte!” the commander screeched.
Uncertainties clouded her mind, but she was truly menaced by what she already knew: these things had shown themselves right after the Kestrel depowered its weapons. That made perfect, terrible sense to her.
They could hope these things came in peace, or try to bluster them off. But if these things got to open fire first, Brant had a bad feeling there’d be no chance for retaliation.
“Divert something back to the beam cannon and get ready for a fight. Don’t shoot unless they fire first, or…unless the debris field knocks out their shields and gives you an opening,” she said.
“I’ve got to stop talking. Oxygen is busted over here, gotta’ conserve. 78, you’re in command until I’m back aboard. And Toh?”
A pause. “Captain?”
“I want you to repeat after me: at least it’s not the spiders again.”
She heard him breathe in and out slowly. “At least it’s the not spiders again.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him, but she’d have to take it. There still had four minutes before they’d be able to jump, five minutes before she’d be able to beam out. All she really wanted to do was hunker down here and watch the data coming in and direct the fight if it went down, but she wasn’t sure how much good air there was in here, and there was still the matter of rescuing the engi. If nothing else, the freighter had a transport beam of their own, but she’d need the access codes from a crewman to use it. And the Kestrels sensors were now directed at the unknown craft, so she’d have to find this guy on her own.
She opened the door and walked back into the corridor. The air actually seemed breathable in here now; maybe the oxygen system was failing, but not completely busted. It was confusing, but hopefully she’d be gone before she had to care. She inched up to the cargo bay door and put her ear against it. Something was scuffling around and making some noise. Good – the engi was still in there. She shouted into the closed hatch:
“Hello? I mean you no harm. I’m a Federation captain; we can see you’re in distress, and you didn’t respond to our hails. I’m here to help.”
She held her ear to the door again, and heard…nothing. Whatever was in there went still.
“Enemy shields have taken several nasty hits from debris. We might get that opening soon,” Ahab said just a little hungrily.
“Own shields at fifty per…make that twenty-five percent,” 78 said.
Brant cupped her hands again. “I’m coming in! We’ve got to go right now!”
She opened the hatch to the cargo bay, and the emergency lighting wasn’t nearly enough to light up the room. The yawning, open room was nothing but a haze of shadows and dim lights to show where the walls were, and...
…a door on the other side of the room hissed open. Brant only caught a glimpse of a shadow scuttling out of it before it slammed shut again.
“Oh God damn it,” she muttered. She must have spooked him. She didn’t exactly want to chase a frightened cyborg around a derelict ship with crap oxygen while her crew tried to sucker-punch hungry demon-aliens, but as ever, she had to play the hand she was dealt. Besides, this guy could get her out of here faster, and he might still have valuable intelligence. And blah blah blah the right thing to do, too.
She ran into the cargo bay. “Come on, guy! This is a rescue mission! For what it’s worth, engi slaves aren’t even valuable enough to justify the…”
She almost fainted. Her breaths became ragged and desperate. The air in the cargo bay was all inert gas, no oxygen. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she’d gone running off after the engi without checking, and she was nearly at the door on the far side of the room before her lungs or wrist unit had figured out something was wrong. She stumbled up to the door, amazed how quickly a few breaths of this dead air had winded her and pretty sure she didn’t have enough oxygen in her blood to get herself back to the corridor she’d left. She opened the door ahead of her and jumped through, sealing it behind her and praying that the air she was breathing now had some O2 in it.
“Three minutes on jump!” 78 said. “Four on tran-“ A loud blast interrupted him. Something had hit the ship.
The air was thin but breathable. She looked at the system readout on her wrist console. A shape moved at the far end of the corridor. What was going on with the life support? They’d just taken a direct hit to shields, a door closed at the far end of the corridor, their shields were out and 8 might be dead and the Lanius had come...
Brant slapped herself. “8, report,” she said.
