[x] Head to the Control Centre
The gear on offer for you is mostly light on armour, and you feel like you want something more. Things are clearly not going according to plan and you have no desire to die before you even find out what's happening. You put out a hand and link briefly with the equipment tree, and pick out something from Luyu's list. The tree hisses for a moment then begins to sprout a single large fruit, a glistening shell around a fetal powersuit taking shape inside.. The process will take a few minutes. You do your hair as you wait, pinning
elaborate rolls around a pair of nekoform pins that should keep it disciplined enough for combat.
Finally the tree is finished, dropping bloated, splitting fruit at your feet. You will privacy and a shoulder-high blurfield appears, then you peel off the spraysuit chunk by chunk and let the scraps disintegrate down the floor drain with the fruit juice. The shell's offered base is a sports bikini with careful webbing to leave your interface meridians clear; with it on you hold your hair up and step into the armour's boots. Smartgel flows up your legs followed by cartaliginous soft plates and the hard plates that lock together into their invincible shell. Tingles run step by step up your spine as the armour encloses your body and locks to each meridian. A nostalgic feeling, for nothing you can remember.
The battle mask slots over your face and clamps around your head. You pull your hair free and let the armour's forcefield shimmer over it; you will not enter battle without your warrior's array.
With your armour set you assemble your weapons. A thruster pack is an obvious upgrade for the boarding shell, and you take a sustained fire weapon and fit a funnel crown to your armour's back and shoulders. A quick system test shows the funnels are functioning normally, moving out on small bursts of thruster fire and spinning on force field wings before returning to their places either side of your long hair. Finally you clip a whip sword across your haunches, so it's mostly concealed but can be drawn easily.
Luyu eyes you as you step out of the blurfield. "You seem like you know your stuff, 'Doctor'. Even if your body is pure decoration."
You shrug. "That can be useful sometimes. People know to look out for even girls as tall as Mirareki."
"So you were a spy then?" She asks.
"I don't know."
"Alright. Let's move." Luyu says. "I guess I'll take point."
"I can do it," says Mirareki. "I have a lot of custom mods for scouting." Both of Luyu look at her, eyes flicking up and down, and you feel the flicker of scans.
"Seems like you do. Heck of a set for a journalist." The big woman smiles in a way that shows a lot of white teeth.
Mirareki looks back cooly. "I do supernature reporting." She says. Your brain clicks over. Supernature reporting means reporting from inside posthuman structures, observing without disturbing, an ant reporting on the affairs of giants. "And reports from warzones and alien worlds. Before that I was in the Iris Unified Militia."
"Tough girl." Luyu says. "Alright, you walk point. I'll be second and last. The doc here seems like she can handle herself so she's next, then the maths-botherer and the shortstack." She gives Aletta another toothy smile, which the Eternalist ignores, and then pauses looking at Reizay, who's still looking more than a little panicked. The valkyrie drops to one knee, towering over the dyson girl only slightly, and looks her in the eyes. "Sorry. I know this is all strange and terrifying." She says. "But if you follow my orders and don't panic, I will get you out of here alive. And then we'll get you home. That's a promise."
Reizay looks up at the big combat body then nods quietly.
"Can we get on with this?" Mirareki asks, face carefully blank as she looks at the tableau.
"Sure." Luyu rises. "Lead the way, Point." Mirareki aims her carbine and moves up to the train, walking to the front as the rest of you board.
"We should go to the command centre." You suggest. "If we're going to find out what's happening, we'll find out there."
"Sounds good to me." Luyu hefts her weapons. "Someone hit the button."
Reizay swipes the controls and the train hums into motion.
*****
The train spirals up the ship, climbing rapidly. You latch onto how it is constructed. A maze of different shafts, chosen by algorithm to allow a maximally efficient journey in terms of bringing crew from one area to another. The chain of carriages shifts as needed to follow vertical or horizontal paths, bound together by force rather than matter.
