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Epilogue – Boredom and Boardings

Shi instinctively tried to stretch as she awoke, but found that she was just as tightly restrained as she was the last time she had risen from her catnap.  She opened her eyes, found only darkness once more, wiggled her ears, heard only the muted, faint hum of the ship’s power core and engines through the rubber plugs in her ears, then sighed around the big rubber mass filling her mouth and proceeded to stretch her body as much as was allowed.

Had she known she would wind up so completely bored, she may have reconsidered blowing the power core and getting a jumpstart on her next reincarnation.  The thought was a bit selfish certainly; Briar likely would have found himself in Erisaya’s realm, but the others?  She wasn’t exactly sure of their faith.  It wasn’t her right to make that kind of decision for any of them, honestly, not when there had been a chance at living for another day.

How long had she been trapped inside the Seal-Tech?  It was easy to lose track of time when you were completely isolated with nothing to do.  Well, nothing more to do; she’d exhausted every option she had at her disposal within a couple…hours?  Days? Or at least, a couple of periods between consciousness and slumber.

Once Shi had woken up after her confinement within the Seal-Tech, her body still hurt, but she felt rested and refreshed, her magical reserves restored for what little it was worth.  She had awoken to complete darkness of course, along with a constant pressure squeezing at her entire body, some parts more than others.  Every inch of her had been covered by a skin-tight layer of Seal-Tech, but just being blinded, deafened, and silenced was only the first layer of restraint formed by the arca-tech creation.

It hadn’t taken her long to realize that she too had been fitted with a stout, cervical-style collar of thick rubber, keeping her head straight and almost completely unmovable.  Thick bands had formed around her upper body, above and below her breasts, holding her arms firmly against her torso.  Her forearms were crossed in front of her in a very tight self-hug, fists still balled up and pulled to opposing sides of her body around the corset-like formation of rubber holding her midsection in a not-quite-crushing grip; she could feel it every time she breathed, extending from the bottoms of her breasts all the way to the tops of her hips.  Her legs were pressed tightly together, held there by no less than half a dozen stout straps, though she was fairly certain that a second layer of Seal-Tech had covered her legs beneath the straps, forming something of a sleeve that would have kept her legs together regardless of the extra straps.  Even her feet weren’t forgotten, her toes pointed sharply downward into an en pointe position and held there by the Seal-Tech, though what little movements she could manage revealed that there were no heels to enforce the ballet-like position of her feet, just the rigidness of the rubber itself.  Even her tail felt restricted, the rubber there making it very difficult to move it at all, the Seal-Tech seeming to want to force her tail to just curl up around her legs.

Though she realized it was most likely useless, Shi had wasted no time in testing her range of movement, finding that she could squirm and wiggle, lift her legs and bend them, with some difficulty, at the knees, but could manage little else.  She felt like she was being held in place at the console, and after some additional tugs and jerks, assumed she was similarly cocooned like Hilde had been.  

Interestingly enough, she could still feel her gun belts and harness upon her body, and the weight of all three of her revolvers still in the holsters.  Apparently the Seal-Tech still couldn’t consume them or further manipulate the enchanted leather.  Not that they did her any good at all, of course.  She couldn’t exactly do a quick draw inside the straitjacket-like bindings, could she?

It hadn’t stopped her from experimenting, though.  Once Shi had collected herself, she had started trying to tap into her magic.  She knew that it was pointless, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying; there was always a chance that the strange, rampant Seal-Tech was different in some way from the refined stuff used in the dark elf prisons.  She had been limited in what she could manage, of course, but she tried starting with the basics, just tapping into her reserves and creating flames on her hands, like she had done with Briar to try and burn away the Seal-Tech.

Though Shi could feel the magical energy waiting within her, she simply couldn’t utilize it.  As she had expected, the Seal-Tech’s strange nature was somehow blocking her from manipulating that energy, as if there was a thin, impenetrable barrier between her and it.  A barrier made of black latex, apparently.  

After several failed attempts to create fire, Shi instead had focused entirely on just grasping the power, trying to force her way through that strange barrier.  That was when the Seal-Tech took notice and reacted, constricting more tightly around her waist and throat, crushing the air from her lungs and preventing her from breathing in more.  She immediately stopped her attempts, but the constriction had remained unyielding until she had spots flashing in her vision.  Only when she was on the verge of passing out did it relent, returning to its previous tightness.

Memories of a previous experience, in another lifetime, flashed through her mind as she had frantically breathed in through her nose, of being just as helpless within the strange latex, of other punishments for trying to use her magic.  

Never one to learn her lessons and be a good girl, Shi had of course tried again once she had recovered, several times in fact.  Each time the Seal-Tech cut off her air in the same crushing way, only relenting when she was about to pass out.  After the third time, it had shifted the way her body was held, forcing her legs back, bending her body into a backward arch position, stretching her to the point that her toes were touching the back of her head.  The Seal-Tech had held her there for quite some time, until her body was crying for relief, aching and sore, on the level of the pain she had felt when she’d overdone it with her magic during her team’s ill-fated escape attempt.  Then she had been released back to her previously bound state.

Over the hours…days?…weeks?…Shi had been contained within the Seal-Tech, she had made other attempts, of course, but each time it had ended with her breath being taken from her, followed by her body being placed into that painful, extreme arch.  That told her some amount about the nature of this Seal-Tech, though.  She specifically remembered having experienced additional types of punishments before, specifically electrical shocks, all over her body, especially the more sensitive areas.  

She could remember pleasure too, vibrations that teased and edged relentlessly, of tickling sensations all over her body.  None of those happened here, so perhaps this type of Seal-Tech wasn’t fully active, or was missing certain other aspects to its makeup?  This version still had the life-support magic, though, as evidenced by the fact that she hadn’t starved to death, and hadn’t even begun to feel hungry, even after all the physical exertion she had gone through before her capture, and during her escape attempts.

Regardless, now that she had woken up again, finding no changes, Shi began the ‘workout’ routine she had developed for herself, mostly consisting of stretching her limbs and digits to their meager limits and doing crunches and awkward sit ups.  It wasn’t much, but it kept her occupied for a little while at least.  The Seal-Tech itself, despite its restrictive hold upon her, also seemed to keep the wearer’s body free of any great pains that it didn’t inflict, meaning that stiffness was lessened, and blood flow was maintained throughout the body despite any odd restraint positions.  And she was never cold, her body kept at a rather comfortable temperature at all times instead of the sweltering conditions one might expect within a thick rubber suit.

Did the Seal-Tech do something to calm those trapped within it as well?  Somehow, Shi hadn’t gone mad within her isolated state.  Though she wasn’t certain how long she had been within the tight rubber, it felt like several days at least, and she hadn’t felt her sanity slipping yet.  How would someone like Murissa handle it, though?  Not everyone had the mental fortitude Shi possessed from her countless hours of study as an arcanist, after all, not to mention the benefit of many previous lives of experience.

It was during Shi’s latest workout that she detected a change in the muffled sound of the ship around her.  The pitch of the humming grew higher, then began to fade.  The ship lurched in a familiar way.  

They had reverted back to normal space!

Shi rolled onto her side, then tucked her legs in and shifted her weight, awkwardly wiggling herself onto her knees.  Though she was tethered to the console, her ‘cocoon’ had given her some small amount of mobility.  She strained to listen to what was going on around her.  She could just barely make out the sound of the TK-drive fading off to what seemed a normal level, the vibrations she felt through the Seal-Tech indicating the ship was slowing, the engines winding down and bringing them to a halt.

The silence was deafening in its own way.  Shi turned her body as best she could, straining to pick up anything at all.  For a time all she could hear was her own heartbeat, but then she felt a different kind of vibration, heard a loud metallic clang, then several more, echoing throughout the ship.  Those were on the ship’s hull.  Docking clamps!  

After a few moments, a different kind of rumble could be heard, and she felt a rougher vibration.  There was a more jarring shake to everything, then silence returned.  Then there was another lurch, which Shi recognized as the ship once again entering hyperspace.

It had to have been another ship they had docked with.  Since their TK-drive hadn’t revved up again, that was the only explanation that made sense.  Who had picked them up, though?  Was it DSM, or was it the dark elves?  Someone else?

Shi would have to wait for a while longer before anything else happened.  They remained in hyperspace for a long time, long enough that she had slept twice more, and gone through another half dozen exercise routines.  She even tried tapping into her magic again, getting to enjoy another painful punishment session before they came out of hyperspace.  This time there was a longer period within normal space, and finally more rumbling and clanging as the docking clamps were disengaged, only for another set to be secured to the hull.  

Then there was more silence, leaving Shi tense.  The dark elves certainly weren’t in a hurry.

Shi was actually startled out of another nap by the faint shouting of several voices.  She jerked at her bonds as she came fully awake, again forcing herself to her knees.  She could make out at least half a dozen voices then, all speaking the native dark elven tongue.  Not DSM, thankfully, though there were still plenty of uncertainties ahead.  Though she couldn’t see them, several individuals were moving around her, more than just the voices she had heard.  

Shi let out a squeal into her gag, hopping up and down on her knees to draw their attention.  She was reaching the limit on just how much she could handle not knowing what was going on, not to mention how much boredom she could take.  

A moment later two people came up to her.  One immediately grabbed onto the grip of the revolver still on her chest rig.  He just as quickly screamed in agony as a crackle of electricity filled the air between them, boots thudding on the deck as he staggered backward and fell to the floor with a colorful stream of curses.

Shi winced, biting into the gag.  She’d forgotten about that little security feature…  She tried to speak, wiggled her bound arms back and forth, but it was far from coherent.  

To Shi’s complete surprise, the other person in front of her grabbed at her special revolver too, yelping as another shock triggered from the unfamiliar touch.  That person started cursing after they’d hit the floor too.

“Idiot!  What is wrong with you?!” shouted a male voice over the curses, in quickly spoken dark elvish.  “Was the first time not enough to teach you not to touch that gun?  Get the collar on her and take her out of here!  We’ll worry about those weapons later, not like she can use them anyway.”

There were some unintelligible murmurs from the two who had just gotten shocked, the first one picking himself up after a few moments.  Shi felt a hand press roughly onto her head, the thick Seal-Tech collar shrinking and reshaping, merging with the rest of the latex coating her body, leaving her able to move her head for the first time since she had been consumed in the stuff.  Another collar was quickly secured about her neck, though, the metallic lock snapping shut and beeping several times as an electronic component engaged.  This collar was weighty and felt fully metal, but was not nearly as tall as the one that had just vanished, more like three inches or so.

