Richter
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Post by Richter on Jan 16, 2016 21:10:00 GMT -6
The predators are every bit as heavy as they look, and even the captain has to really put some heft into the throw to get the monstrously-sized creature airborne. It slammed into its friend and left them both paralyzed for long enough that James could dispatch both with a relatively quick slash of his sword, which tears through their hide with less ease than he would have expected. Their hides are tough and leathery, resisting blades well, though not nearly so well as to stand firm against a sword of that caliber with so much muscle propelling it.
The shot revolver actually proves to not be very effective though, at least when not at point blank. The thickened skin and fur does catch the majority of the buckshot, even though each one creates a new wellspring of crimson on the flesh of the animal hit. It turns to snarl at James, leaving it open enough for Skippy to bury her axe into its neck. The first hack doesn't bring it down, it takes two more before it finally falls.
Shikoto manages to dispatch one of the pair as well, the first few pulls of the trigger send rounds hammering into the ice. The third strikes true and tears out a chunk of its face with a blast of gore, turning the dirty snow even dirtier as blood is poured liberally upon in.
As if realizing that they made a grave mistake bringing the team to battle, the wolves that remain turn and flee back the way they had came. Dextrous limbs carry them in a series of bounding leaps back into the upper levels of the ruins where it would be difficult to follow them. The men on the high ground are more than happy to receive the order to bail and they immediately retreat into lower sections of the buildings they were atop of, though the insects continue to harry them for the entire duration until they get behind some doors. The fliers eventually pull back as well, and the sounds of battle from other sections of the city indicate that the retreat is unilateral.
Once more they're left to only the silence of this dead planet.
"This is new. Never had the wildlife coordinate before." McKie joked while wiping the blood from his face.
Skippy meanwhile turned one of the wolves over with her foot. "Normal wargs don't get this big, or aggressive. Been on this planet for a long time, I know the trends. You know what else? These one's don't leave this crater. None of the critters here do. You saw where our ship was, they never once came to attack it despite being in easy range to do it."
Then she turned to the spy and gave him her thoughts on the topic he had spoke of in addition. "These ones do. But not usually to this level. Are they getting smarter?"
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Nothing else assailed them along the way, and they managed to get through the stockade easily enough and regroup in front of it. No one dead from the other squads, but there was some wounding. In fact, one of his vanguard had brought back one of those nasty bugs and held it up for the boss to get a look at.
It kind of reminded him of a flying lamprey. Long body, whipcord tail ending in a stinger, punji pit for a mouth, fur, and a three sets of wings spaced equally down the upper half of its body. Beneath the fur was a thin layer of chitin.
"Think these are poison, boss. One stung Josselyn and she's not feeling so hot. You see one, don't let that stinger nick you." The scout said, before chucking the thing aside into a snow drift.
Within the stockade were a number of hastily constructed building and tents, mostly put together with materials taken from the city. A quick look inside didn't reveal much at all that would be of use to them, mining equipment and empty food tins primarily. Must have been where McCoy's workers had stayed at. The entrance tunnel to the vault was at the far side of the enclosure, and James and Shikoto could see it better now. It was a big tunnel carved by machinery straight into the rock, going back about 100 feet and ending in a huge, iris door made totally of metal. Numerous smaller hallways branched off from this main one, but it was too dark down those side passages to see much from the central corridor. The main one was lit by more lights installed by the bounty head's crew.
The place was a war zone. Blood, acid burns, and broken bolts laid everywhere. There were no bodies however.
The huge door itself bore the scares of numerous attempts to breach it. Tools, explosives, even more acid, stranger things as well. Apparently it had held firm despite all of it. Not without taking some damage though, so the metal clearly wasn't some kind of impervious alloy. It was just very thick and well made.
Tiny vents around the door seemed to be less resilient on closer inspection. Those looked to have been melted open and used to get around, though they were way too small for anything larger than a big rat to go through. A keypad on the side of the door glowed yellow, still operational despite all of the abuse that had went on around it. Whether by design or accident couldn't be determined.
Even though it was open to the outside world, the place had a sort of overbearing pressure to it. The weight of years. The air somehow tasted stale despite the abundant ventilation. It seemed likely that this vault hadn't been opened for a long time. And as for the passcode itself, it was a whopping 20 digit long string of alphanumeric characters.
What would they do?
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Rabite
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Post by Rabite on Jan 16, 2016 22:10:19 GMT -6
After killed, the wolves are left behind after their locations are marked, so that they could be lifted out of here after they're done. After they arrived, James received a damage report from the crews after they arrived at the meeting point, along with any point of interest as they traveled through the city. Reloading his sidearm as the two members in the group gave him their options, he nods in agreement and provide his own thoughts on the happening.
"Even humans can't perform a well organized retreat like that without training, those things are definitely not normal. Rodari, you mentioned that they didn't attack before, that could be easier they're here to guard something, or that whoever is behind them did not have any more intention or resources to actively attack. Look at their movements, retreating once they begin to receive damage. If they truly wanted to stop us or slow us down, they would have sent much more to exhaust our men and supplies, but they did not. Have you two heard of any special systems that might allow them to control mutants? McKie did you hear anything back in town? What about the bugs Rodari? Anything about them?"
He also noted the poison, and even the existence of bugs in an area this cold. Most insects would try to avoid this kind of temperature, but yet they seem to be fine with living in the area. The other animal they see in the area so far are the wolves, and these stingers definitely won't punch into their hides. It goes the other way around, bugs can fly, so they are definitely not a part of the wolves diets. If they couldn't see any other animals so far that means what other animal here would not be common, so why do these two types of creatures stay here? These clues are pointing him towards something inside the vault are controlling these animals, and they might see more of them in the future as they advance.
