Dark Sectors

Anything you might want to try out that doesn't temporally or thematically fit the serial should go here. This is an ideal space for all your what-ifs and might-have-beens, as well as for your average silliness.
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IamLEAM1983
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Dark Sectors

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October 28th, 2027

The previous weeks had turned Hope's seasoned combatants and paralegal defenders into raw nerves and muscles. What had been years in the making for Aidan and most of the others had been centuries of careful observation for many others. Of them all, Meris and Nereus were those who were most directly concerned. Weeks of subterfuge and backroom deals had culminated in some of the most explosive ten seconds in Drake's life. It was all mostly a blur - all he distinctly remembered now was wearing himself hoarse as he shot at Wesley Chambers and his goons, the Black Speech at his lips, and simultaneously covered the escape of a target he knew any seasoned marksman could've clipped, if he hadn't been careful. The man formerly known as Xenophon Thanos had first put up quite a fight, unaware as he'd been of the exact nature of their attack.

Aidan still remembered the moment the light shifted in Nereus' eyes. Hope, almost painfully surging through someone who'd forgotten its uplifting grasp. Seconds later, the guru's armed retinue had started shooting at their employer, their vacant eyes hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses they'd all learned to recognize.

Chambers had tried everything. He'd even lashed the flesh of several guards together into a monstrous, hulking beast - one which Tom and Aislinn had fried to a crisp with conjured lightning and Hellfire. His mind was still swimming from it all - Najeeban seemed so risible, now... Jameson's shuttle had flown off, dangerously veering off-course when a physically-manifested blast of raw, kinetic rage knocked it aside. That had been Chambers' last hail-mary, and he'd almost managed to crash them all on the craggy coast off of Southern California.

A few days passed in Hong Kong. At first, Marinos had been docile, even somewhat groggy. Everything had proven to be too much for him to process at once, so he just followed along. Then, on the morning of the third day, Tom had been awakened by Nereus' wails. Centuries of pent-up abuse were discharged in a few hours, Marinos turning Mary's personal training facilities into a warzone with nothing but his mind. Every dummy seemed to wear Chambers' face, every target practice sheet had his jailer's silhouette. They also lost Meris for a few hours, as the long-separated couple found time to seemingly fuse back together. Even with doors closed and the blinds drawn, you didn't need to see or hear much to understand the Augur also had centuries of longing to express.Archie had been impressed: Nereus loved Meris like few immortals had seemingly loved another deathless individual. The norm involved a growing sense of distance, but the former Augur had seemingly spent centuries pining for his lover and companion.

Then, like clockwork, Preston had picked up signs of a routed Renewal's attempt to not only spin the guru's absence, but also to recover him. George and Randolph were subjected to raids at their residences but came through largely unscathed. A phone call from Archie saw to it that his brother and the Grimley Circus would take the Drakes, along with Katherine Starr and Tiara Delgado, in for further protection. As expected, their temporary new location was kept secret. If Charles didn't know where his daughter was kept, then neither did nosy telepaths from the ocean's depths. It was cold and ruthless - but it had been the right call. Still, with the Void Weavers on the chase and the Gentlemen mopping things up behind Holden Hall, all immediate ties had to be cut - and quickly.

And so, even as the Day of the Dead neared and Magnus felt the stirrings of Evil in the air around Jameson's heliport, a peculiar figure - contacted by Caliban Smith on their behalf - greeted them at the harbor's Taiang Sheng Spaceport. Tyler Renny was appropriately human-sized, but ensconced in a black-and-gray exosuit that bore uncountable signs of strain and repair. His red dot-matrix visor displayed a smiley-face that receded into two simple points, and a four-fingered hand cocked what had probably been some sort of Stetson-esque hat in another life. It was now floppy in places, the starch gone from the brown leather, and as worn-out and comfortable-looking as the padded leather duster he wore. His voice had a tinny quality to it, less like a Victorian Clank's and more like a verbose AI's - if said artificial intelligence had sported a quasi-Australian accent and what had to be a solid lifetime of burr and grit.

"Nice to meet you all," he said, nodding. "I gather you're in something of a hurry, so my men helped out Hauser's by a margin or two: you lot are officially electrochemical compounds being shipped to Sector Four's microfactories as of this moment. I've bribed everyone on this here terminal - nobody's seen you here before. As of right now, you're in the troposphere and about to make your descent to one of Marinos' Ibiza resorts..."