The other person her gun had shocked took hold of Shi’s arm and hauled her upright so that she was balanced on her toes.  Shi felt a tug at her neck, a leash, she realized, as she was urged forward.  Grunting angrily, Shi tried to walk, but her legs were still bound tightly together.  A firm slap on her backside made her squeal just as angrily, leaving her butt stinging as she took the hint and started hopping on her toes.  She recalled that the Seal-Tech seemed to have an uncanny ability to keep those trapped inside with their feet trapped en-pointe upright, though her natural sense of balance from being a kerryn certainly didn’t hurt.

As Shi was being led away, she heard some faint, muffled shouts from the direction of Hilde, then felt the thump as something heavy hit the deck, followed immediately by a scream of pain.  “Move it, prisoner!” said the guard holding her arm, in the common tongue, just before he slapped her ass again, just as the other one tugged at the leash.

Shi snarled into her gag, but kept moving, balancing precariously on her toes as she hopped along, her balance a bit off thanks to her being unable to move her tail as easily as she normally would.  She didn’t care one bit for the guards’ antics, but would cooperate for now.  She couldn’t really do anything to them after all, not unless she could find a way to force her special revolver into one of their hands, anyway.  She would just have to play along until she could have a chance to speak with someone and try to get her team out of the mess they’d found themselves in.  She had too many questions about what was going on that needed to be answered.  A little more time inside the Seal-Tech wouldn’t matter, not with a burning desire for revenge on the asshole who had betrayed them burning within her.

And there we are, at the end of the tale of Red Team and the Black Ship!

I sincerely hope that you enjoyed that ride as much as I did.  This story was one I wrote fairly quickly, over the course of about a month last year, and it has undergone some revision work all the way up until it was posted here as new developments in my setting have come from other stories.  But, this one was special; I love the setup and story, but I really enjoyed the characters, though not all of them saw as much development as others.

But fear not, because THERE IS A SEQUEL!

That’s right!  I’ve already written the second story of Red Team, and now that things have calmed down somewhat, I’ve expanded on the rest of the team and developed them further.  You spent a lot of time with Shi in this one, and while she’s still the main character in the next story, you get a lot more time with the others as well.

I probably won’t be posting the sequel immediately, instead posting other stories in this setting and beyond, but it is out there and it is DONE.  It took quite a bit more time to finish due to various circumstances, having been started in August last year but not being completed until March this year, but it is a much longer and more complex story, since I decided to switch through the other characters’ POVs.  You also get a slower paced story, with more kinky situations in this one.

Planning has already begun on the third story, which is in the  outline phase currently.

Thanks so much for reading and sticking with me this long!  I really do hope this was a fun ride for you!

Stay tuned for something different next week!

Until then, Urban out!

Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server!  I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!

Chapter 10 – Warm Embrace

Wiping sweat from her brow, feeling the Seal-Tech spreading upward over the curve of her breasts and downward over her pubic mound, Shi drew her big boy once again, thumbing the hammer to half-cock and rolled the cylinder.  “This corridor…it’s straight above the lower decks’ central corridor, right?  Nothing vital between here and the engineering level?  Not that it really matters if we’re trying to blow this ship, I guess.  If we can just shut the power off, we might stand a chance, though.  If not, well…nobody else has to suffer this fate.”

Kaylee shook her head slowly, her mouth working open and closed without a sound.  “Y-yeah, just power lines and vents and stuff…” Her eyes went to Shi’s big revolver and somehow got wider.  “You’re…not going to…use that, are you?”

Shi didn’t reply as she thumbed the hammer all the way back and began the charge cycle, wincing as it started up.  The shot could potentially breach the hull if she didn’t gauge the round’s power correctly.  Shi’s grimace deepend as she felt the weapon already pulling on her almost non-existent arcane pool, drawing at reserves of power she didn’t have.  “We’re not going to have much time.  I’ve got another shot that should do the job if you don’t know a quick shut down process.”

“Your best bet is to eject the power core,” Kaylee said, then gulped.  “There should be an emergency eject somewhere around the console where Hilde is… I don’t think you can initiate a self-destruct without command-level authority.”

Shi nodded as the whine of the revolver picked up, spreading her legs to widen her stance as she aimed straight at the floor, then shifted her aim slightly in the direction of the engineering section.  Her vision blurred, the corridor swirled, and she nearly fell.  “Follow me down the hole if you can.  I don’t have anything left in me to soften the landing.  For what it’s worth…this stuff won’t kill us, I think.  I just…don’t know what it’s going to do to us after it has us.”

Kaylee nodded slowly, closing her eyes, perhaps even offering a prayer to the gods.  It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have them on their side.  Shi offered her own short prayer to Saressh; she hadn’t been an especially devoted follower in her current lifetime, but the kerryn goddess wasn’t a particularly vengeful one in that regard…most of the time.  The goddess had certainly gone on a rampage after she had been freed from her captivity a few thousand years ago during the Kerryn Liberation War, but that was a collection of memories for another time.

Her gun humming, her skin and nerves burning as the big revolver sucked at her very life force, Shi braced herself and squeezed the trigger.  She screamed as the accumulated energy flowed into the round and fired.  She could feel fire in her veins, almost as if every nerve within her had ignited at once.  If her muscles hadn’t seized up where she stood, Shi would likely have dropped the gun and fallen into a quivering mess right there.

The weapon’s discharge roared loudly, meshing with the pounding of Shi’s heart in her ears, as green-white energy slammed into the deck between Shi’s feet.  There was no backblast on this shot, instead the intense, nearly blinding light pierced through the metal plating as if it wasn’t there.  In fact, it wasn’t there, not anymore.  Where the shot touched, nothing remained aside from dust in the air.  

New warning alarms sounded, lights flickered and went out, and the ship lurched.  Shi saw sparks and steam hissing from exposed wires and pipes as the light from the shot faded, and heard water pouring out from somewhere.  There was no rush of air indicating a hull breach, only the perfectly circular holes that had been cut through the decks, angling toward the rear of the ship.

Shi fell into the hole more than she jumped into it, somehow maintaining her grip on her steaming revolver as she hit the deck below on her side, crying out in fresh pain as she rolled over the lip of that hole and fell again.  She could feel the gravity aboard the ship fluctuating as the internal sensors tried to make sense of why there were suddenly sections of the ship missing, and thankfully that allowed her some small amount of relief as she stumbled and rolled from one deck to the next.  Shi was soaking wet as she rolled through water pouring from a severed pipe, then somehow managed to land on her feet on the bottom deck, though she only remained so for a moment, toppling forward with a loud cry of pain, her everything throbbing with hot agony.

The Seal-Tech on those decks had likewise been disintegrated by her shot, and seemed to be having trouble processing its functions as well, wiggling and thrashing slowly around her, but unable to reform itself properly as it had before.  The sound of Kaylee’s launcher firing above her got Shi moving again, panting heavily as she willed herself to crawl, then awkwardly try to stand, staggering unsteadily around the dangerous latex filling the corridor.  She could barely see, her vision wavering between extremely blurry and the darkness that came just before unconsciousness.  The Seal-Tech upon her body had covered her thighs to the limit of the bodysuit and started toward her knees, as well as reaching her collar bone to begin spreading down her arms.  She even felt it creeping down her tail.

Shi gasped for air, stumbled and fell to her knees as a terrible fatigue and burning pain in her nerves overtook her.  She caught herself with her free hand, closing her eyes as the agony of firing her revolver with no magic reserves left threatened to fully take her into unconsciousness, if not much worse. She cried out from a more intense pain pulsing through her body, but again willed herself forward, crawling on hands and knees.

Something heavy landed behind her, Kaylee crying out with her own pain.  The muscular pilot’s hand wrapped around Shi’s bicep, hauling her upright.  “No time to rest, commander!  Not a good spot, either!”

“K-Kaylee…you…” Shi forced her eyes open, seeing the Seal-Tech flowing from her arm to Kaylee’s hand.  She also saw several splatters of the stuff spreading over Kaylee’s body and face.

“We’re on a tight timeline here, and the natives are pissed,” Kaylee said, managing to force a smile as she started  tugging Shi along, walking with a limp, favoring her right ankle.  Around them the Seal-Tech finally started to get a handle on itself.  

The pair crossed the threshold into the engineering section.

Shi’s eyes immediately went to HIlde, who looked almost like she was cocooned in a way, still stuck to the console where she had sat, though now her form was mostly featureless, smooth, shiny Seal-Tech covering her like a second skin.  Though strands of the Seal-Tech held her in place at the console, she still squirmed, and had her arms crossed in front of her, thick rubber straps holding her limbs in place, looking very much like a straitjacket, her neck surrounded by a stout, tall collar to keep her head movements at a minimum.  Somehow, even her wide dwarven feet were angled downward to limit any attempts at walking.

Kaylee released Shi’s arm and motioned with her Seal-Tech covered hand to the far end of the console near Hilde, her fingers likewise getting forced into a fist as she pointed.  “There!  That’s the ejector!”  As the sound of rubber squeaks grew louder behind them, Kaylee hooked her useless hand awkwardly through the forehand grip of her launcher and turned toward the doors and the corridor behind them.  “I’ll hold them here; do what you gotta do.”

Shi nodded, unable to find her voice, but somehow willing herself to move her legs.  Staggering forward, she thumbed the hammer back on the revolver, gritting her teeth against the pain that flared back up as the amplifier engaged again; she didn’t bother with adjusting the cylinder; any of the remaining rounds would do the job.  Kaylee fired behind her, the blast rocking her, nearly causing her to fall.  She pushed forward, though, breathing through gritted teeth and focusing on the panel that was her destination.

The Seal-Tech lingering around Hilde and splattered on the console didn’t react as Shi approached, perhaps aware that her body was already mostly covered with the stuff.  Shi could feel it snaking over her jawline, down her forearms and shins.  It wouldn’t be much longer now.

Shi stumbled as Kaylee fired another shot, bumping into the console, nearly dropping to the floor.  As she picked herself up to reach for the pin holding the emergency ejection system’s door shut, her eyes went to the screen in front of her.  She paused, blinking, not certain she was seeing the text correctly.  Her vision hadn’t improved, she could barely focus at all.  Her head pounded, her nerves burned, and all she could smell now was rubber.

Blinking several times, Shi could finally make out the text.  It was a series of status logs from the ship’s computer.  The warnings from the damage she’d caused with her last shot had been canceled out.  She hadn’t realized it before, but the klaxons had gone silent.  Power was being shut off or rerouted along alternate routes by the ship’s systems.  The TK-drive was nearly at full power and ready to jump.  Coordinates had been set…no, they had been set and changed from their original destination.  But the startup command…no, that couldn’t be right.  Shi blinked again, re-reading the section again as Kaylee fired, then screamed, a trio of softer pops from her pistol ending a moment later, as did Kaylee’s defiant scream.

