And
as the captain speaks it, a view into the bridge's portside
navigational sensor station. Like starboard to the fore right of the
captain's chair, a sphere projected around a chair with shifting panels
to place the buttons where they apply.
In it seen the charted
course of the Archive, the controller moving the view into that of the
Centaur in pursuit, and ahead to what's known of the center of the
galaxy.
From the display the view fades to the real, plowing the galaxy until the core is reached, a planetary system held in rotation. Perhaps from the star that once was, if ever it were or perhaps just accumulated stone, it is clear from the cities and ghosts inhabiting this place was once alive.
Perhaps.
Or it could be that this place was constructed by these beings using the same telekinetic by which they use their tools, to build these ships converging in the Archive's path, to operate their controls.
Would they ever have needed bodies at all ?
Or are they dead so long they evolved to life again at the strangeness of galaxy's core. Their ships are dark. Foreboding. Vicious in design, made to make fear.
Where Centaur would slice, these beasts would gouge, littered with guns like an afterthought. Conquered civilizations displayed in their designs beneath the unifying theme of shattering prey, to loose its lifeblood crew into cold space.
No stars lurk here, all devoured.
Cold beyond frost or the moisture of ice, eyes in the dark no longer requiring the light. These are like the creatures known in POV, the dead and their gods of lost worlds forgotten.
As one closes a port behind with a blast of psychic expulsion to the panel from waved hand as though to death strike it. The things only know violence, pain, cold.
As that glider hits bridge, another display not unlike the Centaur's, showing the path of two ships approaching from just inside galaxy's edge. Zooms in to the blurred images so far away, examining designs.
A read on the Centaur showing signs of its plating, archive showing none. He turns his head into a the next scene into Centaur's walkways.
____________
Gijo - Passing literal fucking Mary in a uniform down the corridor. She smiles sly, "Private Arameth ... "
Mary - Fights back laughing, "Ensign ... " Clears her throat, "bo-Letzir."
They pass and Gijo smiles happy, maybe a little bit proud, she glances to the floor as others pass. She notices they seem wrapped up in one's story of getting their assignment to the ship's particular position, communications sub-tech.
Passes a door with the sound of sobbing, another the sound of fucking.
Two more passing like nothing, talking about the history of the engine control scheme. "But I really don't know any more than that. Apparently nobody does except maybe the captain."
Other - "I bet the mechanic knows."
First - "Mm. Probably."
Gijo looks after as they pass. Down the hall two people make out desperately in tears, the sound of an alien snarl in disgust, the view darting away to the sound of the pilot grid door sliding open as Gijo enters.
The inside of a large sphere, actively mapping every direction around the ship in coalescence of all incoming data, with primary cannon control from a chair set in the center.
She relieves the secondary with a smile.
Second - "After system check ?"
...
Gijo - Smiles back, "How about when the mission's done."
She sits and runs through the sign in checks as he walks away a bit more frustrated than seems natural.
The main cannons set on ether side of the hull, wing protected, responding to check before settling back in. Stabilizers fire their rounds about the surface, turning it here and there a bit in its slipstream before stabilizing.
Aside from these base checks, in slipstream there's not much to do, as all is run from the engine itself by base calculation of entry and exit from it's singularity generated bubble in the universe.
Technically to our universe they no longer exist, until choosing a re-entry point, the illusion of linear travel only required to acquire it amid the waves of space and time.
________________
Captain - "But to what purpose !?"
Gregor - " 'Trained by the fates ... to know what to do. Which means he may not even himself, know."
McCabe - "You mean he just ... had a feeling he needed to steal a top secret craft."
Captain - "And take it to the center of the galaxy because the world's about to blow. To. What. Purpose."
Gregor - "I'm saying he may not even have known the ship was there. They just ... 'do things'. Whatever the hell they want."
Captain - "Without orders ?"
Gregor - "They do precisely what would have been ordered, if anyone knew, what nobody did."
...
Captain - "Okay. You go back to the engine room. And you go back to the bridge. Gregor, I want you to run all theoreticals on what that ship may be. McCabe, you look up the man."
McCabe - "There is nothing here captain. We have nothing."
Captain - "That's right."
Gregor - "Nor anything on that ship."
Captain - "That's wrong. It's shell works like a three dimensional printer and it dropped a beacon at base which means he wants to be followed. That beacon maintains an active signal, with that ship."
To McCabe - "And on that ship, is, I'm assuming, is an archive of information which will tell us all we need to know, about the man."
Gregor - "You mean ... "
Captain - "Hack it and tap it boys, now get the fuck to work. Honestly, this conversation is starting to piss me off." He flips on the desk computer and ignores them.
...
Gregor - Looks to McCabe who seems confused, "Right then."