"Scouts, increase the radius of your duty, I want to see them before they get close, don't let them jump us again. Have Josselyn take a break with the injured, see if we got anything for her, if not then rest until she recovered. If she gets better she can join in guard duty here. "
He looks at the tents and buildings nearby, then give out the orders to have the injured be carried inside for temporary treatment. Anyone that are unable to move would be left here until their return trip, and a few members would stay behind to defend them. As they continue inside the tunnel, James note some of the acid burn and try to calculate how powerful are these liquid. The bodies are gone too, including their bones so it is no work of wild animals. Someone or something took them, for unknown reason.
"....Be on alert, get some flashlights around, I want the place as lit up as a disco ball. Don't give them any chance of getting a first strike on us. Joke boy, I know you took a bit of hit, you did well, so get patched up first. After that I want you to go over there and see what you can do with that keypad, see if you can check it out, maybe open the door. If you can, tell everyone to get ready first, won't want to unleash a wave of enemies."
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Post by Pitman on Jan 16, 2016 22:27:18 GMT -6
Shikoto sighed in relief as one of the wargs actually managed to die against him but inside mentally cursed at how ineffective his magnum was. Soon the other quickly left going back up the roof leaving Shikoto next to the dead warg.
"What the hell... I need a bigger gun.", Shikoto commented to himself as he pushed himself up now looking at the beast.
He examined it carefully and wondered how it could get so big so easily in this place.
"Wolf like, are those tend to be smaller due to constantly hunting? Well whatever.", Shikoto soon stated as he moved from the building back outside.
He then turned to look around noticing everyone was winded but the ambush was easily defeated, though he couldn't tell how bad the damage was on the group.
"I am ok here, though please note those things take at least a few magnum shots before they go down. Whatever those things were, we something with more stopping power.", Shikoto soon suggested then heard the entire situation.
'They never attacked this organized huh. That... that is strange if they haven't in over the decades and then suddenly attack. Wait... could it be? Either they getting some smart intelligence and mutated into smart beings or someone or something is training them.', Shikoto soon began to think. Of course it was a hypothesis and could very well be wrong but Shikoto still had those thoughts in his mind. As the group moved toward the Vault he began to notice everything and now figured out what happened here. At least he figured out that the people here attempted to break in every possible way but all of it failed. Not to mention it looked like people here died, no bodies which further gave to his hypothesis.
Hearing the boss Shikoto soon comments, "You know I do love to be everyone's chew toy. I am winded but fine it only damaged my clothing with its claw and got slammed the shit out of me. Lets get to work on this baby, also just to be on safe side."
Shikoto soon turned around then whispers to James, "I dunno but I got a feeling whatever happened here I got a feeling those beasts were not normal. Maybe Domesticated and trained to fight. I will crack on this thing but just to be safe, watch everyone."
He then promptly did a little stretch then yells, "Alright let's crack this egg open for some scrambled eggs!"
He quickly went to the terminal to power it on he was greeted with 20 digits which he soon groaned.
"Really? I knew it wasn't going to be easy but come on. This kind of security? What your hiding an armada?", Shikoto commented as he saw the complex password.
"Boss this might take a while, so just seat tight.", Shikoto soon yells over to James now knew what he was dealing with then mutters, "Because I got a bad feeling about this place."
He soon began to type and attempt to hack into the system and see if we could even get into the system if at all.
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Richter
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Post by Richter on Jan 16, 2016 23:13:17 GMT -6
The two groups exchanged uncertain glances as they broke up, one part going in with James, while the other held down the fort. Something weird was going on around here, and nobody liked it.
The metallic floor of the entry tunnel clanked loudly beneath the snow boots of the troops, and in some parts it shifted below them where the damage from acid had weakened the moorings. Looking more closely would reveal to James that the acid seemed to be pretty potent. It melted right through the floor and into the wiring cavity below. There was light fixture in place around this corridor, but they weren't in use. Now they knew why. The pattern of damage looked too sporadic for it to have been done purposefully, so likely it was done as an accident in the middle of a battle.
Didn't make it any better for them, though.
The men who came along with the captain split up to cover those side passages, their flashlights cutting the darkness like brightly polished sabers through a black canvas. These egresses go back quite a ways and continue to branch off into more rooms and chambers, their purpose wouldn't be readily apparent unless they went down them and explored. Which seemed like a dangerous prospect at the moment. There were 4 of these offshoots, enough that they could safely cover them, but it'd stretch things a bit thin. While the main thoroughfare here could fit a vehicle, the other halls could only allow two men at best to pass side-by-side.
His sidekicks filled him in on what they knew while they tentatively moved deeper into the earth. McKie first: "I didn't hear about anything like this. Some 'wild' mutants turn up from time to time but they're of animal intelligence at best. As for controlling them? Impossible, they're practically mindless. I don't know how you'd even begin to do it."
Followed up by Skylia. "The only bugs on this planet are the burrowing kind. Or that was what I thought until now. Never saw anything like those stinging ones, least not on New Prospect. Or anywhere else for that matter. Those 'diggers' I mentioned? Those are the burrowers. Nasty spitting worms. They tend to hang around old ruins, maybe for warmth? We saw a few when we first set up camp here. They're solitary critters, or they're supposed to be anyway."
Another scout gave a whistle to draw the attention of his fellows and pointed down the hallway closest to the keypad. His flashlight illuminated what looked like nets filled with some kind of chalky white orbs at the very edge of its range. Several dead insects could be seen at the feet of this weird arrangement.
The keypad beeped shrilly each time Shikoto punched a character into it, and it popped up on the screen to represent it. Slow going, but it didn't look trapped.
As it was, a quick examination showed that all the keypad did was control the door.
When on the 10th character, McKie nudged the mechanic to get his attention, and also pointed down that side hallway. "Look close, I think I see a light on down there. A series of them, actually."
Indeed, from on the other side of the dead bugs a handful of faint blue glows could be seen reflecting off the metal walls. They didn't notice it at first until their eyes had adjusted to the light in the tunnel. Perhaps that'd prove to be the network access point he had been hoping for? Might be worth investigating before exposing themselves to whatever was on the other side.
