“[The Nomads] are opportunistic parasites, not only of human beings, but of technology as well.” - Dr. Kendra Sinclair, 800 A.S.
Though being the bulwark of a Tempest’s integrity, the frontal section of the Pripyat took a significant beating in its confrontation with the Schiller. Many decks lost their pressure and life support, with a lot of crewmen and personnel of the agency getting spaced. They were trained and ready for a scenario like this, but they were never truly prepared.
A white noise static from a wrecked communication device filled Nemezida’s ear. Groaning, slowly coming to her senses, she attempted to gather a picture of what happened. Not too long before she got hit with a piece of armature in the head, she was escorting what she believed to be a gold mine of information for a hypnovirtual interrogation. All the necessary security checks of the subject were performed preliminary. Body scans have revealed no alien organisms within and no signs of exterior tampering or bioengineering. Brain activity has revealed no abnormalities. Clinically, he looked just like a regular human being. She had no clue how he could have been a mole for the Nomads.
The deck around her was wrecked beyond recognition, even if the fire was mostly put out by the automatics. “Overseer to Korbut, come in.” A vain attempt at reaching the commanding officer has made Korbut realise that the device in her ear was nonfunctional and that the static was not from the blunt force trauma. Frustrated, she tore it away from her head and tossed it at Voronin’s corpse. A new course of action had to be planned. She had to warn the others about the newly discovered dangers. If agents of the Nomads have found a way to blend into the crowd without any signs that were easily discernable previously, today the situation has drastically changed.
Though concussed, her limbs still obeyed her command. Each step had to be carefully calculated before her body fully regained consciousness. As she limped through the hall, she took note of her surroundings. At first, she couldn’t really process the conclusion, and after making sure that her hearing was intact, she came to a sudden realization: everything was very, very quiet. No screams, no blaring alarms, no thuds of impacting ammunition. Did they win? Could it be true that they have successfully fended off an assault of an enemy far superior in numbers and coordination? Or was she drifting in a piece of a bulk that somehow still had functioning life support? Or could it be that she already perished and all of this was her final delirium?
A thud. Right ahead of her, around the corner down the hallway. Another piece of bulk collapsing, she thought. Until it repeated. A pattern of thuds began to sound like steps. Rescue? After all, her communication link was busted. Yet the steps sounded too heavy for something human. What else could it be? Robotics? She froze in place, with her sidearm pointed in the direction of noises that were slowly but surely approaching her. The Volgograd Industries PK9M was designed to fend off both organic and inorganic targets, so if that something meant harm to her, she would nonetheless be capable of defending herself.
Yet nothing could prepare her for what was coming. Something akin to a quadrupedal beast fused together out of scrap, bent bars, wires and… something else. And whatever it was, it was heading straight for her. Momentary shock of the sight passed, though not too soon to be replaced by another. What appeared to be the jaw of that thing began to rattle with sounds of screeching, moaning metal. What at first she thought was just noise came to form a pattern.
“Mistress.”
What uttered this word was not even a voice. Collisions and moans of metal formed lifeless vibrations for Nemezida’s brain to discern as something that would be used in spoken communication, except it was devoid of any intonation - organic, synthesized or robotic. She never before heard words uttered through an amalgamation of metallic noises. A series of shots fired from her pistol hit the beast right in its head, making it recoil, though not putting it down.
“Cruel mistress. Why do you despise us?”
The beast stepped forward. Its posture signaled that it was preparing to confront Nemezida. One could only imagine how strong a beast of undead metal would be, so she didn’t take any chances. She had to reach the command centre and the only way to reach it was past that thing. She waited for the right moment.
The beast pounced. Its entire body, from head to tail apart from the limbs, has opened up and formed a giant cylinder, big enough to swallow her whole. Instantly calculating her odds, Nemezida evaded the attempt on her life with a jump, landing precisely on top of the beast’s deformed maw and pushing herself off of it, landing behind it. She ran, picturing the layout of the ship in her head as she did. The adrenaline release in her system kept her at a sprinting pace, yet she knew that the beast would not be far behind. She had to reach the maintenance shafts that were closest to the command center.
Heavy thuds were getting closer. In hopes of gaining some distance, Nemezida used her advantage in dexterity by taking turns through the halls that would be too sharp for the beast of this size and weight. An entrance to the maintenance shafts was just around the next corner. Before she could proceed through them, she knew she had to divert the beast and seal it off. Another turn, this time in the opposite direction of the shafts, towards a different section. Methodically, she slowed down her pace, freezing in her place right in front of a bulk door. The beast pounced, much higher into the air, not letting her jump off of it as she did once before. Pushing herself forward slightly, she slid underneath the beast on her knees, watching it tumble down into the next section. In the same instant, she reached for the door controls, at long last sealing the chaser away, leaving it to scrape at the partition in frustration.