Nereus looked exhausted, but his eyes carried a sense of lucidity and self-assurance that had only developed in the last few days. He was still wearing the same suit he'd worn on the day of his rescue, Mary's staff having quickly taken the Augur's meagre belongings to the dry-cleaners, a few days ago.

"We're headed to Paradise, I take it?" he asked, the long and balding locks and sternum-length beard having been traded for a shorn head and a closely-trimmed goatee. As enormous as he was, he was the first Void Weaver they'd see that carried it well. Either Amaxi hadn't noticed the treachery, or She believed that pulling health and vigor out from under Her defecting servant's feet wouldn't serve as adequate punishment.

"Yarp," agreed Renny. "Armstrong Station first, then pods aboard the Gong Zillah. It's an ion-drive ship. We spend three weeks going extrasolar, then we hit the jump point for Gliese. We've always made our jumps back home from the inner reaches of your asteroid belt."

Tom seemed unconvinced. "We'll still leave a trail, even if it's covered. Do the Loyalists have operatives outside Sol?"

Renny's mask produced crackling sounds - laughter. "They've tried, for sure. Those the Vanguard didn't space, the Akari tore apart."

He sniffed, then looked at Meris. "Just FYI - we'll be at the edge of a big patch of dark space. I know you've got a swath of demons and some angels on your proverbial Speed Dial, but they'll have a hard time pinging us back. Long-dead worlds apparently fade away from angelic and demonic perception. A month or so in my neck of the woods, and you'll be all set to fix up His Majesty here into another average calamari. Xenophon Thanos'll be officially dead, and they'll need a while to start looking for Nereus Marinos."
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Re: Dark Sectors

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The archmage nodded. "Matriel is aware of the situation, and we've gone long periods of time without communication. Naberius and Sam will be in a similar situation. At the very least, they will have some indication of my status because of this," she stated, gesturing to the ring on her finger. "Even at a long distance in space, they'll know I'm still alive, despite the silence and uncertainty of where I am."
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Re: Dark Sectors

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"We're gonna have fun, I bet," Mary observed. "After a certain definition of fun, anyway."
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Re: Dark Sectors

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Renny gave Mary a fairly lopsided look, the gesture being almost birdlike thanks to the absence of facial features. "I'm guessing you might, Jameson. Hong Kong's basically Paradise with nicer suits and pricier cars, anyway." he said, after which he considered Meris' words.

"Magical ring, huh? Well, if you say so, Your Highness - I'm just used to you people getting all wistful and mushy on me and my guys a few weeks in. We've got lakes, but nothing like your oceans. Not sure how your pelt's gonna take to it all, honestly."

He headed inside the shuttle, where he sat next to a rather curious woman at what had to be the co-pilot's seat. She looked human enough, but her skin was of a light shade of purple with some gray undertones, and her one visible eye was almost neon-blue, her iris feeling as though she packed the mild cousin to a lich's via-absorption capabilities.

"Zoraya, may I present to you the very official sixty kilograms of nickel and the ten gallons of ionized sterile water we're taking back to the Zillah... You'll know them better as Mary Jameson, Meris and Aislinn McConmara, Nereus Marinos, Aidan Drake and Archibald Holden."

The girl's hair hung over an eye in a slightly punkish 'do, her soft lilac lips curling into a worn smile. "Heya," she said, her consonants distorted by a lifetime of space-side Russian, "I'm with the Vanguard. Space Mages, more or less. The faceless cowboy reject over here says he runs most Sectors, but he doesn't set foot in Three or Six without mine or Mother's say-so.
- Come on, it's just a social call!" protested the Duster. Zoraya's eye twinkled at these words.

"It's an important social call. We like you, Tyler, but we like that you obey our rules even more than we do you," she said, a teasing level of playfulness mingling with perhaps a smidgen of aristocratic haughtiness.

"Remember what happened to Mox, the last man to level a gun in my face?
- You tore him apart with a fist-sized black hole you stuck in his chest with a punch of some kind," added the Duster with a shrug. "So?"