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Rabite
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Post by Rabite on Jan 16, 2016 23:44:25 GMT -6
James took a look at these acid, if they're still potent that could mean either they last a long long time, or that they burn real fast. Well, it's not burning everywhere, so it sounds like the first.
"Definitely not native, either they were buried experiments of the past, or someone had different plans for them and brought them here. Lets do the easy, I'm not in the mood of fighting some giant acid spitting spider thing. Throw in a few molotovs, see how that goes. Tenjo, get to work. Everyone else stay on your toe, those could be eggs. Won't want to be like that movie where mutants pop out at us, and watch out for whoever laid those eggs."
He looked over when McKie points towards the hallway, and wave for Shikoto and a few guys to go check it out. It's electronics so that's his job to deal with. Then give some thoughts on those other passages, after deciding it's worth a shot, he let Shikoto do his job here while some of the other crews begins to light up the web filled room.
"McKie you stay here and keep watch, Rodari come with me, lets see what we got over there.
He gave second command to McKie while the two of them heads towards one of the unexplored passages, hoping to find something that could help, or at least scout for possible enemies. Either way it'll reduce the total enemy numbers, making their lives easier for them, and reduce the chance of being ambushed from behind when they go in the main gate. It's really dark inside so he throws a flare to see if it'll give him some vision.
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Post by Pitman on Jan 16, 2016 23:59:18 GMT -6
Shikoto continued to work until he heard about another hall way which he turned.
"Hrmm maybe some networking?", Shikoto soon pondered.
When hearing of opened egg and acid Shikoto soon took out his magnum once more and turned on his light. He soon nodded as he joined the group into the hallway with his own flashlight on well as they moved in.
"Spiders that spit out acid, great what is next on this just dandy day.", Shikoto soon comments as they moved into the darkness as he had his revolver aimed forward.
Of course to whatever that will greet them in this dakrness it wouldn't be nice. Which Shikoto was now seriously considering everything they ran into so far might be more then just wild life. The more he saw the more his theory might be right. What ever is given to them next would hopefully will have no teeth.
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Richter
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Post by Richter on Jan 17, 2016 0:18:34 GMT -6
The hallway full of the weird orbs is quickly bombarded by firebombs which everyone involved is very eager to see the results of. Primarily because most of them had also come to the conclusion that those are eggs. Thick black smoke fills that particular egress, enough to block out the extra light provided by the fire. A series of hisses, pops, and screeches came from down that way; whether it confirmed their suspicions or not was up to them, but when the fires had died down all that was left of them was a few piles of burnt black matter.
The smell was horrible, they'd just have to live with that as a consequence.
Shikoto's corridor took him a short ways past the burn eggs and into what looked like a small library. The lights he was seeing were indeed terminals. There were only about 3 dozen actually books here and they were placed on shelves carved into the walls, all of the rest of the media must have been electronic. Indeed, 8 computer screens sat on desks located around the room. The not-so-good news was that this entire chamber was filled with most of those soccer ball sized orbs, with sticky strands of rope-like gunk enclosing them and also generally coating the walls, floor, and part of the ceiling. The material was pasted over most of the keyboards like hot glue, and the only one that looked clean enough to use was at the furthest corner.
What fun.
Outside of the library were a pair of bathrooms, and another door that opened into a gymnasium. Exercise equipment and mats for athletics drew the eye in there, but little else. These rooms were also all filled with the same orbs. Tons of them. If these were eggs, that might just end up to be bad news for Shikoto here.
Whatever he chose to do, he couldn't afford to burn out the ones in the library; it'd surely ruin the computers and deny him any attempts at access. Speaking of which, the computer screen's splash page invited him in with a deceptively cheerful image of an open book. Below it were the fields for username and password.
If he dared to go in there to use it.
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Meanwhile, the hall picked by James was cleaner if nothing else. Skippy dutifully followed behind him and covered his back with her crossbow, providing a ranged element to his melee. Which might prove to be a good combination since these passages were tighter than the one they had came in through.
There are 6 rooms in here and all of them look to be barracks. The defining features of each one are the rows of bunk beds and lockers that were presumably used by the crews who built this place. James reaches this conclusion by opening one and finding bright yellow construction uniforms and tools inside.
It isn't as pretty as it seems, though. Dried blood is everywhere, though it is so old that the scent of it has long since drifted out of the area. Every last bed chamber was ransacked by acid and claws, with the furniture within basically destroyed by whatever had come through here. The lack of bones wasn't enough evidence to disprove the gruesome thought that whatever did this murdered a lot of these people in their sleep.
But just when he's about to say that it all looks the same, the second to the last room proves to be the weirdest. All of the beds and lockers are shoved to the corners of the room, and a massive hole is bored straight through the stone. Some kind of fleshy looking pillar rises up out of it and continues up into the ceiling, where it goes into a vent...
Maybe they should be wearing masks in here?
Regardless the thing is definitely alive. And big, it looks about as wide as a tree trunk. Smaller, branch-like growths split off of it and burrow into the walls at seemingly random intervals.
"What the hell?" Is all that Skippy has to say about it. Apparently, McCoy didn't get the chance to thoroughly explore these tunnels either before being ran out. This was new ground for all of them.
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Post by Pitman on Jan 17, 2016 0:34:50 GMT -6
When Shikoto was greeted with the large library the first thing he sighed at the amount of orbs all around. Yep this day went from just bad into much much worse.
"Great... if only we knew their exact nature then this wouldn't be an issue.", Shikoto soon commented which meant that whatever new things he ran into meant more trouble.
Looking around he noticed the various computers and saw all their state. Not wanting to make much noise if these were noise sensitive Shikoto slowly moved around until he saw a screen light up.
