- Joined
- Jul 19, 2020
- Posts
- 48
- Awards
- 4
- Essence
- €9,912
- Coin
- ₡5,500
- Tokens
- 0
- World
- The Beyond
- Profile
- Click Here
“Doctor Foster, it’s time to pack it up.”
The voice of Fennec Shand echoed from just down the ridge as the ever-curious Dr. Jane Foster lingered up ahead. The bounty hunter sighed, watching as the former astrophysicist ripped a tiny, leather-bound notebook out of her satchel and began scribbling away. Her gaze darted around like a madwoman, taking down every observation she could before her escort forced her back to camp.
Which would be soon, if the hunter had her way. Her boots crunched in the snow as she angled up the hill towards where Jane stood, hurriedly writing. The sight of the strange, uncharacteristically green plants had been queer enough from afar, but the further Fennec got to it, the more unusual it looked. The small forest near the Rock Raiders’ encampment, part of the very little original vegetation the ice moon of Inverxe played host to in the first place, was becoming overgrown. Where once relics of trees creaked in the night, now vines began to snake up their trunks. Flowers bloomed on branches that hadn’t seen the slightest green thing in, by any estimation, decades, easily.
“Poison,” Jane said as Fennec joined her at the crest of the hill.
There was no other way to describe it. Fennec had not been on Inverxe long, but she’d heard plenty of stories. As twisted and almost psychotic — if you could call a hunk of floating rock psychotic — as Inverxe was, phenomena like this were somehow even stranger. The two women stayed at a safe distance, and Fennec reached out and touched the scientist’s shoulder gently, but with purpose. The small, lithe woman turned and nodded, stuffing her notebook into her satchel and slinging it back over her shoulder.
Jane Foster had been her ticket to the surface. In the weeks since she’d received a startling reprieve from death — and worse — in Dante’s Abyss, Fennec had learned a surprisingly small amount about what, exactly, her job here was. She’d departed the comet’s medical facilities and tried to get in touch with her employer, but had only thus far received cryptic messages. The first directed her to Syntech’s shuttles, which had ferried her to the Hub. She’d spent a few days there, waiting patiently — as instructed — before one day, Foster had knocked on her hotel room door.
“You’re Miss Shand?” she’d asked. “I hear you’re escorting me to the surface.” Though she wouldn’t describe Jane as warm and bubbly, the woman approached this whole situation with more excitement than Fennec deemed appropriate for an excursion to a death moon.
“I suppose so,” she’d replied, with the proper level of enthusiasm (read: none).
And then they’d been off. Jane, it seemed, had already booked them — or someone else had, and she simply had the connections on hand — passage to the surface with a collection of miners that were going to relieve some of their malaise-inflicted mates. They’d been lucky enough, Fennec supposed, to find solace and shelter with the Rock Raiders, one of the few capitalist outfits that still dared to operate down on the moon’s surface. The mercenary had been brought along under the guise of being ‘hired help’ for the miners, to beat back small adversaries that would occasionally come along and try to halt their activities. Some things didn’t like the very earth around them being drilled into and ripped apart, she supposed… but the Rock Raiders didn’t much like being interrupted.
Danger lurked everywhere on Inverxe, though, even if you weren’t trying to milk it for every last Coin it was worth. Fennec and Jane had now taken several excursions outside of camp, into the wild — much against the Raiders’ advice — for Jane to do some research on the new… vegetation.
“Doctor,” Fennec held up a hand as they crossed down the hill and back onto the beaten path. Jane stopped in her tracks, looking at the crags around them.
This particular mining settlement — Camp Gnawbone, as it was called, much to Fennec’s displeasure — was situated in the foothills of a larger mountain range. It was a perfect spot for the Raiders, rife with caverns and mineral deposits they could easily get rich off of; it also, however, served as an ideal habitat for every creepy-crawly beast that stood diametrically opposed to that mission. The creatures here did not like to be disturbed, but they were so constantly, and after two weeks of subduing baby xenomorphs and iceworm larvae, Fennec was beginning to feel quite apathetic toward the miners’ safety and more sympathy towards the plight of the poor monsters.
She felt, quite suddenly, almost like her head was splintering in two.
A whisper filled the chasm of her mind, and though she couldn’t make out what it said, she knew who it was. No amount of healing techniques or bacta tank soaking was going to remove the Fallen Arbiter’s diabolical drawl from her memory. Though she couldn’t call it a ‘sense,’ per se, the sheer volume of unmaking influence on this planet had been giving the bounty hunter migraines for weeks, and now was no different.
