One curiously looks up at our mecha and after some bizarre popping noises asks “Kellek spawn?” with religious overtones and points to himself with a clawed finger to suggest he is.
Evidently he is a priest or some sort of techno shaman. There are a few cybernetic parts evident on his body; The other scavengers seem to defer to him. It would seem they are part of the same tribe though since they all share similar purple tattoos on their ugly bodies. This priest has three arms, a normal sized one on the left enhanced by some metal claws on some of the digits and a withered smaller one on the right with a mechanical tentacle underneath that he uses to support the weaker arm. You can tell from the structure of what he is saying that his name is Zeteg. One of the scavengers who seems to be his assistant and has much less cybernetic augmentations (of what I can tell only a goggled monocle with some sort of radio antenna protruding from it covering over his left eye… it would appear the antenna might be attached to his skull as some sort of an implant) introduces himself as Gom in a similar though less grand manner than the shaman. Gom is also wielding a curious spear-like weapon made from a long pointed power drill which he holds out between the spiritual leader of his group and us, to protect him in case we mean harm.
The language barrier is tricky… gesturing with their weird appendages it looks like they want to talk to us but their language doesn’t make much sense. They notice this and produce from their garments small wearable electronic auditory devices in pendant form. I guess they want us to put them on? Their motions are instructions, demonstrating they would like us to put them on and showing that they are also each wearing one. It goes on the neck and has a long wire end that goes in your ear. Tests of the processed air indicate that it is foul but breathable so, frustrated with these linguistic difficulties I eject myself from Claymore. The first thing the scavengers do is frisk me, taking my gun and shortsword and they then force one of their quirky little devices into my hand. Monkey see, monkey do. The scavengers noticeably relax a bit once they see me put their translator machine on.
My three beast mecha scrutinize the party of weird mutants then glance to each other in a relaxed way, knowing they could easily vaporize the whole group should they desire to. Zeteg and Gom fiddle with the dials on it calibrating the device and the ear wire probes me while a set of microneedles embed the pendant onto my chest. It only hurts a little as they are installing it onto me but now I can understand what they are saying. They explain that those monsters we slew were a buffer to keep out a brutal and barbaric race of rat people who their tribe had driven to this rock after repeated conflicts. They say I can have my weapons back if I can get my compatriot to put on one of the devices.
“Drake, what do you make of these… creatures? Do they seem like the ones that piloted the mechs we fought in the valley?”
“No… most definitely not, my bioscans don’t even ping a single chromosome in common with the ones in the mechs we faced.
I continue to send more messages to Drake that I tap out on my wrist panel with my analysis of the landing party. Zeteg seems to be the authority figure, Gom is his lackey. Those monsters we killed were their guardians to keep some worse barbarians in check. It is incredible that so primitive a group of sentient beings would have access to neural linkers… but not unique since their enemies are a race of uncivilized ratmen with crude non-niode driven vehicles who are taken with periodically flying over to these people’s nearby world and pillaging their settlement. The zombie mecha with their radiation weaponry keep the ratlings underground in subsurface dwellings below the ruins on this space island. It would seem in our vigilant pre-emptive fight for survival as explorers, that Drake and I had accidentally upset an ecosystem.
You know what that means. uh-oh... A swarming surge of various sized ratmen all wearing various types of improvised armor made from junk pours from burrows and caverns making a peculiar war-cry. Gom and Zeteg quickly decide to just toss me back my weapons and make their way back to relative safety of the landing craft. It will take the scouts awhile to get any of the mecha Drake and I had totalled back online again since we’d done a thorough job trashing them. A huge ratman raider, much larger than most of the others bearing a large, crude, blunt bladed sword made from hand sharpening a shred from the plate to what had at one point been part of a vehicle stands imposingly, blocking the path I am trying to make back to my mecha.
Drake leans out his cockpit raises his hand rail gun and removes the head from the ratman, “Myco get swallowed by that mecha of yours and lets get going!” Drake then opens fire with all his missiles weapons laying waste to the area around the ratmen. “Moe, collect those remains.”
Moe’s Aspis quickly does so as Drake scans the area and Myco returns to his mech.