"That... is odd. screen suddenly turns on is not so suspicious.", Shikoto commented as a joke which put him more on edge.
As he looked around he soon moved toward it a bit slowly then finally half way as he pauses and looks around to make sure. Regardless he knew if he moved wrong, he would be fucked regardless, as he moved steadily, some may call him an idiot or brave. Still he finally arrived at the spot and saw the screen saying user name and password.
"Oh that is nice little screen with user name and password.", Shikoto soon commented as he looked around still suspicious then.
Great with such a thing it soon sighed at his woes but then takes out a device.
"Ah I forgot I had this guy.", Shikoto comments as he typed in admin then put in device to begin going through the passwords.
The only issue? How long it would take if these orbs do not stir.
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Rabite
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Post by Rabite on Jan 17, 2016 0:55:29 GMT -6
"....I have a real bad conclusion in mind. Whatever it is, it's huge, it eats meat, and we're not going to have a fun time if we encounter it in open space. We don't have the guns to take on it either, and any engagement with it would likely result in heavy casualties. Search around, see if we can find any explosives or some other useful goods that might help us here, keep as quiet as possible and try to keep your light covered so it won't alert that thing."
If that's just a single leg, the thing would be several story high. He was here to look at ruins and capture a pirate, not take on a giant monster. As much as like fighting, he's not as keen about taking on something of that level. But they did try to look around for useful items or hints, perhaps diaries of a worker or something to explain a bit more about these things, hopefully to find a weakness or at least what happened here. Of course, everyone being dead already tells enough, he just wanted to know how it came to this.
"They were taken out in their sleep, so whatever it is, can see well in the dark... moves fairly quiet, and judging from the size of this room it wasn't this big before. The stuffs we burnt in the other room could be its eggs... oh boy, we'll need some artillery support if bad comes to worse."
After they're done here, they head back to the main room, where James shakes his head towards the group and give them the bad news.
"Something is here, it's huge, and there's probably smaller version of it. We should watch our steps, don't run out to open space, keep quiet so it won't spot us. Set up some C4s along the tunnel, if we get rushed by a large group we can blow up the tunnel and trap them here. A few of you stay here, inform us if anything approaches. The rest of you come with me, we'll stay with the techie and see how it goes. If you see any eggs, smash them."
And that's exactly what they did, poking eggs apart with their melee weapons, keeping small distance to avoid any unwanted happenings. Eventually they arrive at where Shitoko is, who is working on the computer. Providing cover for him as he works, while trying to reduce the number of eggs that they see. As they do that, James takes a look at the bookshelves to see if there are anything of interest, perhaps some important info are written in paper rather than entered as data? Even if not, some of these research data might be able to fetch him a price on the market, who knows if it might interest someone or not?
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Richter
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Post by Richter on Jan 17, 2016 2:07:19 GMT -6
Rifling around through the lockers rewarded James and Skylia with a few bricks of mining explosive, still in the package. It would do in a pinch. The detonators were stored somewhere else, not here, for safety reasons. Their own would likely work just as well, anyway. And if their suspicions as to what this thing is are correct, they won't be parceling their plastique out into small chunks anyway.
The giant thing doesn't move or take any actions while they're in there, and Skippy is as quiet as a mouse the entire time.
Bringing this news back to the crew is met with a mixture of incredulousness and blanching of the face. A couple of them look ready to make a joke, but the dire look on the boss's face shuts that operation down right quick. They got about setting up some charges without delay while the rest move with him to go and break up those eggs.
Which is in fact what they end up to be after all, that's a hard bit of information to miss when they're doing the grisly work of smashing them open. Yellowish goop pours out, and if you dug around inside of the shell you'd find some kind of insectoid larva that was about as big as your forearm. No one was dumb enough to do that, but a few of the eggs sloshed over and spilled the contents while they were smashing them open. Even after they broke 30, they barely made a dent in the numbers. Speaking of breaking, the yolk-analog inside sizzles lightly as it comes in contact with the floor. This stuff doesn't seem to be very powerful, not enough to burn through metal, but it'd blister a hand if you touched it. Without a dedicated doctor or other scientific person at hand no one there could imagine what its purpose was in the eggs. Skippy has the bright idea to shut the doors to the latrines and gym and start barring them from this side while all of this is going on. Just so that if any of them hatched, they'd have to break down the barricade to join the mob.
Regarding the bookshelves, the captain would find that the texts were mostly fiction. He didn't recognize any of the titles. The handful of nonfiction books were regarding this planet, travel guides, almanacs, and similar. Both could fetch a price. Shikoto might also be interested in the latter considering he was looking into how this world came to freeze over earlier. Nothing of potentially secret nature is stored out here, likely there'd be another data cache behind the giant door for any sensitive information like that.
Speaking of Shikoto, the machine plugged nicely into a universal port just below the computer's monitor. He's very lucky that the guilders kept the same standard from the old ages, or this little trick would be impossible. On the device's own tiny screen, seemingly arbitrary selections of numbers and letters flew by at lightning speed. 'Access denied' flashed on the main monitor so fast that he could barely read it each time the auto-hacker attempted and failed a brute force attempt. It must have taken 15 minutes before it finally beeped loudly and brought 'access granted. user: local_admin' onto the screen. It then brought him into a completely text-based user interface, all black background and white text:
C:\> _
With a few quick commands he's able to get out of this machine and onto the actual network. It has some pretty robust security, but his little toy there helps him to bypass it.
G:\ROOT> _
And from there he can pull up a list of directories:
ROOT <You are here.> PROJECT FILES FLOOR PLAN I SEE YOU STAFF ROSTER CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE PERSONAL LOGS
All of them report some level of data corruption or denied access, but he has some limited room to work with. He's currently at the highest possible clearance level for this machine. What would he look at first? Wait, what was that fourth one? Shikoto looked again.
