Terminal

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

'Targets keep saturating the air with heavy particulate. I can't lase them at distance if they keep doing that!' King signaled out with evident frustration, their limbs and body seeming to contort and snap at arbitrary, abrupt angles in the murk as they drifted across the floor to interpose themselves between Kleo and the four cadaver puppets that had attempted to reel her into their welcoming arms.

'Closing distance to maximize lasing effectiveness at close range.' King began to drift across the floor, seeming to follow the fourth cadaver's severed, muscular appendage still draped across the floor almost like it was a guide rail. As he approached the clustered group, his body began to shimmer with piercing starburst lines of incandescent light that bloomed across the front of his body, starting at this chest and rolling across his shoulders, arms, and head - which then stabbed across the murky gloom to illuminate the quartet of puppets. At first the stabbing, rapidly dancing rays of light seemed to glide harmlessly off of their figures, its intensity diminished by the voluminous amounts of visceral void-gunk being sprayed across the environment. As King closed the distance however, the innumerable starburst rays intensified on contact and would begin to flash-ablate whatever they made contact with.

Upon gliding directly into the awaiting cadavers' arms, evidently completely uncaring of their hostility or actions, King would then bloom like a small nova, violently incandescent brilliance tearing out from their front of their body in every direction to engulf the four hostile entities in front of him - so starkly bright that the rest of the room seemed to visibly darken from the intensity of it, a cone of shadows falling across everything situated directly behind King as everything directly in front of him was caught within the empyrean focus of his fire.

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

'Contact. They know we're here.' King relayed as his broadened, translucent form recohered and shifted, flowing like liquid sheet-ice from the back of the group, flowing around bodies and shoulders like wind to recrystallize into his Human form at the front of their formation. King flung out his hands, and vibrant, spiraling trails of light began to gleam beneath the otherwise opaque texture of his holomatrix - all converging upon his hands. As energy built-up, the etheric-saturated environs shied away from his form.

'Painting targets.' Dozens of individual lines of light emerged from King's chest, each one highlighting the head of a creeping figure as they rose or began to slough forward - with no less than three lines painting the skull of the massive, hulking ghoul that had dropped before the group. The beams were all-but invisible except to those of the team who could perceive thw low-intensity microwaves King was using for his targeting. Those who could would have seen that each individual beam seemed to be wavering, flickering in and out along their lengths as random and dense etheric particulate drifted through the station's atmosphere - for atmosphere there was, seemingly an even mix of both the station's natural environment and the oneiric chasm, in spite of all the hull breaches. An atmosphere that, seemingly, was altogether too thick for King's chosen weapon.

'Dense, exotic particulates in the atmosphere. Lasing pulses ineffective. Going to release a thermobaric blast to clear the air. Initiating optical disorientation flash immediately prior to fire. Check your sight. Firing for effect in three, two, one-'

Like a flashbang going off, King's form bloomed with intense photosaturation - so bright that it would have been blinding even through closed eyelids, and almost assuredly to all the etheric visual organs growing out of the terrain that seemed to be tracking them. As foretold, the blinding light was immediately followed by an intensity of low-pitched humming followed by a churning, electrical snap as King fired a finger-sized, radiation-stimulated bolt of magnetically contained plasma into the area before them. Scant meters ahead, the thin vacuum gradient around the plasma gave way as it rushed into the chamber's atmosphere, the magnetic force containing it collapsing and shunting all of the thermobaric energy through the direction of the breach - directly forward. The energy snapped like a blooming whip, expanding explosively in the midst of the corridor. Its actual thermal effects were minimal, the plasma being too diffuse to actually ignite anything - but it created a superheated shockwave of force that would batter and pummel and perhaps stun most of the rising corpselike figures while dry-baking their organic dermis, and - King hoped - would dispel the heavy haze of particulates that would otherwise obstruct his more effective fire.

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

"Alice is right, we need to move. Double time, let's go! Through those doors!"

"Minimize ethereal usage and keep your heads on a swivel, call out any incoming as soon as you have eyes on! Do not fire if any incoming doesn't make a hostile move, we don't need more attention on us. If they do make a move, weapons free!"

Salvator Rasch

'Wilco, providing cover.' Kind indicated, their form adopting a grimace of distaste for the twitching eel corpse that had been deposited at their feet. 'This should be invisible from the other end, kindly do not open fire through me if we draw more shots, please and thank you. I will soak up any incoming fire; just mosey through the damn door.'

Even as King's message went out, their humanoid form began to contort and shift. The surface of their clothes and skin fuzzed over with scintillating rays of soft halflight; the construct's surface texture abating and exposing ever-so-briefly the nearly crystalline and frigid internal space of their hard-light composition. Its humanoid shape deformed and expanded, briefly becoming nearly as bloblike as the puppeteer entity itself before flattening and expanding outwards into a concave-impressioned, rectangular surface that shimmered as it hung in the air before its coloration drained away, leaving behind only a high-opacity shimmer in the air akin to wavering heat with only the faintest suggestion of crystalline lines of force binding it in place to indicate King's presence.

