Just a progress update. Microsoft forced an update to my desktop computer which sent my computer into an infinite reboot loop that can't be canceled. I was playing the full release of subnautica in order to catch up with the story so I can get info directly from my own playthrough but since my computer is toast right now, the next chapter will be delayed until I can fix my desktop (however unlikely that may be) and then play through the full release until I get to the 2ndary research facility. Keep your fingers crossed I can fix my desktop, and just hang in there!
good luck with the computer, hope it gets fixed soon
Finally got my computer issues fixed and got the info I needed for this chapter!
Chapter 43: Answers
Palmer parked the Determination outside the disheveled structure near the opening that Sally had mentioned. From what they could see, the interior didn't fair much better than the exterior of the alien facility. There were green lights inside, but they were very faint and flickering. Palmer made his way back to the vehicle bay while Jeff went down to storage to gather some supplies. Once Jeff came back up and handed Palmer some rations, they both hopped into their respective vehicles and deployed. Palmer dropped down to the ledge below and Jeff hovered just below the belly of the cyclops in Talon. Jeff made his way into the small entrance while Palmer boosted to the edge of the opening and pulled himself inside. The green flickering lights barely did anything to illuminate the inside. They both turned on their flood lights to get a better view of the scene before them.
"This place took a major beating..." Jeff said as he eyed the debris.
In front of them was a walkway that lead down and to the left. The ceiling was caved in slightly and the supports holding it there were severely twisted and barely hanging on to their previous anchor points. Moss grew over many surfaces and some even hung down from the ceiling. Though the place was very obviously heavily damaged, the faint lights and the apparent presence of a functional force-field to their right at the back of the room indicated the place some how still received power from some where. As they explored this first room, Sally detected a signal.
"Detecting a faint alien broadcast. Linguistic analysis reads: 'Caution: Hazardous materials and lifeforms contained within.' Further analysis indicates the interior walls in this section are substantially reinforced. This further implies the the designers were seeking to either keep something out, or contain it within. Whatever their intention, it clearly failed."
"What can you tell us about the apparent energy source giving this structure power even though it has been severely damaged?" Palmer asked.
"This structure appears to have been sitting in its current condition for quite some time, even older than the Quarantine Enforcement Platform. However, as with the QEP, this structure gets its power from a separate energy source some where else on the planet rather than on sight which is likely why the state of the structure has not entirely prevented it from being powered. Further analysis needed."
"Huh, well maybe that means we'll still be able to find data on a cure of some sort!" Jeff said excitedly.
As he was finishing his words, Jeff started to notice increasing itchiness around his limbs.
"It's getting worse..."
Palmer positioned the PRAWN suit next to the force-field and a familiar terminal opened up beside it.
“Jeff, this terminal takes the same purple artifact thingy we used to access the big gun, we should still have one or two left. Did you happen to grab one?”
Jeff tried to ignore the itchiness.
“Yeah, I got one.”
Jeff opened the internal access hatch of the external storage module on Talon and pulled out one of the purple tablets. He exited the seamoth and inserted it into the terminal. The force-field instantly cut out with an electrical pop. It then came back on, flickered violently for a moment, and then shut off again.
Jeff and Palmer waited outside the doorway for a few minutes just to make sure it had fully shut off.
Eventually, Jeff swam inside and linked the terminal with his PDA.
“Integrating new PDA data,” Sally said.
After a few moments of downloading, a data document appeared on the PDA screen and Jeff began reading.
“Looks like specimen research data... there's info on creatures like what seems to be the peeper, some other small creatures and such. There's a couple of entries here on some big ones too... 'Leviathan Embryos', 'Large Carnivore Theta', and an 'Unidentified Leviathan'...”
Jeff continued reading.
“Anything on a cure?” Palmer asked.
“Looks like most everything they studied had no immunity to the infection... they made some headway with the unidentified leviathan... they designated it as 'Sea Emperor' and its bone samples indicated a potential for 'Kharaa' immunity.”
“So we have a name for the disease now...”
Jeff continued, “Here we go! 'Single specimen capture for study at purpose-built containment facility, constructed in volcanic region at a depth of 1.4km! We've got a lead! They built a facility deeper than this one that houses the potential cure specimen. That facility is our best chance at a cure! Nothing else in this data entry says anything about a cure being found at this ruined research base.”
“Well that's bitter sweet... We have a more solid lead on where to find the cure, but its not here and we have to go 1.4km down into a volcano to get there...”
Jeff unplugged his PDA and swam back to Talon, “It's better than no leads at all. I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel increasingly more itchy.”
“Yeah same for me... that's not a good sign.”
“Let's explore the rest of this place and see if we can get any more data, then we need to think about building an outpost somewhere down here. A place we can re-charge and store stuff.”
“Are you out of your mind?! This whole place is Ghost Leviathan territory!”
“We just need to find a nook some where... the Ghost Leviathan has a wide hammer-head front. We find an indention somewhere that's smaller than that width and we'll be fine... Though, we'll need to find a place to hide the Determination where we can access it from the base so we can defend ourselves.”
“If it weren't for this freaking disease, we could be hanging out on that tropical floating island right now while we build a rocket to get out of here... not living in a giant creature's literal lair...”
“Think positive, Palmer, it's one of the ways we stay alive.”
Palmer sighed and turned the PRAWN suit around to head down a sloped path to a collapsed door. Jeff picked up another one of those ion crystal cubes from a pedestal near the doorway. The frame of the doorway had collapsed near the top and some debris from the wall and ceiling were hanging down in front of it making it impossible for the PRAWN suit to pass. However, Jeff was able squeeze Talon under the debris allowing them to explore further with a vehicle to refill oxygen in.