According to the readout, the rapid startup command sequence was an executive level override, higher up the chain than even the ship’s captain at a classified level, and had been transmitted from the Stalker, along the very hardline Hilde had set up to allow them to remain in contact with the ship.  Shi’s eyes played over the screen rapidly.  A default set of coordinates had been activated and adjustments calculated by the ship’s computer, some unknown destination listed as a DSM research station.  Who had triggered that startup command?  Was someone on board working with DSM?  

“No…it couldn’t be…” Shi muttered.  The captain had said he’d been in contact with someone about the ship…had DSM bought him off?  Had it been someone else with ties back to that company?

Reading over the logs again, something had changed the coordinates, once Hilde had managed to get access into the system…was it the Seal-Tech that was doing all that?!  The command had come from somewhere else besides engineering…one of the labs, it looked like.  Was it…that device she’d seen on the screen above?  Some kind of AI inside it that had activated when they had hooked it up to the ship’s power?  The coordinates…Shi thought on them for a moment…yes, they were definitely inside dark elf space.  Communications logs indicated that most of the ship’s communication equipment had been shut down, though once the new coordinates had been set, a hypernet burst transmission had been sent to someone to alert them of the ship’s pending arrival at its new destination.

Someone on board the Stalker had betrayed them.  They had triggered that startup and gotten the Seal-Tech moving again.  Was it some kind of containment process, maybe?  A security feature built into the device that DSM had been studying?  Was everything the Seal-Tech doing preprogrammed instead of actually being truly intelligent?  A protocol designed to contain and stop anyone from studying its nature and discovering its secrets?  Had Captain Maerill been offered a payoff to let the Seal-Tech resume its activity and allow the ship to fall back into DSM’s hands?  

Too many questions flooded into Shi’s mind, and she was far too drained to ponder them now.  As what little energy she still possessed quickly burned away, she sighed and dropped her head.  She eased the hammer down on the revolver, feeling the accumulated energy dissipating with a hiss of escaping steam.  She turned around, wincing and groaning in pain as she slid to the floor next to the console.  The TK-drive thrummed louder, and Shi felt the ship rumble as it transitioned into hyperspace.  

Shi also felt the Seal-Tech upon her body snaking itself between her fingers and toes, flowing upward over her cheeks and toward her mouth and ears.

“This stuff kept the crew alive for some reason…I’m not going to kill us all…” she muttered, grunting with pain as she forced herself to raise her arm and reholster her revolver.  “And I’m sure as hell not letting DSM get hands on this ship if some asshole on our ship got paid off to sell us out.”  Wherever they were going, Shi was certain their odds were better than with DSM, even if it was to the dark elves and their shady prison system.  At least they might be willing to make a deal.

Shi closed her eyes as the Seal-Tech flowed over them, tasted rubber as it filled her mouth and formed into a large ball between her teeth.  The sounds of the ship faded as Seal-Tech flowed over her ears, and she let her fingers curl into fists without a fight as her toes were likewise completely covered.  Shi could feel the suit begin to reshape itself over her body as she let another darkness consume her, that of her exhaustion.  

For a wonder, her intense pain seemed to lessen, the Seal-Tech, despite the growing tightness of its restraints, seemed to be easing her discomfort.  The warm embrace of the Seal-Tech actually felt rather good as Shi drifted off into a much needed slumber.

Whew, what a ride that was!  At least our girls made it out alive, if not entirely free!  Plenty of mysteries abound as this story comes to its end, and Shi gets some much needed rest.

But it’s not quite over yet!  Stay tuned next week for the final chapter of The Black Ship, the epilogue!

Until then, Urban out!

Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server!  I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!

Chapter 9 – A Mad Dash for Freedom

Shi heard the squeak of expanding rubber at the same time as something dark suddenly loomed behind Briar, shaped vaguely like a spacesuit.  Instinctively, Shi modified the flow of her magic in her mind, pulling the flames from her left hand.  Shi grabbed Briar’s recently cleared arm and pulled him behind her as Shi willed the remaining fire to erupt from her right hand at the Seal-Tech mass in the form of a small fireball.

The first of the wards exploded in a crackling discharge as its arcane energy spewed fire upward like a landmine.  Kaylee shouted something, but it was drowned out by the boom of her launcher discharging another shell.

The mass in front of Shi flailed wildly as the arcane flames consumed it.  It stopped moving a moment later as its form shuddered, losing its shape as it melted onto the floor.  

Unfortunately for Shi, there was another mass looming right behind the melting one, and it hadn’t been touched by the fire.  Knowing she couldn’t start another spell in time, Shi’s hand went to one of the revolvers at her hips; she didn’t normally try to fire a gun this close to an airlock, non-lethal enchantments on her rounds or not, even if the hull plating would likely stop the bullet, but desperate times…

The Seal-Tech mass was faster, though, its still-vaguely-spacesuit-shaped arm extending in the blink of an eye, reaching for Shi as it expanded like a balloon filling with air.  It wrapped around Shi’s waist and pulled her toward it at almost the same moment, throwing her shots off, causing them to strike the walls behind.  Shit!

“No!  Commander!” Briar shouted as another ward exploded.  

Shi fought to maintain her distance, but the strength of the thing was formidable, and it took everything she could muster to maintain her footing.  Gritting her teeth, she brought her gun back on target, but saw other tendrils starting to grow from the thing.  

Briar uttered a prayer as Kaylee fired another shell.  As the Seal-Tech mass squeezed around Shi’s waist, Briar’s hand touched Shi’s shoulder.  

Shi felt herself displaced as the magic washed over her, then she realized she had switched places with Briar.  The pressure around her midsection had lessened, but she could feel the warmth of the Seal-Tech lingering there.  “No, Briar, why did-”

Another ward exploded, and Murissa roared a challenge.

“You have to get the others out of here!” Briar said as he was suddenly pulled toward the growing mass.  Off balance, he practically flew into it as the tentacled arm shortened, his back slamming against the Seal-Tech’s ‘chest’, his arms and legs melting into the rubber.  Tears streamed down his cheeks as he struggled, rapidly being absorbed into the mass.  “There’s still hope!  The escape pods!  You have to get out of here!  Erisaya will protect me, but you have to go!”

“Briar…” Shi muttered, wincing, making herself watch as the Seal-Tech monstrosity pulled Briar into itself. The medic had closed his eyes and taken on a more serene appearance as he was pulled fully inside the Seal-Tech, which began to shrink and form itself to his body.

Shi glanced down, saw that she had her own Seal-Tech patch growing around her waist, eating away at her bodysuit.

“I think they’re pissed,” Kaylee shouted, firing off another shell that rocked the small space; the fact that Shi could actually hear her was a small miracle in itself.  Shi turned her head numbly in that direction after one more look at the featureless form of Briar as the Seal-Tech began to form restraints upon him.  Kaylee dropped the empty magazine from her launcher as two more wards shot fire at the shambling rubber masses.  The corridor beyond was covered in black rubber or blackened scorches, but the Seal-Tech was relentless, reforming and coming forward after only a few seconds.  It must have been drawing a ton of power…

There had to be a reason the escape pods weren’t used by the crew, but what choice did they have?  It was a chance they’d have to take.

Shi looked once more behind her, saw the Seal-Tech she had burned up bubbling as it too started to reform.  Wincing as the Seal-Tech around her waist grew tighter, almost like it was intending to crush the breath out of her, Shi stepped up behind Kaylee and Murissa as Kaylee slammed her remaining magazine into her weapon.  “Last stand here, or we try the escape pods.  I don’t have much left to offer.”

“I’ll take a fighting chance over this!” Kaylee replied.  “Briar wants us out of here, and damn it, as much as I hate to leave him and Hilde, we don’t have much choice here.”

“How can we get there?” Murissa asked, her blades held warily in front of her, for what little good they would do in their current situation.

“I can get us there, but then it’s all on you two after that; you’ll need to get out of here and find a way to help the rest of us,” Shi replied, a bit grimly, feeling a warmth spreading up and down her torso.  “They’re…they’ll be fine, we just can’t help them…” 

Shi could certainly get them to the escape pods, but after that, she’d be lucky if she didn’t pass out from the strain.  Regardless of the danger, she began another spell, weaving the arcane symbols with her fingers, drawing heavily on her dwindling arcane reserves as she formed the image of the corridor with the escape pods in her mind.  She had to pull from deep inside for this one, wishing for a moment that she could tap into the ship’s reactor like the Seal-Tech had, or whatever the magical source was that had initiated that rapid startup.  Though her eyes were closed as she weaved the spell, she could feel Kaylee and Murissa looking at her.

Shi didn’t have a generator, but she did have some batteries, or at least, something like them.  It wasn’t much, but it would certainly help; maybe she wouldn’t pass out once the spell was done after all.  Using one hand, Shi began running her fingers over the remaining bullets on her gunbelt, sucking away their enchantments and reabsorbing their magic into her inner pool.  

Two wards exploded in quick succession, the smell of hot rubber nearly overwhelming.

“One left…” Murissa said, growling tensely.  

Kaylee fired another shell, rocking the area around her, momentarily deafening them.  She raised her hand from the grip, all fingers held wide, then quickly took hold of the weapon again.  Five shots left.

Knowing that more of the black rubber welled up quickly behind them, Shi solidified the image of the corridor outside the escape pods firmly in her mind’s eye as they had seen them in passing, rapidly chanting the power words.  

The last of the wards exploded.  Even with her ears ringing, Shi heard Murissa’s defiant roar.

Shi shouted the last of her power words, triggered the energy she had stored up within her, and touched her hands to Murissa and Kaylee’s shoulders.  The corridor distorted and warped around them, twisting almost into a knot.  Shi had a momentary sensation that they were falling, then the world untwisted itself, and they were suddenly in the corridor outside the escape pods.

Kaylee and Murissa staggered, catching themselves before they could fall, but Shi’s head spun, and she still nearly blacked out as she fell against the wall, barely keeping herself on her feet.  It would have been so easy to just have gone to sleep right then and there.

“Commander!” Kaylee shouted over the ringing in Shi’s ears.

Shi shook her head, waved them forward.  “Go, go!  You two get out of here!”  The Seal-Tech had expanded upward just below Shi’s breasts and as far down as her hips, taking on a more solid form that squeezed her all around, like some kind of corset, and was still creeping up her bodysuit.  She panted and pointed at the nearest pod.  “You have to get back to the ship and warn everyone what’s happening here!”

