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Sigma 16 - Chapter 36 – Taker Blues
🕑 Added 2023-07-19 05:33:58 +0000 UTC
Talia clamped her helmet into place and finished sealing her suit. Despite the air conditioning inside the habitat module, she could still feel the heat radiating from the airlock. Today looked like it would be the hottest day yet, and it was still only morning.
“What’s the status, Neo?”
[Informative: Seeker-H7 fabrication will be complete in approximately four hours. Alien units designated ‘Dapple’ and ‘Dusky’ have been waiting for User outside since sunrise.]
Talia raised an eyebrow, flipping her HUD to the base’s external camera feed. True to Neo’s word, both spiders were bouncing around near the bottom of the ramp to the Bootstrap Module, their chittering audible through the audio.
As soon as she stepped outside, both jumped up and seemed to hop in excitement. When she reached the bottom of the ramp, Dapple held out a small, crushed ball of metal about the size a fist.
“Uhh…?” Talia raised an eyebrow.
[Informative: It appears to be part of the wreckage recovered during your latest expedition from the base.]
She eyed it warily, then took it. Looking it over, she couldn’t see anything special about it. “Can you ask them what this is?”
Her suit chirped at them in what she could only call spider-talk. The spiders shared a look and then, for once, her translator worked.
“Maker! Gift!” appeared over their heads in speech bubbles.
“A gift…okay. Thank you,” Talia mumbled. Interspecies diplomacy was on a positive track, at least. With several more hours until the Seeker was done, there was time to kill. She activated the translator. “Would you like to go debris dragging again today?”
To her surprise, both spiders jumped up and down, chittering in excitement. She hoped this wasn’t a mistake, and it turned into something like walking a dog every evening… They certainly didn’t have enough debris to do it forever.
“Seems like the translator is getting better,” she commented. Both spiders tilted their heads in confusion. She sighed. “Maybe not that much better.”
Dragging the hull panel back had drained a quarter off her ATV’s fusion cell, so this wasn’t exactly conserving power. But it wasn’t that much and with the Seeker on the way, she hoped all the issues would be solved.
She challenged the spiders to a race back to the same debris field they had collected from the day before, but when she crested the last dune, she pulled her RSU-7S to a stop. The sun beat down on her, causing her visor to darken as she swept her gaze over the sandy landscape. There should have been sparsely scattered pillars of metal jutting out of the sand, but there was nothing but empty desert.
“Neo,” she said, a frown tugging at her lips. “There was wreckage here yesterday. The spiders couldn’t have cleared it during the night. What happened to it?”
[Informative: Dapple and Dusky remained inside their designated resting area during the night. No activity has been recorded by perimeter scouts, however this area falls outside the range of QCD-2P patrol route.]
Her frown deepened. If the spiders hadn’t collected it, then who…or what had?
The spiders peered at her inquisitively, chittering quietly to each other. Talia shook off her confusion and question and led them further into the desert, her eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of wreckage. It didn’t take too long to find another suitable pile, but it had added a few kilometers to their trip.
Repeating the process from the day before, she pulled out her multi-tool and sliced and prepared the wreckage into manageable pieces. This time she had two chains that were customized for Dusky and Dapple. Instead of hooking them on their forelimbs, it fitted around their torso in what she hoped would better distribute the weight.
It took a lot longer to convince them to put it on than she expected, though. But they eventually complied, and then when they saw how it worked, they seemed overjoyed, taking off back toward her base before she even got back on her ATV.
She had to push her throttle to the limit to keep up, but thanks to the flats, she took the lead. The spiders let out happy chirps at her as they clittered after her.
[Informative: Fabrication of the Seeker-H7 has completed and is awaiting your inspection and deployment.]
Talia grunted. The expedition had taken longer than she expected, though. Before she could respond to Neo, a sudden explosion erupted in front of her, a green cloud of fire enveloping her as she drove through the geyser of semi-molten sand.
Somehow, she managed not to topple over the ATV and cruised through the cloud. Her suit’s warning indicators alerted her of super-heated plasma outside her suit and her RSU-7S had multiple yellow damage indicators blaring audible alerts at her.
[Warning: Dangerous plasma discharge detected. Minor damage has been sustained to User’s vehicle. User’s energy shield integrity remains at 99%.]
“Neo!” she shouted, her heart pounding. “What the hell was that?”
[Alert: Hostile unit detected. User is under attack.]
Talia looked over her shoulder. Behind Dusky and Dapple in the distance, a large dust cloud was billowing up in the air, a distant vehicle zooming after them. Her HUD reacted instantly, highlighting the vehicle and zooming in. The 4x zoom was enough for her to tell it was some sort of truck or large dune buggy.
Whatever it was, there was some type of rear mounted cannon, and a second green glob of plasma flung itself forward. This time, it slammed into the sand in front of Dapple and Dusky, causing them to skid to a halt. Their chitters morphed into shrieks of fear that her translator turned into chat bubbles. “Taker! Taker! Taker!”