In the room beyond, there were several empty aquariums as well as a few display cases that still had preserved specimens inside. The eye-catching point of the room, however, was a large case pillar in the center that housed a very large and spiky egg.
“Look at the size of that thing!” Palmer said swimming up to it.
Palmer began scanning it while Jeff explored to their right, deeper into the facility.
There was another data terminal that stood in front of a large window that looked into a massive aquarium with several skeletal structures including one massive one in the center. Jeff got out of Talon and linked his PDA with the terminal.
As Jeff was reading the data, Palmer came up behind him while reading the data gathered from the egg.
“There's another creature out there as big or bigger than the Ghost Leviathan according to this data... Luckily, it says this egg has been sterilized but there's not much else it was able to determine.”
Jeff kept his eyes on his PDA, “I may have found the full grown version of that creature...”
“What is it?”
“I've downloaded a damage report … It says a Leviathan class creature attacked this facility and caused the damage we see now. Not only that, but the destruction of this facility is apparently what caused the quarantine... It seems like this alien disease didn't actually originate from this planet, but rather the aliens came here to conduct research on the wildlife to see if any of them were immune. When the Leviathan breached this facility, the disease got out with the specimens.”
“Well that answers a few questions... but what kind of creature is powerful enough to destroy a structure like this? It's so heavily fortified with this off-world metal... that doesn't bode well for our cyclops if we ever come across one of those things...”
“We'll upload the DNA data from the egg you scanned to Sally so she can scan for a matching DNA strain in any creatures on the radar. We'll know it's there before it knows we're there.”
“Hopefully...”
They both continued through another doorway into a hall, passing by another large window that peered into the same aquarium Jeff saw before.
They entered into another room and they both stopped in their tracks. On tables, in containers, hanging from the ceiling and scattered on the floor were body parts of the same teleporting creatures that had attacked them at the last Degasi base.
“What...?”
In the center of the room was an almost fully intact version hanging from the ceiling with various tubes and wires attached to the creature's organs.
“It looks dead... I'll try and scan it,” Palmer said as he got closer.
Once Palmer had the scan data, Jeff exited Talon and Palmer got inside to refill his oxygen while he read.
“'Self-Warping Quarantine Enforcer Unit'... This lifeform shows signs of heavy genetic modification and extensive mechanical grafting. It does not have a digestive or pulmonary system but instead has an on-board battery receiving energy directly from the main grid and distributing it around the body. Miniaturized phase technology has been implanted beneath the skin and is triggered by the central nervous system allowing the construct to teleport at will. The brain and central nervous system have been augmented with advanced processing power and remote communications. Programmable. Hunter/killer. Threat level: high.”
Jeff was still putting it together, “So these things are machines created by the aliens to enforce the quarantine? That explains their seeming intelligent maneuvering when they attacked us... It also explains why we've been seeing so many of them just watching us from a distance.”
“It also explains their ability to teleport,” Palmer noted as he continued to inspect that data download.
“Well we should expect more of them in the days to come. If they're programmed to eliminate or contain creatures with the disease, they'll be after us until we're dead.”
“Yeah, Sally, upgrade the Warper's threat level to extreme.”
“Affirmative,” Sally responded.
Jeff and Palmer switched places in Talon.
As Jeff gripped the steering yoke, his hands began to ache and itch even more. He started massaging his hands.
Palmer swam over to another data terminal near-by the dormant Warper to gather the last bit of data before they went back.
“Caution, detecting atypical fluctuations in blood plasma proteins. A self-scan is strongly advised.” Sally suddenly said to Jeff.
"Oh no..."
Jeff took out his own scanner and began scanning himself.
"Self-scan complete. Bacterial infection has spread to the skin and pulmonary system. It is imperative that you find a way to neutralize the infection. Medical report recorded to databank."
Jeff frantically brought up the medical report.
"God save us..."
Jeff Pulled off his gloves to look at his hands. His heart skipped a beat and his eyes narrowed. His skin was red with irritation and very dry. Even more alarming were the green glowing spots that popped up along some of his larger blood vessels.
"Palmer! Take off your gloves!"
Palmer was in the middle of reading the data he had downloaded. The urgency in Jeff's voice convinced Palmer to stop and immediately take off his gloves. What he found was not much better than what Jeff had seen.
"Oh gosh... Jeff... you'll want to read this data entry I just got."
"Warning, contact with the Determination has been lost!" Sally alerted.
"Save it for later! Something's happened to the Determination! Grab onto Talon!"
Jeff pulled Palmer back to the collapsed doorway, aggravatingly slowly as he dodged debris and tight corridors. Palmer got out and entered the PRAWN suit. They both made there way to the exit. Just outside was the Determination, covered in armor breaches and missing armor plating. The pilot's bubble was cracked in several places and the red emergency lights were blazing inside. There were Warpers all over the place and in unison, they all turned their gaze directly at them.
"Sally! Fire on them for heaven's sake!" Jeff shouted.
"Unable to synchronize with Cyclops systems."
It was then that he noticed the coms tower on the top of the Determination had been obliterated.
"Palmer, we break for the docking bay. We've got to torpedo these guys manually! Now GO!"
Palmer drove the PRAWN forward and jumped off the edge with a burst from the jump jets. Jeff flew forward at max speed ramming into a warper directly in his path. There were so many of them. At least twenty. They had all stopped attacking the cyclops and began closing in on the both of them.