The makeshift, transparent barrier King had reformed themselves into was not perfect - even stretched and expansive as they had become, they could not cover the entire squad in disarray as they were unless everybody decided to become comfortably well-acquainted with each others' personal space in a hurry, and the floating barrier notably hovered nearly half a meter above the floor itself. King also then continued to move, orienting to position themselves between the doorway and the etheric entities while the team repositioned.

'Lasing medium within ideal parameters; I will unleash suppressing fire in this chamber if any of those live organisms come any closer. Get a move on so I don't have to, yeah?'

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

"Noted. Taking it into consideration. Like to make a note that I'm perfectly capable of listening to what you have to say without shouting."

"You heard them. Do what you can, but don't take any big risks." He confirmed to Ilshar right before the latter started his probes.

Salvator Rasch

“No way above,” he hissed in a stifled voice. A tarrhaidim could not really be out of breath, but he was still partly in the flash of reacquainting himself with his bodily functions. “There’s ether-spawn there, huge ones, a whole pack. The cloak - they felt a disturbance, know we might be here. We need to move forward, fast.”

Ilshar Ard’sabekh

"Rapid maneuvers might tip our hand - if they are already aware of our presence, we should try and distract them without having them follow us or alert other nearby ether-dwellers nesting here in the station." King voiced, turning to both Alice and Salvator.

"If the shroud has already put them on alert, perhaps it can be repurposed? Would it be possible to make a lure that could be ejected somewhere nearby to focus their attention? Something small but enough to shake their notice off of the shroud."

"Be advised, unknown creature spotted. 10-foot invertebrate. Doesn't seem sapient, nor has it displayed hostile actions."

Rho-Hux

King's translucent form turned to follow Rho-Hux' callout. The hardlight construct somehow managed to produce a sound over the comms equivalent to a sharp, anxiety-laden inhalation.

"...I think I recognize that classification of entity, if not the exact species. It we can generate a node of qillatu and wrap it in a partial baffle cut from this shroud before ejecting it, it should go for the more obvious meal. If we just try to maintain the shroud I think it will be on our backs for the rest of this damn mission. Echo, can your scan give us a read on local atmospherics, partial or otherwise? Chemical munitions might work best here for dealing with this entity directly without raising too much heat."

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

Alert. Initiating Multi-spectrum scanning. Elaboration. Relevant information to be overlaid on friendly HUD.

Echo Domain

"What?!?" King's disbelieving voice rang out over comms. "Wait, stop! No active scans or pulses! There's no telling if there is any security out there configured to react to unverified frequencies! This is supposed to be a stealth operation!"

"Maintaining a shroud. We're not invisible, but we'll be much harder to detect in the etheric."

Salvator Rasch

"Somehow I am not too worried about all the etheric beasties and a little more worried about about all the extremely obvious and probably conscious sensory growths along with all the automated asset denial systems!" King groaned. "Or competition, for that matter! Can we please stick to passive detection only at least until the AO gets hot?"

He drifted near to the front of the group, his own wavering optical camouflage causing a distinct haze as he appeared to gesticulate wildly at them all while speaking. 'I've been on an operation like this before, and trust me, last thing you want to have to deal with is a station losing superstructure integrity prior to exploding with you in it! You should not need to be an expert or have paid attention during the mission briefing to look around here and know that there are extant etheric-electro automated security measures around, infested by oneiric organisms or otherwise and that they were clearly messing with some deeply ill-advised garbage before everything went straight into the can! If any of you can perform analysis that is a little less overt, by all means, go for it! But otherwise, kindly stop trying to arm the giant bomb we're all standing in!"

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

King, being a full construct, had no need to suit up in order to endure the pitiable conditions of hard vacuum and cosmic radiation - though whether or not the etheric forces writhing within the Sargasso were of any influence to him was less certain. As it came into view, he actually seemed to *shrink* - literally, hunching over as he eyed the derelict warily.

_{"Not this shit again."} He could be heard to utter quietly. As they all cycled out onto the station exterior, he seemed laughably underdressed for the occasion - but he glided through space with what seemed to be perfect precision, making no evident corrective maneuvers. He simply moved and went exactly how he wanted to, almost as if he had perfect motion control even in hard vacuum.

As the group struck out from the dropship and towards their chosen entry point, King's form shimmered and turned eerily translucent - light from one side of him gliding and being projected back out the other as a form of optical camouflage. Not the most effective at short distances, but from a distance or simply in a very dark space it would likely do the trick. In the shadow of the looming station, he became exceedingly difficult to pick out unless the team checked against any of the signal filters he read as being completely dead on.