Zoraya's skin faintly seemed to glow in response, if by glow you could refer to an odd sense of pitch-black radiance creeping outwards from her skin, darkening her cheekbones and temples. She raised a hand casually, contemplating her own fingers even as the air around them seemed to blue-shift, creating vibrating, ghostly trails of her own hand. The pilot flashed a smile, exposing perfect pearly whites.

"So you have a six-shooter that's at least two hundred years old, and I'm packing a monofilament blade and the ability to turn your bullets into useless pellets with the density of a car. I'm saying we like you just the way you are."

Nereus was slightly taken aback by the exchange, and he couldn't help himself but to send Meris a shocked glance and a few telepathic comments.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we supposed to be heading away from Dalarath? These two are sticking to the old song and dance you might remember from a few centuries ago - it doesn't exactly inspire confidence." 
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Re: Dark Sectors

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Aislinn waved to Zoraya. "I take it the Vanguard's liking of Renny just the way he is allowed you to agree to flying us there?" she asked the pilot.

"Nereus, our options for hiding from Chambers are limited. You can't expect a place that was previously overrun by outlaws to be like Sesame Street. I understand that you want to get away from that type of behavior and mentality, but the authorities on Earth see us as criminals, so we can at least stay on Paradise until things improve enough for us to return there. I hate to say to be thankful for the aid that we did receive, but that's where we're currently at; our personal moral objections will just have to take a backseat for the time being. We're on survival mode," Meris answered back, giving him a sympathetic look. "You also have to remember that I have had to do some questionable things while globetrotting and playing a lethal game of whack-a-mole with Dalarath's plots. It's not fair, but that's just the way it is."
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Re: Dark Sectors

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Nereus seemed unconvinced. "I mean, I suspect they're not as murderous as my kind, but I just-"

He picked his seat in the shuttle and lowered the safety harness over himself, pausing to figure out how to widen it using pressure-release catches. After a few tries, he was buckled in in a manner that didn't look too restraining, even if he did take two seats.

"I'm tired, I suppose. Not so much physically as mentally. Psychologically."

Perhaps sensing the former Augur's troubles thanks to his body language, Three lowered his own harness into place and gave the big Squid a quick shoulder squeeze. "Once we'll have unpacked, you'll see that there's still room enough for an actual sense of friendship or brotherhood, in Paradise. There's good people there, you just need to look out for them. If it turns out I'm wrong, then it won't be too much of a problem."

Nereus scoffed in slight confusion. "Why is that, mister Drake?
- Because we'll be there. We'll spook the paranoid asshats with this thing called trust, and show them how much we can get done if we work as a team."

Zoraya looked back at Aislinn. "Tradition does count for something," agreed the young woman, something to her skin swirling on top of her base light purple tone, what had previously looked like pale highlights actually fluctuating, proving to be dormant manifestations of the power that rested within her. The darker patches of a few seconds ago retreated, that whitish sheen she'd displayed soon requiring intense focus to be so much as properly discerned.

She ran through a pre-flight checklist without naming items, Renny keeping pace with the seasoned hands of a frequent pilot. "It's more a case of him telling me my people's sworn enemies might gain a foothold or even take out valuable assets if someone wasn't around to keep an eye out for you. There's others like your Void Weavers across this galactic arm alone, so there's reason enough to believe those you call the Others actually have untold numbers of servants across the galaxy. There's also people who benefit from their schemes tangentially. You'll probably meet one or two of them once you inevitably go tourist and ask Tyler to take you to what's left of the old jails."

The woman looked at Aislinn through what seemed to be a rear-view video feed and smirked. "If by meet you mean watch a comatose hunk of flesh drool and snore, that is. The last official beneficiaries of the old prisons on Paradise are over fifty thousand years old on average. Even when the Riot happened, our thieving and mass-murdering ancestors took one look at people like Sargoth of Kalla and said Nope. These fellas are staying sound asleep, thank you very much."

Archie seemed intrigued. "Sargoth of Kalla? What manner of name is this?!"

Zoraya made a face in the rear-view feed. "It's an asshole's name, for sure. He's Shardar, a species from outside our galaxy. They have cheap FTL travel and cellular regeneration capabilities that make your best speed-healers look like chumps. Biologically, they're mostly organized and hyper-efficient cancerous masses on two legs, which is what makes them so adaptable. They can survive anywhere - and they think the Milky Way is their hunting preserve. Kalla's basically you, Holden, if being a Lord means you actually own a couple star systems with a few hunting cottages thrown across 'em.