The PRAWN's jump jet slowly dissipated and Palmer began falling toward the seafloor. One warper followed after him. Palmer saw the creature on his radar and as soon as he landed, he whipped around and grabbed one of the creature's arms with the powerful claws of the PRAWN. He pulled the creature closer and braced the PRAWN's left leg against its body until the arm was ripped clean off. In a mechanical screech, the creature disappeared in a swirl of light and bubbles.
Palmer looked back up toward the Determination and noticed Talon swarmed by warpers. With the jump jet recharged, he pushed off of the ground with another burst of speed. The PRAWN slammed into the underside of Talon pushing it out of the group of warpers. Jeff's body was suddenly visible barreling out of the mass of warpers. Palmer immediately switched directions and burned the rest of his jump jet to change direction. For a second, Palmer was worried Jeff wasn't moving. Luckily, after a second, Jeff shook his head and looked right at Palmer as he started to sink back down to the ground. Jeff began swimming down toward him with warpers right on his tail. The second Palmer hit the ground, he jumped again, with 50% jet charge. It was enough to close the gap and Jeff latched onto one of the hand rails on the roof of the PRAWN suit as it sank down the seafloor again. Jeff looked behind him and saw a warper gaining ahead of the rest. It slashed with its praying-mantis-like arm just barely missing his leg. Gravity sped up their descent, increasing the gap between them and the warpers, until they hit the ground. Palmer had to wait for the jump-jet to recharge to 100% in order to have enough to reach the underbelly of the Determination. Nervously, he watched the percentage rise as one warper came in for Jeff.
"Heads up!" Palmer shouted.
Jeff brandished his knife. The warper slashed for his chest as he dodged backwards. The point of the arm stabbed into Jeff's calf causing him to shriek in pain. The adrenaline pumped through his veins as he grabbed the creature's arm and pulled himself toward it, slashing into its soft translucent chest. The creature made a shriek in pain but was not deterred and brought its other arm up to strike Jeff. Suddenly, the warper was pulled downwards by one of its translucent tentacle. Palmer punched the warper into its weakened chest as hard as the PRAWN could punch and completely obliterated the internal organs of the creature, sending it flying back in a cloud of various liquids.
Immediately, Palmer boosted upwards with the fully charged jump-jets, racing toward the docking bay of the Determination. Jeff was yanked upwards with the PRAWN suit straining his arm until he was able to grip with both hands. One side of the docking bay opened up but the other was jammed shut. Palmer grabbed the edge of the bay doors and pulled them inside where the docking clamps retrieved them. Jeff continued hanging from the prawn suit as it was brought to the ceiling of the bay where Palmer exited the suit through the upper hatch. The alarms were blaring and the red emergency lights were flashing.
Palmer raced into the bridge and dropped into Jeff's seat. He initiated a barrage of torpedoes and then rushed to the pilots seat as water leaked in from various points in the glass.
"Engine powering up."
As explosions flashed all around him, he pulled the Determination backwards out of the side-cave into the main cave system.
Palmer looked behind him at the radar. As the last torpedo made contact with its target, the final red blip disappeared.
He slouched in his chair as he let out a sigh of relief. The alarm stopped and the lights turned from red to yellow.
"Hey Palmer... little help here?" Jeff said over the coms.
"Oh! Sorry Jeff!" Palmer said as he bolted out of the chair to go down and help Jeff climb down from the PRAWN suit.
Palmer slid down the ladder and opened the first bulkhead into bay 1. Above him, the PRAWN was docked with Jeff still hanging from one of the upper handrails, blood dripping down his leg.
"Did it break a bone?"
"Luckily no but it'll still hurt like heck if you don't help me down."
Palmer helped Jeff get down as he winced in pain.
Once Jeff was on the floor of the docking bay, Palmer went back to the storage room and and came back with a medical kit.
"Ya know, that stunt you pulled out there couldn't have been more perfect. I don't know if you saw the whole thing through that swarm of warpers, but they had teleported me out of Talon making me an easy target. They had me on all sides, but when you hit the underside of Talon and launched it forward, it knocked me clear of the warpers and dazed some of them too. There's no way I could defend myself with just a knife against that many warpers. I owe you one," Jeff said as Palmer applied a bandage to his leg.
"Thanks. I had no idea what I was doing," Palmer said with a chuckle.
"So," Jeff said as he stood up on one leg, propping himself up against the wall, "What's the situation?"
"Well the good news is that all the warpers were neutralized. The bad news is the Determination is pretty badly scratched up, the coms tower is shot, and there's some water getting in through the pilots bubble. On top of that, I've no idea what state Talon is in."
"Well lets fix the glass breach first and foremost. Then we'll pick up Talon and get to repairing her and Determination."
"Jeff, the idea of a base down here might have just become mandatory with all the repairs we're going to have to make."
Palmer brought the Determination back through the side cave toward Talon's last known location. The water was clouded with the blood of the warpers. If, that is, the strange liquid is blood at all. It was concerning that Talon's beacon was not visible, indicating some severe electrical failure at best. Eventually, through the clouded waters, Palmer spotted Talon, sunken to the ground, upside-down on a ledge.
Jeff hopped up and leaned over Palmer's shoulder, "Oh, that's not good. Definitely a hull breach."
"Yeah and look there," Palmer said pointing to left side of Talon where the hull-plating pealed back around a gaping hole, "That's some shrapnel damage. Sorry man, looks like one of our torpedoes hit real close."
"It's Okay. It's not like we can control where the warpers are positioned, and I'd much rather have a broken seamoth than a living warper. Just gotta fit some new armor panels on it, replace some of the wiring, and replace the pilot's bubble. I'm not an engineer for nothing, you know."