"Ingress through the hatch. Others are too suspicious. We'll rotate who's on point as we go through, no sense killing any single one of us from the stress. Rho-Hux, you're up first. Let's keep it quiet as best we can."

Salvator

“Maybe the hatch is not suspicious enough,” he commented as the squad advanced towards the least ominous of the ingress points, “It’s what thinking, material boarders would use. We might not be the first.”

Ilshar

"I'm uh, with the big guy on this one, chief." King chipped in over comms. His voice was all-but cracking from evident apprehension. "This is a tiny chokepoint, probably booby-trapped, leading into a killbox, and there is some little shit waiting for us to go in so they can seal the way back out behind us." Almost as if his simple utterance would make it come true, King began swiveling about, taking in the immediate surroundings, paying particular attention to anything obstructing line of sight or any corners. He had not put out any active scans or bursts, thankfully.

"Say what you will about the big exposed hull breach; at least we would be able to get back out that way pretty easily. This hatch may as well be a coffin." His camouflaged form was practically rigid now as they came closer to the hatch, in stark contrast to his erratic bout of movement earlier - and his voice had a faint undertone of near-panic to it. Whatever the advantages of his evidently malleable form were - hiding his feelings, if indeed he had any, was not one of them.

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

"Indeed, I was part of a research team on a ship focused on the Oneiric Chasm and the Abyssical Plane. Already went in quite a few expeditions there... Which only taught me to always be on guard and never consider oneself overly 'familiar' with the Oneiric Chasm or the Abyssical Plane. I only hope the creatures down there aren't particularly troublesome. I have quite a few in mind that would make our life down there a living hell should they be left to roam freely through that maze..."

Alice

"Right...I have something of an academic background concerning Ethereal studies myself; albeit I do not have much of a talent for the arts these days. We might want to pair off our composition so everybody who is a worthless bullet-catcher has an Etherealist they can throw themselves in front of for aforementioned bullet-catching. Particularly since our AO is going to have lots of anomalous activity and zone partitioning, yeah?" He flung a lazy salute to Alice before tapping his nose and thumbing in Kleo's direction and silently mouthed: 'Not it.'

"I can attend our self-appointed leader over here..." King decreed with an easy wave while leaning over ever-so-faintly and resting an arm on Salvator's shoulder as the Voidhanger continued their efforts at the workbench - though fittingly enough, Salvator might not even have noticed the posturing, for all that King was evidently utterly weightless. "So somebody had also better go with our mobile artillery and also miss Human Supremacy here. Though speaking of the artillery..."

King did not have any evident devices enabling him to send or receive Echo's technical data, but evidently had not only received it somehow but had seemingly digested its contents almost immediately, as evidenced by his almost immediate response. "I can see why they've requisitioned you...or you are volunteering. Your fabrication manifold should help support get into that control center. Would you happen to have an estimated margin of error for that coordinate tracking?"

Even while King was voicing the question to Echo, he once again stealthily cast another electron-mediated message to Salvator.

'Going to want to give Echo a separate secure communicator our Troubleshooters don't know about. I can give you a distraction or cover if you need it to slip one their way. Signal me three pips if or when.'

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

King had done little else other than dismissively roll his eyes and pretend to sleep when the team had received the Sargasso briefing - his eyes had snapped open when the Invictoid had indicated that anybody was free to challenge Salvator's de-facto command of their squad, staring at the Invictoid Authority with unmasked distaste. He had sourly gotten up from where he was seated at the table and fallen in behind Salvator almost immediately, the wavering curtain oh photons comprising their visage taking on a shifting quality of camouflage; blending in with the shifting alien corridors of the vessel as the team moved to the armory and making efforts to stay both out of sight and mind, for the time being at least. He followed Salvator over to the workbench and stood by as the Voidhanger began modifying their shotgun.

"You got a name? Designation? Callsign? Or should we stick to calling you 'support'?"

Salvator Rasch

It was then that King reached out and placed a thumb against the Salvator's helmet - and in the next moment King's reverberating, echoing voice resonated in Salvator's ears almost unbidden, seemingly occurring from somewhere inside their own body.

'Better call them 'troubleshooters,' chief. Don't react. I'm hitting your cochlear bone with an electron stream so you can hear this, they shouldn't be able to overhear. This wouldn't be the first time the Intransigence has arranged for inconvenient individuals like ourselves to get stranded and mysteriously vanished around a space station. Can't elaborate just yet, we'll talk more later. Just keep this in mind: Our 'support' are not our friends.'

King retracted his thumb, their active camouflage patterning fading away, leaving them conspicuously opaque and eerily picture-still once more.

