• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Chapter 2: Invasion or Cooperation?

Acewing13

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Outremer System, O-1/Bohemond, Base Alpha

RTTTT. RTTTTTTTT. RTTTT.

Caleb grimmaced as he fired another burst into the swarming mass of spiders, turning to run again as he tossed the empty magazine aside. "Keep going, keep going!" he yelled as he reloaded.

"We'll never make it," another soldier replied, before crying out in agony as he was pounced by a green spider and torn apart by the monster's pincers.

"Fuck," Caleb said, firing a burst into the distracted spider, before continuing his run. "Get to the landing pad, damn it," he added, turning to fire from the hip at the swarm.

RTTTT. RTTTTTTTT. RTTTT.

"Come on, the shuttle's landing," he said, pointing at the shuttle coming into view. "Forward, men, forward!"

The ISOC soldiers rallied, putting on an extra burst of speed, firing on the run to get back to the landing pad before they were overrun. The group got to where the shuttle had dropped them off, just before the spiders caught up to them.

"Hold them back," Captain Schembri said, putting his rifle to his shoulder, firing single shots into the monster's heads, their dead bodies causing the spiders behind them to stumble. "The shuttle's coming. Hold the line!"

The soldiers responded to their Captain's call, sending a storm of lead at the spiders, the dead visibly piling up in front of them.

The jets of the shuttle quickly became audible over the cacophany of gunfire and spider screeching, with some of the men cheering at the prospect of escaping the nightmare.

WOOOM, TSSSSSSS, BOOOM

The soldier's hope died as they suffered through the dual explosions of the alien laser ionizing the air mere meters above their heads and the shuttle's fuel tanks ripping the craft apart as the weapon did it's damage.

They weren't left to mourn their loss for long, as the spiders took advantage of the humans' distraction to swarm forward, overwhelming the thin white line. Caleb screamed in frustration, before being bowled over by a black monster.

Having pinned it's prey, the spider hissed in the human's face, spittle hitting his face before closing in for the kill.


BEEEP. BEEEEEEP. BEEEP.

"Fuck!" Caleb said, swiping his arm through the air as he sat up from his bed, before realizing that he wasn't back on the island that had killed a large group of his friends and associates.

BEEEP. BE-

"Shut up," he muttered, heart still racing as he reached over to turn off his alarm.

Fucking damn it all, he thought, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. You're fine, Caleb. You're safe. So are your subordinates, thanks to a spider in fact. Well, most of the subordinates. He frowned at the reminder, but shook his head and just focused on his breathing to calm his heart.

Time to get going, despite not getting enough sleep, Caleb thought, sighing as he slipped out of bed and started for the bathroom.

Halfway through his wakeup routine, his pad beeped with a message, "Report to the General's office at the earliest convinence."

In other words, Caleb thought as he spit toothpaste out of his mouth, get here now. Though, it's not drop everything and run to the barricades urgent. Otherwise, the message would have been delivered by a klaxon.

[more writing here]

"Captain Schembri, reporting to the General's office."

[more writing here]

"Some bright spot decided to call the particular strain Tantalus' algae. Fitting myth at any rate."

[TL;DWY - Caleb talks to the General, get info dump on issues that have occured due to the events of chapter 1. The Statesman, Winston Churchill, is effectively destroyed, the surviving crew joined the base's personnel. An emergency 'black box' ship has been sent back to civilization with an report of what happend and a request for support. Food's running tight, due to the long term storage being kept on the starship. People are dealing with the posting turning from weird to the frontline of an alien war, with varying degrees of success. Focus of the scientific personnel is now either trying to talk to the Spindileggius that the team brought back or converting fungus into something edible. Military are being focused on taking back the ruins and the weapon before reinforcements show up in a month and a half or so. Caleb and the group are charged with performing recon on the island before the general assault. Caleb asks if diplomacy is an option, but the General shoots that down.]
 

Acewing13

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Caleb sighed as he sat down in the empty conference room, setting his datapad on the table in front of him. After taking a longing look at the empty coffeemaker, he picked up the datapad again and messaged the group.

Meeting in conference room 2 to go over new orders. Both science and military personnel required. - Captain Caleb Schembri

With the message sent and no coffee to keep him awake, Caleb tried to keep himself busy with paperwork, but was soon taking an unscheduled nap, head laying on his folded arms.

Captain Elizabeth Bakarra hadn't slept much after they got back to somewhere that vaguely seemed like civilization. Too much work to do, and sleep wouldn't come to her much anyway when she tried. So she fell back on her discipline, face eternally stony and weapons always on, she kept putting herself where she was needed. The frontlines, security around the base, dealing with the dead. She bittled it all away and kept moving. There would be time for tears when the people in this base were back in their respective homes and off this pointless world.

The call to a meeting wasn't met with happiness, but instead of grumbling she sighed and freshened herself up. This meant only cutting her hair down a bit to a shorter style, better for warfare she'd learned, and combing it. That was about all she could do with her self-imposed schedule. Entering the conference room she saw the sleeping body of the Captain, and promptly slammed her fist on the table beside his head to wake him up. "Wake up, make yourself presentable." She muttered, the fatigue in her voice apparent, and her throat ever so slightly raspy from yelling at people for hours.

"Oww," Caleb said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he straightened up. "Yes, ma'am."

The weeks after the battle at the ruins seemed a blur to Sergeant Patrick Turner. He spent most of his time filling sandbags and burying comrades in an attempt to prevent him from thinking too much about that day. It didn't help. Every day it seemed like more bad news. First the meals started getting smaller until it was almost nothing. Then it was passing by the med-bay and seeing all the faces staring back, asking for help or release from their pain. The quiet days were always the worst. The phantom sounds of skittering always kept him on edge. He used to try and get through it by talking with some of the other Atlantican personal but the wishful thinking and the fond memories only made him wish to be home even more.

When his datapad pinged he headed to the conference room wondering if this was about another shortage. Maybe water this time? He'd heard rumors that the water purifier's filters were on their last legs from the maintenance department. He shuffles into the conference room and salutes his superior officers. "Alright what's the damage now? Water? Are we finally out of smokes? If so then please give me the heads up so I can lock my stash up." He peers over to the empty coffee pot and to Captain Schembri and jokes half heartedly. "Yeesh out of coffee now? How will the base ever run now?"

"That's the question," Caleb replied, smiling as he shook his head. "I'm told we'll get full rations before any action, so I'll suffer through the withdrawal headaches until then."

Jackson looked like a zombie as he lay on his chair, the back leaning back so far it might as well have been a bed. By all that was known and holy he damn deserved a bed. "Zese Gehirnverweigerer's have me working in gods damned biology ven zere's so much more to explore here zan zis damned moss." Looking at his empty coffee cup reminded him of the very very very good reason of why this algea was so important however and while it didn't improve his mood it did put things in perspective. While he wasn't the best at these experiments he was still a very smart person, he knew without figuring out how to turn this alien greenery into something that humans could at least derive nutrients from was important to stave off starvation.

His brain was fried with equations and facts on the artifacts he had been looking over for months now. Some of the artifacts seemed useful in the endeavor of not starving and others were either useless or actively harmful to plant growth and similarly food growth. The vast majority of the exercises seemed in vain, the moss just had too much toxins from sulfur to mycrocistyins. The best he and the other braniacs could think of would be composting the algea to expand the already growing garden dome. Even that however was off the table because they have maybe enough food for one or two weeks, not much time when it comes to feeding a large base of people.

He was startled out of this general degredation of his mood and sanity by his tablet buzzing under his ass. After some careful redistrobution of weight he managed to finangle the PDA out and looked at the message before groaning and reaching for the tea mug..... which was still as empty as the last time he had checked. "Noooo ve don need to stock amenities. Vee have enough to last till the next zipment." Jackson mumbled under his breath as he went to the meeting. The sleep deprivation giving him a slightlimp.