“Fennec — ” Jane called out, reaching for her companion, but the bounty hunter stumbled just out of reach as the ground beneath them cracked open. Another iceworm larva snaked out, aiming its heated horn for the scientist and lunging. Fennec got her bearings as quickly as she could manage and hooked an arm around the creature’s midsection, hugging it tightly and pulling it down onto the ground. Her back smashed into the snow with a crunch, the creature writhing on top of her as she held it within her grip. She was lucky it was only a baby, knowing that these monstrosities could grow as large as ninety-odd meters; this one was only about three-and-a-half or four but still packed quite the punch.
Fennec reached behind her back with her free arm, pulling the vibranium dagger out of where it was stored in her rifle and swinging it high up into the air. She brought it down with a satisfying squish into what she could only hope was the iceworm’s ‘neck’ and threw the beast off of her, barrel rolling away from it and swinging her blaster rifle off her back.
She let out a deep sigh. After days without her effects in Dante’s Abyss, she was happy to have her trusty old tools back again. She let her finger rest on the trigger, aimed for the creature’s head, and prepared for the killing blow.
“Wait,” Jane muttered, “look.”
Fennec’s eyes drifted up behind the iceworm, where a tangle of thin, green vines snaked out from a small crevice in a nearby cliffside. Black ooze dripped off of it — not too much, but just enough to be noticeable — as it slithered toward the worm, which squirmed in pain on the ground before both women’s eyes.
The iceworm cooed, and for a moment, as the vines began to coil around its body, Fennec swore it was almost… looking at the two of them. She thought, perhaps, it was begging them to save it — but they were both frozen. The hunter could almost feel Darkseid’s influence radiating out of the corrupted plantlife’s pores. She’d seen enough of the Unmaking to last a lifetime in the Wastes of Cevanti, both on the outside and inside her own head, so she was beginning to learn how to recognize it when she saw it. She’d admit that she hadn’t been keen on seeing it again so soon.
But this was the job, wasn’t it? This was what she’d signed up for. She’d known that.
The vines jerked, and the iceworm was snatched from view, squeezing into the too-small crevice in the mountainside with a disgusting squelching sound. Its blood oozed out of the crack after it disappeared, staining the snow-covered ground with a deathly hue.
“Back to camp,” Fennec ordered, severity lacing her tone. She looked at Jane, pale and frozen in place. “Now.”
The scientist nodded and started off down the hill, her escort not far behind.
The voice of Fennec Shand echoed from just down the ridge as the ever-curious Dr. Jane Foster lingered up ahead. The bounty hunter sighed, watching as the former astrophysicist ripped a tiny, leather-bound notebook out of her satchel and began scribbling away. Her gaze darted around like a madwoman, taking down every observation she could before her escort forced her back to camp.
Which would be soon, if the hunter had her way. Her boots crunched in the snow as she angled up the hill towards where Jane stood, hurriedly writing. The sight of the strange, uncharacteristically green plants had been queer enough from afar, but the further Fennec got to it, the more unusual it looked. The small forest near the Rock Raiders’ encampment, part of the very little original vegetation the ice moon of Inverxe played host to in the first place, was becoming overgrown. Where once relics of trees creaked in the night, now vines began to snake up their trunks. Flowers bloomed on branches that hadn’t seen the slightest green thing in, by any estimation, decades, easily.
“Poison,” Jane said as Fennec joined her at the crest of the hill.
There was no other way to describe it. Fennec had not been on Inverxe long, but she’d heard plenty of stories. As twisted and almost psychotic — if you could call a hunk of floating rock psychotic — as Inverxe was, phenomena like this were somehow even stranger. The two women stayed at a safe distance, and Fennec reached out and touched the scientist’s shoulder gently, but with purpose. The small, lithe woman turned and nodded, stuffing her notebook into her satchel and slinging it back over her shoulder.
Jane Foster had been her ticket to the surface. In the weeks since she’d received a startling reprieve from death — and worse — in Dante’s Abyss, Fennec had learned a surprisingly small amount about what, exactly, her job here was. She’d departed the comet’s medical facilities and tried to get in touch with her employer, but had only thus far received cryptic messages. The first directed her to Syntech’s shuttles, which had ferried her to the Hub. She’d spent a few days there, waiting patiently — as instructed — before one day, Foster had knocked on her hotel room door.
“You’re Miss Shand?” she’d asked. “I hear you’re escorting me to the surface.” Though she wouldn’t describe Jane as warm and bubbly, the woman approached this whole situation with more excitement than Fennec deemed appropriate for an excursion to a death moon.
