TheMadAsshatter

Carvings of the Galaxy

I agree.

Carvings of the Galaxy

Already got my next post in.

Carvings of the Galaxy

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Tahlia Spade

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Seemingly out of nowhere, Tahlia heard a set of unknown footsteps enter the cockpit shortly after Owen made his entrance. She had just enough time to turn around and catch a glimpse of the... robot, thing before something that was actually fleshy (at least, relatively) yanked her hair and threw her out of the seat. She lost her balance and ended up on the grated floor, hitting her face pretty hard. "Oww... fuck." Her initial surprise and shock of being one of five people to make first contact was replaced with her training as she felt one of their captors subdue her and bind her arms behind her.

"This is what's happening, Owen!" she spat, not in anger at Owen, just in anger in general. Where the fuck did they come from? She turned around and looked out of the cockpit to see the stars and empty space make a transition into the interior of some sort of hangar. The clever bastards tricked them to catch them off guard. They had been captured before they even knew it.

The alien that had bound Tahlia forcefully picked her up and began marching her and the others out of the Artemis. "Do what they say, don't give them an excuse." She didn't dare say more lest she provoke the wrath of the creatures they were surrounded by. She did earn a piercing look from one of them, but no physical retribution, or even a verbal warning. She got a good look at the thing's face. It had a vaguely humanoid look to it, with obvious differences of course. Their bodies were very angular, with several sharp corners and tight curves around what she assumed to be their muscles. They seemed slightly taller than most people; maybe by a foot or so. It may have been intimidating were it not for a couple of things.

Firstly, the fact that they simply didn't just tase, or kill them all, and the mention of treason were signs of a structured government and diplomacy, both of which were relatively good signs. Or bad, depending on the type of government. Second, they weren't being treated particularly badly as of yet; a sign that there were some rules of engagement that they had for this sort of thing. All things that Tahlia wasn't unfamiliar with.

It occurred to Tahlia, as they marched through the various hallways, how well she was taking this, considering they had effectively been abducted by aliens. To be fair, it was likely the manner at which they were taken. It wasn't dissimilar from a regular cop arresting someone for burglary, or something. Even Tahlia had done her fair share of takedowns during training. It felt as though things would have pretty much went the same way if they were found and captured by a group of humans. She only hoped that by "treason" they hadn't inadvertently committed an act of war, or something.

The hallway opened up to what seemed to be a prison cell, which the women were promptly thrown into. It took a couple of minutes before Owen showed up, but no sign of Benji. Was he still on the ship, hiding or something? Maybe Owen had seen him. She was about to say something, but felt a pain when she opened her mouth. She felt her face and remembered the fall she took. There was a cut across her right cheek. It wasn't bleeding badly, but it still hurt. She failed to notice it before, but it wouldn't have been the first time. Nor the last, probably.

Regardless, Benji was still missing, and God only knew what they did with Rend. As far as Tahlia cared, they could keep him as a fucking pet or something. Regardless, they first needed to find out what happened to Benji, then they could worry about how they would get out of this mess.

Carvings of the Galaxy

@Atrophy Nah, it's pretty much just a filler. I did post it, so if it'll affect anything, then yeah. I doubt it, though.

Carvings of the Galaxy

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Tahlia Spade

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Tahlia kept scrolling through one of the screens next to the pilot's seat to confirm what was happening. The ship was definitely caught in something that was pulling it away from their planned course. What it was, how big it was, and how far away was unclear, but Tahlia held on to her slightly far-fetched suspicion. She supposed it wasn't exactly far-fetched. More just... hard to believe, regardless of how likely it seemed given the circumstances.

Tahlia turned around and leaned herself to one side of the chair as she heard someone entering the cockpit. Echo stood in the doorway, seemingly with a sense of caution. "Not gonna lie, we may be in a weird situation. I'll fill you in once the others show up, but for right now, I need you to get on that computer and check for any damage, mainly on the engines," she said, pointing to the monitor on the left side of the cockpit.

As she was finishing her sentence, Yazmin walked in, her arm seemingly repaired, or at least functional. "Glad to see you're not hurt," she started, examining the limb out of curiosity. "Now, if you would, I need you to get on the other computer and see if you can find something in front of the ship. Anything, I don't care what. It's still a good distance away, but we're closing on it pretty quickly," she said, gesturing to the computer on the right. "I'll tell you what's going on when Owen and Benji get here."

She turned back to the front to ensure the ship was still oriented towards the anomaly. She saw that it was, but she also noticed that the ship was beginning to decelerate. Evidently they were getting close to their new neighbors.

Carvings of the Galaxy

I'll probably throw up a short post for the sake of continuity. I feel like it would be a bit awkward to have a long-ass post addressing each character individually, on top of the main business.

Post Your Pikcha

Yay, potato-quality cell phone camera.

Carvings of the Galaxy

Brace yourselves, nerds!

Carvings of the Galaxy

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Tahlia Spade

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Upon exiting the med bay, Tahlia immediately went to her quarters, locked the door and dimmed the lights. She made her way to her bed and let herself fall onto it, burying her head into the pillow. She tried to clear her head, but it didn't work. The memories of her deployment and the result of her transgressions flooded her head with demons she thought she had buried. Why did this have to happen? Why couldn't the mission have just gone as planned? This event would have lasting ramifications on the entire crew, not least of which herself. Of course, brooding about it wouldn't do much of anything. She needed to do something to distract herself, or otherwise restore equilibrium to her psyche, and she had the perfect plan.

"FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK!!!"