The door to the conference room edged open, revealing a rather tall and gangly lad with messy coffee coloured hair decorated with a teal streak. He looked a little confused, but his eyes (partially concealed by the glare of light on his round glasses) lit up as he realised that he was, in fact, in the correct place. From his surprised body language, it seemed like this was a rare occurence. Nonetheless, the man entered the room, running a hand through his tousled hair before clearing his throat, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet. He began with a deep breath, almost exaggerated.

"H-Heee-Hello, I am Benjamin H-Hase. I'm your new...." he paused suddenly, looking frustrated, before holding up a finger in pause. "New linguist. Sorry. S-Stammer." Benjamin, as he had introduced himself, grimaced slightly at the admission of having a stammer, a slight flush coming to his face. Of course he had practiced for this very moment, but it didn't stop the issue from happening in the moment. "I uh... I-I'd like to add that.... I'm.... not here to r-replace..." he looked towards a post-it note on the front of his notebook before continuing, "Doctor Grey."

Eliza, Captain Elizabeth Bakarra, fixed the new guy with a hard stare. Tall, muscular, with the eyes of someone who was so goddamn tired (though that seemed to be going around) she was a formidable sight, even apparently exhausted. She just sighed at him, pointing authoritatively at a chair. "You couldn't anyway skinny britches, sit down, it's talk time."

Seeing the Conference room open Niu lumbers along and ducks his head into the doorway about to enter only to stop face level behind one of the bases more human members, as the captain is speaking ""...itches,sit down,its talk time"" he lets out a snort onto the back of the person blocking the doorway and in a bass tone akin to barry white "Astroneer Kuaile reporting as ordered"

Sitting towards the back of the room is one of the newer soldiers, this one in his late 30s and wearing the uniform of the Gemeinschaft der Welten Space Marines. Lt Montgomery lounges back nonchalantly in his chair, waiting for the briefing to begin.

Benjamin struggled to meet the woman's eyes - she assumed this person was Captain Bakarra, but he didn't want to assume. "S-skinny... britches..." he stammered, repeating the nickname under his breath as he moved to sit down before jumping slightly at the sensation of breathing on the back of his neck. He turned around. Oh! A Daqin! Benjamin straightened his glasses, nodding towards the Daqin with an excited smile that he could barely contain.

Before he managed to embarass himself further, Benjamin sat in the seat that the Captain had gestured to, fixing as many people as he could with a kind, if not slightly goofy, smile. He set out his notebook on the table, opening it to the next page and clicking his electric stylus into activation. A strand of his hair fell in his face, which he quickly brushed back.

"You heard me, Skinny Britches," Captain Eliza confirmed with a gruff tone, then looking at the beast behind him and fixing him with the same commanding look. "You, big boy, if you can't fit in a seat, stand in the corner and look menacing, makes us look good." She herself stood behind the Captain that was in charge, and seemed to had taken it upon herself to order people around.

Nodding he takes a seat down at the table pulling out a datapad ready to scrawl down highlights from today's meeting.

"Alright," Caleb said after looking between the gathered personnel and his datapad, "Looks like most everyone's here. Of course, that can change, who knows what the REMFs will pull next, but we'll consider this the full team for the moment. So, let's go over what we're all going to be doing. In short, our job is first going to be reconning the enemy encampment ASAP, basically see what's changed in the last two weeks. For this, it'll mainly be military personnel, though unless one of us can understand some amount of Aos Si, we're going to be bringing Dr. Hase with us. Our second job is that we'll be in the second wave of the main assault, scheduled for two weeks from now, with our goal being to disable the alien anti-orbital weapon. For this, everyone is going to be going, since we'll need the science personnel to help us figure out what to disable or break to make sure our rescue doesn't also get shot out of the sky when they show up."
 
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Acewing13

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Looking around the room, Captain Schembri continued, "Know that it's a big favor to not be in the first wave. After looking at the venom that Dr. Grey was injected with, we're expecting huge casualty percentages. We'll have some armor available, but most of that, like many things, was stored on the Churchill, so none of us are going get it. Beside that cheery note, any questions so far?"

Jackson slumped through the door and walked slowly to the chair near the end of the captains talk and collapsed into a chair and seemed to start dosing off, not by choice.

Eliza, who hadn't sat down, moved her way to Dr. Jackson's seat, and slammed her fist into the table closest to him to wake him up. Having done that, she finally responded to the Captain. "So, we're bringing Skinny Britches with us on a recon mission? Because that went so well last time." She said with her arms crossed, frowning darkly. "People are going to die, and the best bet we have is to just push on through? Can't the nerds make some sort of anti-venom or something, is that how that works?"

"If we had the equipment to make an anti-venom and a year or so, sure," Caleb said with a shrug. "I'm told there's a couple of people working on it, but most people that could help with that problem are working to make sure we're not stuck eating a quarter of an MRE for a meal. And apparently it's complicated to figure out what parts of the alien venom are the neurotoxin, let alone how to neutralize them."

Monty, while looking relaxed before the briefing, is now listening intently. When he speaks, it isn't the plummy refined accent most expect from an Englishman, it's the hard tone of the Northern Counties. "Sorry if I'm speakin' out of turn, Guv, but ya did say this was a recce job. 'Ow close we gettin' if we need a civi translator?"

"The general gave me some discretion," Captain Schembri said, glancing at the notes he'd made during his personal briefing, "but the main thing is figuring out where their anti-orbital weapon is and how to disable it. If it's obvious where the weapon is from far away, then Dr. Hase just got some fresh air. If not, then we might have to look at either re-entering the vault where we found our "friendly" spider, where the doctor's knowledge of Aos Si will be important. Might find something that Dr. Grey missed or didn't mention the first time."

Monty nods at each point made, "Fair enough, guv. If we can't see the cake, we'll 'ave to ask for some... and I ain't much of a talker... so point made, eh!" The soldier rubs his chin, "But we'd best take enough gear in case the frying pan turns out to be a fire, eh... Do we have enough men for Direct Fire Support to be set up if we have to go in?"

"If you're asking if we'll have any additional support for the recon, besides being dropped off by shuttle beyond what we think is the weapon's line of sight, no. If you're volunteering to set up a sniper position," Caleb said with a smile, "just give me a list of equipment you'll need requisitioned, the sooner the better."

"'Appy to guv, if you 'ave enough people for the close up work..."

Benjamin listened to the brief, offering a little wave when he heard his name, a little flick of pride in his chest as he wriggled slightly in his chair. He was happy to be here, but he was also aware of the circumstances that brought him here - he wouldn’t be here had Dr Grey not died, and that did make him somewhat… uncomfortable. He had been necessary for his knowledge of the Aos Si language and culture, but didn’t know too much past that. Not that Benjamin was fussy, he was just incredibly happy to apply his area of academic expertise to the real world.

At the mention of no armour, Benjamin shifted uncomfortably. He had been relying on some level of armour. He was fairly nimble, sure, but he wasn’t… the best… when it came to physical fighting. He had never handled a gun in his life before, not beyond the day long intensive training he had in preparation for this.

“S-Skinny…” Benjamin repeated under his breath again, furrowing his brows in some form of subtle anger and sitting more upright than he had been, allowing his body to extend to its full height. “M-Maybe if you s-spoke another l-language you wouldn’t n-n-n-neee-need me,” Benjamin murmured under his breath, covering it up by shuffling his papers, face flushing slightly as he realised that insulting an incredibly muscular soldier was not a good idea.

As Monty spoke up, Benjamin smiled a little to himself, fixing on the man’s interesting accent and dialect. He’d have to perform some sort of a case study on him… of course, in secret. Most people didn’t like it when Benjamin studied them, and he didn’t blame them, it did include a lot of absent-minded staring as he thought about different features. He suddenly snapped back into reality as his name was mentioned, clearing his throat slightly and shifting, making it acutely obvious that he had just been day-dreaming.