Jeff hopped back over to his seat and lifted a bottle of water to his mouth.
Palmer got up from his seat and pointed to the water spraying through a crack in the Determination's pilot bubble, "We better get working on Determination first."
"Roger that. I'll go check the engine room, you go ahead and patch those holes before the drainage system gets overtaken."
Palmer retrieved a builder tool from his thigh and slid down the ladder to get some glass and Jeff hopped back toward the engine room.
The engine seemed fine as Jeff went through the checklist on his PDA. Asside from being strained when Palmer full-throttled it in reverse, all was well with the internals. However, Jeff considered it likely that the propeller needed repairs and would have to check that later. Jeff then moved on to checking the sub-systems on a console inside the engine room. Life support was fully functional but the electronics were damaged in several places, the worst of which was the coms tower which was where the sub communicated between different instances of Sally in PDAs, on-board other vehicles, and installed in bases. It was also where the main sonar system was installed but with that gone, they were now reduced to a very short-range back-up sonar. It seems the warpers new this module was vital and targeted it first. Had Sally not detected the signal-loss, they may have come back to find a scrap heap rather than a sub.
So, after a full diagnostics, the electrical issues seemed to be the biggest problem with everything else being fairly minor. A few hull plates would need to be replaced and the pilots bubble would eventually need to be replaced as well but Jeff's priority was to get the electronics back to 100% and to rebuild a coms tower.
When Jeff came back to the bridge, Palmer had already layered new glass patches over the cracks and the thin film of water on the floor was slowly disappearing as the drainage systems caught up.
"This area seems as good as any to build an outpost. The entrance to this side cave is only barely big enough for the Determination to fit through and I doubt a Ghost could fit its wide head through."
"What about the warpers?" Palmer said as he re-holstered the builder.
"They'll be back for sure which is why we're going to use this ruined alien facility to our advantage. Did you see that large aquarium when we were inside there?"
Palmer nodded.
"Well warpers are designed for water right? So, if we reinforce that aquarium, build our base inside it, and then drain it, there's only two outcomes. Either they can teleport into air, but they'll be unable to do anything because they'll drop to the ground, or they can't even open a portal in air so they won't be able to get in. And with the alien material surrounding us, I doubt the warpers, which were designed by the same aliens, would be able to break in physically."
"Jeff, that's brilliant!"
"Thanks! There's more though. To protect Determination, we can build a sonar system inside the base like the same one we had in the coms tower so even if they do attack our cyclops again, they won't be able to warp in undetected."
"Thank God you're an engineer!" Palmer laughed and Jeff did the same.
"Alright," Jeff said, clearing his throat, "I'll start working on repairing the computer systems in here, you need to get back in the PRAWN and retrieve Talon so we can start safely working on repairing the externals of the Determination and then get started on building the base."
@ThunderShock27, you might want to come back quickly, I think that @Recursion used up all our material for bumps.
A flash of lightning, a crack of thunder rolling through the atmosphere. The sky is black with rolling clouds. Rain pours down on the roof of a small disheveled barn in the middle of a pine forest. Save for the flash of lightning, it is almost entirely dark inside. The sound of footsteps splashing across the soaked ground growing louder and nearing the barn. There is silence for a few moments, then the rickety barn door is slowly slid open, letting in dull gray light. Five men rush into the barn out of the rain, two of them carrying a large reinforced crate between them by its handles The other three begin sweeping the ground floor, clear forms of machine guns sticking out from their dark forms below. Another form rotates around the edge of the barn door and begins sliding it shut from the inside, struggling as he tries to keep his footing in the wet ground. The distinct form of an AK-47 Advanced hanging from the strap round his shoulders. The two men holding the crate set it down in the middle of the barn floor. One of them takes out an LED lantern and places it on the crate, turning it on. The light pushes back the darkness very subtly with pure darkness still at the edges and corners of the barn. The three who had been looking around with their weapons drawn slowly converged back on the crate. One of them began talking in a hushed voice.
"We'll stay here the night. We have plenty of distance between us and the soldiers. We wake at three AM and make our way for the ocean. There will be boats waiting for us."
He pointed at the two who had been carrying the crate, "You two take first watch. NO FIRE. Is that clear?"
The two nodded. Then, the one who had been speaking with the clear authority of a leader, crouched down next to the crate and removed the lantern off its top. He flipped four latches up and opened the crate. Inside was a series of small black canisters that numbered 15. The leader's voice escalated to an excited tone.
"We'll be able to do a lot of damage with these babies men. Let's not let down the brotherhood."
Suddenly there was a single creak of wood from directly above the men. The leader snapped his head up and his men followed his gaze.
"Did you check the loft?" He shifted his eyes toward the three men who had cleared the ground floor while keeping his face up toward the loft.
The men each looked at each other with an alarmed look and immediately fanned out looking for a ladder. The light from the lantern made it easier for them to locate a wooden ladder that had been hidden in the dark corner of the barn. One man shouldered his AK and began climbing while the other two pointed their own up toward the top of the ladder. The first man reached the top and brought his AK around and pointed it into the darkness. He strained his eyes but couldn't see anything. He reached for the barrel of his gun where a flashlight was mounted but before he could turn it on, a form shot out of the darkness and kicked him in the face sending him flying backwards down the eighteen foot drop where he landed on his head, clearly breaking his neck and laying limp on the ground. The men began shouting and fired their guns into the loft. In their fire, yellow light shown out from the loft in the outline of a person. One man's eyes went wide.
"IT'S A SPARTAN!"