She screamed into the pillow while pressing her face into it as hard as she could. As gratuitous, mindless, and unhealthy as it was, she felt slightly better afterwards. She got up and took several deep breaths, then almost without thinking about it, threw herself onto the floor and began doing push ups. She refused to stop until she was physically incapable of continuing, at which point she simply let herself collapse to the floor. She then switched to sit ups and repeated the process, simultaneously taking off her jacket and tossing it aside. She wasn't even keeping count, she just needed to sweat and work until she just couldn't continue.

Eventually, after something like 80 or 90 sit ups, her abs failed her and she fell on her back with a thud. Her arms were still shaking from the push ups, and her breathing reflected her exertion. She brought one arm over her eyes and shut them for a moment. The workout had helped, but her thoughts were still clouded. Still, she figured she had done enough to clear her head for one moment and decided the next thing to do was to take a quick shower and then get to the cockpit and try to calm herself.

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Freshly showered, clothed, and hair still damp, Tahlia left her room and made her way to the cockpit. Upon entering the kitchen, she noticed where one of the bullets had hit. It wasn't more than a meter away from the window. Dumb fuck could have jettisoned all of us in one fell swoop. Physics - 1 | Human Race - 0. She shoved her sarcasm aside and pressed on, passing through the adjacent corridor until she got to the cockpit. The door opened, and she was greeted with a similar sight as before. With the cockpit fully lit, it was hard to see anything other than a few stars out of the window. She sat herself back in the pilot's seat and dimmed the lights again, hoping to return to the state she was in a couple hours prior. She got comfortable and focused on her breathing, keeping a slow, steady pattern.

Her breathing technique didn't help much. It was easy when she didn't already have a lot on her mind, and while it generally helped, she found it more difficult to clear her mind this time. It had been well over a year since the last time she was nearly this stressed out. She let out a heavy sigh and kept trying.

Her attempt was interrupted a moment later when the ship lurched slightly. The anomaly drew her attention for a second, but she wrote it off as a stellar wind and tried to resume her routine. Not even ten seconds later an alarm sounded and the lights came back up. Tahlia immediately stopped and looked around, trying to find any indication as to what was wrong. The HUD changed suddenly, showing a sphere with what she figured was a waypoint on it, a heading indicator drifting away from that point, and a pulsating circle, low and somewhere around the 5 o' clock position, along with two warning messages.

ALERT: FLIGHT PATH DEVIATION
WARNING: MAGNETIC ANOMALY DETECTED

"What the hell?" Tahlia uttered as the engines began to spool up; the roar of the thrusters echoing through the ship. Evidently, the autopilot was trying to correct this. She looked at the ship's velocity. It had dropped dramatically, and was still dropping, even though the engines were at full power at this point. Naturally, her first instinct was to try and correct this herself. She got on the controls and scrolled through one of the displays until it brought up the autopilot. She turned it off and took control of the ship, grabbing the yoke and turning it to the left and pulling up, orienting the ship such that it was pointed in the opposite direction of the anomaly. Of course, her knowledge of astrophysics was extremely limited, and anyone that was more knowledgeable would tell her this was futile. Regardless, it made little difference in changing the ship's actual heading. It's orientation shifted, but it kept accelerating towards the anomaly, the velocity indicator still dropping.

Tahlia started looking for an override button on the controls. That's how these things worked, right? Surely there was some way to boost power to the engines. She eventually got to a power management option, which allowed her to allocate extra power to the thrusters. The ship shuddered as the extra power was pushed through the engines, but it still had barely any effect, and another warning showed up telling her that the reactors were in danger of overheating.

"FUCK!" Tahlia shouted, releasing the controls and bringing the power back. At this point, there was nothing she could do. The ship was caught; the mission was over. No doubt they were plummeting towards a black hole, or something equally horrifying and far too large to escape. They were doomed. Humanity was doomed. Tahlia stared at the HUD in disbelief. At this point, the heading indicator had them moving straight towards whatever was pulling them in. She turned the ship towards the anomaly to confirm this. Sure enough, there was a pulsing circle somewhere in the distance, and the heading indicator was right over it. She couldn't see what it was, but the indicator was there. She lowered her head and found the intercom button. She figured the crew deserved an explanation.

"Attention, all hands, this is Tahlia. I..." She stopped. It was a damn shame. Mankind had gotten so far, and their snowball's chance in hell was about to evaporate. "I regret to say that the ship is... It's changed course. I tried to stop it, but it won't budge. The ship is moving towards something. I have no idea what. On the off chance that we survive what's about to happen, brace yourselves."

That was it. That was all she could say. She brought her knees up to her face, wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her head. Tahlia had hoped that she could do something, but there was nothing to be done. They were going to hit something, and they were going far too fast to survive the impact...

Although...

Tahlia brought her head up. Clearly the ship had pre-programmed flight instructions, and if the people that made it weren't stupid, they would have designed it to avoid any significant hazards, and would have probably documented them in such a way that the ship could track them and make corrections should they move. Furthermore, even if it wasn't something that was documented, the ship's systems should have been able to recognize what it was that was pulling them; that would be the smart thing to do, at least, as opposed to simply labeling it an "anomaly". Whatever was there must have either not been there before or moved too quickly to track, and be something no one has ever documented, which could only mean one thing.

Tahlia got back on the intercom. "Disregard last message. All hands get to the cockpit." As crazy as it sounded, it did make sense. Unless she just didn't know what she was talking about and was being hopelessly optimistic. Furthermore, the possibility of what she suspected opened up a completely new can of worms chock full of possibilities that were both better and worse than the alternatives. Regardless, in a few minutes, it seemed very possible that the words "foreign relations" were about to take on a whole new meaning.

Carvings of the Galaxy

Just FYI, I have started on the next post, but it's been a bit slow going, and I'm having a bit of trouble coming up with how to write the next part. I'll try to have it up no later than Sunday night.