ROOT <You are here.> PROJECT FILES FLOOR PLAN STAFF ROSTER CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE PERSONAL LOGS
How odd...
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Post by Pitman on Jan 17, 2016 3:29:13 GMT -6
Shikoto continued to stare as screen as the system continue to until finally the screen stated soon came to a access granted bypassing everything he soon came up to the screen and noticed all the various options. As he only blinked suddenly he noticed something odd. "Wait... I swore it stated I SEE YOU.", Shikoto soon commented as he saw the screen but was now gone. For a second he thought he was going mind but then calm himself a bit thinking maybe he was just stressed or it was that woman's fault from earlier in the day stressed him out. "I got to be stressed, well whatever lets see what we got here.", Shikoto then stated. He soon choose the first thing on the terminal of Protect Files, hoping to find something. (RICHTER) G:\PROJECT FILES> _ Upon gaining access, there would be four more subdirectories. Only 2 were able to be accessed, however: PROJECT BIES PROJECT UNITY PROJECT EOS (Data Corrupt) PROJECT NEO (Clearance Insufficient) PROJECT NEO (Clearance Insufficient) (PITMAN) "Oh? That sucks. I guess lets try the first one then.", Shikoto soon stated as he picked PROJECT Bies. (RICHTER) G:\PROJECT FILES\PROJECT BIES> _ Name: Project B.I.E.S. - Biologically Integrated Electronic System. Purpose: To bring about next-gen computing technology by harnessing the most powerful processor currently known to mankind: The human brain. Status: Data not found. (PITMAN) "What actual fuck. Is my mind playing tricks on or did I just imagine seeing that?!", Shikoto soon stated as he saw the screen change after he soon was getting a sick feeling. From Human Brain Computer to now human to human, it made him wonder what in the world they were thinking in the past. "Well whatever, alright lets check the next section then.", Shikoto soon stated as he went back all the way to the next part FLOOR PLAN. (RICHTER) G:\FLOOR PLAN> _ Finally something fairly normal. This based seems to have 4 floors, and he can scroll through the lot of them with ease on this directory. Each level has its own map. They're on the first level right now, and a helpful arrows points out what room he was in. It was labeled as library. The other 3 rooms out in the main hall here were barracks, storage, and cafeteria. An addendum on the side notes that those exterior rooms are only for convenience for the laborers, and they'll be converted to other purposes at a later time. Apparently that never got a chance to happen. On the other side of the huge fault door here was a large circular chamber that more rooms radiated out from like the spokes of a wheel from the central axis. At the very center of the circle appeared to be an elevator. Rooms on level one seemed to be security and housing for the personnel in charge of keeping the base secured. There were two barracks opposite of one another, an armory, a computer room, and two security booths right on the opposite side of the vault door to check incoming visitors for clearance. Level 2 looked to be the actual facility's storage. Nothing of much note here, the 4 rooms it had were all labeled 'warehouses a through d'. Level 3 contained housing for the scientific personnel, the base's medical station, and similar. Level 4 was broke into two parts: REDACTED and UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Indeed, it looks like the base never entirely got finished, but it was apparently in use regardless. While here he also managed to find out this place's name: Epsilon Bio-Medical Facility. It was doubtful that'd be of use to him, but it was worth noting. Head Researcher: Doctor Bradley Eigen. Current Quarterly Progress: Unknown, last log entry: SYSCLOCK.DLL ERROR. That looked to be all that there was. A lot of junk characters and errors showed up on his screen, apparently whatever hard disc stored this data had suffered some kind of damage over the long years. As for the name...well, it sounded grisly enough. He'd get no more from this directory. (PITMAN) "What the... seriously? They made a computer out of human brain?", Shikoto soon stated as he read the files though whatever else about it didn't work. Well Shikoto soon shrugged but back of his mind something was clicking but he didn't pick on it just yet. He would go back to the previous Directory and soon choose the next project that he could view. (RICHTER) G:\PROJECT FILES\PROJECT UNITY> _ Name: Project Unity Purpose: To determine the extent of human-human empathic sensitivity and its potential applications. Status: Partial success. Further tested on hold indefinitely after Incident F33. See attached note for details. Head Researcher: Doctor Eric Sonderson Current Quarterly Progress: N/A, project suspended. Attached Note, Incident F33: Opening this took filled Shikoto's screen with another array of characters. But something wasn't right about it... Once again, after blinking a single time Shikoto doesn't see anything but a jumble of ASCII characters with no rhyme or reason. At the bottom is a single line of text: Datafile corrupt. (PITMAN) "What actual fuck. Is my mind playing tricks on or did I just imagine seeing that?!", Shikoto soon stated as he saw the screen change after he soon was getting a sick feeling. From Human Brain Computer to now human to human, it made him wonder what in the world they were thinking in the past. "Well whatever, alright lets check the next section then.", Shikoto soon stated as he went back all the way to the next part FLOOR PLAN. (RICHTER) G:\FLOOR PLAN> _ Finally something fairly normal. This based seems to have 4 floors, and he can scroll through the lot of them with ease on this directory. Each level has its own map. They're on the first level right now, and a helpful arrows points out what room he was in. It was labeled as library. The other 3 rooms out in the main hall here were barracks, storage, and cafeteria. An addendum on the side notes that those exterior rooms are only for convenience for the laborers, and they'll be converted to other purposes at a later time. Apparently that never got a chance to happen. On the other side of the huge fault door here was a large circular chamber that more rooms radiated out from like the spokes of a wheel from the central axis. At the very center of the circle appeared to be an elevator. Rooms on level one seemed to be security and housing for the personnel in charge of keeping the base secured. There were two barracks opposite of one another, an armory, a computer room, and two security booths right on the opposite side of the vault door to check incoming visitors for clearance. Level 2 looked to be the actual facility's storage. Nothing of much note here, the 4 rooms it had were all labeled 'warehouses a through d'. Level 3 contained housing for the scientific personnel, the base's medical station, and similar. Level 4 was broke into two parts: REDACTED and UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Indeed, it looks like the base never entirely got finished, but it was