“Y-Yes… I am… t-t-trained as a diplomat,” Benjamin left out the fact that his training had only been six hours long, “a-and I can pro-promise that I don’t s-s-s-st-stammer in Aos Si.” He chuckled nervously as he finished the joke, before flushing and staring down at the table, pushing his glasses up on his nose. He fixed his gaze on a coffee stain on the table. Cool.

Patrick chuckles as Benjamin mentions his occupation "Diplomat aye? You gonna talk em to death while they..." He mimicks, with his hands, two pincers closing down on his neck while he mouths a scream. "But hey! Maybe this one won't try petting the damned things this time around so maybe this excursion isn't doomed afterall."

Eliza looked at Dr. Benjamin with narrow eyes, too tired to be taking this shit right now. Even still, at his 'full height' he was sitting in a chair, and Eliza was not. Towering over him, walking over to his seat, she leaned down to his side, staring him in the eyes. "I don't need to know another language, Thin Legs, because we have smart guys like you. Maybe if you worked out for more than a grand total of never you wouldn't need me." She poked his chest, smiling sarcastically. "So, lets call it symbiotic and leave it at that, Bony Boy."

Benjamin blushed at Patrick, before barely managing to conceal a frown. It would have been cool to pet the creatures, but then he had to remember that they were an already existing culture. And that, you know, they were pretty deadly. As Eliza bent down, his eyes widened and his breath hitched in his throat, eyes flitting between her eyes and the table. "Y-You like n-ni-nick... nicknames," he said quietly, feeling a little bead of sweat form on his forehead. Maybe he should workout more. Benjamin was a pretty decent swimmer, having been on the university swimming team, but that was about it. Weights and athletics were an unknown concept to the man. "I-I... I am also wi-willing to offer small...." he paused. "Small lessssssons in Aos... Aos Si."

Good, the boy knew his place. Eliza huffed, standing back to her full height, not one to slouch even with a minimal amount of sleep. "That would be great, but I doubt you're going to be speaking it on this trip anyway. The spiders don't speak it, and any elves are long gone from this world. That much we know." She huffed again, and left the scientist to his own personal space. "I would suggest, kindly, that any slim scientific doofues train their bodies for the next week or so. It won't do much, but maybe it'll... what's that word, maybe it'll have a 'placebo' effect."

Caleb blinked a few times at Eliza and Benjamin's interaction, chuckled, and said, "You're more likely to be reading Aos Si than anything, yes. Great idea though, Captain Bakarra. Would you mind overseeing that? I think you'd be able to...encourage Dr. Hase to get the best results from that."

Eliza was conflicted between being annoyed at being given more work to do, and being interested in watching an entire room of nerds actually working out. That would be an enjoyable sight, seperate the wheat from the chaff, or the chaff from the stronger chaff. They already weren't wheat. She was wheat.

"If that's an order, I'll do it." She agreed, shrugging. "I don't need sleep anyway."

"Thank you, Captain," Caleb replied with a nod. "Forward me some of your paperwork later, don't want to overload you." After making a few notes on his datapad, he looked up and asked, "Any other questions or concers so far?"

Eliza's face suddenly froze, and she leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. Looking at nothing in particular as if deep in thought, she mumbled to herself, "Shit, did I have paperwork to do?"

Looking over the mission briefing on his datapad he focuses without lookign up, "Mam, will be hoofing it or will we have a ground vehical to get us close? also..should we encounter any unknown devices are we to secure them and bring them back or leave them where they lay for a research team?"
 

Acewing13

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"It's an hour or so shuttle ride to the ruins," Caleb said, forwarding a map of the planet to the group's datapads. The surface of the planet was broken into a number of archipelagos, with a number of markers dotted across the map, with two of the most promenient ones labeled, Base Alpha and Ruins, being on seperate islands. "From what we've been able to gather from studying and 'communicating' with the Spindileggius, it seems like they both hear and 'talk' with the hairs on their bodies. Seeing as they're covered in said hairs, we're going on the assumption that they're fairly sensitive to sound. So, we'll be dropped off on the farthest point of the island from the ruins, theoretically a thirty minute hike away, but with how mountainous the terrain is, it'll probably take at least a few hours to get to a place where we can overlook the ruins, where we'll make a decision on how to proceed from there." Looking around the room, he continued, saying, "The shuttle will be on standby, ready to pick us up in case we run into trouble, but there'll be a delay in calling them in and being able to evac. I'd like to err on the side of caution, but we do have a duty to get intel that will make the general assault work. If any of you have suggestions on how to accomplish this task, now would be a great time to bring them up."

"Well if recon snake was ever around maybe they'd be useful." Eliza muttered, still leaning against the wall. "But I doubt that. So instead we need intel in some other way." She huffed, looking to Benjamin. "If Skinny Britches is our best bet for talking to that insect we've got, we need to give it a shot. I bet that beast can give us intel on their tactics, abilities, weaponry. If only we could speak to it."

"I c-caa-can help with the paperwork..." Benjamin offered, tapering off as he spoke with a red flush of "this woman hates me" appearing on his face as he busied himself with re-ordering his spotless pile of paper. At the mention of exercise, Benjamin frowned a little - but, he supposed that his past swimming accolades would come in somewhat handy... just... maybe not exceptionally handy.

Regardless of his mental workings, Benjamin did listen to Niu's questions and Caleb's answers, grinning at the "Spindileggius" comment. He wrote down a few notes on their communication styles, wondering how he could use that to a strategic advantage as well as to communicate with the spiders. That was his plan, after all - he didn't want to intimidate or hurt them, just enter into a dialogue with them, if that was at all possible. He remained fully aware that they had killed his predecessor.

At Elizabeth's comment, Benjamin straightened again. "I could... try... to... uh... t-talk, with them. If they're s-s-s-sensitive to noise, then they p-probably have a way of c-c-c-communicating that uh... isn't.... audible... t-to the human ear," he spoke, furrowing his brows with concentration. "I can download v-v-v-various frequen-quencies to my datapad to s-see which ones they.... find.... agreeable," he suggested. "T-Then that could uh... open up... a mode of... com-com-communicating."

"I can do the paperwork," Eliza muttered defensively, "I just hate it with every atom in my body." She pointed at Ben, looking at the Captain. "I was just gonna threaten the insect with violence, but his thing might work better." Her arms crossed again. "Won't be nearly as satisfying though."

Patrick perks up at the sound of 'frequencies'. "If these creatures rely on vibrations to talk and communicate surely we could use some type of sonar to maybe distract or mute them. Back under the sea the subs we have, have to occasionally lower the amount of sonar we use in order to prevent the sea life from getting too aggravated. It ain't much but maybe we could use it in the assaults."

"Ooh, we'll have to look into that," Caleb said, making a note on his datapad. "Well, if anyone else has ideas, let me know. Other than that, if any of you have ideas in the next twenty hours, let me know. Either way, be at the airfield at 1700 hours on the dot so we can get to the target just after dark. Everyone besides Dr. Hase and anyone else that wants to help interrogate the spider, you're dismissed."

Picking up his datapad, he gestured for the Doctor to follow him, as he said, "Let's go ahead and get caught up with how that communication is doing. You've probably had your fill of it, but at the very least, it'll be good for me to know our options on the more diplomatic side."

Eliza was the first to frown, following the Captain and the new Doc. She vanished into the corridors for about a second before reappearing with an assault rifle, following Benny Boy and the Captain to their prisoner. She had a few reasons for this, including a sense of rage at the entire spider race, a desire to keep the nerds safe from these threats, and to make the spider feel guilty for it's failures if it even had a fucking soul.

Eliza walked with the grace of a hitman, weapon over her shoulder, as she stalked the hallways behind the two men.

