Curb Side Stomp
Posted on Sun Oct 29th, 2023 @ 7:30pm by The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Javiylah MacArthur & Lieutenant Commander TaijanSuda ch'Thulhu & Lieutenant Jayla Kij MD & Lieutenant JG Fox Jasper & Ensign Asami Inoue & Chief Warrant Officer Mara O’Sullivan
2,319 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
World Wide Web
Location: Wreck of the Dromadue, Schrimshaw Star
Timeline: After Wincey, Sins, and Plan
The salvage team's arrival at the airlock rendezvous point was perhaps the strangest entry to the three-legged race as could be imagined. Though comparing the corpse of the Dromadues captain to that of the more ambulatory Proximal was a little unfair. After all, the corpse brought silent and meaningful contemplation to the table.
Proximal brought...well...
"CLICK. Alacrity is to be accredited," Proximal said, its claw-tipped limbs worrying together in a mincing motion. "CLICK. The longer we wait here, the more likely we are to attract far bigger threats than mere carrion eaters."
"What the hell is that?!" Ensign Ull exclaimed before coming to her senses.
From the drone came a short burst of communication that was, at least for the away team, business as usual. The fact the drone was currently being powered solely from Fox's suit with minimal intervention was something they didn't really need to know, yet.
"Commander," Fox's voice said, with a background noise of echo into silence. "DSRV inbound on your location, running dark and ETA in 3...2...." There was a soft clunk of metal against metal and the recovery vehicle bumped against the outer airlock RV with a perfect match up and a quiet 'yes!' from its pilot.
"One," said Fox. His tone brightened in that empty echo as it became obvious that the DSRV was noticeably lacking in any form of lights, shielding or powered-up airlocks. "Request urgent evac of all parties. Pretty please. Smile and jog forward in an orderly fashion when you see the green light around the airlock. Take your seats. Strap in real fast. Gonna be a fun ride..."
"Secure the hatch!" Prue called out to his team. While Waxx and Ull were technically his officers, the butter-bars hadn't ordered anything yet and time was of the essence. The other noncoms did as ordered and were the first onto the DSRV. Ull and Waxx stood on either side to help the others on board while Prue guarded their six-position. He'd dropped to one knee and kept his rifle ready for anything that might come near.
Proximal didn't bother speaking or uttering a phrase of clicking condemnation of Starfleet procedure. It instead thundered into the hatchway, somehow squeezing his bulk through the opening with which was saying something for the mostly cyborg entity.
“Hey!” complained Jayla as she was smooshed aside by the hasty proximal. “No need to trample everyone! And to think, I stood up for you!”
Mara managed not to roll her eyes as she watched the two Operations technicians board with their burdens in tow. She handed off the suit, which one of the techs secured in a jumpseat, before waving Inoue onboard, "Get in, Ensign."
Asami had been doing her best to cover Mara while supporting her carrying the body. Giving the Chief a glance she nodded holstering her phaser and climbing through the hatch and into the safety of the DSRV. Breathing a sigh of relief it took her a moment to move all the way and clear room. "In Chief!" She called, ready to take the body and help the other woman through.
Tag: Mara
Javi was the last one outside the DSRV, slowly walking backward towards the vehicle as she continued to scan the bay. All of her senses were telling her that they had problems inbound. Her FELINE balanced as she did, making low grumbles. "Let's go, Fox," she ordered as she motioned the two Security personnel onboard before she followed them.
"Confirm please, Commander McArthur- everyone on board?" Fox asked.
"CLICK! Yes let us be away from this shoal of misfortunate scrap!" Proximal prompted before his turret-like head turned and looked at the body of the starship captain. Proximal began to point an arm towards the cadaver. "CLICK! That is mine! It belongs to me, as I am the sole sentient being alive upon the wreck that things came from. Rights of salvage!"