apparently in use regardless. While here he also managed to find out this place's name: Epsilon Bio-Medical Facility. It was doubtful that'd be of use to him, but it was worth noting. (PITMAN) "Finally something that we can use, Alright lets memorize all this.", Shikoto soon stated as it over looked everything about floor plans. The more he went through the more he began to figure something went wrong here. It still stated under construction, possibly this world went to shit before it could be completed perhaps? When he came up to the Armory, and computer room. Both might actually be good places to go especially if they had some new better made weapons. When he went to the level three he looked at it medical station which would also be very valuable and memorized it as well. Finally he got to the last part it stated REDACTED which meant from the old world Classified. Maybe possibly where the experiments were at? When he finally came to the last part his face went pale reading it. "Epsilon Bio-Medical Facility huh... So I was right this place is a lab, that created things. Reading those Project Files further makes it likely. Alright could explain all these monsters maybe?", Shikoto soon comments as he shrugs as he now pressed back to the next Directory, STAFF ROSTER. (RICHTER) As he flipped backwards through the plans to get out, Shikoto would stumble across another level that he missed before. It was dubbed Level 0, and it seemed to be above this one. It consisted just the central circular chamber, which was expanded to be about twice the diameter of the same part on the other 4, and 2 offshoot rooms. Nothing up there was labelled, not even with REDACTED. Maybe a later addition? It yielded no clues. Done there, he moved on. G:\STAFF ROSTER> _ Large parts of this directory were also bugged. Even the parts that weren't were of little use to him. Mostly named of who worked on what projects, and who was assigned to what departments. The only potential benefit was that it revealed the directors of Projects Eos and Neo. Which were Doctors Felicia Godder and Vasily Torskov. Whether that'd help him or not was unclear. It also clarified that quite a few people worked here, in its heyday. He could count around 80 people broken up between 4 projects, medical, and security branches. (PITMAN) "Oh? Level 0? Interesting... could of been added later?", Shikoto soon thought as he didn't notice it earlier. As he continued into the next part he soon read the names of Doctors in charge. "Hrmm Doctor Felicia Godder and Vasily Torshov. Interesting names maybe I should remember it just in case.", Shikoto pondered as he continued to read about the projects and how they were split. The more he looked the more he wondered what exactly was the mission in this place was to be. Regardless with no further information he went into second to last Directory, CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE. (RICHTER) G:\CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE> _ Accessing these files gave the mechanic a long list of readouts on estimates for how long individuals parts of the base would take to be completed. Apparently the remainder of level 4 was going to take upwards of 2 years to finish. As with the staff roster, most of the information here was clerical and not of much use. By scanning some of the materials used in the construction Shikoto would come to the conclusion that this is a military lab, because heavy reinforced concrete was used to build the entire thing. Destroying it from the outside would be very difficult. Of course the door basically implied that, but it also proved that if they lost control of said door on the way out, they'd be stuck in here. No easy way to dig through what the walls were made of. (PITMAN) "Ah Explains why this place is hard to crack. Military grade facility huh.", Shikoto commented which itself made the job much harder. Of course a miltiary facility itself not only to withstand nuclear war but also infiltration in case anyone tried to get in. This would mean that this place possibly had high level security inside which would be a good idea to tell the boss when he is done here about it. Regardless he was coming to an end to this terminal which also meant he was losing a way to even get inside. He promptly backed out and went to the final part of this long journey, PERSONAL LOGS, whatever was said here possibly could explain what exactly happened here and why. (RICHTER) G:\PERSONAL LOGS> _ An easy one, this entire section was barred for security purposes. Likely, he'd have to find another terminal with higher access to get more. Most likely that was on the other side of the door. Before he could pull out two things would happen. First, the PC would blue screen and crash. After that, the screen on his hacktool would start to go wild and beep repeatedly, the backlight pulsing from red light to green, then back again. Seems he was done here, whether he liked it or not. (PITMAN) "What the awww fuck!:", Shikoto soon stated as he grabbed his device from the terminal as the entire computer crashed. This was a problem, a big problem with no other way to open the door he knew this was not good. "Well this makes this entire situation worse, what else could happen now?", Shikoto soon stated as he was pissed.
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Richter
Veteran Member
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Post by Richter on Jan 17, 2016 4:44:08 GMT -6
Perhaps the most disturbing thing out of all of this was that nothing happened, even when Shikoto's handheld started to go nuts. The room was deafeningly silent outside of the whining beeps and the sound of shells being broken. It was weird, everyone had expected something to go wrong on a cataclysmic scale.
But it did not.
They now had a choice. Would they go through the door, or leave this entire mess behind and try to forget that it happened? Supposedly there was something very profitable hidden here, and the floor plans seemed to confirm it. On the other hand, it wound up to sound significantly more dangerous than any of them had given the encounter credit for.
James talked about hunting for glory and fortune pretty often. A chance for both was right in front of him. Was he daring enough to take it? And of Shikoto, he often talked about unearthing the secrets of the Old Era. He had only scratched the surface, did he dare to go deeper?
For now they had a little bit of time to think about it, because they'd have to trek back to the main corridor and link back up with McKie and the soldiers kept in reserve to cover their flank. Nothing had caught their attention from down that way either, so it seems that no trouble had assailed them either.
Yet.
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Rabite
Veteran Member
Emperor of H
Hey, look over here.
Posts: 1,887
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Post by Rabite on Jan 17, 2016 13:43:10 GMT -6
As Shitoko obtain information on the other rooms in this floor, the rest of the men were sent to search for useful goods in the storage rooms after finishing their job in breaking the eggs as much as they can.