Benjamin tried to fight back the proud smile on his face, knowing simultaneously that whilst it was his idea, it probably wouldn't be appreciated in the same way it would have been if he was still at university. He nodded towards Patrick, writing a few more notes as he spoke, placing a question mark at the end of a scrawled "WHAT SEA?". He was planning to to some more research, pending his level of clearance and ability to get into the files, of course.

Hase looked up as Caleb gestured towards him, hurriedly stuffing his books into as many pockets he could whilst retaining the main notebook and stylus in his hand. He nodded a goodbye to anyone who wasn't coming to interrogate the spider, before nearly running into Eliza as she left to follow Caleb too. "Ladies f-... uh... C-Captains first," Benjamin corrected himself, seeing his life flash before his eyes for a brief second, before bowing his head and attempting to catch up with Caleb.

"One of those, yeah." She smirked briefly at him, following behind the two men.

A head peeked around a distant corner from where the band of three entites appeared in front of a door. Looking back to where they came from, an empty hallway, and back to the one with actual people in it, Leon opted to spend their time on the latter. Granted, they were supposed to be in 'conference room 2', or a conference room with one of the many numbers anyway, but the fact of the matter was that they did not know where it was, nor did they care to find it any longer.

And either way, the fellows they were about to meet, not disturb (They wouldn't even dream of doing so) seemed capable enough to give them a push to wherever they were supposed to be at. Not that they had to know that Leon had managed to wander off too far. They waited for the bunch to enter before once again tilting their head to take a good look at whatever was inside. Suffice to say, Leon was not expecting some huge spider to be in there at all.

"Hah! Look at that!" Leon quietly sidled up to the woman with all the guns, before giving out a hearty laugh and an amused shake on the shoulder.

"I did not think I would get to see this in the...hm, I don't know if you'd call it morning, but what a sight," Their Spanish origins, though lacking in the little left of their human body, was evident in the slight accent in their speech. In truth, maybe they shouldn't have been too shocked as they try to recall the exact reason they were here for, but then again, they didn't expect to find one of the first rooms they took interest in to have one of the infamous death-bringing arachnids.

Captain Schembri blinked at the sudden appearance of the soldier, before glancing at their name tag and biting back a groan. "Morning, Matrose de Castilla," he said, shaking his head as he looked at his datapad. "I was wondering if my roster was correct or not. Make sure you actually go to the meeting in the future. Thankfully, all you need to do is show up at the shuttle pad tomorrow with your equipment and you're good to go."

"Of course, of course," Leon nodded, "I was only...taking a detour, Captain. Won't happen again." Their voice was sheepish, yet they held their ground and made sure that everything else only showed sign of promise. It usually held back from releasing unabashed frustration upon them when they were called into a superior's office. But this time, they did hope they'd get to stay longer than their previous stations.

Eliza looked at this new individual, with a frown. They were too upbeat for her taste, suspiciously upbeat. Either they were a bad liar or worried about something, and Eliza wasn't fond of the idea of insubordination during this survival situation. "There's a date and time on the sheet, the paths are labelled," she reminded sternly. "You'll need a better excuse next time."

"I'll make sure to have one at the ready, then," An award winning smile would have helped them in this situation, although their metallic augmentations removed any sort of mask of innocence.
 

Acewing13

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As the group walked through the connecting tunnel between the barracks and the biolab, there was a marked increase in traffic, with scientists hunched over their datapads and military personnel dodging around them, carting crates full of mechanical parts. Caleb led the way, keeping the group out of the way before turning down a less crowded corridor to the quarantine wing. Away from the bustling of the algae project, the set of rooms that the xeno-team had taken over to care for and interact with the Spindileggius was much more calmer and contemplative. The lab was split down the middle with a panel of transparent aluminum, with the lab equipment and humans on one side, focused intently on their screens, and the spider alien on the other, who was also focused on it's own oversized datapad, holding it in two pincers, tapping on it with another, and holding onto what looked like a half-eaten steak in the last. The Spindileggius was the first to notice the new arrivals, giving them a short wave before tapping on the dividing panel to get the scientist's attention, then pointing out Caleb and the rest.

"Oh, hello," a disheveled scientist said, getting up from his desk and walking over to them. "Dr. Matt Boden, good to meet you," he said, giving the group a general nod before focusing on Benjamin. "Good to have you back, Dr. Hase. You're here to help the...our protectors get caught up on what we've learned from the Theradectan?"

Eliza, one of those protectors if her assumptions were correct, was not happy. She locked eyes with the beast, whichever eyes she felt like locking onto, and just glared. Fully armed, she took a position by the door and watched the spider, exhuding hurt and malice.

Benjamin, on the other hand, stared fondly towards the Theradectan, mirroring the waving gesture before turning to Dr Boden. "Y-Yes... a-a-a-although I.... I think that... s-s-s-some of us aren't t-t-t-too fond of this iiii....iiiiidea," he said chirply, eyes flicking towards Eliza, who was decidedly very anrgy at the spider.

"W-W-We are looking t-to t-test a theory on uh.... fr-fre-frequencies," Benjamin began, pushing his glasses back up his nose and flicking through his electric notebook as the teal strand of his hair fell into his face. "H-How are you c-communicating w-w-with the... the... Theradectan s-s-s-so far?"

"Huh, guess we can try that," Boden said, looking around the lab to see what equipment they had available. "So far, we've essentially been playing telephone through Aos Si script. Kadinle is relatively fluent in the script, so we're essentially typing questions and answers back and forth, thus the datapad. Probably helps that whatever the Aos Si's tech was, they also had touchscreens."

"Wait," Caleb said, raising an eyebrow. "Kadinle?"

"Yeah," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "When we asked him what his name was, he gave us two symbols, one meaning strait, as in rivers, and devotion to 'divinity', probably supposed to be a particular god, but nothing in Aos Si matches up. Anyway, someone," he continued, looking over at one particular scientist that raised their datapad to cover their face, "had a little bit too much too drink, and decided to translate those symbols into Kyle and Adini, smush them together, and come up with Kadinle. No one really had a better name, so it stuck."

Leon remained at the rear, but certainly not due to lack of interest. The woman who had berated them made the recollection of their previous red-faced superiors flash in their head all at once. So perhaps, for once, they should keep their snarky remarks to themselves as they ambled around the room, taking the details of all the bits and bobs. They snuck glances of datapads from behind a few of the scientists they passed, though nothing really popped out at them. All words and symbols that meant nothing to them, but seemed 'cool' nonetheless.

However, after a moment or two of ambling and hopefully the attention of the rest of them on their datapads, Leon casually ambled up to the barrier. They looked around to double check everyone's state, albeit carelessly, and tapped it lightly with three fingers, a wave and a flashy smile. Knocking could've gotten their attention faster, though they didn't want to scare the poor thing. If it was keen enough to attempt to communicate, then it probably didn't mean any harm. Probably.

Kadinle looked up from his extra large datapad, lowering his head in a nod. Putting the rest of the steak in it's maw, it used it's two free pincers to tap out a message, before flipping it over so Leon could see the message and it's translation. "Hello, new warrior. If you ask brilliant people, you can recieve a tablet to talk back. Sadly, I don't comprehend your speech yet without the script, though I might soon."

Leon hadn't actually expected a reply back, and was planning to mope briefly then walk away to listen to the rest dawdle on, so it was an unexpected delight. Being called a 'warrior' was a change in the usual names they were called too. "Wonderful scientist," they drawled on, spotting a nearby person in a labcoat and glued eyes, "I can borrow one of the translators, yes? For the, em- Kandle? Kingl- K- nevermind. The spider, I mean."

"Yeah, we've got a couple extra," Dr. Boden said, pointing at a stack of datapads on a nearby table. "Honestly, we need all the data we can get to keep rubbing out the weirdness in the translating software. Right now, it's way too 'Old English' for it to be 'publicly available', so type away."

"Important data...yes, that, I will certainly do." With a newly supplied instrument, like a child given a new toy, they approached the Spindileggius with a bounce in their step. "Hello! Kyle! I think. My name is Leon. I hope they feed you in there. It looks very...contained."