Murissa’s ears twitched as her eyes darted around the corridor, alert for a sudden attack.

Kaylee nodded grimly, her eyes lingering on Shi’s midsection, and hefted her launcher, then approached the nearest pod.  She slammed her big fist onto the button, activating the warning lights and klaxons; the pressure doors ground open, followed by the pod’s hatch.

Taking a few steps back, Shi pressed her head against the bulkhead, trying to catch her breath and overcome the fatigue that had consumed her.  It had been a while since she’d had to teleport more than one person, and even then she’d been at full strength.  Through her exhausted haze, a memory surfaced:  back in the old days, teleportation had been a lot easier, with her easily transporting a half-dozen others hundreds of miles with barely any effort.  Magic had certainly waned in the galaxy over the centuries…

As Kaylee stepped up onto the lip of the pod entrance, Murissa shoved her aside and stepped in front of her.  Kaylee staggered backward, looking hatefully back at the ferakatian.  “Damn it, Murissa!  What the fuck is wrong with yo-”

Murissa roared in response, the arm that hadn’t shoved Kaylee glistening with a black rubber tentacle that had whipped out from within the pod.  She stabbed forward with her long blade, impaling the Seal-Tech shambler to little effect, snatching her short blade from her trapped hand before it could be seized, quickly slicing the tendril away, though the remnants remained upon her arm, now radiating outward from her forearm.  

“Murissa!” Kaylee said, her anger quickly replaced by a growing panic.

Shi winced, muttering a curse.  Of course they were in the fucking escape pods!  Why else weren’t they used?  More warning lights above the other pod bays started flashing, and their doors opened.  A veritable wave of black flowed out of the remaining pods, reforming into the shamblers.

“Blow the ship!” Murissa roared, backing up to stand between Kaylee and Shi, holding her left arm away from her.  Shi watched as the Seal-Tech spread over her hand, forming a tight skin before Murissa’s fingers were forced into a fist, said fist quickly smoothing over into a useless black globe.  Murissa turned to them, rage in her eyes.  “Go now, damn it!  Don’t let it spread!  Don’t let them win!  Go!”  The ferakatian turned back and steadied herself into a wide stance between Kaylee and Shi, roaring with defiance, daring the shamblers forward.

Gritting her teeth, Shi snatched the collar of Kaylee’s bodysuit and hauled her backward.  “Let’s go, Kaylee!  Now!  Move it!”

The pilot allowed her larger bulk to move with Shi’s guidance, and she ran down the corridor, back to the connecting corridor they had traversed on the way inside, Shi struggling to follow her as she wavered unsteadily in her steps, bouncing from one bulkhead to the next to keep herself upright.  They headed toward the stairwell, but Shi could already see shamblers and grasping tentacles waiting, moving toward them.

“What are we going to do, commander?!  There’s nowhere else to go!”  Kaylee’s face, despite their exertion, was pale, eyes wide as she fought to keep her panic in check, the barrel of her launcher wavering as she pointed it at the approaching hostiles. 

Another roar came from Murissa in the direction of the escape pods, and was choked off a moment later.  Shi looked at Kaylee, the two sharing a silent moment, fear filling their faces.  How could they possibly make it back to engineering from here?

Oh no, poor Briar!  Poor Murissa!  That tricky Seal-Tech is something else!

Can Shi and Kaylee find a way out, or are they doomed to a rubbery end?

Check back next week to find out!

Until then, Urban out!

Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server!  I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!

Chapter 8 – Discoveries and Desperation

The hammer fell, and the corridor was bathed in brilliant orange and blue light as a spiraling streak of fire erupted from the revolver’s barrel.  The fire grew, splitting into a trio of intertwined trails of flame that took on a serpentine visage, each roaring down the corridor as they spun about one another, the sound more intense than even Kaylee’s launcher.  The shamblers were consumed by the flames, melting away into puddles which were in turn seared into dark stains on the floor and wall panels.  The flames stretched the length of the corridor, Shi’s sights having been aimed toward the door at the far end.  

The spirals of arcane fire struck the far door, roaring again as they exploded in a pulsing fireball that rebounded backward  into the corridor, reaching halfway back down its length.  As the fire suppression system kicked in, the flames were already dying out, but for the moment, nothing moved in the corridor but the swirling gray mist trying to extinguish flames that were already gone.

Kaylee whistled.  “Holy…was that a literal dragon’s breath round?!” 

“Something like that, yeah,” Shi said, lowering her big boy as the amplifier turbines spun down, steam rising from the barrel as the last of the energy dissipated.  Her vison wavered a bit, and she felt light headed for a moment, but the adrenaline pumping through her helped it pass quickly.  “Alright, double time, let’s move!”

Murissa was off like a shot, Kaylee a couple steps behind.  Shi urged Briar to go ahead of her,  “Why didn’t we try that in the lower corridor?” Briar asked as he jogged forward.

“Way too tight,” Shi replied, holsting her special revolver as she looked behind them, hearing movement in the stairwell, but for the moment the black rubber seemed to be keeping its distance.  Shi followed Briar, fighting off another bout of nausea.  “Back-blast would have cooked us.”

“Couldn’t you have lowered the amount of power, though?”

“That was lower power,” Shi said.  “I didn’t give it enough time to charge to full.”

“Oh…” Briar said, eyes wide as he clutched his holy symbol close to his chest.  “I…had no idea that gun was that powerful.”

“Full power…it can probably reach something equivalent to a ship’s cannon with the proper round,” Shi said as they ran, wiping sweat from her brow.  Briar hadn’t actually been on a mission where Shi had to fire the weapon before, just seen her practicing with low-power practice rounds back at the firing range.  “That would take a lot of energy from me, though.  Even that shot took something out of me.”

“When the commander wants something blown up, she’ll make sure it happens,” Kaylee said, laughing as she swung her big gun to cover an open doorway, though her face turned serious quickly.  “I’ve got movement in here, but the stuff is staying away for the moment.”

“Keep moving, if it’s not coming at us, ignore it!” Shi said, and Kaylee continued onward, looking quickly at other doorways as she passed, but not lingering on any in particular.  Shi glanced into the room as she passed by it.  She slowed, then stopped, tilting her head at what she saw.  Sure enough, there was plenty of the black stuff inside, coating the walls and floor, writhing around the edge of the door where her flames had burned it away.  Deeper inside, probably where Kaylee’s human eyes couldn’t make out all the details in the darkness, Shi saw a trio of humanoid forms, glistening and coated in a skin-tight layer of the black sealant, their features hidden but for the vague outline of eyes and ears and the shapes of their bodies, indicating male or female.  They were clustered in the corner of the room, writhing and squirming, an occasional muffled groan coming from them.  The more striking detail of their predicament, however, was that while they were coated head to foot in black rubber, said rubber had also shaped itself into restraints.  Each form had several distinct straps wrapped around their bodies, their arms were crossed in front of them or behind them as if they wore straitjackets, their feet were angled downward and held in en-pointe positions, and wide collars had formed around their necks, holding them like cervical braces.

Shi’s eyes widened as she realized what the stuff was:  Seal-Tech!  This stuff was Seal-Tech!  But what had caused it to behave like this?  Why was it on a DSM ship?  Had it…mutated somehow?  Been taken over by some kind of alien intelligence?  Had someone created some kind of trap aboard the ship?  Had the dark elves made some kind of move against DSM?  Her mind raced with possibilities and questions, but no answers.

Murissa’s angry snarl drew Shi’s attention just as the ferakatian kicked the blackened door at the far end of the corridor with a solid metallic thump.  “Locked!”

“Hang on, I should be able to bypass it,” Kaylee said, going to the panel beside the door.  “Uh…cover me…” she said, pausing as she started prying the panel open.  Readying herself, she eased it open, hesitantly peeked inside, then fully removed it, apparently seeing nothing wiggling in the tight space.  She reached in for the wires and started pulling at them while she fished out a folding knife from one of her pockets.  

Shi moved to join her companions, but two doors further down, something else drew her eye and she paused again.  The door was only partially open here, singed by the backblast from her shot, still-smoking remnants of the Seal-Tech along its edge and inside on the floor.  Though she couldn’t see anyone else restrained inside from the narrow opening, the red glow of a mostly uncovered monitor was plainly visible.  On the screen, streaked with the mysterious rubbery substance that was Seal-Tech, Shi could make out some details of the images, specifically a partial schematic of some kind of device with a tubular chamber attached with multiple warnings flashing elvish script, stating ‘Rampant Replication Detected!’, ‘Extreme Power Consumption!’, and ‘Containment Breach!! Evacuate Immed-!’  The rest were illegible beneath the Seal-Tech that covered the screen.

Brow furrowing, Shi considered those warnings.  They implied that DSM was experimenting with the stuff.  So far, nobody in known space had managed to crack the mystery of Seal-Tech besides the dark elves that had created it, and if they had, they weren’t talking about it.  The stuff had become one of the great mysteries of modern times, and trying to decipher the secret of what made it function as it did had consumed the lives of many arcanists and techies alike.  It was arca-tech, that much was for certain, but nobody outside the dark elves knew why it worked as it did, regenerating itself from nothing once it was applied to someone, its ability to reshape itself seemingly at the whim of ones who controlled it, and most importantly, negating one’s ability to use magic once it was fully ‘installed’ upon them.  That added an entirely new level of threat to what they faced, certainly, especially to her and Briar.

Shi herself was among the ranks of those arcanists who had devoted some of their arcane studies to Seal-Tech, and she was no closer than anyone else to breaking its secrets.  It behaved like curse magic in how it couldn’t easily be removed, but nobody had managed to figure out how to break the curse, at least not for long, its magic-negating properties preventing even holy magic from affecting it for long, even those spells meant to break curses.  Some had theorized a quantum-level encryption method of some kind that would keep the magic in place until it was cracked, tied to some mysterious system on the dark elven homeworld, but nobody had managed to discover the encryption method, if there even was one.  Like regular latex, Seal-Tech could be formed into almost any shape or color when applied, and according to recent reports, could reshape and change color while worn now.  It could be peeled away or burned or frozen off, but it would inevitably regrow itself; over the centuries it had been in use, the rate of regrowth had increased significantly, from a few days to a few hours at most.  With what they had seen inside the ship, it was now growing much faster, reforming in seconds.  What had DSM done to it?  Had DSM done that, or was this some new iteration of the arca-tech?  That power consumption warning…was it…it had to be!  

The Seal-Tech was somehow drawing power directly from the ship itself!  That’s why the power cores had been shut down, to stop the spread, and it explained why it had come alive when power had been restored.  But how was it growing?  Was it related to whatever device it was in that schematic?  How could it keep regrowing itself?  Was it consuming things within the ship, like their spacesuits, or was it growing itself in other ways?  Was it…alive?  Was it somehow sentient?