A cylinder fell out of the loft to the ground and after a split second, it exploded releasing thick smoke into the barn. The leader could be heard coughing out commands.
"GET THE CRATE!"
The smoke made it impossible for the men to know where to shoot so they just stood where they were frantically turning their heads looking for any sign of a target. One man at the base of the ladder felt the air part in front of him and saw a dark form drop from the loft. Before he had a chance to react, he had a bullet from a silenced pistol through his head sending him backwards onto the floor. Hearing the faint pistol shot, another man at the opposite corner of the barn began firing his AK in that direction. Once again, the bullets caused another yellow outline of a human form but before the man could reach the end of his clip, he had two rounds into his gut and he fell dead. The last four men stood around the crate, the lantern long since turned off. Two of them picked it up while the leader and another man stared into the smoke in the direction the spartan's energy shield had illuminated. The man standing next to the leader suddenly snapped his head backwards and sprawled on the floor dead. The leader fell prone on the ground and lay still. The two men carrying the crate began rushing to the door. There was another flash of lightning that split through the smoke and illuminated the distinct black armor of a spartan. He began firing at the form with precise accuracy. The yellow light from the energy shield flashed on as the bullets made contact but after two whole seconds of AK fire, the shield suddenly popped and the form retreated back into darker, thicker smoke.
"GET OUT OF HERE!" The leader yelled toward the men carrying the crate, now shifting the door open and dashing out.
The leader fired another round of bullets into the smoke from his position on the ground but two bullets from his left ended his spray for good. The form rushed out of the smoke out through the barn door. The men carrying the crate were far down into the woods but still visible through the thick rainfall. With another crash of lightning and thunder, the spartan holstered his pistol and took a DMR off of his back. Two thunderous cracks echoed through the forest as both men fell dead in the mud. The spartan reattached the DMR to its place on his back. Suddenly, the entirely dark form of the spartan changed. Green lights came on in various places and the spartan's visor illuminated to a light green. The spartan began jogging toward where the crate had fallen next to the dead men.
"This is ThunderShock to HQ, plasma bomb cargo has been recovered. Repeat, the alien bombs have been recovered. That's the last of the terrorist group operating in this area, my mission's done, requesting pelican EVAC from current position. Spartan out."
ThunderShock stood there for a moment and looked at the sky.
"My field call is over. I can finally get back home and catch up on some things."
-End-
Thank you all for sticking around! I apologize for my lengthy absence. Life caught up with me and I hit a severe case of writer's block, unable to figure out how to direct the next course of Splash Down into an entertaining route. I won't lie, I've also been really sucked into PUBG so that's also been quite distracting. However, don't worry, I have not, and will not abandon this story. I just needed a break, albeit one I should have made clear to you all! Things will be getting back on track shortly here friends! A fresh perspective has been achieved and Splash Down will resume! Once again, thank you for sticking around and being so eager for more installments!
I’ll be honest. I know it takes a long time to write stories. I’ve tried a few times myself. You just do you, ThunderShock27. I really enjoy your work and can’t wait for the next chapter.
Comments
good luck with the computer, hope it gets fixed soon
Chapter 43: Answers
Palmer parked the Determination outside the disheveled structure near the opening that Sally had mentioned. From what they could see, the interior didn't fair much better than the exterior of the alien facility. There were green lights inside, but they were very faint and flickering. Palmer made his way back to the vehicle bay while Jeff went down to storage to gather some supplies. Once Jeff came back up and handed Palmer some rations, they both hopped into their respective vehicles and deployed. Palmer dropped down to the ledge below and Jeff hovered just below the belly of the cyclops in Talon. Jeff made his way into the small entrance while Palmer boosted to the edge of the opening and pulled himself inside. The green flickering lights barely did anything to illuminate the inside. They both turned on their flood lights to get a better view of the scene before them.
"This place took a major beating..." Jeff said as he eyed the debris.
In front of them was a walkway that lead down and to the left. The ceiling was caved in slightly and the supports holding it there were severely twisted and barely hanging on to their previous anchor points. Moss grew over many surfaces and some even hung down from the ceiling. Though the place was very obviously heavily damaged, the faint lights and the apparent presence of a functional force-field to their right at the back of the room indicated the place some how still received power from some where. As they explored this first room, Sally detected a signal.
"Detecting a faint alien broadcast. Linguistic analysis reads: 'Caution: Hazardous materials and lifeforms contained within.' Further analysis indicates the interior walls in this section are substantially reinforced. This further implies the the designers were seeking to either keep something out, or contain it within. Whatever their intention, it clearly failed."
"What can you tell us about the apparent energy source giving this structure power even though it has been severely damaged?" Palmer asked.
"This structure appears to have been sitting in its current condition for quite some time, even older than the Quarantine Enforcement Platform. However, as with the QEP, this structure gets its power from a separate energy source some where else on the planet rather than on sight which is likely why the state of the structure has not entirely prevented it from being powered. Further analysis needed."
"Huh, well maybe that means we'll still be able to find data on a cure of some sort!" Jeff said excitedly.
As he was finishing his words, Jeff started to notice increasing itchiness around his limbs.
"It's getting worse..."
Palmer positioned the PRAWN suit next to the force-field and a familiar terminal opened up beside it.
“Jeff, this terminal takes the same purple artifact thingy we used to access the big gun, we should still have one or two left. Did you happen to grab one?”
Jeff tried to ignore the itchiness.
“Yeah, I got one.”
Jeff opened the internal access hatch of the external storage module on Talon and pulled out one of the purple tablets. He exited the seamoth and inserted it into the terminal. The force-field instantly cut out with an electrical pop. It then came back on, flickered violently for a moment, and then shut off again.
