Thread: An Eclipse of Corruption (Vuxayl x Cricket)

Xayun's suit made a good job of hiding his hastened breathing as he exposed himself in front of the crew and its commander, trying to fool them into thinking he was part of the freelancers. The Laut'Haler he had been facing didn't seem to be concerned enough to press him with any inconvenient questions, and he gave a shy sigh of relief, his heart thumping in his chest. The cold, razor-sharp stare that she gave him, though, made him feel just as nervous. Even with Xayun's appreciable experience in mercenary work and other unsafe missions, the imminent danger he could feel under his skin still had an effect on him. With a deep breath and a shake of the shoulders he eased himself into the situation, now that the others believed - or rather, didn't immediately challenge the notion - that he belonged in the freelancer team, and he put on a slightly more energetic mood. Once Karilel gave the order to move, he gave a solid Yes, commander and followed her and her crewmembers, staying in the freelancer group. As they were walking, he took a few moments to better evaluate the personnel surrounding him. Compared to Karilel's group, all wearing their official military suits in impeccable condition, the freelancers looked like a bunch of alien space cowboys that had been collecting dust on some fringe-colony. Xayun tried to take some comfort in thinking that he looked at least a little bit better than most of them, or at least didn't look as bad as some of them. The groups seemed tense, he noted, and some of the freelancers seemed to have their fingers on their weapons, ready to respond to any sudden threat. Something that would be perhaps too extreme in a rescue mission on an uninhabited planet, but there was something particularly eerie about this mission, and the whole crew felt it in varying degrees. He was already sweating from the walk up to the received signal, his secondary eyes fogging up from the moisture. Halfway through the journey, one of Karilel's crewmembers sighted something gleaming on the horizon, and they quickly rushed in to the site. Once they arrived, they could see the steel beams poking out of the Kanayago's shipwreck, holding strips of insulating fabric like flags on the planet's howling winds. The ship had a massive trail of metal pieces and charred sand carved into the planet's surface behind it, having endured weather erosion, and had broken in half before stopping. Electrical wires, hydraulic systems and warped structural features poked out of the former Kanayago like guts from a machine, and cargo, machines, tools and crew belongings had been ejected in a circle around the hull's fissure point. The ship almost looked like a skeleton, most of its metal panelling having been torn from the framework, and only a few beams remaining. A few of the mission's crewmembers poked at the debris with the tip of their rifles, idly turning them around. There was no chance anyone would have survived such a crash - even if they had somehow survived the impact, the ship or whatever had been left of it didn't have the capability of providing any life support, and the Kanayago had been missing for years now. And yet, there were a few thing that definitely weren't right. Xayun himself helped turn the debris over, searching for the bodies of the missing crew - not even one was found. Not even half of one, a single limb or a dried smear of blood was inside or outside the derelict, and not even the ever-changing weather of this remote planet would have succeeded in removing all organic remains from the crash. Most of the ship's actual hull plating was missing, together with chunks from the frame that supported them it was possible that the wind had slowly removed them and pushed them around the surface like metal sails, but the extent of the missing panelling was unusually large. Spread around the ship and half-buried in the ground, only some of the machines remained some had signs of being hacked away and gutted, vital electronics seemingly torn out of them. And finally, the signal wasn't coming from the derelict's location - it was somehow still in front of them. The crew looked at each other, unsure of what to make of the contradictory data. Searching the derelict was proving to be futile - it presented more questions than answers, and they still had to investigate the signal. A few kilometres ahead, once they arrived to the signal's location... there was nothing. The planet presented its untamed wilderness at them from all sides, not a single artificial construct in sight. The crew swept a circle around the presumed site from where the signal had been emitted, and most of them found nothing. Except one of them, which struck one of the Kanayago's metal panels with her boot, half-buried in the dirt. A piece from the derelict having been swept away by the wind, most surely, but still the crew brushed away some of the dust, investigating it. Embedded in the ground, two large semi-circular doors formed what seemed like an entrance, made from plates of the Kanayago's hull. Two bundles or electrical wires were looped around a hole on each door, and it took three members pushing them on each side of the entrance to force the doors to rotate on their hinges, opening a dark entryway underground.