“Commander, what is it?” Briar asked.

Sparks flew from the panel where Kaylee worked on the wires, and she spat a curse.  “Heh…black wire fell out there, thought it was that shit…” she muttered a moment later, shaking her head.

Shi saw the Seal-Tech around the door start to writhe, no longer smoking.  She turned to look down the hall as she stepped away from the door and saw more patches beginning to move within the corridor.  “We don’t have much time.  How’s that door coming, Kaylee?”

“Almost there…just gotta get the power right here…” Kaylee chewed at her bottom lip as she worked the knife into another wire.

“Hurry!” Murissa said through clenched teeth, looking tensely down the corridor, tail raised and waving back and forth.  

“I am hurrying!  You wanna get your big mitts in here and poke around?” More sparks shot from the open panel.  Kaylee pulled her hands back with a yelp, blew out her breath and wiped at her brow.  She immediately went back to work.

At the far end, Shi could see more of the shamblers oozing up the stairwell.  She adjusted her grip on her regular revolver and heard Murissa’s warning growl.  She backed toward the others, keeping herself between them and the shamblers.  “Briar, the moment that door opens and we confirm it’s clear, get in there and make sure the suits are space-worthy.”  Shi didn’t say it aloud, but she was worried about Murissa; standard procedures aboard ships were stated to have at least a couple larger emergency suits onboard in each airlock, but with DSM’s elf-centric attitudes and general corporate mentality, she wasn’t entirely certain they would follow conventions.  If they didn’t have a suit for Murissa… No, there had to be a suit there that would fit her; there had been larger suits in the airlock they’d entered, Shi was certain she had seen them.

Tendrils of Seal-Tech started worming their way out of open doors and through wall panels along the corridor.  The stuff was reforming itself quickly.  Moving a few feet away from her companions, Shi used her free hand to trace along the scorched wall to their left, speaking arcane power words as she did.  Glowing runes formed where her finger touched.  She repeated the process a few more times along the floor and opposite wall, staggering the clusters of runes every few feet.  It wasn’t much, but hopefully her improvised wards would slow the Seal-Tech monstrosities down long enough; if Briar could assist once they were suiting up, it should be enough…

“Got it!  Door’s opening!” Kaylee announced after a few more sparks, quickly stepping back and hefting her big gun.

Shi looked over her shoulder as the pressure doors opened, Murissa and Kaylee at the ready.  None of the Seal-Tech dripped from the doors, and the prep chamber beyond showed no signs of the stuff.  The suit lockers were sealed, and Shi saw the suits waiting through the windows on the locker doors.  Thankfully, there was at least one larger suit.  “Briar, get those suits ready!  Kaylee, Murissa, guard the door, but don’t go beyond those wards.  I need to prepare a barrier spell for when we suit up.”

“Yessir!”  Kaylee and Murissa took up positions on either side, their attention back the way they had come.  A half dozen shamblers were in sight, and more were starting to form as the Seal-Tech began dripping from the ceiling and coming up from the floor at the far end.  

Briar hurried inside and went to the locker with the larger suit first, pulled it open and activated the suit’s startup sequence to begin an integrity and systems check, then moved to one of the regular-sized lockers to do the same.

Shi holstered her revolver and stepped into the middle of the doorway, steepling her fingers together as she closed her eyes and concentrated, beginning another spell.  She could create a temporary wall of pure arcane energy in front of the door; the airlock chamber should only have one entrance, and should be completely sealed otherwise.  All they had to do was delay the Seal-Tech until they could get inside it.  If Briar could create a protective barrier as well, then they should-

Briar shrieked in absolute terror.

The spell died before it reached Shi’s lips, her eyes popping open as she and the others whirled around to look behind them.  Shi’s eyes widened further as she saw Briar struggling to pull away from one of the suit lockers, thick tendrils of Seal-Tech trailing out of the lock, stuck securely upon his shoulders and calves.  Only this Seal-Tech wasn’t black.  It was mostly gray and white, its surface still retaining the distinct shapes found upon the outsides of spacesuits, though distorted from stretching and with a distinctly shiny sheen to them.  It almost looked like arms had reached out of the locker and seized him.

“W-wh-what the fuck?!” Kaylee shouted, fear coloring her voice.  “They can do that now?!”

Murissa snarled behind Shi.  “They’re learning…camouflaging themselves…”  Her voice was strained, like she was struggling to keep herself under control. She hadn’t sensed the danger inside; that was troubling, but neither had Shi.

Noticing that neither of her companions had moved to try and help Briar, just too shocked to move in the moment, Shi came to her senses first and began another quick spell, fingers moving rapidly.  Briar screamed again as the spacesuit-like form shambled out of the locker, maintaining its grip upon him as it closed the distance between them.  It was starting to darken and losing its features, becoming like the other shamblers, though it loomed larger, still retaining something of the shape of a spacesuit.  Briar’s body was slowly being covered by the Seal-Tech as well, spreading down over his shoulders, already upon his chest, and already covering his feet and moving up his thighs.

Was this stuff like regular Seal-Tech?  Was it ‘locked’ upon someone only when it was fully in place, or was it already too late?  It had to be consuming Briar’s clothes already, but maybe they could still get it off of the priest.

Shi flung her fingers forward and uttered her power words, thread-thin lines of arcane energy whipping from her fingertips.  The blue-white threads filled the space between her and the Seal-Tech mass, slicing into its limbs just inches from Briar, then through the main mass, ripping it into smoking pieces that fell to the floor and started to melt into a puddle.

Briar kept screaming, though, shaking his arms and kicking wildly, trying to fling the Seal-Tech off of him in his panicked state.  The inky black kept creeping over his body, though.

“Briar, calm down!” Shi shouted, stepping into the room.  She was really starting to feel the drain upon her that all of her recent spellcasting had caused, blinking away sweat as she pushed through a sudden feeling of fatigue and blurred vision.  Shi could try to get the stuff off of Briar, but he had to stop flailing around first.

“It won’t come off!  It won’t come off!” Briar screamed, letting out a frightened whimper as the stuff started up his neck.  He lifted his hands, balled into fists, and shook them again, his eyes somehow widening further.  “I can’t move my hands!  They’re stuck!”

“Stop moving, damn it, I’m trying to help you!  CALM DOWN!” Shi snapped, using every bit of authority she could muster.

Briar blinked, but stood there shaking, gulping fearfully.

“Now stand still and breathe.  This might be a little uncomfortable, but I promise I won’t hurt you, okay?” Shi approached Briar, held up her hands and uttered another power word, her hands erupting in blue-white arcane fire.  “Hands!”

Whimpering, Briar did as ordered, offering his balled up hands to Shi.  

Shi reached for them, concentrating on the intensity of the fire she wielded, and carefully moved her own hands over Briar’s.  She didn’t touch Briar, rather kept the flames a few inches away, only moving them close enough to burn the Seal-Tech.  Shi recalled having done something similar before, though not in this lifetime, just a fleeting image and a few familiar sensations, but the memory remained mostly ephemeral.  

Briar winced and whimpered again, blinking away tears, but held as steady as he could manage.  The Seal-Tech melted away from the intense heat, dripping onto the floor.  A few seconds more had Briar’s hands free, and Shi started moving up her arms.  The Seal-Tech had stopped growing, at least while it was being assaulted by the magical fire.

“Commander, they’re almost to your wards,” Murissa said then, voice tense.

“Hold the line,” Shi replied, her voice more calm than she felt, her concentration fully on getting the stuff off of Briar before it consumed him.

Shi was concentrating so intently on Briar’s arms and chest, being careful not to burn him, that even Shi’s kerryn ears didn’t hear the other lockers opening behind them.

Seal Tech!  Those nefarious dark elves, what have they done now?  Or was it DSM’s experimentation on the stuff that caused this mess?

Backed into a corner, how will the remaining Red Team members get out of this one?  Can Shi manage to save Briar?  What’s coming out of that locker?!

Stay tuned for next week’s chapter to find out!

Until then, Urban out!

Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server!  I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!

Chapter 7 – Escape Route

“What is this stuff?” Murissa snarled, angrily throwing her helmet to the floor before starting to strip out of her suit.

“Some new alien intent on consuming everything?” Hilde offered, shaking her gloves off and dropping them in with the rest of the ruined gear.  The black rubbery stuff had splattered all over their equipment, but for the moment hadn’t spread across their weapons, scanners, or computers like it had their suits.

“Some DSM corporate secret more like,” Kaylee said with a grunt as she struggled out of her gear, careful not to get any of the stuff on her.  “Some nasty surprise they’re working on to drop on the next group that dares goes against them.”

“May Erissaya’s light protect us…” Briar whispered as he started a longer prayer.  He had doffed his covered glove first, the sealant or whatever it was having congealed into a mass that was growing thick over that hand.  Now he gingerly used his remaining glove to pop his seals and wiggle out of the rest of the suit.

Shi kicked off her last boot, adding it to the pile of quickly moldering suits in the corridor at the base of the stairs.  Her chest harness and hip holster rig were speckled with the stuff, but as she had taken them off, the black flecks of rubber flecked off, sticking to the rest of her suit or dripping to the floor.  The rig was fine leather, more organic than the synthetic fibers that had composed their spacesuits and everyone else’s gear harnesses.  If not the material, then…it had to be the enchantments she had placed upon the gear, to enhance its resilience and reduce wear and tear.  Could the goop not consume magically enchanted items?  That may have been the case, since magical fire seemed to work so well against whatever it was.  

Looking at the others’ weaponry that had been set aside, Shi noted the black specks upon the guns and the streaks on Murissa’s blades.  The black rubber, sealant, whatever it was, stuck to the weapons and magazines, but didn’t seem to be consuming it like the holsters, sheaths, and straps…it definitely preferred items with an organic component.  Shi focused herself upon their gear, closed her eyes, and began uttering another set of power words as she worked her fingers and traced patterns in the air.  The weapons and ammunition glowed as her spell finished and settled upon them.  Shi wavered on her feet for a moment, feeling sweat bead on her brow at the effort she had just exerted to infuse magic into so many items at once.  It seemed her experiment paid off, though, as the black sealant started to run from the weapons like water, pooling on the deck beneath them.

The thought occurred to Shi that the protective spell she had woven around them when they’d first entered the ship may have had the same effect.  Perhaps the spell’s protection was what had slowed the consumption of their suits as much as it had?  Or the blessing Briar had placed upon them?