"Hello, Kitten," Kadinle replied, the message now showning up on Leon's tablet. "I just finished my repast, so I'm doing well. Thankfully, your food sustains me for now, unlike the colonizers'. Your matriarchs are wise to keep me confined for now, until my people can assure you that we aren't a threat. Too much blood lies on the ground for that now, especially the little brilliant person I first met, who was there along with the matriarch in the entryway."

"Colonizers? That aren't us? Or do you mean the new 'warriors' like me who showed up?" Leon, to put it simply, had little to no ulterior motive. While Dr. Boden did ask for 'important information', their curiousity was simply piqued, and boredom had been far from the horizon. Also, being called 'kitten', though most probably unintentional, was something they hadn't been called before. In a good way.

"I did hear about that at some point. The blood, not the little brilliant person nor the matriarch. They're the ones who found you?" They looked around after typing in the last few words, at all the different 'little brilliant people', though none of them looked as eagerly as the lanky one they walked in with at the spider. Leon attempted to gesture at the tablet for a while to let the rest know they'd attempted conversation without them, and turned swiftly back to paying attention.

"The colonizers are the Aos Si that built the ruins," Dr. Boden said, looking at the conversation history. "When Kadinle brings up warriors and matriarchs, we think that's more of a male/female split. Males are inherently expendable, therefore warriors, while females are the leaders and heads of the clan, therefore matriarchs. Could be wrong, but seems to fit."

"And, since you haven't been paying attention to other briefings," Captain Shembri said, rolling his eyes, "It was Dr. Grey and Captain Bakarra that he was talking about at the end. Dr. Grey died before...Kadinle was able to stop his guys from attacking us. Oh and why have you been saying Theradectans and not Spindileggius?"
 

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"As far as we can tell," Boden said with a shrug, "their name for their species in Aos Si is 'venomous insect/bristles'. Seems a little on the nose, but I guess 'smart featherless biped' isn't too much better. Anyway, since they're spider-looking beings, we picked two spider species, black widows and tarantulas, that fit the bill, threw their latin names into the name smushing algorithm, and got Theradectan. So, officially they're theradectan spindileggius."

As Leon and Boden talked, Benjamin watched the spider intensely, eyes fixed on it as it tapped away at the datapad whilst fidgeting a little on its remaining legs. At the mention of the naming 'procedure', Benjamin rolled his eyes, almost thinking that it was a little rude to the spider to name it Kyle. Not that he had anything against people called Kyle, but he couldn't help but feel awkward about giving it a human name, and not an Aos Si name.

Deep in his own thoughts, Benjamin jumped when Leon knocked on the class of the cage, nearly dropping his notepad on the ground. He scooped it back up midair, looking around to make sure that no one had seen, and offering those who had witnessed the clumsy incident a small, awkward smile. He then picked up one of the pads, desperately willing himself not to drop it. "Old E-English is f-f-f-fun," Benjamin murmured under his breath, a little offended by the lack of love for Old English in the room.

As Leon and Kadinle spoke, Benjamin inputted some Aos Si into the datapad that formed a simple message that read "Hello, my name is-" - instead of his name, however, a name that Benjamin knew would be hard for Aos Si phonetics, he inputted the meaning behind his name - "son of the right hand".

The Doctor found his mind drifting again, wondering if Leon's name had been translated to Lion, and then to Aos Si for Big Cat and then to Theradectan for Small Cat... namely, a kitten. It was an interesting idea.

Kadinle looked at Benjamin, particularly his hands, for a moment, before typing, "Hello. Query, does the males of your species also have their reproductive members in their forelimbs? And you remember which limb you use to impregnate the matriarch in question?"

Benjamin died a bit inside, clenching the tablet tightly before typing "No, we have our reproductive organs here-", and then pointing to his lower abdomen, an excessive blush on his face as he did so. This was... awkward. But it made sense that the spider would be intrigued due to the differing biology.

Eliza, for the longest time, had done little more than glower at the spider. Even the rather humorous exchange didn't make too much of a dent on this attitude. She did have to be question, a calloused hand lightly smacking Benjamin's shoulder. "Hey, Insect Whisperer, minion to the Matriarch, what does Elizabeth mean in old person speak?"

Leon glanced back and forth, reading what they could on the few translators being shown around. Reading quickly wasn't one of their strong suits, which meant they appeared to be oggling the texts on the screens for at least a minute or two, intensely staring. They let out a hearty laugh at the rather out of the blue, but very entertaining conversation Kyle had started with the lanky one.

Benjamin wasn't impressed with Elizabeth's response or Leon's laugh and frowned, puffing his chest out as if his ego had been bruised. "I'm n-not a m-m-minion..." he murmured, before wracking his brains for the meaning of her name. "It's s-s-something to... uh... to d-d-do with an... an oath," he answered slowly, remembering the time his lecturer Elizabeth Fitzwilliam had asked his class a similar question.

"Alright." Elizabeth took that in, the frown deepening. She stared at the spider, looking into its eyes, and spoke in an angry low tone. "Ben, now ask it why it couldn't do shit for her. Ask why it just sat there like an ineffectual waste of oxygen."

Ben? That was new. Finally a recognition of his name, even if he didn't often go by the shortened version of his first name. As she... asked... the question, Benjamin noted her anger and frowned, figuring that it was the Captain's way of demonstrating her grief at the loss of a colleague. He gulped slightly, and typed a message in Aos Si that read "My colleague, God's Oath, was a close friend of our other colleague, a woman of science. Unfortunately, she died, and I believe you witnessed it. God's Oath is wondering-" there was a pause in typing as Benjamin wondered what to say "-wondering why you were unable to help. There is no judgement, only a question," he lied.

"Are you certain there's no judgement, Son of the Right?" Kadinle asked, glancing up at Benjamin before going back to his typing. "I'm still learning how your species expresses themselves, it's different than we Theradectans do, but the matriarch God's Oath is looking at me differently than I've been looked at before."

Benjamin looked towards Elizabeth with panic, a tiny bead of sweat forming on his brow. "I am quite certain, that is an expression of-" once more, there was a pause, and Benjamin decided to be honest, changing his response. "She is upset. Her job was to protect the woman of science, and she couldn't. She would like answers." There was a little interval before Benjamin added something else. "She is fearsome, but she will not hurt you. You are our ally now, and she understands." Another lie wouldn't hurt, right?

"I'm sure God's Oath knows that I'm more useful alive than dead at the moment, though I understand if that doesn't mean we're close companions," the spider replied. "To be honest, I'm angry with myself as well for not saving the little brilliant person. Despite my best arguments and pleas, my matriarch didn't agree to stop the violence before I invoked my priestly privleges to stop my people from killing God's Oath and the rest of their group. So, to put it shortly, I wasn't persuasive enough or fast enough to save the litte brilliant one. What was their name, by the way?"

Benjamin felt a little lump of emotion form in his throat and he shifted his position slightly, typing a reply. "Thank you for your honesty, my friend. I cannot translate her name to its elements, but in our language, she was called Jessica." He then handed the pad to Elizabeth so that she could see the answer, praying silently that she wouldn't scroll up or react in anger. "I.. know it's n-n-n-not much... b-b-but..." his tone was laced with genuine sorrow and regret, and he made a move to place a hand on Elizabeth's shoulder but stopped short at the last moment.

Eliza's first move, despite his wishes, was to scroll a bit up and very quickly read through the chat for context. She stared at it, expression a mix of roiling disappointment and seething anger. With a long and aggressive sigh she handed the pad back to him. "Thanks," she muttered, clearly dissatisfied, and moved back to lean against the wall near the door. She returned to just glowering in general, but now at no one in particular.

Dr. Boden coughed as he walked up to a door set to the side by the divider, his arms full of speakers. "Someone want to tell Kadinle to move to the far side of the enclosure? Need to follow procedures before we walk in there."