"No more of a construct than you are, friend. Though I'm surprised you've been tasked with overwatch for us, given the focus you'll need to get to that control center. Maybe they think we can't get our job done otherwise?" King laughed then, hunching over faintly as they leaned their photo-curtain against the workbench. There was something ever-so-slightly off about their posture - some incorrectness to the curve of their spine and the balance of their frame relative to where their center of mass should have been.

"Anyway - we should talk about our mutual objectives. You've got your own craft but with you moving around inside that station and all the Etheric mess inside, it's entirely possible some of you might get cut off from it. Likewise, with all the automated defenses we'll be dealing with, our own exfiltration craft might be at risk. Might even have to commandeer one of the vessels we're being sent to investigate if things get really bad. What is going to be our exchange protocol for objective assets for when things start going wrong?"

King seemed wholly uninterested in the contents of the armory - though as he had joined the team just a few minutes prior, perhaps he had already outfitted himself for the mission sight unseen? Though by the same token, there was no evidence of any equipment on - or inside - his person. How exactly was the contentious construct meant to fight?

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

King had paid very little attention to the Invictoid Authority's wheeling and plaintive refrain regarding the stabilization of Zanovia, instead having fallen-in with the rest of the Envenomed and taken the time to give what remained present of the group a good look. The interstellar political jockeying and the attendant excuses and justifications that came with it were scarcely different for the Intransigence than it was for the UCL, it seemed. The only meaningful difference as far as King could discern, was one of scale. The Intransigence was the equivalent of a screaming and flailing infant flinging its own waste against the walls to see what would stick (an observation King had made aloud in the past and was likely to make aloud again in the future - if not right that moment), and all the frontier skirmishing and power consolidation was doubtlessly the result of a need for internal stabilization as anything else. The General butting heads with the Invictoid more or less confirmed that - the Intransigence was suffering from growing pains.

The concern being broadcasted by the other members of the little band King had been foisted upon was a mite annoying however. King found it somewhat bizarre that any of the others should so openly care, or pretend to care. On one hand, it was nice to know some of them might have the requisite critical thinking skills needed to not throw a celebration in order to eat whatever line of bullshit their erstwhile masters might feed them - but on the other, did it even really matter?

They were all just cogs in a vast interstellar machine. They just had to do the work, and look out for their own interests in the time being. The nuanced intricacies of all the petty betrayal and optics was not something they had a hand in. The illusion of meaningful significance being force-fed to them was getting a bit too on the nose though - time to readjust everybody's expectations.

"So if I am assessing these briefings correctly, the 'perceived strategic performance' of this little band of yours has granted them the privilege of being the sacrificial bullet catchers? You do realize my skills do not entail retrieval and exfiltration of corpses, right?" King's overall tone was one of openly contemptuous mockery. As he spoke, he casually folded his hands back over his head as he leaned back against nothing in particular in the air, his projected body seeming to take on a paradoxical angle of balance.

"I suppose you offering to send me to another space station is your subtle way of letting us all know that you intend to fire us at the problem and forget it until either it or us are gone? At least give us the details on the actual teams you are sending to do the real work while we dance a distracting hanged-man's jig for the enemy. It wouldn't do for our dicking around to inadvertently inconvenience them somehow."

From the perspective of the others, the only thing that might have stood out more than King's brazen flippancy and disrespect for the Invictoid and them was the rapidity of the conclusions he had drawn. The Invictoid had scarcely drawn up the dossiers for them to review, and yet King was already speaking as though he was familiar with their contents. Perhaps he had been briefed in advance? Or perhaps he really was truly some kind of artificial intelligence, although no designed intelligence was so likely to be as openly disrespectful as King dared to be.

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

"Nice to know I can still make all the ladies swoon." King preened where he sat as Kleo was bodily hauled away, not even so much as flinching as the blood she spat all over his shirt dripped down his chest. Abruptly, his entire body seemed to ripple with undulating waves of scintillating, iridescent color - and the blood covering his shirt and boots were both violently flung away from him, some of it even splattering against the Invictoid Authority's own shield, causing it to shimmer once more as it deflected the bloody droplets.

"As for our erstwhile Commander - rest assured sir, protesting frequently and often is one of my most developed skills. I will be sure to forward all of that to you in the future." He flicked a lazy two-fingered salute Salvator's way. He did not otherwise make to move from his seated position, with his boots - or the seeming of them at any rate - still propped up on the meeting table. "Otherwise, I am something of a close-in fire-support specialist. Covering and suppression fire, wide-variety energy frequency munitions, aerial, amphibious, and space-capable environmental maneuvers. All of which will mostly be limited by how slow and inept the rest of you are, but I imagine somehow we will be able to muddle our way to realms of disheartening adequacy all the same."