“I suppose so,” she’d replied, with the proper level of enthusiasm (read: none).
And then they’d been off. Jane, it seemed, had already booked them — or someone else had, and she simply had the connections on hand — passage to the surface with a collection of miners that were going to relieve some of their malaise-inflicted mates. They’d been lucky enough, Fennec supposed, to find solace and shelter with the Rock Raiders, one of the few capitalist outfits that still dared to operate down on the moon’s surface. The mercenary had been brought along under the guise of being ‘hired help’ for the miners, to beat back small adversaries that would occasionally come along and try to halt their activities. Some things didn’t like the very earth around them being drilled into and ripped apart, she supposed… but the Rock Raiders didn’t much like being interrupted.
Danger lurked everywhere on Inverxe, though, even if you weren’t trying to milk it for every last Coin it was worth. Fennec and Jane had now taken several excursions outside of camp, into the wild — much against the Raiders’ advice — for Jane to do some research on the new… vegetation.
“Doctor,” Fennec held up a hand as they crossed down the hill and back onto the beaten path. Jane stopped in her tracks, looking at the crags around them.
This particular mining settlement — Camp Gnawbone, as it was called, much to Fennec’s displeasure — was situated in the foothills of a larger mountain range. It was a perfect spot for the Raiders, rife with caverns and mineral deposits they could easily get rich off of; it also, however, served as an ideal habitat for every creepy-crawly beast that stood diametrically opposed to that mission. The creatures here did not like to be disturbed, but they were so constantly, and after two weeks of subduing baby xenomorphs and iceworm larvae, Fennec was beginning to feel quite apathetic toward the miners’ safety and more sympathy towards the plight of the poor monsters.
She felt, quite suddenly, almost like her head was splintering in two.
A whisper filled the chasm of her mind, and though she couldn’t make out what it said, she knew who it was. No amount of healing techniques or bacta tank soaking was going to remove the Fallen Arbiter’s diabolical drawl from her memory. Though she couldn’t call it a ‘sense,’ per se, the sheer volume of unmaking influence on this planet had been giving the bounty hunter migraines for weeks, and now was no different.
“Fennec — ” Jane called out, reaching for her companion, but the bounty hunter stumbled just out of reach as the ground beneath them cracked open. Another iceworm larva snaked out, aiming its heated horn for the scientist and lunging. Fennec got her bearings as quickly as she could manage and hooked an arm around the creature’s midsection, hugging it tightly and pulling it down onto the ground. Her back smashed into the snow with a crunch, the creature writhing on top of her as she held it within her grip. She was lucky it was only a baby, knowing that these monstrosities could grow as large as ninety-odd meters; this one was only about three-and-a-half or four but still packed quite the punch.
Fennec reached behind her back with her free arm, pulling the vibranium dagger out of where it was stored in her rifle and swinging it high up into the air. She brought it down with a satisfying squish into what she could only hope was the iceworm’s ‘neck’ and threw the beast off of her, barrel rolling away from it and swinging her blaster rifle off her back.
She let out a deep sigh. After days without her effects in Dante’s Abyss, she was happy to have her trusty old tools back again. She let her finger rest on the trigger, aimed for the creature’s head, and prepared for the killing blow.
“Wait,” Jane muttered, “look.”
Fennec’s eyes drifted up behind the iceworm, where a tangle of thin, green vines snaked out from a small crevice in a nearby cliffside. Black ooze dripped off of it — not too much, but just enough to be noticeable — as it slithered toward the worm, which squirmed in pain on the ground before both women’s eyes.
The iceworm cooed, and for a moment, as the vines began to coil around its body, Fennec swore it was almost… looking at the two of them. She thought, perhaps, it was begging them to save it — but they were both frozen. The hunter could almost feel Darkseid’s influence radiating out of the corrupted plantlife’s pores. She’d seen enough of the Unmaking to last a lifetime in the Wastes of Cevanti, both on the outside and inside her own head, so she was beginning to learn how to recognize it when she saw it. She’d admit that she hadn’t been keen on seeing it again so soon.
But this was the job, wasn’t it? This was what she’d signed up for. She’d known that.
The vines jerked, and the iceworm was snatched from view, squeezing into the too-small crevice in the mountainside with a disgusting squelching sound. Its blood oozed out of the crack after it disappeared, staining the snow-covered ground with a deathly hue.
“Back to camp,” Fennec ordered, severity lacing her tone. She looked at Jane, pale and frozen in place. “Now.”
The scientist nodded and started off down the hill, her escort not far behind.