"Got it," Captain Schembri said, having connected his personal datapad to the network, before typing, "Hi Kadinle, I'm Caleb. We're going to do some tests, so if you could go to the far wall for a bit, that'd be great."

"Alright, Full-Heart," the spider said, scuttling over to the indicated position. While Caleb mentally dealt with what the translation telephone had done to his name, Boden pressed a big blue button with his elbow, which slid a second panel of transparent aluminum between the spider and the quarantine's airlock.

"We've run a bunch of tests with Dr. Panagiotopoulou, looking for any potentially dangerous pathogens that could cross species either way," Boden said, as he walked into the airlock. "We didn't find anything, so we've mostly dropped the need for suiting up when going inside."

While the scientist set up the speakers, Kadinle asked, "Query for the new people, are you from the military branch of command?"

"Everyone but Son of the Right is, yes," Caleb typed back. "Kitten is the lowest ranked. Then God's Oath and I are equal ranks, but I'm in charge because of senority."

"So you do indeed have more equality in ranks than my people," the spider replied, scratching his head with a pincer before continuing, "Maybe my people back home have improved on that front since we left."

Leon had initially been listening— reading, the conversations between the newcomers and the spider, but upon continuation, they figured it was something they probably shouldn't have stumbled on. They never liked tense atmospheres, and so it was safe to say that their attention drifted off somewhere acceptable. 'Round the parts the 'matriarch' had gotten all...matriarch-y, they supposed. While they did chime back in at the mention of 'kitten', they simply nodded along, observing what they wanted to do next.

Ah, she'd scrolled up. Benjamin afforded her an apologetic look, making a mental note to talk to her about this after the meeting was done. He'd had to lie to the spider, and had done so at Elizabeth's expense. He felt bad but.. not too bad. It was all in the name of science and that was all that mattered... right?

Shaking that thought out of his head, Benjamin looked up to see Kadinle scuttle to the edge of the cage and tilted his head slightly, wondering what was happening. At Boden's explanation, he nodded, but still felt a little ill at the prospect of going in without a mask. He didn't want to look like the odd one out, however, and so bit back his anxiety and entered the airlock.
 

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"Will your people be in the place we last saw them in?" Benjamin typed, before looking up at the spider expectantly.

"There's no reason for them to move and many reasons to stay," Kadinle typed, before raising his free claws in a shrug. "When I talked to them for those too few moments, they did say there was damage to the life sustaining machinery, and a number of my people's stasis failed. But it's better than anything else on that island."

Benjamin frowned, nodding, before writing a note of that in his log. "S-s-surely it is p-pertinent, in this case, to ttttttravel back to exactly where yu-yu-yu-you found the Theradectans?" Benjamin asked Caleb with an exaggerated blink.

"That's the plan if we don't get caught before hand," Captain Schembri replied. "Gonna be a tough hike, but we should be fine."

"You're really coming with us Skinny-Britches?" Eliza said from her spot against the wall, her face a mix of general concern and exhaustion. "We need you for the elf-speak, I guess. Ever used a firearm? Ever shot a living being?"

Benjamin blinked at Elizabeth. Once. Twice. Three times. Then a red flush spread across his face and he dropped his head bashfully. "I... I once sh-shot a... g-g-g-goose," he answered. That counts as a living being, surely. He did leave out the part where he cried for a week after he shot it. Oh well. She didn't need to know that.

"Oh honey." Eliza sighed, shaking her head lightly. She wasn't mad, but this was a rather annoying hurdle. Surely this kid had more talents than just mental ones right? Ones that might help him? "Well, we can train you for that. Because when it comes down to it, you're not shooting geese, you're fighting for your life. And I'd rather you stay alive."

"Really should have run the scientists through a survival course or two before coming," Caleb said with a sigh. "Good old hindsight, not much use in the present."

"Okay," Dr. Boden said, rubbing his hands with sanitizer as he walked out of the quarantine room and gave Kadinle the full space back. "So, what tests did you want to run with the speakers?"

Benjamin flushed red at the pet name and at the dismissive tone, scratching the back of his neck to symbolise how awkward he felt. He had been trained, just... not with real people. And there was definitely a divide there, and Benjamin knew that - there was a reason he was a scientist and not a soldier.

As Dr Boden spoke, Benjamin cleared his throat and clapped his hands together, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he spoke. "I w-w-would like to p-p-play some... freeeequencies. T-T-To see if... there are... fr-fr-fr-friendly ones... and.... harm-harm-harmful ones." He felt a little bad about doing this to Kadinle... he should ask for permission really. "J-J-Just in case w-w-we can... use.... s-s-sound against... the.... spi...spiders."

"Sounds like a weapon," Eliza reasoned, "and if there's one thing I like the nerds working on, it's weapons development. Cuz it means I get to weild cool shit."




[Didn't write yet - The team finds out through a fun game of translation telephone from Theradectan to Aos Si to English is that the spiders were brought here by a radical faction of elves, 'the colonizers', to help establish an outpost on the otherwise barren rock. For some reason, either unknown or untranslatable (haven't decided yet), the elves put the spiders in stasis and left. An indeterminate amount of time passes, some of the stasis fails and spiders die, and they were woken up by the humans messing with stuff. Thinking that they were some other group of elves, they took out their anger at their comrade's deaths on the 'devilish bipeds'. Kadinle the Friendly Spindileggius 'Priest' (so named from two symbols that have been wildly construed into Kyle/Adini) took it upon himself to prevent more deaths on both sides, by invoking their main goddess (untranslatable atm) to call for a ceasefire, though he didn't think it'd still be in effect if they went back to the ruins without him.]

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The Next Afternoon, Shuttlepad

"Alright," Captain Schembri said, going down the ranks of the gathered soldiers and scientists, going down the list of personnel outside the shuttle, dressed in his combat fatigues and a facemask. "Sound off, let's make sure everyone's here. It's a long ride there and back."

Xavier sat towards the front of the group as he makes the final checks on various shuttle systems on a datapad. He scrolled down the various pages to ensure all systems go for the shuttle. He paid no attention to what Captain Schembri said as Xavier finished his checklist. He set the datapad to sleep mode and slipped it into a pocket of his jacket. His jacket, a black leather affair, fit snug to Xavier's body however, it's noticeable for its lack of adornaments. No patches, no markings or anything, almost as if it has been stripped bare. In the back of Xavier's mind, he wandered mentally back to what happened last time he left a home station. A noticeable shiver echos throughout his body, his hands gripped his knees tightly, turning white as his breath shortened. A mere moment this lasted, before coping mechanisms kicked in, returning Xavier to a neutral state.

Benjamin had been stylishly early, arriving exactly 15 minutes before the designated arrival time. To kill the extra time, he'd decided to work through his notebook, refreshing himself on the notes he had taken during the interview and inspection of Kadinle. He was dressed in rather odd clothing, looking quite small in his 'officer' uniform - a grey great coat with a civilian researcher chevron on the soldier, covering a tight-fitting black turtleneck underneath.

"D-Dr Hase r-reporting for... uh... duuuuuuty," he stammered slightly, Germanic accent once more appearing at the pronunciation of his last name.

Thankfully, Leon had managed to find the appointed location in the nick of time. A few extra corners were added to the route they could have taken for maximum efficiency, but at least they were more familiar and less likely to get lost the next time they had to go somewhere. Strapped inside their holster was a regular pistol, and slung on their shoulders was the rifle issued by ISOC right before they left.

Situations like these, stagnant and monotonous never got along well with them. They'd always felt uneasy, bordering on annoyance, as they sat fidgeting constantly. Eyes that wander to ceilings and floors, the occasional gentle whistling, fingers that drummed and smoothed over their all too similar uniform. It was suffocating, but they hardly admitted it to themself.