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James was watching Shitoko as he hack the computer, with a better reflex sight he was able to see, and determine that those flashes of image were not his imaginations. He look around the room, but didn't see anything that might be cameras or sensors, but he knows they are being watched somehow. He has no wishes of backing down, at least from what he seem so far they would still be able to handle it. The place might be a military grade research lab, but it seems that it was not fully complete, as shown from the data and the lack of actual defense mechanism. Another evidence support that is the way they were attacked in the city, by controlled mutated animals rather than an actual defense system, certainly not something your usual military ruins uses to fight off invaders.
"Warehouse... if we need bigger guns we'll be getting it from there, the third floor could provide extra information too."
He slowly returned to the rest of the crew with the information they have received, and the decision he chose.
"We're going in, whatever it was have certainly saw us already, if we back off now it would not be an easy retreat either. We already saw what was in the lab, whoever is in charge of this place will certain not let us go free. If whatever that thing really is of that size, we might actually be safer inside here, even if we run the risk of fighting smaller versions of that thing here. But, I'll give you guys a choice, anyone of you that wishes to run, are free to retreat back to where the wounded are resting. Those of you with the guts to reach out and grab this shiny gem of opportunity, raise your swords, let us crack this shell."
He gave an opportunity for his men to choose, as it would be better to send a bunch that is ready than those that would simply run when danger arises. He was fairly confident in his men's physical and mental ability, but nevertheless anyone that feels less confident, are free to go. Before they move on, he give a short speech to them to raise their morale and get them ready for the operation.
"Hear me! Ever since we have been formed we have not seen defeat, nor have we even suffered heavy casualties. But before we fully experience harsh battle such as this, we will not fully become true warriors that can go head to head against tough opponents. Know this, our opponents are not invulnerable robots, nor are they divine begins! No matter their size, if it is flesh then we can hack into them and kill it like a stray dog! Remember the battle in the city outside the vault, their futile attempts to stop us would be foil here just as well! We are the ones they should fear as we knock down their doors, and bring our blades down to sever their pitiful lives! Do not be engulfed by your fears, let it burn inside your heart, and fuel our desires to conquer our opponents. By the end of this day, we will stomp on their lifeless bodies, and lay our lands on their treasures! Advance!!"
James had Shikoto opens the gate, so they can advance inside after making sure there's no hidden traps at the moment. They try to move as quietly as possible, using their ears to see if they can hear anything moving in the darkness, while throwing flares ahead to light up their way. James wonders if there's a light switch that could make their lives easier, but he's very sure whoever controls the computer system earlier can simply turn it back off. Their first goal is the armory on the other side of this floor, where they could possibly get better equipment to deal with anything they encounter.
"Defensive formation, set C-4s along the walls as we go. It doesn't seem like they have too many other exits, if we collapse this one as we retreat it would make our lives easier. Whoever is watching us in the darkness would want to think about before attacking too, if they would like to keep the place clean. You hear me? Computer demon guy, I know you're watching and listening to us, anything too big and I'll let it off. I don't think anyone's willing to come over to fix up your mansion either, not in the middle of this mountain."
It was a bet, the effectiveness of the explosives on this vault are unclear. The place is military grade, possibly able to defend against external assaults, but this is an attack from within. It is also a ruin, which means little to no repairs have been done to it since it got buried, possibly weakening it's planned structures. If whoever is in charge wants to keep the vault unscratched, they would have to reconsider what level of force they might use on the pirate group.
As for their formations, James stands in the front, holding his sword out like a shield similar to when he fought the other Tiny. The group keeps a slight loose formation in case of traps and explosive attacks, but close enough to spot each other and avoid being snatched in the dark. Several other crew stays a bit behind James' sides, holding their shields up as defense is their first priority. They don't stand too close to him, so that when necessary he could fully swing his sword without risk of friendly fire. The middle layer are formed by ranged fighters such as Shikoto and Skylia(if she is around), so they can provide missile fire as the front stop the advance of the enemies. There is also the men with make shaft pole arm weapons, who can attack with more distance and support the front. The weapons are not very well made so they would likely break after a short amount of use, but nevertheless it was better than nothing, and could simply be retrieved to be used regularly. The rear are men skilled in both combat style, as they are to move between the three layers of the formation in order to deal with any possible situations, and for any enemies that comes up to attack their rear. The notable member here in the rear formation would be McKie(if he is around), who would also be skilled at starting a retreat when necessary, and to have a better perception of any movements from behind.
The second rank are also tasked with maintaining their visuals, which means flashlights, flares, and perhaps torches if they have to come to that. Planting the explosives are also their job, so if anyone that tries to attack them, might have to reconsidering them accidentally pressing the switch if their lives are in danger. Every few step they stop and listen in order to scout ahead, indoors at a location like this would mean echos can be pretty loud, if there are those spiders here moving they should be able to hear it along with anything else in here. If they see any electronics for Shikoto to deal with, James would have the entire team stop by it; with the front and rear teams defending with a slightly wider radius, while the middle team closely covers for the hacker, trying to provide as much protection as possible. After all, as much as Shikoto thinks all the time, he's not just being thrown away like trash, the Cosmic Terror treats all of their members like families and friends. If they didn't James would have had him killed when he screwed up on his earlier missions, rather than just gave him a lesson. James also let McKie use his extra Portable Shield, if he already had one then he would have lend it to Skylia instead, and if she's not there then whoever is in charge of the rear formation. Shikoto had his own, so there's no need to lend him another.
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Post by Pitman on Jan 17, 2016 20:18:01 GMT -6
"Oh good nothing happened.", Shikoto comments as he moved back towards the group.
As he finally arrived back he soon says, "We are going have to crack this the hard way. Oh and this place expect bad thing..."
With that Shikoto then turns to James to explain the situation entirely and even told him all the floor plans in the process. Not to mention anything of noteworthy was shared. Which of course meant this was a military grade facility meant expect bad things. Regardless everything he read made one simple thing in Shikoto's mind, why they did this sort of experiments and why it was never completed. Whatever they were fully doing here and their mission must it be so important to do inhumane things?