Both of them propped up the hull panels to use as makeshift shields.
Talia pulled her ATV into a curve to come back around when another plasma shot slammed into the makeshift shields. The metal immediately heated to a brilliant yellow-white while the green explosion catapulted another geyser of sand and debris into the air.
Dapple let out a pained shriek and collapsed. Part of shield had caved in and scattered the hot metal all over his side.
“No!” Talia cried out, her heart twisting. She brought her ATV to a screeching halt, the dust she had been kicking up suddenly billowing past her.
She pulled her Cortex Legion Mark IV off her back and knelt behind the small ATV. Bracing her rifle against the seat, her HUD immediately kicked into the same scope mode she had practiced with days before.
[Notice: User aim assistance is active.]
Talia focused on bringing the buggy into view. Two blue faces appeared in her scope, one driver and a gunner. They were still well over two kilometers away and past where she was confident of hitting them with every shot.
Hitting them with every shot wasn’t exactly necessary.
Steadying her breath, she squeezed the trigger and didn’t let go. The negligible recoil and the bracing from the ATV kept the barrel locked on target, and a spray of armor-piercing rounds spewed out. Dozens of sparks erupted from the vehicle as rounds slammed into the vehicle.
Suddenly the vehicle jerked violently to the side, the sudden change of direction pulling the vehicle out of her scope’s zoom. Instead of worrying about it, she ejected her magazine and slammed a fresh one into the receiver and took aim again.
It zig-zagged randomly as it retreated, and she had to lower her zoom level, but she could clearly see the gunner hunched over his turret, no longer moving or aiming. She fired a short burst at the retreating vehicle anyway, just to make sure they didn’t turn around or stop, then turned her attention to her spiders.
Dusky had moved to hold his shield above dapple who was still shrieking and trying to scramble away from the melted metal. Talia jumped on her ATV, then drove straight to the distressed spiders, then pulled out her multi-tool. She sliced off the chains holding them to the wreckage first.
“Neo! We need to target the melted metal on Dapple and get it off of him!” Talia shouted.
[Affirmative: Selective Material Deconstruction set.]
Her HUD highlighted thousands of tiny splatters that had coated the spider. Some were still smoking and burning. The spider looked up at her and shrieked as she pointed the multi-tool at it, but was stuck to the metal and couldn’t escape.
“It’s okay! I’m not going to hurt you!” she shouted before pulling the trigger. Dapple flinched as blue lines of light ran over his carapace, but calmed slightly as the metal began to disintegrate and flow into the multi-tool’s internal hopper.
While that worked, she peered around Dusky’s shield to make sure the blue aliens’ vehicle was still moving away. It was.
“Neo! Where are our scout units? Follow that thing and see where it goes, and make sure there aren’t more of them!” Talia shouted.
[Affirmative: Scout units deployed.]
Dapple pulled itself up off the sand and jumped away before dancing randomly in a circle. She deactivated her multi-tool. To her relief it seemed like his carapace had resisted the metal sinking in deeply, but there were still dozens of scorch marks all over his side.
She activated her translator. “We need to go back to base right now!”
The spiders looked at each other, and she gestured emphatically. They seemed to get the picture and headed toward it right away, leaving the wreckage behind. Dapple limbed and was slower than normal, but Dusky slowed down and stayed beside him, as if to make sure he was okay.
Talia gritted her teeth and scanned for the enemy vehicle. It had disappeared over the horizon, only the rising dust and sand trailing behind it giving away its position. That was surely out of the range of their plasma gun, but she still didn’t like them all being out in the open. She hopped on her ATV and followed her spiders.
Her recon drones buzzed by them, going in the opposite direction a few minutes later. Her HUD showed a map of the units. Two were chasing after the blue aliens and two had begun to circle them in a scouting pattern, looking for any unseen threats.
She kept picturing the last image of the vehicle in her head, the slumped over alien on the turret. She’d killed them, or at least it looked like she had. A wave of nausea threatened her. It wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t had a choice; it was kill or be killed. So why did she feel like she was going to throw up?
“Why didn’t we spot them earlier?” Talia demanded.
[Apologetic: Area of operations exceeds base surveillance and patrol route range. This unit was not focused on scanning for incoming units within close proximity.]
“For now on, we need scout drones in the air all the time. We need a dozen…no, two dozen of them on patrol, and have them go out a lot further! If they come back, they might have even heavier weapons, and what if they bring something that our Cortex Vanguard ADS can’t handle?” Talia hissed.
[Affirmative: Multiple scout drones have been entered into fabrication queue. Additional charging ports will be required.]
She clenched her jaw. She wasn’t sure what was worse—the fact that they had been attacked so close to base, or that she did not know what the capabilities and response the blue aliens might have to having failed.
Comments
Aphanvahrius
A battle! How exciting!