Eliza wasn't late, she wasn't early, she was on time. Armed with a rifle at her back, and an assault rifle in her hands, she was dressed in her usual attire, which was her armor with a half-cape over her left shoulder. This wasn't usual for the AU military, she just thought it looked badass. At her hips were two more weapons, sidearms, a revolver at her right hip and a service pistol under her cape. Over her armor and on her belt was even more ammunition. She was ready for a fight. "Captain Elizabeth Bakarra, present, locked, and loaded."

"Oberleutnant zur See Jérémy Hernandez, at your service," a French officer said, giving Captain Schembri a salute as the American walked by.

"Glad to have you and your squad along with us," Caleb said, nodding to the new blood. "Just stick close and keep your eyes open." Walking to the middle of the group, he looked over the gathered personnel, cleared his throat, and said, "Alright, guys, here's the shortened plan, cause we don't have time to say the whole thing if we want to get this recon on the road before sunset. We got some useful intel from our spider alien, but at the end of the day, if we're attacked, we will return fire. If our cover is blown, we'll be returning to the landing site as fast as possible. A support team has jury rigged some counter-measures that we think will be effective against the Theradectans, but we won't have active overwatch, due to us not wanting to get our ride shot out of the sky. So, stick together, no one wanders off by themselves, and we'll all get back home without becoming spider chow. Cause yes, that's a thing they probably did to our fallen brethern, but I'm also told they do the same thing to do their dead, so... no dying today, even if it's culturally appropriate, get on the shuttle."

Xavier, having heard the others speak their names and rank, sighed, then said, "Staff Sergeant Xavier Rhoads, live and in person." He offered the group a half hearted salute before returning his eyes to the data slate in front of him. His fingered danced across its surface, plugging in various bits of infromation, removing others, modifying bits of code. All within a span of a minute, a bead of sweat dropped down from his foredhead when his hand sudden ceased movement. "Well, that should be everything in terms of getting the shuttle and necessary systems set up. She is as ready as she can be Captain." Xavier said quietly as he replaces his data slate into a protective pouch within his satchel.

"I don't give a fuck about culturally inappropriate," Eliza growled, fingers gently caressing her weapons, "They make a move I don't like every single one is dead. Way I see it, ain't a single one of them worth one of us. Lock and load soldiers and nerds, I don't care how kind hearted you are, they kill you they'll tie you up and suck your juices out. Don't let that happen."
 

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Benjamin watched everyone arrive, making notes on a few things that Caleb said (mainly about dying being culturally appropriate), before hopping on the ship. He took a few minutes to organise his notes, before realising that reading the book he had packed would be a little weird.

"Thank you for making my rambings succinct, Captain Bakarra," Caleb said, shaking his head before pointing at the shuttle. "Everyone get on board, we got a deadline to keep."

As the group began boarding, another suited scientist came out of the airlock, before running over to Captain Schembri. The pair talked as the rest of the group boarded the shuttle and a few minutes passed before Caleb came aboard, a frown on his face. "Sorry about that, let's go," he said as the shuttle's door closed.

And with that, the team was on their way, the shuttle creating a wake on the ocean surface as it flew just above the surface.

Xavier held tightly onto the armrest to his right, his left hand gripped the data slate tightly as the shuttle skimmed across the ocean. His eyes remained closed throughout the trip, his lips moved in a repeatative motion, as if receiting a chant of some sort. During the journey he remained quiet, repeating his mantra to himself over and over again. Doing what he can to maintain a semblance of calm given what lay before the group.

Benjamin was intrigued by the conversation that Caleb had had with the scientist, but didn't feel like it was his place to ask. If it was anything concerning the Theradectan, he would be told later. Well, he would like to think that he would be told later, but of course, official secrets and all that. Benjamin adjusted his glasses before biting the bullet and taking out the thick academic book on the biology of arachnids.

Few Hours Later

As the shuttle reached the ruin-laden island, they could only tell the difference between the land and the sea by the surf catching the starlight as it broke against the stony beach.

"Limit the light and noise you make after the shuttle leaves," Caleb said, walking back to the shuttle's hatch as it slowed to a hover a meter or so above the island's surface. "Don't know how much attention we've attracted and we'll want to avoid picking more up after the shuttle tries it's distraction maneuver. So, keep quiet unless you see hostiles or something relavant to the mission happens."

With that, he opened the hatch and dropped to the ground, raising his rifle as he advanced to a larger boulder, setting up a firing position to cover the rest of the team's drop.

When the entire team had disembarked, the shuttle closed up and flew off, flying just above the deck as it swung closer to the ruins. Getting as close to the alien weapon as it dared, the shuttle fired a missile, which burst into pieces above the ruins, the rumble of the explosives washing over them a few seconds later. That was soon followed by the sound of gunfire and the crack of the shuttle breaking the sound barrier as it flew away.

Well, that's useful intel, if worrying, Caleb thought as the distinctive sound of 5.56mm kept going for a few more seconds before being silenced. Apparently if it's so simple a grunt can use it, it's simple enough for aliens to sort out. Shaking his head, he waved the group forward, keeping his rifle at the ready as they advanced.

After a thirty minute hike, they crested a ridge that commanded an uninterrupted view of the area, having a gradual slope on either side. Caleb signaled the group to halt, setting a few of Hernadez's soldiers to keep watch before gathering the rest around.

"Alright, before we go further, I want to go over one last thing," the Captain said, once the group was together. "And no, I'm not talking about the spiders apprarently figuring out how to fire our guns, though that's fun. Before we left, Dr. Boden talked to me and let me know that he'd set up a radio in our friendly Theradectan's room, so we could use him to talk to the other spiders if we made contact. Now, the reason I didn't talk about this before was that the General specifically said that we couldn't do that, but Boden set it up anyway. My question for all of you, is if given the opportunity, should we use that resource or no? Obivously, if the Theradectan really wants peace, it'd make things a lot easier. However, we still haven't cracked their 'spoken' language, so we wouldn't know what he's saying to his comrades. That's why the General doesn't want us doing it. We could be tricked into a trap or something else along those lines. Either way, this isn't something that I'm going to make an executive decision on, since it's going against explicit orders. Really, I'll be in trouble when you guys report that I suggested to disobey the General's orders. If we do this, then we have to all be behind it. So," he said, damning his conscience for putting his neck out like this, "What do you guys think?"

Eliza was armed to the teeth and was holding her assault rifle at the ready, wearing her dark cape for better stealth, and because she thought it looked cool. She looked over everyone present as she listened to the captain, and she let out a sigh. "Does the Spider know that's what we want it to do? Did we brief the captured enemy prisoner on this or are we hoping what he said to us is true?"

"Boden said that Kadinle's been briefed, yes," Caleb said, with a nod. "It does come down to how much we trust the spider to do what it said it will do, at the end of the day."

Oberleutnant Hernandez frowned, looking at the personnel that had visited the Theradectan in quarantine. "Putting the fact that we could be court-martialed for disobeying the General aside, do you think we can trust the spider?" he asked.

Xaiver stood at the back of the group, his face pale under his gear. His breath came in near gasps as the booms echo from the fired guns taht destroyed the shuttle. Everything was fine, everything was fine, Xavier repeats this over and over to himself. He tried to calm himself as the others discussed various points. His hands drifted down to his sides, brushing against his styled pistols. The familiar faux wooden grips provided a measure of reassurance and comfort for him that mere words cannot. With himself under control, he looked to the group and spoke, "I can't speak to anything related to the spider but we should probably expect the worst when we get there. If they figured out the big guns, who knows what else they have activated."

Benjamin looked towards Hernandez, gulping slightly and adjusting his glasses as he realised that he was amongst those being addressed. His eyes flitted towards Elizabeth momentarily to see if she had anything to say, before starting to speak himself. "H-H-He seems... trrrrrrustworthy.... he ha....hasn't lied... y-yet," he answered, with a little shrug that seemed to suggest arrogance but in fact demonstrated the exact opposite.