This din was overridden somewhat by the banging sound of rock spiders hammering against the hull of the DSRV, most of them flailing and lacking purchase. One of them even tried biting down on a sensor boom, but had the misfortune of doing so over the hyper diamond focusing dome. Its rocky maw opened in a silent howl of pain as chips of diamond-like teeth flew off in every direction.
Fox flinched at the myriad readings flooding his console and felt the pain signals from the attack on both himself and Suda chime in as he shifted position in his seat and activated the engines. Fast and outwards seemed the best option right now, and he ignored the internal conversational battle between giant spidery robot and the away team.
Asami instinctively put herself between the construct and the Captain's body. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she stared at the large construct towering over her. Shit... Gulping back a nervous rumble in her throat she didn't move even as the ship shook under the munching of the rock spiders. "Not happening." Everything in her way saying this was a bad idea, but it was like Asami was out of her own body, it barely felt like she was the one saying these things.
“Yeah, that’s definitely not yours,” Jayla agreed. “Now be quiet and let our pilot think or we might not get out of here.”
"Don't need quiet," muttered Fox. "But Suda could use some medical attention if you're all done arguing." He pushed down the primal fear of present FELINEs, though that was somewhat dulled by the heady adrenaline rush of their current situation.
Mara gently bumped the ensign's suit as she casually stepped in front of both her and the strapped-in suit, helping to visually and physically block Proximal from Inoue's view. "Good job," she whispered across a private channel as she grabbed onto a hold, ready for more turbulence from either the entity or the ride back to their ship.
Bhéara leaped from Javi's shoulder to Mara's and rumbled at Proximal, making it clear that the FELINE wasn't pleased with its behavior.
Her cheeks turning a deep red, Asami gave the Senior Chief a nod of appreciation trying to mutter a small thanks, as she moved away, taking up her station at Sciences.
Proximal muttered something unintelligible and folded its limbs back into themselves in what appeared to be a sulking posture. No doubt Maddox was going to get an ear full about this, but that was a problem for Future Maddox which Present Maddox was blissfully unaware of.
"I highly recommend everyone deactivate every power source that can't be ejected into space," Suda said just short of a direct order. "These little assholes seem drawn to them like flies."
Without a single word, Jayla began fumbling with her med kit, making sure that everything was powered down and not just sleeping.
"CLICK! Get this thing off of me!" Proximal bellowed, as Morpheus clambered atop him, and curled up on his shoulder. The FELINE then went utterly still, powering down. "CLICK! This is unacceptable!"
“Oh, for pity’s sake, its just a robot!” said Jayla, exasperated, as she shut down her tricorder.
"I'm with Proximal on that one," Fox deadpanned. His voice slowly filling with clear emotion as he kept talking, hands light on the console as he did. "Just keep the fucking cats off both of us, please. And someone take a look at Suda? He might not admit it, but we both took some hits while you lot were out there exploring and winning friends."
"I'll live," Suda grunted. "That's the plan, at least."
Focus intact and more than capable of remaining so despite the chaotic group behind him, Fox triple-checked his trajectory back to the Daedalus and corrected his aim just a little to account for recent motion. The spiders were a problem he couldn't overtly concern himself with right now, getting 'home' was more important. "You're gonna need to strap in and focus on keeping the spiders off us," he said and fired up the drives to send them hurtling outwards from the Dromadue in the very specific direction of Daedalus. In the myriad noise of background radiation and threats, their home ship still called across space to him, a lone friendly voice in an ocean of distraction.
And so, like a lone tank in a vast battleground of weirdly ethereal noise and danger, the chunky, heavily armoured DSRV spun up to ramming speed, Fox's fingers on the trigger and his attention solely focused now on getting everyone from this rough and ready A to a friendly, welcome B.
Suda brandished his dagger and held it at the ready. "If anyone has any melee capability, I suggest you prepare yourself now. Those goddamn bastards are quick and give no quarter."
"Put that away before you stab something," Javi's order wasn't quite a bark but it was close. Bhéara's growl underscored the words as the FELINE let its tail lash around angrily in the air. "Everyone hold on while the LT gets us home safely."