Drake watches as the spacecraft starts to lift off, he ideally focuses his projectile weapons on it and contemplates firing…
Meanwhile as I get back inside Claymore I see the mutants putting their filter masks back on and turning off the large air pumps. The ratpeople are oblivious, caught up as they are in being shelled and blown up but the ship containing the technoshaman and his assistant turns to face us… it drops gas grenades causing the remaining ratlings who have survived the first assault to choke and gasp. “Claymore, eject capsule!” another small rocket propelled box, in which I’ve packed the other translator is vomited out of my Skriag’s mouth. I remotely guide it over to Drake’s antithesis using controls from inside Claymore. His sensors indicate that these are the full numbers of the raiding party. With a thunk the container magnetically attaches to Drake’s mecha.
“Drake, they say we should wait for the gas to clear.” The few remaining members of the raiding party stagger away in a retreat. A small black and purple bipedal light mecha with tentacled arms is deployed from the landing craft as the ship raises. Smaller transports have been called out which the scavengers are using to clear the bodies and what salvageable bits of debris they can. The bizarre two legged mecha with tentacled arms gestures to Claymore and Drake’s Antithesis feverishly.
“That’s Gom and he says we should follow him off this rock to their planet. Said Zeteg will let us do repairs on our mecha if we help bring back his.” I type some more stuff out to Drake since I’m not sure how to turn off the transmitter on the translator.
We could still blast them after the repairs if worst came to worst. They seem to know the lay of this place better than us though so we could probably stand to learn a thing or two by going with them. Get one of your guys to put a tracer on the gate though, in case we have to fight our way out, to find our way back, eh?
“Not a bad idea, Moe put the tracer and send the ore and other samples through in the shipping crates, I don’t want to lose any of them.” Drake has his Antithesis bring in the translator, Drake picks it up turns and opens a pod inside the hidden hatch, “I didn’t want to use you yet.” He attaches the device to a Drake clone, “Alright you’re me go interact with the nice alien samples while I get some shuteye. A.I. wake me if there is trouble,” then Drake climbs into the pod, and goes to sleep. The Drake clone smiles, “Fun time.” The clone explains the situation to Myco through Quanta to avoid the possibility of the aliens spying on their conversation. -Drake refused to wear the device so he volunteered me. I don’t mind I get to try out the fun stuff for a change.-
This causes me to quietly and briefly wonder to myself if the Drake I’ve known so far was the original or also yet another of many backup clones. I set the thought aside though telling myself it does not greatly matter for the time being. “Hello Alternate Drake” greets Quanta to this one via her remote access shareware program, e-lizaβ. I am beginning to arrive at the conclusion that to judge Drake with the same system of morals as a more typical human would be a somewhat large mistake since through the understanding I have garnered working with him, here is a man not distinctly amoral but more likely operating on a post conventional set of ethics. There are things the Mad Cloner personally views as right and wrong which matter more to him than what specific governments may decree. This would adequately explain part of his personality but to get the a deeper feel for the shape and extent of it I’d have to get to know my friend better. I could not escape the distinct feeling that my conjecture and speculation about the inside of Drake’s mind was merely scratching the surface. Oh well, that is something to think more about another day, once we are back safely at home in our own universe.
Elsewhere, behind the gravity shields of a massive city the size of a continent on Earth, the norunners watch the replays of what transpired at the gate. “The gate is again opened now is the time to prepare for conquest. Call forth the armies and unleash our wrath.”
“I would urge you to not yet send out the fleets oh Grand Hierophant” a military commander of indeterminate hybrid origin says to his holy leader.
“Oh” the leader inquires “then what would you advise? I may find this amusing.”
“Well oh ever great and terrible one,” the commander finishes “we should probably observe these intruders for the time being, and arrange for them to be brought to the grand capital for questioning”
“And then torture?” an Inquisitor asks, eagerly.
“Sure, why not?” “This pleases me. Carry on then!” the Hierophant decrees to his underlings.