Jeff and Palmer waited outside the doorway for a few minutes just to make sure it had fully shut off.
Eventually, Jeff swam inside and linked the terminal with his PDA.
“Integrating new PDA data,” Sally said.
After a few moments of downloading, a data document appeared on the PDA screen and Jeff began reading.
“Looks like specimen research data... there's info on creatures like what seems to be the peeper, some other small creatures and such. There's a couple of entries here on some big ones too... 'Leviathan Embryos', 'Large Carnivore Theta', and an 'Unidentified Leviathan'...”
Jeff continued reading.
“Anything on a cure?” Palmer asked.
“Looks like most everything they studied had no immunity to the infection... they made some headway with the unidentified leviathan... they designated it as 'Sea Emperor' and its bone samples indicated a potential for 'Kharaa' immunity.”
“So we have a name for the disease now...”
Jeff continued, “Here we go! 'Single specimen capture for study at purpose-built containment facility, constructed in volcanic region at a depth of 1.4km! We've got a lead! They built a facility deeper than this one that houses the potential cure specimen. That facility is our best chance at a cure! Nothing else in this data entry says anything about a cure being found at this ruined research base.”
“Well that's bitter sweet... We have a more solid lead on where to find the cure, but its not here and we have to go 1.4km down into a volcano to get there...”
Jeff unplugged his PDA and swam back to Talon, “It's better than no leads at all. I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel increasingly more itchy.”
“Yeah same for me... that's not a good sign.”
“Let's explore the rest of this place and see if we can get any more data, then we need to think about building an outpost somewhere down here. A place we can re-charge and store stuff.”
“Are you out of your mind?! This whole place is Ghost Leviathan territory!”
“We just need to find a nook some where... the Ghost Leviathan has a wide hammer-head front. We find an indention somewhere that's smaller than that width and we'll be fine... Though, we'll need to find a place to hide the Determination where we can access it from the base so we can defend ourselves.”
“If it weren't for this freaking disease, we could be hanging out on that tropical floating island right now while we build a rocket to get out of here... not living in a giant creature's literal lair...”
“Think positive, Palmer, it's one of the ways we stay alive.”
Palmer sighed and turned the PRAWN suit around to head down a sloped path to a collapsed door. Jeff picked up another one of those ion crystal cubes from a pedestal near the doorway. The frame of the doorway had collapsed near the top and some debris from the wall and ceiling were hanging down in front of it making it impossible for the PRAWN suit to pass. However, Jeff was able squeeze Talon under the debris allowing them to explore further with a vehicle to refill oxygen in.
In the room beyond, there were several empty aquariums as well as a few display cases that still had preserved specimens inside. The eye-catching point of the room, however, was a large case pillar in the center that housed a very large and spiky egg.
“Look at the size of that thing!” Palmer said swimming up to it.
Palmer began scanning it while Jeff explored to their right, deeper into the facility.
There was another data terminal that stood in front of a large window that looked into a massive aquarium with several skeletal structures including one massive one in the center. Jeff got out of Talon and linked his PDA with the terminal.
As Jeff was reading the data, Palmer came up behind him while reading the data gathered from the egg.
“There's another creature out there as big or bigger than the Ghost Leviathan according to this data... Luckily, it says this egg has been sterilized but there's not much else it was able to determine.”
Jeff kept his eyes on his PDA, “I may have found the full grown version of that creature...”
“What is it?”
“I've downloaded a damage report … It says a Leviathan class creature attacked this facility and caused the damage we see now. Not only that, but the destruction of this facility is apparently what caused the quarantine... It seems like this alien disease didn't actually originate from this planet, but rather the aliens came here to conduct research on the wildlife to see if any of them were immune. When the Leviathan breached this facility, the disease got out with the specimens.”
“Well that answers a few questions... but what kind of creature is powerful enough to destroy a structure like this? It's so heavily fortified with this off-world metal... that doesn't bode well for our cyclops if we ever come across one of those things...”
“We'll upload the DNA data from the egg you scanned to Sally so she can scan for a matching DNA strain in any creatures on the radar. We'll know it's there before it knows we're there.”
“Hopefully...”
They both continued through another doorway into a hall, passing by another large window that peered into the same aquarium Jeff saw before.
They entered into another room and they both stopped in their tracks. On tables, in containers, hanging from the ceiling and scattered on the floor were body parts of the same teleporting creatures that had attacked them at the last Degasi base.
“What...?”
In the center of the room was an almost fully intact version hanging from the ceiling with various tubes and wires attached to the creature's organs.
“It looks dead... I'll try and scan it,” Palmer said as he got closer.
Once Palmer had the scan data, Jeff exited Talon and Palmer got inside to refill his oxygen while he read.
“'Self-Warping Quarantine Enforcer Unit'... This lifeform shows signs of heavy genetic modification and extensive mechanical grafting. It does not have a digestive or pulmonary system but instead has an on-board battery receiving energy directly from the main grid and distributing it around the body. Miniaturized phase technology has been implanted beneath the skin and is triggered by the central nervous system allowing the construct to teleport at will. The brain and central nervous system have been augmented with advanced processing power and remote communications. Programmable. Hunter/killer. Threat level: high.”
Jeff was still putting it together, “So these things are machines created by the aliens to enforce the quarantine? That explains their seeming intelligent maneuvering when they attacked us... It also explains why we've been seeing so many of them just watching us from a distance.”
“It also explains their ability to teleport,” Palmer noted as he continued to inspect that data download.