We don't know what he did that forced the Wardens to imprison him and impound his ship, so long ago, but we found Shardar DNA on Gliese. We think he might've had something to do with the extinction of Wardens on the whole.
- And this charming fellow is asleep?"

Renny sniffed and tossed his head in his own rear-view feed. "Yep. Pumped full of nanites and nutrients. Like all our long-term guests, the cradle he's in keeps him hooked to muscular stimulators and takes care of everything from urine to solid waste. He's let out in low gravity once a week so therapeutic rigs can put his limbs through tone-maintaining exercises without waking him up."

Holden seemed surprised. "This is altogether more sedate than our Karthians' idea of stasis."

Renny smirked, the gesture translated as a winky-face Emoji on his visor. "The Wardens ran a prison - not a gulag. All the trades we picked up, all the schools we put together, they're all thanks to the libraries, vocational training centers and Social Services systems the Gliese natives put together. As far as we know, they wanted to treat their galactic cluster's criminals - give them a chance to return to their own species and cultures as productive members of society."
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Re: Dark Sectors

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Mary took her time settling in, since she had to set her sword to one side in order to fit in the harness properly. She was keenly interested in the pilot's procedures, being a pilot herself of course. "Fifty thousand years? That's kind of a lot," she commented at one point. "I guess Earth is just one marble in a whole field of the gods' playthings, huh."
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Re: Dark Sectors

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"That's certainly a valid way of seeing it. From what I know, Earth is God's focus, but other parts of the universe were created and then left to their own devices. Whatever deities exist possibly stepped in to fill the gaps, if they didn't side with Amaxi and Her brethren. Hence why Paradise has its plethora of gods," Meris mused, getting into her own harness.

Grimacing at the information about Sargoth of Kalla, Aislinn looked in the direction of Zoraya's monitor. "Well, if God was responsible for the Shadar's creation, They made a walking god-mode if there ever was one," she muttered.
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Re: Dark Sectors

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"I like to quote Ian Malcolm on that one," replied the mutated human. "Life finds a way. If the Shardar are that tough on the genetic level, it means their corner of the universe wasn't conducive to life the way you or I might understand it. I doubt God is as perfect as some missionaries of yours try to depict Her as being - there being a bunch of other gods and tutelary spirits besides angels or demons kind of demonstrates that. My guess is other people pitch into Creation from time to time, even if the fact that we have stable laws of Physics and pretty solid standards for habitable planetoids points at a directing instance."

She shrugged. "I mean, everyone on Paradise is carbon-based in some way or another."

A few screen taps and switch flips later, she nodded at Renny. "Pre-flight checks out. Departure window's in the green, gravity stabilizers are nominal. Armstrong Station's sent us a flight path to the Gong Zillah on one of their umbilical freighters - the USN Von Braun. Their captain's apparently a veteran from the early days of Luna's colonization, one of the colony's former Lieutenant Marshals - Diego Asher."

The screen filled in with a mugshot of an emaciated man of vague Latino extraction, his side shot showing evidence of bone implants designed to counter the satellite's low gravity. Cosmic radiation often triggered massive calcium loss, long term residents of the moon being forced to shore up their bones and vital organs with minor sustaining implants. Children born away from Earth's gravity well typically grew up tall and rail-thin, Asher being no exception.

Nereus craned his head forward and to the side and chanced a look at the monitor. "This man doesn't look too well.
- Armstrong's Paradise with more SpaceX and Virgin Industries nerds, plus some fogeys from the NASA days," replied Renny. "No blue skies or obvious day-night markers for years makes anyone a little loopy. If you're sane, you have a barrage of tics and nothing else. If you're not, the Marshal's men have a file on you and you've probably done anything between extortion and murder. So yeah, Asher probably left the force to stave off his dropping off into Crazytown."