Forward is always a strange thing on a spacecraft. Humanity still calls them ships, but you've always, and perhaps this is a new insight from only the space of your existence, or perhaps it's an insight from whatever echoes of your old memories remain, thought that's a misnomer. They're more like giant mobile buildings, pushed up by their giant engines, not sideways.
This is a big one. A citadel of space. The train flashes past one station after another, some small and closed off like the one you just left, others huge, multi-platform concourses with trees and dispensaries and coffee houses and big screens meant to maximise the supposed amount of space, now flickering and strange.
In some places there are transparent walls leading into great gardens, riots of plants and colours, sealed behind airgates and charged with luminous nanotechnology, acting as part of the ship's life support functions. Much of it seems overgrown or disused, slim coffee bars with shiny stools on top of them, gardens overgrown, arcades silent.
The architecture is minimalist and undecorated, except by plants and abstracts, and by panels of bright primary colors. The ship's spray suits seem like they would fit well into the aesthetic.
"This is an old ship." Aletta's voice says. It's not Aletta though, or Minetta. A new persona has appeared. Where Aletta is cool and reserved, and Minetta seems warm and loving, this new persona seems more animated, looking around. "I am Juketta, their memorial." She bows, formally.
"I was wondering if you had a historian thread in there." Luyu said. "I thought you people usually travelled in threes but I guess you're efficient like that."
"Not every place has room to fit a lot of meat in it." Juketta says. Luyu shows teeth, but the priestess holds her ground. "Anyhow, I recognize this architecture and design. I'm pretty sure this is a Deep Ship."
Mirareki looks at her. "No way. Surely those aren't still in use?"
"Most were destroyed during the fall of the Third Interfacate, but at least a score survived. There's no reason to think they wouldn't still be around, even after a thousand years."
"What are Deep Ships?" You ask. Reizay looks pleased, having wanted to, but not wanted to show ignorance.
"They were created by the Chrysanthemum during contact with the Lobell refugees." Mirareki says. "Huge antimatter powered arks based on the ancient interstellars used during the migration. They were meant to prove Chrysanthemum dominance." She glances at Juketta who is being pointedly patient and coughs. "My apologies, Memorial. You can certainly tell this better."
"You have the broad strokes correct. The Interfacer and her supporters wished to show the refugees the dominance of the Chrysanthemum as an alternative to the Black Rose, while at the same time demonstrating her loyalty to the antimatter guilds and their river backers in the face of growing demands for the use of spin state reactors."
"Antimatter?" Reizay squeaks, eyes wide with sudden terror. "This ship is full of anti-matter?"
"I don't know. It's possible the power systems have been changed out. Either way it's quite safe, there's nothing to worry about. These ships are near the height of pre-fifth-interregnum technology. The fact they're still able to be used after so long must demonstrate their durability. It does however deepen the mystery of who could have kidnapped us." Juketta says, then blinks and is replaced, once again by Aletta.
These names mean nothing to you. It's a a sour, isolated feeling. Discovering this place is a wonder should feel better than this.
The car continues to wind upwards. "So what's your story Luyu?" Mirareki asks after a while.
"Oh nothing special." The Luyu at the front shrugs. "I'm just a conflict specialist you know? A lot of militias need experienced people and I'm nothing if not that."
There's a clunk from above, and an emergency light goes on, the train hisses then jerks, Reizay yelps, but Aletta reaches out a hand and catches her as the train slows and slides to one side as the track loses power. There's a clank of some safety below and the car slides to a gentle stop. The lights flicker off, and your masks automatically switch over to a green, white and red composite of light enhancement and thermal vision.
"Everyone okay?" Luyu asks. There's a chorus of affirmatives. "Guess we walk from here." She says. "Hey Journo, can you get the floor hatch open?"
"I'm on it." Mirareki says. There's a few moments of work and then brighter light pours in, your vision adjusting automatically. Mirareki gives a thumbs up and drops through, then you hear her gasp.
"Mirareki, are you alright?"
"Yeah. Just got startled."
"Get your screen out, then you won't freak me out like that." Luyu says.