"Fuck off, ma'am." Suda didn't even blink as he held his vigil against enemies who could strike at any time.
An uneasy silence followed for countless tense minutes before the hull of the Daedalus loomed up in front of the DSRV without any further encounters with the "spiders."
"MacArthur to Daedalus, we're in range of you Javi reported, hoping that the other team had made it safely before them.
"Lt Jasper to Daedalus, DSRV coming in hot..." Something didn't feel right, Fox thought. Usually he had the welcome mat visible at this point, and yet...
An alarm began to bleep on Fox's console. It was not the cue that the docking bay's clamshell doors were opening, and the guidance beacons were activating. It was instead a tactical alert coming from the Daedalus herself. A dozen or more objects were rising up from the star's surface. A suggestion of bulk, vastness, tentacles and glowing hypnotic bands of energy played across the scream: Cuthulu's pet cuttlefish.
Scaled at roughly 1400 meters and change...So a capital C space cuttlefish then.
"CLICK! Those are plasma leviathans!" Proximal choked, not even smugly suggesting that he could sell them better wireless digital security as he tapped into the control feed. "CLICK! I thought you said you subdued them! That your starship had dealt with the local fauna! Do you know what one of those mindless beasts can do to a starship? It will cook us like like a hard-shelled mollusc and devour the rare organics left behind! Why else do you think this graveyard of ships exists without bodies to crew their morbid watches!"
Fox had been worried that the so-far-so-safe trip back this close to home had been anticlimatic. That worry swiftly evaporated in the aftermath of the new alarm and its follow-up data. An icy cool calm dropped over the DSRV's pilot as he regarded the console's data and soaked up as much information as his puny mammalian brain could process. Tentacles. Lots of them. And the world's most aggressive neon club's dance colours playing all around that nightmare vision. This thing - things? - it/they were big. Like really REALLY BIG. And that fact that Proximal sounded bloody terrified didn't exactly bode well.
"You're still here," Fox said, voice level and steady in the way that near death experiences could sometimes take a soul. He had a job, he planned to try doing it. "Since you're not dead yet, how bout sharing what you know? Cos that starship you're looking at is your taxi outta here too now. Understand?"
He could have nightmares later, if they all survived. Right now, Fox living in the moment.
"CLICK! I survived by weening power from the decaying nuclear pile that wreck possessed. A bare ember compared to the more volatile antimatter and other exotic material power sources your starship possesses. I survived by not illuminating myself as though I were a funeral pyre!" Proximal spluttered.
"Line ball," Mobius said from atop his agitated throne, the FELINE moving but speaking. "Daedalus. Catchers mitt. Collision damage is minimal. Compared to Discorporation."
"Fair point, well made," noted Fox with a casual air as he rolled with the verbal shifts in the environmental dynamic. He avoided making any eye contact with the FELINE and kept his visual attention on his console as they drew up close and personal to dock with their home ship. "DSRV to Daedalus," he called ahead again. "Open clamshell doors, please?" He scanned the bigger ship for any signs that this wasn't likely to happen, then added. "We got incoming. REALLY huge, bad news incoming. It keys on power and you're lit up like one of those trees Earth people have in November." Almost right, at least.
"Diverting what extra power we have to engines and structural integrity fields." Asami reported, from her place at the auxiliary science station.
"Trust me, rookie, that won't help one bit." Suda had been jerry-rigging the DSRV's sensor probe with all the improvisational engineering acumen of a professional doorkicker*, which was admittedly minimal. "Just gonna make us stand out even more to those fuckers." Attaching it to the back of a spare EV suit, he set the probe to overload on a timer and hauled it to the airlock. He put his helmet back on and closed the door. When the outer lock opened, Suda set the EV suit's micro-jets to full burn and gave it a swift kick for good measure, sending it sailing outward like a torpedo perpendicular to the DSRV and the Daedalus. "Eat shit!" he shouted into the void before returning to the DSRV interior.
((*Also known as Grunts & Crafts))
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