The captain waves them off rudely, then a grin and a wink. The ship shakes hard. As a K'Terlu whelp swipes the Centaur from it's stream.
It swallows them whole, then pauses with a twitch and a bit of indigestion, then begins expelling damage in convulsive waves from the tips of its wings to tail.
A
hard jerk and its own blood pours from its propulsive pores before the
whole beast pops, Centaur intact with guns smoking. More turn to see
from the pack watching, chewing on the
nearby asteroids.
____
Aboard the station in the office of Technology ~
Technology - "We're getting strange readings from the nova wave." Then distracted by the view from the window.
Technology - "That's useful. Care to elaborate ?"
Science - "It is. Care to look out the window once in a while ?"
Technology - "What the fuck is that supposed to ... "
Out the port, the nova wave appears to be projecting a flickering image of the Earth in an electrical storm spanning the cloud.
Technology - "What the ... fuck ... "
Science - "It is becoming a black hole ... it's ... a projection."
Technology - Walking to the window, "The holographic principle ... holy shit. You were right. I owe you five meaningless dollars."
...
They take each others' hand.
...
Science - "Wanna fuck into oblivion ?"
Technology - "Since the day I was born."____
On Centaur's comm fading for distance while they watch the larvae leap from the asteroids on the view, the Operator rattles - "This is why I brought you here."
~ Science's face slammed to the view port while Technology goes to work, both staring out ecstatic at our solar system crackling across the oncoming wave.
While on the Centaur bridge the nav stations become active, now acting as gunnery, navigation to pilot direct.
The spherical projections surrounding them become active with data for guiding shots and active feed back from the pilot, showing the commands as opposed to the ship's response for that extra bit of prediction as they open fire.
The cannoneers work their three layered gunwale corridors, popping shots as Centaur glides into parallel, blowing back an intended attack.
The many smaller guns above and below dissuading where they can, large central two under Gijo's control only aim with the nose but finish them when they can.
Walking down the station halls to pass one another, past others completely desolate at the end of the world. Two scientists pause in their walk to stare.
1 - "We're all going to die and I've got nothing to lose. I'm completely in love with you. I always was."
2 - "Oh thank God."
They kiss into the madness, then two more in the halls ~
1 - "I fucking hate you. So fucking much." Flicks his forehead.
2 - Knocks her hand away, "Yeah well if I gotta Fucking Die ... "
...
They stare.
...
1 - "I'm glad you're going with me."
...
They kiss into madness.~ (3:02) There's really no helping them, as seen through the revolving windows.
In hissing terror they flee a looming shadow over distant sun's light. A
grown K'Terlu crunches through the stones like a whale through a
school, tentacles snapping to speed of light like whips to sound cracking, to cast its eggs into distant places.
Or at future competition, the broken whelp eaten as it passes, the K'Terlu expels to propel then stops at the Centaur. One eye the size of a world looking down at the ship whose engines struggle against its gravitation.
It breathes enough gas over them like smoke to
carry the sound which booms echoing through the hull ~ "K'Terlu."
And carries on after the fleeing whelps, trailing the same gasses as propulsion, tentacle whipping one aside to grab another, the screams heard as it breathes over it before eating.
________
________________
~ INTERMISSION ~
________________
________
Notes ~ when a whelp grows to adulthood the core abdomen fills the hanging flesh of its wings, while their peaks extend to tentacle and begin producing eggs as opposed to propellant waste.
The waving and
snapping of the tentacles is a way evolved over time of working the egg
through the long fallopians, occasionally shot out in defense as a bullet lashed by a whip.
(egg)
.jpg)
(hatch when it drifts close enough to a heat source)
The ships of Encompass were crewed by the organisms that feed on the egg until the shell is clean. This is what happens when they don't do that. K'Terlu in their larval stage.
While usually the prime beast doesn't tolerate the competition, it does at times lose track of them, being a complete alien whore.
Species such as Apollo's harvest them before birth
for food and astoundingly durable ship hulls like folded steel, as the
shell grew its layers while living.
Of course as an egg, it is a
singular cell, which makes it perfectly responsive to singular control
systems, as a cell would be.
The Nibiri worship the K'Terlu,
Nibiru itself the bones of a whelp, slain by Kron, who fed his soldiers
with its carcass in the conquest of our system. These eggs ships are
treated as a holy testament to their rise.
Only rulers and true
warlords of accomplishment will have them, their hybrid priestesses
being the only ones who can predict a K'Terlu's movements. Bred with
the residue of the shell.
As a progenitor species, its DNA/RNA
can bond with just about any other. One could assume the only other
life form equally dominant at least in this galaxy is mitochondria.
Neither of which the other require.