Suddenly, the ship's radio erupted into loud static, Zoraya immediately flicking the channels knob to another position with a curse. "Pieceashit comms," she muttered, trying to look merely annoyed when her expression suggested something troubled her. She found the Taiang Sheng frequency and started a rapid-fire Cantonese-English hail with the control tower, fast enough and with a sufficient amount of  abbreviations and new terms to make even Mary's head spin. Outside, the shuttle's thrusters warmed up even as its platform rotated, positioning the craft in-line with a series of holographic markers that appeared over the cockpit's reinforced glass.

A tiny alarm chimed moments later, Renny reflexively flicking its volume knob down while enabling the rear-view camera feed. Behind them, and in the hangar, they would distantly see some signs of alarm or of a disturbance in the control tower. Renny zoomed in, the shuttle's rear camera being more suited to tracking celestial objects than for high-resolution terrestrial imagery. In a burry, grainy rendition, they'd see one of the tower technicians fall away in a spray of pixellated blood, as a man with dark, purplish skin, dark spots that had to be sunglasses, and the hazy lines of suggested tentacles walked in and opened fire across the room. In short order, he was seen walking towards one of the consoles.

Having strapped himself in, Three was powerless. He sent the others a horrified look and shouted. "COVER YOUR EARS! GET US AIRBORNE NOW!"

Black Speech erupted in the outer speakers, Aidan recognizing the Chamberlain's clear, concise and surgical delivery. He didn't waste time enthralling anyone and only voiced a single, all-encompassing command.

"Stop the shuttle on Pad Four - at all costs."

All noise stopped outside. It was as though everyone, from the flight controllers outside to the passengers coming and leaving, had all reached the same state of stupor. Then, as cockpits opened, gates were opened and padlocks cleared, a human stampede rushed for their position.

"If I burn and boost us out I'll roast at least fifty tourists!" barked Zoraya. "We'll never be able to send anyone back to Earth again, they'll be accomplices in a murder case!
- Close the rotor shields and push the reactors!" suggested Renny. "Push them back with hot air!
- Same effects, moron!"

Nereus looked down in what might be misconstrued as dejection, only to look up a few seconds later. "I have an idea, but it's a patently insane one!
- Hit us, big guy!" barked Tyler.

Nereus looked at the camera feed. "The magic users draw a shield around this shuttle, while you unlock the gravity stabilizers!
- You want to make an intrinsic field around a spacecraft?!" retorted Zoraya. "What are you trying to do - launch us into the sun?!"

Marinos' tentacles moved uneasily. "No - but I think I could redirect gravity for a few minutes; float us out of the spaceport. You should be able to start boosting once we'll be a mile away overhead. With less atmospheric resistance, you'd break off into space much faster, too. The sooner we leave Earth's immediate radio coverage, the better.
- Does that involve more head-scrambly shit?
- Whispered head-scrambly shit, yes," he retorted. "There's enough noise outside thanks to your engines and the enthralled that you wouldn't hear it. I wouldn't want you to, in  any case."

Outside, muffled pounding noises began to be heard. The ship's onboard translation suite plastered subtitles over the video feed, showing enraged and desperate people, most of obvious Chinese origin, that angrily shouted at them and attempted to climb onto the craft. Many were already injured, having already trampled over one another in their mad dash for the small spacecraft. In the distance, the broken or limp bodies of those who hadn't survived the stampede could be seen, a few of them painfully pulling themselves along the floor, their bruised or broken faces filled with the same mad desperation.

"He says you can't leave!" they all screamed. "We can't let you leave! WE CAN'T LET YOU LEAVE!" 

Renny sighed nervously and looked at Jameson. "We'll need firepower in case someone with know-how finds the emergency door release. Tear off that ceiling panel there," he said, pointing, "you'll find a flight rig that'll prevent you from getting sucked out if we leave with the bay open - and a dart rifle. It's not cybergear, but it's designed to hook to standard ports like yours so it's a tight fit. If you do get sucked out, the cabling has a twenty-meter limit. There's a button on the rig that starts the winch and that'll pull you back in - assuming we don't reach hard vac before then."
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Re: Dark Sectors

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Alarm momentarily blanched Meris' features, but desperate resolve replaced it. Upon hearing Nereus' idea, she whipped her head around to look at Tom and Aislinn. "This is going to be a helluva spell we have to do! Start focusing and get ready to raise a shield," she said quickly, licking her lips nervously.
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