Thread: An Eclipse of Corruption (Vuxayl x Cricket)

Karilel had a million responses that she wanted to spit back to Xayun. She had thought about how she abandoned any hope of rescuing the crew from this planet all those years ago many, many times in the past. But doubting herself made her soft when she needed to be the unyielding commander, and she had put it behind her and tried to stop wasting time thinking about the old mission. But her thoughts would wander constantly, wondering if Xayun had been right back then and she condemned a whole ship to die, or if she had deftly avoided something that couldve cost her career. But now she was thinking this planet would have cost her much more than that. But she couldnt react to any of this drama because something much worse was unfolding. Karilel spun around to see what was going on. She was suddenly made acutely aware of the horror surrounding them. She saw blood and organs, strips of flesh. The scanners built into her physiology were trying to tell her exactly who or what the body was, when someone nervously mentioned that they should leave. As commander, she was about to agree. We need to find a way back out, maybe we can figure out how to climb up from where we fell, or otherwise find a new route she began warily, then cut herself off. Sudden movement. Her sensors were usually optimal at recognizing organic material, especially living ones. But there was still that ever-present buzzing feeling. The depth of the tunnel and whatever interference from the tunnel had stripped her technology down to the most basic of sensors, but she expected to still be able to spot these monsters right away. There had to be a technology in these tunnels that impacted her own. They could be dealing with something on par or even better than the advancements of the LautHaler. The creature sprang and the situation erupted into sheer panic. Everyone was shouting, firing guns or frozen in fear. Karilel swiveled to the scene, her blue light softly glowing around the monstrosity that now had one of the freelancers snared. Karilel instinctively took a step back out of horror, but steeled herself to afterwards to keep going. The female thing took a bite out of the mans flesh, creating an arc of blood. Karilel fumbled for her own gunshe hadnt had it out like the other guards did. She had been relying on them to keep their weapons trained on Xayun, and for the moment she was useless. Explosive gunfire was all around. Karilel even managed to get her weapon out in time to fire at the creature at the end. The collective barrage of bullets finally brought the creature down, though the freelancer man was beyond saving. The dying man gave a shuddering breath before falling silent. The only sounds that remained after the chaos were a few frenzied breaths. Karilel stepped forward to the creature. If the monster sprang to life, the android had no flesh or blood for her. But when she prodded the creature with the end of the rifle, its metal claws and additions looked perhaps savage enough to rip through her delicately folding metal. The monster did not spring back at her. Further inspection revealed that the monsters metal was woven throughout the body, either holding together the looping organs and flesh, or spearing right through the flesh like bones. Something with advanced machinery like this would explain why her systems were less than optimal, among other things. Karilels theory was that this used to be a flesh and blood female, but now enhanced with the robotics. Whether the enhancement became before or after death, Karilel could not tell. She refrained from voicing her hunch. Wild eyes were trained on her, looking for direction. What the fuck was that? someone shrieked. I cant say for sure, Karilel said. But something half flesh, half machine. She spared one more glance at the dead creature. Alright, our absolute priority is getting out of here. We can get back to our ships and hope we can get some sort of communications up to explain that this is a bad situation. The director can decide if its worth sending a much, much more prepared team after we explain all the information. Or if we should nuke the planet from orbit, She added. Abandoning a lost crew again , she thought to herself. The lost crew could be down there, being tortured to turn into these monsters, and they had no choice but to back out. Karilel looked up into the darkness. It was impossible to see where they had fallen through. We can try to get out back where we fell from, perhaps by building upwards with all this rubble. They were still surrounded by ship pieces that could be used. Otherwise we have to keep wandering. We cant just stay here and build up! someone shouted. You saw those things, there could be more! We could take shifts having a small group keeping watch, Karilel suggested. Her mechanical voice might sound calm to the untrained ear, but she was anything but. Being level headed could help in this situation, or hurt her if the others thought she was numbed to it all.