“Well we should expect more of them in the days to come. If they're programmed to eliminate or contain creatures with the disease, they'll be after us until we're dead.”
“Yeah, Sally, upgrade the Warper's threat level to extreme.”
“Affirmative,” Sally responded.
Jeff and Palmer switched places in Talon.
As Jeff gripped the steering yoke, his hands began to ache and itch even more. He started massaging his hands.
Palmer swam over to another data terminal near-by the dormant Warper to gather the last bit of data before they went back.
“Caution, detecting atypical fluctuations in blood plasma proteins. A self-scan is strongly advised.” Sally suddenly said to Jeff.
"Oh no..."
Jeff took out his own scanner and began scanning himself.
"Self-scan complete. Bacterial infection has spread to the skin and pulmonary system. It is imperative that you find a way to neutralize the infection. Medical report recorded to databank."
Jeff frantically brought up the medical report.
"God save us..."
Jeff Pulled off his gloves to look at his hands. His heart skipped a beat and his eyes narrowed. His skin was red with irritation and very dry. Even more alarming were the green glowing spots that popped up along some of his larger blood vessels.
"Palmer! Take off your gloves!"
Palmer was in the middle of reading the data he had downloaded. The urgency in Jeff's voice convinced Palmer to stop and immediately take off his gloves. What he found was not much better than what Jeff had seen.
"Oh gosh... Jeff... you'll want to read this data entry I just got."
"Warning, contact with the Determination has been lost!" Sally alerted.
"Save it for later! Something's happened to the Determination! Grab onto Talon!"
Jeff pulled Palmer back to the collapsed doorway, aggravatingly slowly as he dodged debris and tight corridors. Palmer got out and entered the PRAWN suit. They both made there way to the exit. Just outside was the Determination, covered in armor breaches and missing armor plating. The pilot's bubble was cracked in several places and the red emergency lights were blazing inside. There were Warpers all over the place and in unison, they all turned their gaze directly at them.
"Sally! Fire on them for heaven's sake!" Jeff shouted.
"Unable to synchronize with Cyclops systems."
It was then that he noticed the coms tower on the top of the Determination had been obliterated.
"Palmer, we break for the docking bay. We've got to torpedo these guys manually! Now GO!"
Palmer drove the PRAWN forward and jumped off the edge with a burst from the jump jets. Jeff flew forward at max speed ramming into a warper directly in his path. There were so many of them. At least twenty. They had all stopped attacking the cyclops and began closing in on the both of them.
The PRAWN's jump jet slowly dissipated and Palmer began falling toward the seafloor. One warper followed after him. Palmer saw the creature on his radar and as soon as he landed, he whipped around and grabbed one of the creature's arms with the powerful claws of the PRAWN. He pulled the creature closer and braced the PRAWN's left leg against its body until the arm was ripped clean off. In a mechanical screech, the creature disappeared in a swirl of light and bubbles.
Palmer looked back up toward the Determination and noticed Talon swarmed by warpers. With the jump jet recharged, he pushed off of the ground with another burst of speed. The PRAWN slammed into the underside of Talon pushing it out of the group of warpers. Jeff's body was suddenly visible barreling out of the mass of warpers. Palmer immediately switched directions and burned the rest of his jump jet to change direction. For a second, Palmer was worried Jeff wasn't moving. Luckily, after a second, Jeff shook his head and looked right at Palmer as he started to sink back down to the ground. Jeff began swimming down toward him with warpers right on his tail. The second Palmer hit the ground, he jumped again, with 50% jet charge. It was enough to close the gap and Jeff latched onto one of the hand rails on the roof of the PRAWN suit as it sank down the seafloor again. Jeff looked behind him and saw a warper gaining ahead of the rest. It slashed with its praying-mantis-like arm just barely missing his leg. Gravity sped up their descent, increasing the gap between them and the warpers, until they hit the ground. Palmer had to wait for the jump-jet to recharge to 100% in order to have enough to reach the underbelly of the Determination. Nervously, he watched the percentage rise as one warper came in for Jeff.
"Heads up!" Palmer shouted.
Jeff brandished his knife. The warper slashed for his chest as he dodged backwards. The point of the arm stabbed into Jeff's calf causing him to shriek in pain. The adrenaline pumped through his veins as he grabbed the creature's arm and pulled himself toward it, slashing into its soft translucent chest. The creature made a shriek in pain but was not deterred and brought its other arm up to strike Jeff. Suddenly, the warper was pulled downwards by one of its translucent tentacle. Palmer punched the warper into its weakened chest as hard as the PRAWN could punch and completely obliterated the internal organs of the creature, sending it flying back in a cloud of various liquids.
Immediately, Palmer boosted upwards with the fully charged jump-jets, racing toward the docking bay of the Determination. Jeff was yanked upwards with the PRAWN suit straining his arm until he was able to grip with both hands. One side of the docking bay opened up but the other was jammed shut. Palmer grabbed the edge of the bay doors and pulled them inside where the docking clamps retrieved them. Jeff continued hanging from the prawn suit as it was brought to the ceiling of the bay where Palmer exited the suit through the upper hatch. The alarms were blaring and the red emergency lights were flashing.
"Warning, external hull damage detected. Coms tower destroyed."
Palmer raced into the bridge and dropped into Jeff's seat. He initiated a barrage of torpedoes and then rushed to the pilots seat as water leaked in from various points in the glass.
"Engine powering up."
As explosions flashed all around him, he pulled the Determination backwards out of the side-cave into the main cave system.
Palmer looked behind him at the radar. As the last torpedo made contact with its target, the final red blip disappeared.