Looking at everyone as they finished stripping, leaving everyone wearing only their insulated jumpsuits, black neoprene similar to what divers wore, single-piece with a zipper up the back, with short sleeves and legs ending in red bands around biceps and thighs, and a pair of calf-length socks, the only differences being the rank insignias over the left breast.  Shi nodded toward the weaponry.  “Okay, everyone be careful with your gear; that stuff doesn’t seem to be able to stick to anything with a magical infusion, so maybe we’ve still got a chance.  Don’t take any unnecessary risks, though.  We need to see if we can contact our ship.  Hilde, can you access this ship’s communications array from engineering?  And point us toward the next nearest airlock?”

“Should be able to, assuming all systems have restarted,” she replied, gingerly taking up her SMG and tucking a couple of spare magazines into her jumpsuit pockets.  “As to the airlock…well…we’ll see if I can access some internal cameras or a schematic.”

“You thinking a touch-and-go evac?” Kaylee asked as she hefted her big gun, stuffing her sidearm awkwardly into one of her pockets, along with another magazine for her launcher.

“Probably would be the best chance we have,” Shi said, strapping on her own rig since it was apparently unaffected by the black mess.  A ‘touch and go evac’ was meant for emergencies, like when a ship was going down…or if a ship was invaded by hostile rubber aliens.  A rescue ship could come up directly over an airlock, get the transfer tube set and flood it with enough atmosphere to be survivable, then have the survivors blow their airlock, and get blown through the tube and into the rescue ship’s airlock.  In theory, it could be done in as little as thirty seconds, but had plenty of risks, especially if explosions and flying debris were about.  She was pretty sure that nobody was going to object to the idea, though.

“On it!” Hilde said, starting up the steps with Murissa following, holding her big blade in one hand, and one of her shorter ones in the other.  Hilde had left her tablet behind, not wanting to risk getting any of the stuff on her.

“What about the escape pods?” Briar suggested, eyes brightening.  “There were several still available a few levels up!”

“Maybe, but the crew here didn’t use them for some reason or another,” Shi said as Briar and Kaylee started after the others.  “Maybe that stuff was already there waiting for them; we found none of them missing where we passed, after all.”

“It was certainly waiting for us; didn’t want us going through that door,” Kaylee said, shaking her head.  “And it ate our suits, too, like they knew what you had planned.”

“Maybe, but it could just be how the creatures react to matter with any organic components.  Briar, did your scanner pick up anything at all different during that attack?” Shi asked.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Briar said shakily.  “I don’t understand it; all I got was the same composition of rubber compounds.  I’m not even able to see any magic at work with them either now, so I don’t think they’re some kind of arcane constructs.”

Something lingered on the edge of Shi’s memory at the suggestion of an arcane construct, but then it was gone.  She hadn’t spotted any magical auras upon them either as they’d been chased out of the corridor, only on some of the inanimate pools of the stuff, before they had come alive with the ship.  Magic certainly worked on them, though, so they didn’t outright negate it; perhaps they were just protected from arcane detection?  If you were targeting the arcane research and development division of DSM, making something that’s invisible to magical sight would make sense, right?  So many questions and no time to ponder them.

Hilde was already hammering at one of the consoles as Shi topped the stairs.  It looked like much of the sealant had vanished from the main engineering area, likely pulled from there to block them in the corridor below.  “Where is the next airlock?”

“Just a minute, commander; I’m trying to get access to the schematics…” Hilde said as she pounded the keys.  “It’s password protected…I need to go the back way…”

“We might not have a minute,” Murissa growled, her fur and hair bristling as she stalked around the room, looking like she was trying to watch all access points at once.  Her ears were constantly twitching, shifting in one direction or another.

Briar clasped his hands around his holy symbol, a faint glow slipping through as he stood with head bowed in quiet prayer.  “I…still can’t sense any life from them…they must be some kind of artificial constructs…though somewhere else…maybe in the direction of the cargo areas…yes, there are flickers of life there!”

“Lot of good that does us,” Kaylee muttered.  “We need to save ourselves first.”

“But it means they might have a way to keep these things away!” Briar said, always looking on the bright side. 

“Fucking DSM assholes…just had to install that security patch like good corpo drones, didn’t you?” Hilde spat, hitting a few keys even harder as she blinked away sweat.

Shi’s own ears shifted, and she looked around the engineering chamber.  She could hear movement just out of sight.  A liquidy sound, flowing along through vents and access ways, following wiring channels.  “Hurry, HIlde…we can’t stay here long.”

“I know, I know!  Just a little more…this patch added another half dozen steps to something that used to be simple…” Hilde started muttering to herself as she focused on her task.

Shi heard a vent shift somewhere very close, as if a great weight moved through it.  Everyone must have heard it, because everything, even Hilde’s typing and muttering ceased. Then Hilde was hammering away faster, windows flashing open and closed more rapidly as she switched between them.

“Okay, I’m in…pulling ship schematics and status… Power levels are approaching normal operating ranges,” Hilde said after a few more moments, wiping sweat from her face.  “Nav system looks like it’s locked in with some jump coordinates…TK-drive is charging up.  Shit, this thing’s going to enter hyperspace in like thirty minutes!  Here, here, nearest airlock!  Two decks up, far end, toward the bow cargo containers!”

“Alright, everyone, let’s go, on the double!” Shi said.  Murissa was already jogging toward the doors, Kaylee right behind her.

“Wait, commander, there’’s…this doesn’t make sense, it’s like the-”

Shi had turned to Hilde as Briar started out the door to see what the techie was talking about when a floor panel next to Hilde tore free, a black mass of writhing tentacles surging out.  HIlde barely had time to scream before the first of the tentacles wrapped around her.  Shi raised her hand and let loose with a quick spell, sending a cloud of small, blue-white magical missiles into the rubber monster.

The rubber tentacles writhed and recoiled, but maintained their grip on Hilde.  More panels ripped free, and Shi saw several streams of the black rubber pouring from the ceiling, forming more of the shamblers the moment they had started to congeal on the floor.

Hilde screamed again and fell out of her chair, kicking and trying with everything she had to pull away from the thick tentacles that had wrapped themselves around her legs and one arm.  Shi fired her revolver at two of the shamblers nearest to herself, uttering another spell to send a gout of flame at the mass holding Hilde.

Shi dove to the side in the next instant, cutting her spellcasting short as another shambler whipped a tentacle at her.  As she came to a stop, another shambler swelled out from a wall panel directly in front of her.

Hilde’s scream choked off suddenly.

Shi raised her revolver, ready to fire at the one in front of her, but a golden light sparkled down upon the creature, and the others that had surrounded her, stopping them in their tracks as the magical power caused their glistening surfaces to smoke and roil as if boiling.  Recognizing holy magic when she saw it, Shi scrambled backward and got to her feet, daring a glance over her shoulder.  Briar was in the doorway, holy symbol glowing in his hands, flanked by Kaylee and Murissa.

Shi turned back to Hilde, but the technician was completely consumed within the wildly thrashing black mass, her body now completely coated in smooth, shiny rubber.  She still struggled, but the stuff was holding her firmly in place.  Could she even breathe within it?  Shi raised her hand and began her spell chant again.

“Commander!  No time!  More coming, we have to go!” Murissa snarled.

“I can’t hold these much longer!” Briar said, his voice straining, sweat beading on his forehead.  “They…they aren’t alive!  It was Erisaya’s will that has held them this long!”

Another panel tore loose from the floor ten feet from Shi, between her and Hilde, more grasping tentacles whipping out toward her.  Cursing silently, Shi continued her spell, backing away.  She crossed through the door just as Briar’s spell failed, releasing the shamblers.  

With more tentacles coming her way, Shi swept her empty hand in front of her, creating a jet of fire that roiled over everything directly ahead of her.  It was enough to halt the shamblers and larger tentacle mass, but not for long; the flames died out almost immediately as Shi hadn’t managed a proper spellcast in those precious seconds, but it may have been enough to give them room to escape.

Offering a silent prayer to the gods to watch out for Hilde, Shi followed the rest of her team at a dead run.  She could already hear the squeaking of rubber moving behind them, and heard more moving through the ship’s walls.  “Kaylee, keep an eye on the left flank, Murissa, the right.  Briar, be ready to try and form a barrier when we get to the airlock; I’ll try to work something up to help.  We’re going to have a handful of minutes to suit up at best, we can’t dawdle.  Hurry!”

As Shi ran, she broke open her revolver, ejected the spent rounds and replaced them with fresh ones.  Ahead of them, a vent panel broke free, and a long tentacle of rubber whipped out toward them.  Murissa dove over it while Kaylee skittered to a stop and fell backward, bumping into Shi and nearly knocked her down.  As the tentacle whipped toward Kaylee, Briar shouted his goddess’s name in the midst of another prayer, and the tentacle crashed into a glowing shield.  As the mass recoiled, Murissa swiped her long blade through it, severing a good six feet of the thing.

As the severed part hit the deck, it began to swell.  Shi quickly uttered the power words and sent fire from her hand to cover it before it could pop, instead causing it to burn as the main mass regenerated, the scent of burning rubber thick in the air.  She swept her hand around Kaylee and toward the vent burning the main mass, forcing it back into the vent.  “Go!  Don’t stop!”  She punctuated the command by turning and firing off a pair of quick shots into the shamblers that had followed them, stalling them for the few seconds it would take them to reform.

They kept running, Murissa practically leaping up the stairwell in a few powerful bounds while the rest of them took the steps two at a time, even Briar.  More panels broke free just behind them, and the rubber tentacles just refused to stop their pursuit.  

Coming off the stairs on the second level up, Murissa slammed her fist into the door release as the others caught up to her.  

“Fuck!” Kaylee spat, backing away from the pressure doors.  As they separated, more of the black rubber dripped from between the doors, and more shamblers and tentacles awaited them in the corridor beyond.  Murissa took a step back, and Kaylee unloaded her next round, the magically enhanced shot tearing through everything in the hall.  The blast from the launcher hurt Shi’s ears, momentarily leaving her deafened.  It wouldn’t stop them for long, but at least now the weapon had some effect. Would it be enough to see them to the end of the corridor, though?  Probably not.

“Hold on, just a second!”  Shi’s special revolver was in her free hand again; she adjusted the cylinder with the hammer at half-cock, and then thumbed the hammer all the way back.  As she did, the arcane amplification matrix built into the frame beneath the barrel began to hum, growing in pitch as the rune-inscribed internal turbines began to spin up, generating extra arcane power within the stout frame of the gun.  The exposed section of the turbines began to glow with a blue-white light that only intensified as the weapon charged up.