Meanwhile, back at the entry site of the Gate’s portal, Patrick had his own cosmic and quantum errata to deal with:
It was an odd journey to say the least, after Apocalyptor and I got picked up by a shipping freighter and headed out to the co-ordinates given to me by Mycobacter. We found ourselves in the fringes of known space on a planet in the middle of nowhere with a gate on it and that was about it. It was at that time I found my Jadoon had a unique ability to piggyback gates (it turns out this trick of inducing a “sub-gate warp” was originally used by the Forerunners as a diagnostic tool during regular maintenance of the Niode Gates to see if tempero-spatial signals are traveling correctly between linked gate pairs as they should). The gate co-ordinates according to my bug mech were ones that did not exist in this plane of existence. So he tapped into the gate that stood before us, bombarded it with weird harmonics by vibrating its crystalline carapace.
This essentially caused a gate flux event that enabled us to hack the gate itself. Using this technique we were able to redirect the end destination of the gate. It was a crappy ride to say the least as everything was warping around us, causing nausea, disorientation, and blurring my vision all out of whack. Apocalyptor however seemed unaffected and just steered us to where we needed to go given Mycos homing beacon on his beast mech.
We found ourselves in a very weird place once we exited this hacked gate tunnel. None of the stars lined up with any of the charts on file, the sky was an odd greenish brown hue, and the inhabitants of this world were just not right at all. They were more animal than people resembling more large bipedal rats as opposed to people. They appeared to be a scavenger race, utilizing odd mixes of technology that was unfamiliar to me or my mech. They scattered when we came through and seemed more scared than hostile. A burst of skittering, screeching chatter came through on the comms system across all channels. We had no idea what all was said but my Jadoon obviously wasn’t taking it lightly or as friendly.
“Weapons system powering up”, Apocalyptor informed me as his Rage Pulsar back weapons came to life. “Initializing defense sequence now”
“What the hell are these things and where the hell are we?” I asked him.
“Information unknown Writer, but we are going to follow the locator beacon to find your friend and his machines, these…creatures are in our way so they must be made to move.” Was its reply in an irritated tone.
Before I could really say anything back the Jadoon opened fire scattering the creatures around us. There was some small arms fire that was returned back at us, but nothing that the insect mech’s armor couldn’t handle with ease. He answered each volley with one of his own but aimed for open ground or structures near the creatures, not the creatures themselves I noticed. Seemed he was going for property damage as opposed to slaughter. So while we were making a mess at least we weren’t killing any of these unknown rat things.
In a short amount of time we had scattered the living inhabitants of this area close to the gate, it resembled a refugee camp of sorts. Supplies lay scattered, broken alien tech was in pieces all around, and what looked like the remains of an altar was set up by the gate we had piggybacked to get here in the first place. All in all a strange sight in an even stranger place, made all the more surreal by the colors of the sky where we had come in.
I checked Apocalyptor’s systems over and found there was no damage done to him in the brief fire. He seemed annoyed I even bothered given the series of buzzes and chirps he made while I was doing it. Once I was satisfied he was in working order I made sure his tracking subroutine was still locked on to Myco’s beast machine and we set off in the direction indicated. Maybe once we met up with him and Drake we could find out just what the hell was going on around here...
One ratling, smaller than the others decides to follow this outsider rather than scattering with the others and has hitched a ride on the Jadoon using her prehensile tail. She slaped a translation module, clunkier than the type used by the Antihumans onto Apocalyptor on gaining purchase and with a surprising nimbleness dodged most of the mech’s defenses. Her fur is singed a bit though, so she could not entirely dodge it wholly. She frantically works some dials and knobs on the device, attempting to communicate with The Jadoon and its rider.
Words begin to take shape as Apocalyptor adjusted to the device and his body began integrating with it and vice-versa. My name is Toto. Do not be alarmed by our appearance. Our kind has long prophesied that more would come through the Gate someday. It is in our annals.
She is nervous and worried about if her translator has been set correctly. Do you understand? I would like to be a guide to help you traverse the wastelands here since my role in my tribe is to pass down oral and written history of strange goings on.” So she is a scribe, this just gets more and more curious.
Submitted by Mycobacter, Drake Novum Scientist, Pat Willis, # 712744,706289,224534