He slouched in his chair as he let out a sigh of relief. The alarm stopped and the lights turned from red to yellow.
"Hey Palmer... little help here?" Jeff said over the coms.
"Oh! Sorry Jeff!" Palmer said as he bolted out of the chair to go down and help Jeff climb down from the PRAWN suit.
Palmer slid down the ladder and opened the first bulkhead into bay 1. Above him, the PRAWN was docked with Jeff still hanging from one of the upper handrails, blood dripping down his leg.
"Did it break a bone?"
"Luckily no but it'll still hurt like heck if you don't help me down."
Palmer helped Jeff get down as he winced in pain.
Once Jeff was on the floor of the docking bay, Palmer went back to the storage room and and came back with a medical kit.
"Ya know, that stunt you pulled out there couldn't have been more perfect. I don't know if you saw the whole thing through that swarm of warpers, but they had teleported me out of Talon making me an easy target. They had me on all sides, but when you hit the underside of Talon and launched it forward, it knocked me clear of the warpers and dazed some of them too. There's no way I could defend myself with just a knife against that many warpers. I owe you one," Jeff said as Palmer applied a bandage to his leg.
"Thanks. I had no idea what I was doing," Palmer said with a chuckle.
"So," Jeff said as he stood up on one leg, propping himself up against the wall, "What's the situation?"
"Well the good news is that all the warpers were neutralized. The bad news is the Determination is pretty badly scratched up, the coms tower is shot, and there's some water getting in through the pilots bubble. On top of that, I've no idea what state Talon is in."
"Well lets fix the glass breach first and foremost. Then we'll pick up Talon and get to repairing her and Determination."
"Jeff, the idea of a base down here might have just become mandatory with all the repairs we're going to have to make."
They both made their way back up to the bridge.
"Definitely."
Skope is here.
Thundershock is here.
Who's NOT here?
i'm here as well
Palmer brought the Determination back through the side cave toward Talon's last known location. The water was clouded with the blood of the warpers. If, that is, the strange liquid is blood at all. It was concerning that Talon's beacon was not visible, indicating some severe electrical failure at best. Eventually, through the clouded waters, Palmer spotted Talon, sunken to the ground, upside-down on a ledge.
Jeff hopped up and leaned over Palmer's shoulder, "Oh, that's not good. Definitely a hull breach."
"Yeah and look there," Palmer said pointing to left side of Talon where the hull-plating pealed back around a gaping hole, "That's some shrapnel damage. Sorry man, looks like one of our torpedoes hit real close."
"It's Okay. It's not like we can control where the warpers are positioned, and I'd much rather have a broken seamoth than a living warper. Just gotta fit some new armor panels on it, replace some of the wiring, and replace the pilot's bubble. I'm not an engineer for nothing, you know."
Jeff hopped back over to his seat and lifted a bottle of water to his mouth.
Palmer got up from his seat and pointed to the water spraying through a crack in the Determination's pilot bubble, "We better get working on Determination first."
"Roger that. I'll go check the engine room, you go ahead and patch those holes before the drainage system gets overtaken."
Palmer retrieved a builder tool from his thigh and slid down the ladder to get some glass and Jeff hopped back toward the engine room.
The engine seemed fine as Jeff went through the checklist on his PDA. Asside from being strained when Palmer full-throttled it in reverse, all was well with the internals. However, Jeff considered it likely that the propeller needed repairs and would have to check that later. Jeff then moved on to checking the sub-systems on a console inside the engine room. Life support was fully functional but the electronics were damaged in several places, the worst of which was the coms tower which was where the sub communicated between different instances of Sally in PDAs, on-board other vehicles, and installed in bases. It was also where the main sonar system was installed but with that gone, they were now reduced to a very short-range back-up sonar. It seems the warpers new this module was vital and targeted it first. Had Sally not detected the signal-loss, they may have come back to find a scrap heap rather than a sub.
So, after a full diagnostics, the electrical issues seemed to be the biggest problem with everything else being fairly minor. A few hull plates would need to be replaced and the pilots bubble would eventually need to be replaced as well but Jeff's priority was to get the electronics back to 100% and to rebuild a coms tower.
When Jeff came back to the bridge, Palmer had already layered new glass patches over the cracks and the thin film of water on the floor was slowly disappearing as the drainage systems caught up.
"This area seems as good as any to build an outpost. The entrance to this side cave is only barely big enough for the Determination to fit through and I doubt a Ghost could fit its wide head through."
"What about the warpers?" Palmer said as he re-holstered the builder.
"They'll be back for sure which is why we're going to use this ruined alien facility to our advantage. Did you see that large aquarium when we were inside there?"
Palmer nodded.
"Well warpers are designed for water right? So, if we reinforce that aquarium, build our base inside it, and then drain it, there's only two outcomes. Either they can teleport into air, but they'll be unable to do anything because they'll drop to the ground, or they can't even open a portal in air so they won't be able to get in. And with the alien material surrounding us, I doubt the warpers, which were designed by the same aliens, would be able to break in physically."
"Jeff, that's brilliant!"
"Thanks! There's more though. To protect Determination, we can build a sonar system inside the base like the same one we had in the coms tower so even if they do attack our cyclops again, they won't be able to warp in undetected."
"Thank God you're an engineer!" Palmer laughed and Jeff did the same.
"Alright," Jeff said, clearing his throat, "I'll start working on repairing the computer systems in here, you need to get back in the PRAWN and retrieve Talon so we can start safely working on repairing the externals of the Determination and then get started on building the base."
"Will do Cap'm!"
yeah
He died in an away mission
why did you post it twice
Edit: now I see both