Murissa and Kaylee pulled themselves away from the door as Briar got behind Shi.  Orange magical energy played over the pure mythril frame of the gun like electricity, rapidly growing more intense.  Some of the energy began to form circular arcane runes floating around the revolver’s barrel, further amplifying the magic within the round loaded in the selected chamber.  

As the nearest of the shamblers fully reformed, Shi squeezed the trigger.

Talk about a sticky situation!  That’s some serious infestation on that ship!

As things get more desperate, Shi finally gets to charge up her big gun properly, but will she get the shot off?  Will it have any effect?

Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter in one week!

Until then, Urban out!

Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server!  I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!

Chapter 6 – A Sticky Situation

“Talk to me, Hilde!  What’s going on?” Shi shouted over the rising cacophony of the ship around them.

Hilde was already trying the console she had been setting up on, hammering the buttons and shaking her head.  “Can’t get anything for sure until the system is fully up and running.  It looks like everything is coming online, though.  Something triggered it, I just don’t know what or from where.  Um…maybe five minutes till everything’s ready to go?  That’s insane!”

Shi heard Briar uttering a prayer to Erisaya, Murissa was stalking in a circle around them, alert and ready to spring at a moment’s notice to stick her blades into whatever may come.  The magic flows were fading now that the startup was on track and moving fast, but new auras were forming all around them, faint and indistinct through the bulkheads.  They couldn’t risk getting caught up in something with that much magical power without a clue what it was doing.  “Hilde, where’s the nearest airlock?  We’re getting out of here now!”

Hilde hit a few more keys on the console.  “One more thing, commander; it looks like some executive-level command came in and started this, I just don’t know where it came from.”  She reactivated the hologram display from her tablet.  “Airlock…here!  Ventral hatch is down the stairs over there, then straight down the corridor, a hundred feet!”

“Murissa, Kaylee, go!” Shi motioned with her revolver toward the stairs.  Murissa was already on the move, Kaylee a few steps behind.  Hilde hurried away from the console, leaving the heaviest of her gear behind, and Briar followed, his head darting around, eyes wide behind her faceplate.  “What is it, Briar?”

“It was distant, somewhere above us in the cargo areas we passed by,” Briar said, his green eyes wide with fear.  “For just a moment, I sensed living beings amongst the magic flows.  For just a moment I could sense their life energy, multiple beings, and then they were gone.”

“That’s not ominous…” Hilde muttered as she hurried down the stairs.

“We’ll worry about it later,” Shi replied, following once Briar had started down the steps.  The dim emergency lighting clicked off as more power came online, the brighter lights in the ceiling bathing them in white fluorescence, though several of the panels were partially covered by more of the black sealant.  The corridor here was much narrower than above, reserved mainly for maintenance access for the engines.

Ahead, Murissa had reached the first pressure door that led to the airlock, and was reaching for the panel to open it when she recoiled.  “This stuff…it’s melting,” she rumbled, standing straight, her helmet brushing the ceiling.

“What?”  Shi hurried up behind her, squeezing around Kaylee.  Sure enough, the sealant that had been splattered over the panel had taken on a glossy sheen and was starting to stream down the wall.  A very faint magical aura had started forming around it, though it pulsed weakly.  No time to analyze it, though.  Shi flicked her fingers, calling forth her own magic, hitting the door release with an invisible arcane hand.  

The locking bolts retracted with a series of metallic clangs, allowing the doors to slide apart.  More of the sealant was on the other side, likewise more viscous now, stretching between the doors like some kind of mucus.  At the far end of the corridor, Shi saw the entrance to the airlock staging room, the door splashed with sealant, and more patches around the corridor, likewise running down the walls in the freshly activated gravity.  “Hurry, let’s get out of here!”

Murissa stood motionless.  

Shi gave the big ferakatian a shove.  “Murissa!  Move it!  That’s an order!”

Growling and flicking her tail, Murissa lashed out with one of her blades, cutting through the goopy strands hanging between the doors and stepped through, though she moved with an unusual stiffness.  She was spooked.  

Kaylee followed, stiff in her own movements as she tried to look in every direction at once to see what had gotten Murissa in such a state.

“I don’t understand this…it’s still just reading the same as it was before,” Briar said, tapping the scanner.  “Not even a temperature change or anything in the sealant to indicate why it’s flowing now.”

They’d barely made it halfway down the corridor when Murissa suddenly stopped, and Kaylee bumped into her, though even with the pilot’s bulk, the ferakatian barely seemed to feel it.  “Damn it, Murissa, come on!  We’re almost there!  Move your big ass!” the pilot spat.

“Wait!  What are those?!” Murissa snarled, motioning with her blade.  She shifted her stance, angling herself so that she presented a slimmer obstacle to those behind her and giving them a look around her, keeping one blade toward whatever it was she saw.

Ahead of them, the sealant was moving.  Not just flowing down the walls, but gathering in pools on the deck plates, flowing together rapidly.  The pools, half a dozen of them, started to expand, swelling like black bubbles, then swiftly rose from the deck.  At first they were mostly shapeless masses, rising to about six feet in height, then they shifted again, a quartet of wavering, tentacle-like limbs expanding from the central mass.

Shi couldn’t immediately recall having seen anything like them before, whatever they were.  Briar uttered another prayer as the things started shambling toward them.  Shi’s second revolver was suddenly in hand.  “They’re hostiles!  Deal with them!”

The corridor shook as Kaylee fired her launcher, and even with the noise dampeners in her helmet, Shi winced at the force of the blast in such a narrow space, watching as the hot shell casing was ejected and clattered against the wall and rolled behind them.  The shambling forms shredded and splattered as the rubberized, ‘less-than-lethal’ round filled the corridor in an inescapable cone, exactly what the deck gun was meant to do.  Flecks of black splattered all over Kaylee and Murissa, some on Shi’s faceplate, probably on Hilde and Briar too.

Then the things started to reform, drawing themselves back together in the span of a few heartbeats.

“Well, that’s not good…” Hilde muttered, raising her SMG warrily to her shoulder.  She fired off a short burst from the submachine gun, the subsonic, rubberized rounds peppering the closest shambling mass, the holes the rounds had made quickly filling themselves back in, having no apparent effects otherwise.

Murissa tensed, ready to spring, though her leading blade wavered in her grasp.

“What in the hell…?”  Kaylee said, taking a step back.  Shi thought she was commenting on the apparent lack of effect from her weapon, but then Shi saw more of the black rubber surging from a panel in the ceiling, completely covering the airlock door and walls around it in a thick layer of black.  Several more large masses swelled, dripped from the ceiling, then formed more of the tentacled shamblers.

The nearest one lashed out at Murissa with one of its tentacles.  The ferakatian, already tensed for action, shifted the blade she held toward the masses and swiped, severing the tentacle in one smooth motion.  The severed mass thumped against her thigh, splashing black rubber on her like blood as it fell to the floor and rolled behind her.  The severed tentacle immediately lost its form,swelling up like a balloon before it popped, splashing spots of black rubber ‘blood’ over their suits.

The tentacle retracted, but started to reform almost instantly as another whipped out at Murissa, followed quickly by three more from the other approaching masses.  The ferakatian swiped at the first one, severed it neatly, the appendage whipping by Shi’s head and splattering against Briar’s chest, leaving an inky smear as it fell to the floor and popped, sending more of the goop to splatter upon them.  The other two were just as deftly severed by the twin blades, though they were deflected to either side of the corridor, splattering against the walls.

Behind the shamblers, the sealant coating the door rippled, started growing its own larger tentacles.

Shi glanced behind them, saw the corridor empty, all of the sealant that had been splattered about apparently having gathered in front of them.  “Fall back!” she shouted, motioning Briar by her with the barrel of one of her guns.  Briar winced as he touched the sticky mass on his chest, the stuff sticking and spreading like a thick mucus that he wiped on his leg as he scurried away.  Kaylee fired off another round from her big gun as Hilde started backward, giving them a few more seconds as the things were ripped apart again, forcing them to reform.  Kaylee walked backwards, keeping the launcher’s barrel between her and the shambling masses.

As Murissa started backward, Shi took aim around her.  Instead of squeezing the trigger of one of her guns, though, she shifted her wrist, aimed the wand, and spoke the command word.  Fire erupted from the wand, narrowly missing Murissa as it filled the corridor in front of them.  It didn’t reach nearly far enough to have gotten them all or reach the door, but the four lead shamblers started thrashing wildly, dripping and deforming, melting as black smoke rolled from them.

Fire worked well it seemed.  Shi glanced at the wand, saw the last of the magic fade from its crystal, both it and the carbon fiber cracking as the magic vanished.  Well, she hadn’t expected much from it anyway.  She glanced behind her, took a few more steps back.

“I’m going to make a hole!  Turn your mag-boots up to max and brace for decompression!”  Shi holstered one of her revolvers, drew her big boy from her chest harness and half-cocked the hammer, then spun the cylinder to the specific round she wanted.  She had five different rounds loaded in the gun, each with a different purpose.

Just as she was about to thumb the hammer all the way back to start the charge-up sequence, Murissa shouted.  “Wait!  My suit just lost integrity!”

“What?!”  Shi blinked.  Why now?  How had that even happened?

“Me too!” Kaylee said, her voice pitching higher with worry.  

“It’s the sealant!  When it splashed on us!” Hilde said.  “It’s eating through our suits!” 

Just as she said it, Shi’s helmet display flashed a red indicator as a warning alarm sounded.  Sure enough, a hole had opened on her suit’s leg.  Glancing downward, she saw a growing black spot, several of them in fact, from where the severed tentacle had splattered them.  Her faceplate was starting to grow several patches of black as well.  Damn it!  

“It won’t come off!” Briar said in a panic, trying to wipe his hand against the bulkhead, leaving thin, sticky strands as he pulled his hand away, which was nearly completely covered by the black stuff.

As the flames from the wand died down, the other shamblers started forward.  Shi twisted, fanned the hammer with the heel of her palm, and unloaded the cylinder on her regular revolver, so fast it sounded like an automatic weapon, each of the big magnum rounds tearing through a different target.  The rounds were a lighter composite material instead of lead, enchanted to actually be non-lethal, if rather painful, but the rubber shamblers shuddered and fell forward, quivering and writhing as they started to reform themselves, noticeably slower than before.  

Despite her apparent success, more of the rubber flowed from the ceiling and floor now, forming more of the things.  Too many!

“Fall back to engineering!” Shi jogged backward, holstering her special revolver before she broke open her empty gun, ejecting the spent shells as she snatched one of her speedloaders, slamming six new rounds home before snapping the revolver closed.  Shi uttered several arcane words, working her free hand in a quick series of intricate motions, then thrust it forward.  Blue-white flame leapt from her fingers and spread down the corridor, consuming the shambling masses.  This time, however, as they began to writhe and melt, the fire suppression systems kicked in, spraying chemicals and extinguishing the magically conjured fire.