When they regroup first thing James saying to go in Shikoto soon rings, "You know I am no soldier just a simple slave but, whatever they have here I think it would be a bad idea to let anyone else have it."
Of course this meant if someone else who would try to make this into a weapon for any nations could be a bad end. With that done Shikoto soon went back to the terminal and began to work on it to crack the password. He wondered though if there was a hint from the previous terminal would be it. So he began to think in his mind anything with 20 letters from the previous terminal and began to type them in to see if any work. If it works, good if not well this would be hard regardless Shikoto was wary on anything attacking whatever it was and continue to work on the terminal hoping it would work.
"Let's hope this works, hold your butts.", Shikoto stated as he pressed enter.
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Richter
Veteran Member
Posts: 1,870
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Post by Richter on Jan 18, 2016 0:40:52 GMT -6
First of all, in the exterior storage room the men mostly find heavier mining equipment. Not all of it is very useful in this circumstance. But what is, is that they find more explosives and some kind of liquid-fuel. There are no machines there to run off of it, so those must have been stored outside. Either way they quickly appropriate both, having used quite a bit of their molotov supplies to clear the eggs and explosives to rig the main corridor to explode. Luckily they find more bottles in the cafeteria across the hall to put it all in.
The sinking feeling was that they'd need it.
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James would be pleased to know that no one backed out despite his offer to do so. Everyone who had been with him so far had confidence enough in his abilities to see him through, and even the new batch who did not wanted to remain if only because they had a score to settle. This thing had killed a lot of their buddies by proxy, no one could feel good walking away from that without drawing a little blood as payback. Skippy and Mckie are included in those two stay, as would be expected.
Shikoto punches in the code to the door while everyone watches with bated breath, having no idea at all what awaited them on the other side. Which is good, because it was doubtful that they could have seen it coming.
When the final digit is put in, the panel's yellow light turns green. There's 8 heavy *THUNK* sounds and hisses of pressure as locking mechanisms in the frame of the door unseal so that the iris can open. Which is does after all the pieces have their bolt remove, and the metallic moving parts all grind against each other with a shrill steel-on-steel whine that made the ears ring to hear. Rust and grim in the frame resisted, but ultimately couldn't hold back the hydraulics of the door from peeling it open. First a small pinprick opened in the center, and then that expanded slowly until the entire thing had withdrawn into the walls around it.
Stale air so heavily impregnated with airborne biological matter that you could basically cut it with a knife flooded out and spilled onto James, Shikoto, and their allies. Anyone who thought they were hard enough to not need a mask and goggles before, immediately shifted stance and slammed their faces into one. It was hard to tell if these were some kind of spore, dust, or big mites. Whatever the case it didn't look pleasant. It also made their lights less effective, not terribly much so, and they also didn't seem to ignite from flares or torches.
The antechamber was a large room, maybe 2 or 3 times as big as the main hall. Easily large enough you could drive a small vehicle around inside of it, which was probably the purpose considering how the place was built. At the center of it was a large freight elevator, and numerous metal doors opened into the rooms that Shikoto had seen on the floor plan. Mats of that webby gunk covered the floor, and piles of eggs broken and otherwise sat in corners and suspended to nooks in the ceiling. It also looked like smaller personal elevators were in the back two corners. There were staircases beside each one.
But what really drew the eye was the fact that another one of those flesh pillars shot straight up through the freight elevator and into the shaft above. This one looked larger than the one in the exterior chambers. Smaller ones hung down out of vents like vines in a jungle, swaying on occasion as if hit by a breeze none of them could feel. The ceiling was high and vaulted, maybe 20 feet? There were a lot of lights up there, but most were broken and none were on at the moment. So they had to place their own as they went.
Finding the support pillars is kind of difficult for the pirates, smaller fleshy masses wound around them as if they had the same idea and were reinforcing the structure. James's men still did as ordered but they weren't sure if it would have the same effect when detonated. But it was that or risk slicing at them to gain direct access. Which might or might not anger whatever the hell this is.
Nothing comes out to jump them, yet, but they know that they're being watched. They can feel it. And also see it, because a whirring sound draws their eyes and if they look to the source they can find a single security camera in one of the security booths turning to follow them. It seems that their assumption was correct and that whatever was in here also had control of the computers. A light below the camera's lens blinks as it stares at them through bulletproof glass. They walked by the station with the camera because they were going straight for the armory, which was opposite of the door. On that note, the other security booth and one of the barracks were inaccessible. The doors were completely grown over by biological matter. The rest it looked like they could access.
"I think we should ruin this door." McKie whispered to James. "I don't like the idea that something could seal this behind us. Especially because Joker here didn't mention any other ways out."
Of course that could also set off whatever the hell this thing in here was. There was no denying anymore that it was massive, but it didn't seem likely to be a titan anymore.
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Whatever they choose to do beforehand, they manage to get to the armory, although they have to wheel around the elevator and the central mass growing within it to get there. The door here is heavily reinforced and sealed shut with twinned locking bars, and it's secured by another electronic lock on its own power supply. Shikoto doesn't have a key to this one, but his talents with electronics would lead him to conclude that he could probably pop the panel off and mess with the wiring to get it open. Perhaps fake it out and send a signal that all is clear?
Doing so would bring it to open up. The armory is cut into three sections: A central hall, and two sections to either side of it set up behind a locked set of cells like in a prison. Shelves and lockers hang open inside of it, with equipment throw onto the floor as if someone people rummaged through here in a panic. It doesn't look nearly as pristine as it did from the outside.
Even so, if they spent time to dig around they were almost guaranteed to find something good.
The air in here was also thick with spores, and the ventilation ducts above bulged in places. It was likely that same biological growth had wormed its way in here as well.
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