She knew it was just a moment. If the beast found her all the way here, it would definitely find a way around. She had no moment to spare. The command center was just one rough climb away.
Mistress. Why did it call her “mistress”? A question that phantasmically found its way into Nemezida’s mind, if only as a noisy distraction from what was actually happening. The command center was in ruins and barely functioning, however, it shared the same distinction with the rest of the ship that Nemezida has picked up on as she was chased by that metallic amalgamation. The lack of people. No bodies, no signs of struggle, no belongings left behind. Given her encounter, the probability of the ship’s crew fleeing was out of the question. The question of whatever happened to them was not her priority, however.
Transmission. Initiated.
“This is the Overseer. Code Eighty-Six. I repeat, Code Eighty-Six. The Nomads have adapted a new way of possessing people, one that is not discernable to body or brain activity scans. All SCEC units are to be marked for immediate termination. All ships reporting that they air from the Pripyat are to be terminated on the spot."
Condition of Code Eighty-Six. An emergency in event if the Pripyat and everyone related to it would become compromised or worse. Code Eighty-Six would dictate that the Pripyat would initiate a complete self-destruct sequence and for the next in the chain of command to assume control over the State Security Agency. In such situations, Nemezida was not the one for big speeches, and any unnecessary last wills could only damage the message's details if they were to reach the other end.
A repetitive affirmation was the only sign that her message could have been delivered. Not wasting any moment on sentimentalities, Nemezida approached the main control display. The quickest and most assured way to overload the reactor and to cause it to detonate was to send a signal through a mechanically rigged line from the command center, a safety measure that she personally saw to have installed onto the Pripyat during the retrofit. One more move and the threat would be gone, she thought. She was trained and mentally prepared for this her whole life.
But nothing happened. There was no confirmation, no reaction, no alarm, no farewell message. The ship continued to float in open space. The communication link was still malfunctioning. A glance at the control panel showed Nemezida something she would never think of - the reactor, and the majority of its surrounding systems, were not there at all. Not simply “missing” or showing as disconnected. Completely gone.
Transmission. Sent. Transmission.
Mission. Trans. Mission. Sent
Mission.
Mi-s-Tr-e-s-s.
She turned sharply. Instinctively, she shot the communication link, not knowing whether it would help or not. Suddenly, the ventilation grids of the flooring not too far from the observation deck have gone up into the air. A terrific undead blend of metal has once again caught her trail, crawling from out of the ventilation ducts piece by piece, slowly reassembling its form. A spectacle which Nemezida would not get to see - she was already on the run, dashing through the command center's doors and locking them behind her.
She couldn't afford to think about the “why” and “how”. All she had were the cold facts - the beast is directly linked to the very ship she was inside of. Her only course of action was to reach the reactor room and to send it into an overdrive manually, and she had to avoid any and all electronics and security measures on her way there.
Newly fitted Tempest-class carriers were designed with manual maintenance and labour in mind. Every section of the ship would be accessible for personnel either through the main halls or through networks of intertwining maintenance shafts. One would get easily lost in such a maze, thus every crewman had to be extensively trained to learn the shafts and how to navigate them. Nemezida knew them all as the back of her palm, and she also knew that they connected to the same ventilation system that the beast had crawled out of during their last yet brief encounter.
The fastest route to the reactor came to an unfortunate and abrupt end - a section of a wall pierced the railing and flooring ahead of Nemezida, making her advance impossible. Which meant she would have to take a detour through the shield generator maintenance.
Another collapsed section. The general cheapness of Pripyat’s retrofit was giving way to many collateral damages. Cursing Aralsk's manufacture threefold, Nemezida quickly drew a path through her memorised layout of the system. On her way through, she saw blockages to other routes that would lead her to the reactor room directly. Her other only option was to reach it through the main hallway, which would mean alerting the beast to her presence. Yet she knew that the wretched amalgamation would not get her in time.
The bulk and flooring surrounding the main reactor area no longer resembled anything made by man. Like a fungal infection, the grey matter has spread through the hallways, coalescing itself and the ship's metal into warped, irregular shapes and patterns. Nemezida saw this before, albeit only through a lens of visual scans provided to her by her loyal servants. A twisted blend of alien matter and man-made metal. A visage she never before got to witness in person.
Perhaps, this is how a flea would feel traversing a stray dog's body. An insignificant insect, carefully treading its path upon an animal's hide. The closer Nemezida got to the reactor, the rounder the passage in front of her would become, resembling that of a cylindrical ellipsoid rather than the angular corridors of Coalition's capital interiors. Any gaps in the structure were smoothed out and mended into one continuous shape. A faint iridescent glow meant she was nearing her objective. To her surprise, she met no resistance, which was at the same time an even bigger cause for concern.
