Setting
- 64 posts here • Page 3 of 3 • 1, 2, 3
Cinaed's voice was faint and wavering, but his eyes had flickered open and he had regained consciousness. He looked across at where the others were speaking, still pale as a sheet. "Jason..? I'm back at the tower?"
Then he remembered what had happened. His eyes widened and his expression became mortified. "Th- the mirror!" he stammered, "Amethea! Where- what happened to it?"
Then ext thing she did was reach for her communicator, keying it to the frequencies of the landed ship, she brought the communicator to her mouth.
"Nagala to Pathfinder." She chimed in, but there was silence on her radio.
"Okay..." She muttered.
"Fleet Actual to Pathfinder, respond..." She hailed again, and again there was no response.
"Fleet Actual to Pathfinder Actual, radio check, respond!" She called into her radio, louder this time, and there was still no response.
She frowned and turned to Jason, shaking her head. "Nothing..."
"Or you know if the thing is full of bandits that might be bad too...." He said shaking his head. He perked up a bit though when he hear Cinaed speak.
Jason up to that point had overlooked Cinaed as simply sleeping, but as he began to rouse, it quickly became apparent that something had happened out there.
"What did I miss while I was asleep?" he asked with a frown.
Amethea gave a low snort at the inquiry. She hadn't wanted to go into the place to begin with. But she had, and that meant half the responsibility of what happened rested on her too.
"We didn't find much out to the west, other than a lot of snow and ice," Amethea reported. "There's wildlife in the area though. Not anything I'm familiar with, but there's food options if supplies run short. We also found what looked to be a temple or shrine of some sort out by the east ridge. Everything was written in a runescript that I'm unfamiliar with, and there was a mirror."
She stamped a hoof restlessly and threw a look to Cinaed. She herself wasn't entirely certain what had happened when Cinaed had touched it.
He shuddered at the memory. "It burned. I've never... felt burning before. No heat has ever hurt me. But I couldn't pull away." He looked across at Amethea, "That's when you ... you smashed it, didn't you? And then everything went cold. I've walked through a blizzard in the icy peaks to the point of exhaustion and never felt a chill. But now ..."
Cinaed shivered. "I feel like I'm frozen to the core. Even here next to the fire. I feel ... empty. That mirror took part of me away. Something that made me what I am. Even though I've never known what that is, I know it's gone now. It's horrible. It's like I've been gutted."
The teen wrapped his arms around himself as though he were still sitting in the snow, and there was a glint of moisture in his eyes, his expression miserable. His endless wellspring of positivity had, it seemed, run dry.
"The ship should, under ideal conditions be locked tight, automated systems keeping people out. I have an IFF beacon but no response... maybe there's some subspace interference." She said, making a face. "But that doesn't make sense... because if I'm getting an IFF Beacon... but no response..."
She swiped on the screen and began to tap into the keypad, interfacing remotely with the ship's systems.
"Hmm... my codes are valid..."
She brought up a few more windows, interfacing some more, and frowning. "Not getting any life signs..." She said, keying in several commands.
"Let's see.. this is difficult to verify without any Datalink connection... According to the Construction manifest; launch isn't due for another six months, if the date hasn't changed." She said, keying in a few more queries.
"But why is it here..." She said, trying to pull up navigational data. "Looks like most if not all of the key systems are offline, Diagnostics show red lines across it's lateral structural members. It crashed, and from the looks of it, tore the hell up..."
"Why is a ship that's not due to launch for another six months crashed here I wonder."
He walked behind Nagala to the crates and gave Cinaed one of the extra heating blankets as he spoke. "So what are we doing and when are we leaving then?" He asked.
That just left the matter of the Taiyou.
Jason grimaced as he threw the prisoner a look. He didn't think Nagala was entirely wrong in wanting to just execute the man here and now, but the team had made clear its stance on the matter the night prior. There was an old rule of leadership that a leader knows never to give an order that won't be obeyed. Forcing the matter would fracture the group.
He approached the Taiyou soldier and squatted down in front of him. The man clearly didn't speak their tongue, but there where ways around a language barrier.
"Bring me that rifle," Jason told Ejon.
Once he had the Taiyou soldier's rifle in hand, he stared the Taiyou man dead in the eye and pointed to the man's hand, and then to the rifle. He repeated the gesture, before he drew his side arm and put it to the man's forehead.
"Understand?"
Jason wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in him, if he so much as tried to lay a hand on a weapon. He kept the gun there, letting the soldier sweat a bit over the implication while he waited for the man to make some confirmation of understanding.
"You're the boss." She said, deferring to Jason.
The Taiyou on the other hand brought his eyes up to Jason as he gestured with the gun, watching his movements closely.
"Watashi wa kazoku ni ōkina fumeiyo o motarashita." He said quietly to himself.
He leaned forward to press himself firmly to the gun held to his head.
"Ute!" The Soldier screamed. The look of shame on the man's face, shame and resignation.
He had no doubt that if given half a chance, the man would do as Nagala said. That he would go for a gun, and take as many of them out with him as he could.
He stood back up and shook his head.
"No one untie him," he instructed.
If transporting the man was going to be remotely possible, he would need to connect with him as an individual and not as a soldier. Perhaps hunger might encourage the man towards a point of conversation later. As it stood, he doubted the man would even accept food.
"I'm going to go have a look around. I'll be back in an hour," he said as he gathered up his things to go have a look around their current location.
- 64 posts here • Page 3 of 3 • 1, 2, 3