The channel opened again, and she could only here alarms and the hiss of the vacuum. “Alive. Hull breached, shields damaged. Repairing.”
She wanted to strangle Toh. She knew, of course, that without his deft piloting and Karl’s help they would never have lasted even this long in the field, but her anger needed someplace to go, especially when another piece of debris struck the ship a few seconds later. Brant breathed a sigh of relief as she saw it hadn’t done any more damage to shields, or to their weapons or engines.
Then she saw.
78 came on. “Charlotte…”
The teleporter was down.
“Don’t even think about it,” she hissed. “Without shields you’re all dead. I can catch a ride out of here, but I need a ship to go back to.”
She focused on the door at the end of the corridor, the one that had just shut. Why weren’t the Lanius firing yet? Or…was this their attack? Was the bombardment of debris not as random as it seemed? Who knew what a race of ancient legend was capable of? No, there was no point to those questions right now. She had to focus. This survivor might well be her only ticket out of here, and she jogged after him.
He was clearly agitated, perhaps paranoid, and she had no time for an extended chase. She didn’t announce herself this time, just opening the hatch and stepping through slowly. It was very dark in here, too, only those same dim orange emergency lights ringing the chamber, but they provided enough light in this small space to reveal the beds, shelves, and footlockers of crew quarters.
There was no one in here. She looked ahead, and saw an open door at the end of the quarters, but the lights had failed in whatever room was beyond it. The open hatch was a rectangle of black space.
“Shields just…about…” 78 said. A squeal of static cut him off. Brant glanced at her unit, but it had lost connection to the craft. The sensors must have been hit, knocking out short-range communication. Well, at least it told it her that the air in here was good.
She walked slowly into the quarters, staring into the shadows of the next room. She heard shuffling in there, saw the dim lights around her reflect on some shape moving in there. She held her hands up to show she wasn’t coming for a fight, but thought keenly of the baton and sidearm on her belt. “OK – can we talk now? I didn’t mean to trap you, but it looks like we’ve got to rescue each other now.”
The door shut behind her, and she didn’t walk much further into the chamber. She didn’t want to corner this guy, but she didn’t want him escaping, either.
The movement stopped in the next room. Brant moved cautiously forward.
“That’s it. I’m here to help you, and I need…”
Something moved, and two red eyes stared back at her out of the darkness.
That was no engi.
“…oh, God.”
The thing in the next room crossed the doorway and came into the half-light. It was tall, and its body bristled with sharp metallic edges and point. The eyes glowed red, but they held in her a stare as cold and ancient as the void.
And without a pause, without a sound, it charged at her.
Brant drew her weapons and opened fire, getting a grazing shot on the thing’s shoulder; the metal there did seem to fragment, but the thing did not stagger or cry out. It closed with her and dodged her baton, then grabbed it just above the handle before she could swing it again. She tried to pry it loose, but the thing’s talons had melted against the metal of her weapon and fused the baton to itself. Brant let the baton go and tried to raise her sidearm, but the thing swatted it away.
And Charlotte Brant, unarmed and alone, hit the space monster in the face with her best left hook. It was like punching a steel bucket, but the thing reeled back. She hit it with a flurry of jabs as she closed, then kneed it in the abdomen. She couldn’t tell exactly if she was hurting it, but certainly she surprising it…
One of her strikes went wide, and her vision reeled. She stumbled and couldn’t catch her feet. Her lungs burned. The alarm sounded in her ear: no oxygen. But…but she’d checked. That wasn’t fair. She’d…
She tried to stand, tried to face the thing that was bearing down on her again, but she stumbled again. She tried to control her breathing, but she’d exerted herself too much and now her breaths were ragged, drowning gasps.
The thing’s hand came down over her face, and everything went dark.
Chickengames wrote:This is by far the best fan fic I have read on this forum. Maybe even the best ever. It's really good, and I think you should keep up the story. A story without a resolution always disappoints me. I really hope you continue it.