"Sorry. Used to posthuman hives. Brace yourselves though, this is messy." There's a moment as Mirareki deploys her reconnaissance remotes, and the area below is revealed, objects outlined in green to show that they're through a floor.
You were above what appears to have once been some kind of large art gallery or processional. Huge, abstract sculptures of snowy white carbon and etched sapphire stand on all sides, evoking the idea of winged, feminine figures poised to fly. That's not what startled Mirareki though. You hear Reizay hold back a dry retch. Bodies, both human and mechanical are propped up at intervals. They're a grab bag of a unit, mostly wearing tactical suits but some in more elaborate civilian clothing or strange and dubiously protective armour that looks like it's made from some kind of natural hide. All had defense auras and weapons. All are dead. Around them are scattered the remains of several combat machines, which you recognize as common open source designs.
"Let's get down there. No point waiting in this tube. Reizay, do you want to censor your vision? This could be pretty bad."
"I'm okay." Reizay says, a little loudly. "I'm not so weak."
"Alright. Stay close." The first Luyu jumps down, then the rest of you and the second. They move rapidly to take positions covering both ends of the corridor, their drone moving with the one who doesn't have the plasma gun.
Mirareki is kneeling by one of the corpses. "The tatoos are from the Collective of the Honest, they're one of the main Corner Space outlaw groups."
Across most worlds of the Garden, the ultimate sanction for crimes against the community is outlawry, where those who's crimes are seen as irredemable are exiled from lawful society. While uncommon, and usually temporary, there are still enough who take to the life that collectives of such people form in the border areas of the Garden such as the corner stars.
The disassociation of these facts from any kind of context is becoming normal.
"What happened to them?" Aletta asks Mirareki, who's kneeling next to one of the corpses.
"A big shootout with someone. Not the River or the like, these are bullet marks." She indicates the wound in one of the downed outlaws, a cluster of close in bullet holes in a small cluster in her stomach. "Some kind of very rapid direct fire projectile weapon it seems like."
"Did they just–" Reizay is controlling her voice but barely. "Did they just all die without getting even one of the enemy."
"I don't think so." Mirareki stands. "There's a lot of marks of bullets and quite a bit of what might be blood down that end of the hall." She points. "It looks like they just got overwhelmed. Flanked through the ducts in the wall here." She points up. "It looks like all of the Honest were wearing emergency casters. They probably downloaded to a secondary location. This looks like a covering force. Suicide troops."
"Either way, we should get out of here before whoever did this comes back." One of Luyu says. Mirareki nods, and her drones begin to move forward, revealing the corridors ahead as you climb up the ship towards the command centre.
It doesn't take you too long to reach it. The place is locked behind two sets of armoured doors, but Reizay and her new tools dispose of them in a couple of minutes. You step into a large, overgrown garden that surrounds the command centre and is home to several black stone shrines, each with a statue of a woman clad only in a dark cloak, and several offerings in front of it. Through the garden lies the ship's control room itself.
The Bridge of the Downship is a large space. A large crystalline globe hangs in the middle, an unusual measure to create a visual display, presumably to impress people like the Lobell Refugees who did not employ Garden style augmented reality systems. Currently it's blank, and the various augmented reality control systems are locked out.
"Reizay, can you unlock these?" Mirareki asks.
"For sure." Reizay moves forward to the nearest console. "I won the all district security competition three years running and that was when I was in middle school."
Something catches your senses and you turn. The Luyu at the back is looking around casually, then snaps a finger out and catches something between her fingers. She holds it up. "Some kind of reccee bug." She says, then crushes it. "I think we're going to have company soon."
"I can do it." Reizay says again.
What do you do?
[ ] Let Reizay hack the Command Centre and set an ambush for whoever's coming
[ ] Let Reizay hack the Command Centre and set an ambush for whoever's coming but try to talk to them first
[ ] It's too much risk. Withdraw from the bridge at once and find somewhere to hide and observe.
[ ]
EXEC.UNLOCK