Yet what she saw inside was akin to a living horror. The reactor itself was pierced by a deformed alien growth, sprouting outwards into the ship's interior. A bizarre membrane-like barrier covered the hull breach just above the reactor itself. The Pripyat’s crew did not flee the ship nor were they sucked into the vacuum of space. Their bodies plastered against the undead matter, crucified and lifeless, with expressions of frozen shock etched onto their faces. Some of them were kneeling in front of the reactor, with thick wires stuck into the backs of their heads. As Nemezida walked closer, she recognized Pripyat’s executive officer, along with the commanding officer herself. They were motionless, not reacting to the Overseer's presence.
In the next instant, she felt a sharp pain piercing the back of her skull. Her breath let out a final shocked gasp as her body slumped in front of the reactor, falling down on her knees like the rest of her subordinates, her limbs refusing to obey. Her vision blurred, her hearing deafened. Something very thin and very sharp was working its way between her brain's hemispheres.
Suddenly, she felt a groaning, burning pain, as if parts of her were doused in molten rock and set to fire. She felt like bits of her skin, flesh and bones were torn away with a flaming blade. She felt like she was repeatedly beaten with barbed clubs and pierced with a stake through her heart. But more so than anything, she felt hunger. Like a starving beast that wasn't fed for months. Yet her psyche remained resilient. No matter the pressure, she did not give in to panic. All she knew is that she had to find a source that would nourish and sustain her. Her body felt unwieldy, crude, incomplete, not at all the acrobatic miniature chiseled to perfection that she was used to. She couldn't walk, for there was no solid surface to stand on. She couldn't crawl, for there was nothing for her to grab on. Yet what she could do was swim. With every push, a wave of searing pain echoed through her system, accompanied by everlasting extreme desire for sustenance. Yet at the same time, the surrounding space felt light, like an endless body of substance lighter than water. And like every ocean, it had its currents.
Exhausted in both body and spirit, yet deprived of the luxury of death, drifting through streams on a whim. The vessel she felt like herself was not completely under her control. The sensation was akin to someone - or, rather, something - forcing her to move through the patterns she herself was unaware of. And that something knew where the craved sustenance would be found.
A pulsar. The closer she would get to it, the bigger her hunger would grow, as if whatever was urging her to move forward was feeding her its own craving for energy. Her sight, now adjusted to the natural colors of surrounding space rather than their spectral refractions, was pinpointed onto the source of baptizing fire, so succulently searing with all the energy. Yet she could not get too close to it, lest she would find herself cooked alive by the very spring that would restore her back to shape.
She stopped right in front of a ripple of fire, laying the fractured vessel bare and open. Not a moment too soon, a gentle warmth enveloped her, streaming right into the depths of her being. What felt like a stake in the heart has started to slowly reshape itself and blend together with it. An ecstatic relief has given way, an emotion she was trained to disobey or discard as unnecessary, yet completely succumbing to it in her current state. The warmth channeled through the heart kept spreading, reaching every tear, burn, bruise and fracture. The sensation of regrowing flesh and realigning bones was agonizingly painful, yet she persevered, knowing that at the end of that painful journey would be relief unlike she had ever experienced.
Yet the warmth was not simply healing. Through all the wounds and tears, the matter that has now fused with and reshaped the heart was beginning to sprout into the rest of the body. The tugging pain was replaced with a sharp one in a sensation of its bones, flesh, muscles, bloodstreams and nerves being overtaken and fused into a completely different material. She couldn’t move, as much as she wished to. She couldn’t breathe, as much as she wanted to. She couldn’t die, as much as she desired to.
Slowly, in what felt like an eternity, the body she was controlling would become completely converted. The redundant organs were now fused into a perfected system or repurposed as building material for the rest. The skin now felt more sturdy, yet sensitive and soft. The muscles felt much more resilient, yet retained the original flexibility. All of it felt new, except for the brain.
Her sight blackened, replaced with a ripple of images flashing swiftly in her consciousness. Her very own memories. Every single past experience, from her childhood in Liberty, to her career as a security advisor at the Core, and now finally an agent for the Coalition’s commissariat, elevated to an overseer of her own department, obsessed with ridding the mankind of Nomadic threat and taking their technological heritage for the Coalition’s own use. Every single moment, right until the piercing of her skull. With each flash, she felt every bit of that memory dissipate into obscurity, as if it no longer was hers. As the final bit of her memory left her mind, her numb, empty consciousness was left adrift in the void. As a final bout of her agony, she at long last started to feel the life energy leave her body. Though it was not leaving her voluntarily. Something was dragging it outwards.
The Overseer’s lifeless body, along with her trusted lieutenants, has begun to sink into the amalgamated flooring. A low frequency signal emitted throughout the Omega-58 system, one that would only be picked up on by the residing thralls, hybrids and servants of the aliens.