Shi growled in frustration, her tail thrashing back and forth at having her spell so quickly counteracted, noting that the things hadn’t been nearly as damaged as she’d hoped in the short time they’d been on fire.  She stepped through the door, and Kaylee quickly hit the panel to close it.  Shi could see the growing black patches on her suit, saw the bigger one on Murissa’s thigh where the severed tentacle had landed, and saw that Briar’s chest was almost entirely covered already.

Shi also noticed a particularly large black spot growing on her faceplate, could see it deforming as the reinforced plastic was consumed by the stuff and quickly popped the seal on the helmet, tossing it aside as she started undoing other seals on her suit.  “Everyone get your suits off before that stuff touches you!  And get back up those stairs and away from this door!  We need to regroup and find another way out!”

Uh oh!  Seems that things have gone properly sideways now!  A shame all that rubber is eating their suits and the girls have to strip, though…real shame.

As the situation intensifies, what can Red Team do to get out of this black, rubbery mess?

Stay tuned for next week’s chapter to find out!

Until then, Urban out!

Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server!  I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!

Chapter 5 – Awakening

“Should be around here that the aliens attack,” Hilde said.  “This sealant is obviously their blood or like their secretions that liquify their food.”  She clicked a button at her wrist and swept the beam of her forearm mounted light across a particularly large section of floor covered in the dried sealant, stopping on a bundle of cables spilling from an open panel in the ceiling that had some of the stuff coating them, dried and hanging like ropey stalactites.  “See, they even have tentacles.”

“Nah, we’re not vulnerable enough just yet…and there hasn’t been the big revelation or whatever either,” Kaylee replied, easing around the mess of cables, leading with the barrel of her big gun.  “We need to find something significant first, then on the way out it all turns to shit.  Kind of like those adventure movies where finding the treasure sets off a booby trap.”

“You two do realize that horror stories like that do have some basis in reality, right?” Shi said, noting the annoyed growl coming from Murissa as she stalked behind Kaylee.  The ferakatian didn’t care for movies or most entertainment that didn’t involve keeping herself at the peak of lethality.  Shi herself had a flash of memory from one of her past lives then, a situation not unlike what the two were describing, though she was in some kind of tomb somewhere, surrounded by undead, fangs dripping a dark, viscous substance, a foul odor, her arms wrapped around some object that she knew was very important as shadowed warriors fought the monsters.  And then it was gone, just as suddenly as it had come.  If she concentrated, she could probably glean more from the memory, but now wasn’t the time.

They had been trekking through the DSM black ship for nearly thirty minutes now, keeping their pace slow and steady.  Many of the doors they came to had to be forced open, tearing the coat of sealant that covered them away.  There had been several more signs of hostile activity, but so far no bodies, just signs that there had once been bodies, like tools and tablets laying scattered about, and trails through the dark rubber, even footprints, but with no obvious defined shape.  That discovery had led to the discussion on space horror stories.  They had intentionally avoided going through any side corridors, and were perfectly content to leave any additional doors alone for now.

Shi had kept her arcane sight active for much of the journey as well, picking up the same lingering auras that were akin to wisps of vapor in the air.  As they approached another pressure door, this one a few levels down from the airlock they’d come through, she glanced at the holographic map Hilde kept online from her tablet; they were close to engineering, just through this and another set of doors; the layout of the ship was fairly standard, though they had come across several side passages that weren’t in the basic specs.  She turned her eyes back toward the upcoming door.  “Kaylee, stop!”

The human woman froze in an instant, raising her weapon; Murissa had her short blades at the ready in the same instant, already crouched and ready to pounce.

Shi eased around Hilde and Briar, her arcane sight picking up an intensely glowing object in Kaylee’s path.  At least, it was glowing intensely compared to what she’d seen so far; the aura was fairly weak compared to something like her revolvers, or even the enchanted ammunition on her belt.  “It’s okay, I don’t believe it’s a trap,” Shi said as she put a hand on Murissa’s shoulder and maneuvered around her, crouching atop a pool of the dried sealant a few feet ahead of Kaylee.  As she focused on the aura beneath the rubber, she could see that it indicated a destructive magic, fire in fact, stored within in the shape of a tiny rod.  Shi tugged at the rubber, tore it away and picked up the object, holding it up for a closer look.  “Don’t see these much these days.”

“Is that a wand?” Briar asked, voice tinged with surprise.  “With…fire magic inside?”  Good, he was using his own magical sight, though his was a gift from Erisaya rather than something he had learned from long hours of study, as with Shi.

“It is, but it’s almost completely drained,” Shi said, staring intently at the object.  Aside from a few arcane sigils impressed into the surface, it was mostly an unremarkable gray carbon fiber rod, a foot in length and half an inch wide at its base, the narrower tip blackened, with a faintly glowing crystal set into the grip.  As she turned the cylinder, she saw the ‘Property of DSM AR&D’ and the company logo printed on one side, and what she assumed were the standard legal disclaimers printed in nearly microscopic text.  “I’d heard DSM produced these on a limited basis for their magically inclined employees, but I’d never seen one in person.  I’d say it has one or two charges left…a cone of fire, about…fifteen, twenty feet long.”  She didn’t say it aloud, but she could read the magic aura and knew the command word to activate the wand, the elvish word for ‘incinerate’.  Like the ship and pretty much anything else from DSM, the wand lacked creativity or flair of any sort, and unlike a properly crafted wand, didn’t seem to be rechargeable.

“Signs of burning on the walls and floor,” Murissa said in a low rumble, using one of her blades to peel back some of the sealant where she crouched, motioning with the other to a darkened patch on a support beam circling the corridor that wasn’t from the rubber.  

“Think that thing was useful against the rubber aliens?” Hilde asked, fingering the cutting torch dangling from her harness.

“Well, rubber does melt and burn, so it’s very likely,” Shi said with a shrug, spinning the wand in her fingers as she stood.  She slid the wand beneath a strap on the underside of her left forearm, situating it so that the tip was just below the heel of her palm; out of the way of her drawing her gun, but easy to use if she were to extend her hand and say the activation word.  It might only be one shot, but that one shot could make the difference.  “Come on, we’re almost there.  Stay alert.”

It took a little more effort to get through the last set of doors to the engineering section as they were not only thicker, but set with more locking bolts that had to be bypassed.  It hadn’t stopped the mysterious rubber aliens or whatever had spread the sealant around, though.  Once the doors were open, there was plenty more of the stuff splattered around.  Aside from scattered tools and parts, engineering looked to be intact, though many of the panels were coated in the sealant.  

“Still no radiation leakage detected,” Briar said, fiddling with his scanner.  “Faint power readings from the main power generator and TK-drive…”

“It’s in standby mode,” Hilde said, snapping another comm relay into place at the base of the door frame.  She stood and quickly made her way to one of the engineering consoles.  She waved a hand at a trio of stout levers on the side of the console, sealant coating and hanging from the door that had kept the heavy switches separate from the rest of the controls.  “These are the emergency shutoffs, and they’re all thrown.  Primary and secondary power generator, and the TK-drive.”

“You’d normally only do that if there was a risk of explosion or severe radiation leak,” Kaylee said, looking around the large chamber, approaching the conduits leading from the generator chamber.  “Nothing obvious damage-wise I can see from here, just more of this sealant stuff.  If there was a radiation leak, we should have detected that a while ago.  And if the generators were leaking and you couldn’t fix them, you’d eject them.”

Hilde had moved around the first console, shining her light along another console, tracing a particular bundle of blue cables to where they split off on two different, but parallel paths.  “Ohhh…I think they have a secondary data core!  If that’s not been wiped, then we may have a chance at some of that juicy secret corpo data!”

“Get started with it, then.  If we can get a download, that’d be great; we can decrypt it later.  Let me check in.”  Shi tapped her comm.  “Captain, we’ve reached engineering; initial inspection shows no obvious damage, no signs of anyone still aboard in the sections we’ve traversed.  We’re going to start trying to access their data core and see what we can find.  That sealant is everywhere…signs of people having gone through it before, but…no signs now.”

“I copy, commander,” Maerill said a moment later, voice pitched high as he weighed what she had just told him.  “DSM can be tricky; be extra careful of traps on their systems. I want-”  His voice was drowned out by a sudden burst of static.  Shi’s ears twitched, and she winced and jerked at the painfully loud sound.

Three loud metallic clangs came from her right.  Shi had a revolver in hand and leveled before she had finished her turn toward the source.  Kaylee and Murissa were also looking in that direction, ready to act.  The trio of kill switches had just reset themselves, the door to the panel swung shut with a swift motion, and the locking clip reseated itself in its slot.  Shi didn’t need her magical sight to know that arcane energy was building around her.  “Hilde!  What did you do?!”

“Nothing, commander!  I haven’t even gotten my gear in place yet!”

“Magic is surging into the generator chamber!” Briar shouted, his eyes wide and filled with a golden tint, a sign he used his magical sight.

Shi whipped her head that way, reactivating her own arcane sight.  Sure enough, a massive surge of power came from somewhere within the superstructure, flowing along various pathways.  The generator suddenly hummed loudly, then vibrations filled the chamber as it came online much faster than it should have.  

“Power levels are rising fast, systems restarting!” Hilde called, various sealant-splattered screens flickering to life, loading indicators filling and going green much faster than they had on the bridge.  “That’s one hell of a rapid startup!”

“That shouldn’t be possible!  A power plant that size should take an hour or more to even ramp up to start levels!” Kaylee said, head and weapon swiveling around the chamber.

Shi felt the gravity shift around her, her weight growing closer to its normal single-G value.  The TK-drive had started up too!  “Magic!  They accelerated the startup sequence somehow!”  The flows were moving fast, pouring in from somewhere…Shi could just start to see their makeup, transmutation, alteration, an extremely complex mixture of multiple types of magic that-

Just then, the ship shuddered slightly, and a faint, but very recognizable thump reached Shi’s ears.  “Shit, they detached from the airlock!”  Shi hit her comm again.  “Captain, do you read!  Anyone?”  

There was only static, and the thrum of the awakening ship around them.

Well, with a title like “Awakening”, you knew things were going to ramp up, right?

Those tricky corpo types sure know how to get things moving.  Or maybe it was due to the team being just a bit too genre savvy?

Just how big a mess is Red Team in?  Stay tuned for next week’s chapter to find out!

Until then, Urban out!

Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server!  I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!