"Fair enough, I suppose" Jérémy said, his frown softening as he shook his head. "Merde, this is a bad idea. If we just had more time to learn their language, it feels like we could work this out."

"Unfortunately, we don't have that time," Caleb said with a shrug. "One way or another, if the spiders aren't pacified in a couple of months, our reinforcements will probably orbitally bombard this island, destroying any chance we have at sorting out what they were doing here in the first place. Guess that's why I'm even suggesting this, seems like a waste if it goes that way." After a moment of contemplation, he shook his head and said, "Okay, we'll decide by majority vote if we're going to do this. If we vote no, then we stick to the original plan, keep away from any spider as we gather intel, then pull out if we run into trouble. If we vote yes, then it's the same plan until we can get a spider by themselves, then we pull out the radio and try to get a dialogue sorted out. That'll be done by me, unarmed, while the rest of you cover me and make sure you're not ambushed if things go south. That's the executive decision I'm making here, by the way, you're not changing that. Anything else to add before the vote?" he asked, looking around the group.

Xavier listened into what all the others said, it washed over him in a wave. Bits and pieces stood out to him but most of it blurred passed. Neither plan seemed particularly good to him, however, from his own experience, and with what already occurred. There existed only one option to him. "I say we stick to the original plan, but be preapred to deviate at a moments notice. Changing the plan at this stage without good intel not good. Not good at all. But I'm just the shuttle mechanic and your back up pilot. You are the ones with a better feel for the sitaution here." Xaiver stated firmly but still with a hint of tremors within his voice.

Benjamin knew enough about different languages to know what 'merde' meant, and frowned slightly, blushing a little. He glanced back towards Caleb, listening intently. He liked the second plan, but was questioning how viable it was. "I... v-vote s-second plan. Bbbbbbut... only if it's.... via-viable... s-s-safety-wise."

Eliza huffed, thinking fast to come up with her answer. She wasn't fond of these spiders, not a bit, and their murder of so many people didn't avail them to her at all. But they got one on their side, somehow. Fuck, why can't things be simple. She growled under her breath, "Fine. Option 2 is just Option 1 with extra steps anyway."

Jérémy nodded ruefully, before saying, "Agreed, do it, but only if we don't put ourselves at too much risk. Which includes you, sir."

"I'll keep that in mind," Caleb said, smiling as he shook his head. "Alright, let's get going."
 

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Over the next hour, the hike became more difficult as they worked up the higher hills that would be able to overlook the ruins. What would have been a moderate hike on Earth was turned into an ordeal by the extra .40 gravities that Bohemond pulled on them and the face mask that let them breathe fungi-free air. Despite the effort, the group ended up on the second to last hill from the valley. From their position, they could hear the hisses and buzzes that made up the spider's language coming from the unseen valley. Before they could crest the hill, one of Hernandez's NCO's held up a fist to halt the group. After a minute of looking at their objective, he set a private to keep watch, he walked back to the officers.

"What's going on, Sergeant Cuadros?" Jérémy asked with a raise of an eyebrow.

"The spiders have a watch set up on the next hill, sir," Cuadros said, pointing over his shoulder. "Counted three or four of them. Looks like they have one of our guns with them as well."

"Thank you for the report, Sergeant," Caleb said. "Did you see any other watches set on lower hills?"

"Not as far as I could see, sir," the Sergeant replied.

"Alright, get back to your men," Captain Schembri said, frowning as the other soldier went back up to his position. "Well, who ever's running their operation isn't an idiot."

"No kidding," Hernandez said, pulling up a relief map of the island on his pad. "We might be able to get to another vanage point if we go down another valley, but we'll have to double back a ways."

"Figures," Caleb said with a sigh, waving everyone back down the way they'd come. This left Caleb's squad in front for the next, thankfully spider-free, hill.

Staying relatively quiet, due to being within a stone's throw of the aliens, Caleb took a camera from his pack, set it to record, then crawled up the hill, setting the camera down so it could get a view, and then slowly came back down to the rest of the group, cable in hand. "You guys have to see this," he said, plugging the cable into his datapad and setting it to broadcast to the rest of the group's pads.

The valley below had drastically changed in the last two weeks. What had once been a quiet ruin was now a busy fortress in the making, with debris from the ruins having moved to create cover for the spiders from the ground entrance into the valley, each pile having an emplaced rifle and three to four spiders to crew it. The defenses seemed to be focused more around a cave entrance than the main ruin, though that had it's fair share as well, with a dozen or more spiders on watch.

"Well," Oberleutnant Hernandez said after a quiet minute, "Looks like this will be a tough nut to crack."

Xavier remained quiet as the group travelled through the various points along the way, however, he doesn't seemed thrilled about the change in plans. He kept his peace as they look out over the area, seeing various station guard spiders and the reinforced like area by the cave entrance. "Well, uh, in situations like this I believe the three standard options are distraction, stealth or big booms."

Benjamin's relative fitness came in handy with the strange gravity of the hike, although it was difficult. He pushed through the uneasiness and discomfort, forgetting these negative sensations when they reached the top of the hill and heard the spiders. At the talk of the creatures having a weapon, Benjamin furrowed his brows - how the hell had they obtained a gun? Had they killed another soldier? These thoughts plauged him on the way down from the hill, and all the way towards the next one.

He remained silent as he watched Caleb plant the camera, before checking his own data pad. His frown grew. This... was not good. "D-Do you... think... w-w-we'll... have... to uh... use d-diplomacy?" Benjamin suggested, stammer a little more apparent than usual.

"That or a fucking nuke," Caleb said with a growl, before shaking his head. "Well, really just need a few well placed bombs and we'd be golden, but that might as well be asking for a nuke in our position. Who would have guessed bringing along a bunch of rifles earlier would have back fired so hard?"

Maksim could'nt have guessed, but even so, he wouldn't have said anything. The young man adjusted his face mask which sat uncomfortably tight against his head. Everything was uncomfortable. He was given an ill-fitting uniform, the last one they had, and his boots were a size too large. But the most uncomfortable thing of all was all around him. Maksim thought he was here to peacefully excavate some bones, maybe shards of pottery or something. Sure the work would be hard, but nothing he couldn't handle. This, this he couldn't handle. Maksim shifted in place at the back of the group, trying not to draw attention to himself. His hand reached up and felt the bruise starting to form on the side of his cheek. The first thing Maksim learned on Base Alpha was that "ruskies" weren't the most popular. A couple of cadets taught him that quick when he opened his mouth and his thick accent came out.

But Maksim was here to assist in research. And that was exactly what he was going to do. Even if "research" meant getting caught in the crossfire between a ragtag AU crew and a bunch of sentient spiders.

He turned to Oberleutnant Hernandez and spoke up, trying to keep his Russian accent to a minimum, "Sir, whichever way this situation goes, I would like to assist Dr. Hase." He turned to the doctor in question. "I-if that's alright. I'm not nearly as experienced, but I do know a few things."

Eliza was already locked and loaded, weapons hot as she kept her eyes on the spiders below. She didn't trust them one bit, and the thought of one spider boy making a difference against an entire sect of these creatures was almost laughable. Worse still, nerds were still coming out of the woodworks, people she hadn't met before but she knew probably couldn't help themselves. More flesh to protect. "So we got Water-boy and Doc Ruskie on spider communication duty." She huffed, the situation raising her damn bloodpressure like nothing else. "How can we get the communicator in front of them without being KOS'd? They didn't show the same courtesy to anyone in that valley."

Jérémy shrugged, having been clueless in how to handle the Russian academic. "That's alright with me, Monsieur Sedova," he said.

Benjamin did not particularly like the idea of a nuclear detonation on the sentient spiders, least of all with him and the rest of the team within fallout distance. His face displayed his displeasure at Caleb's remark, before shifting over to look towards the Russian. Benjamin hadn't met the man, but had deduced by his awkward posture that he was a fellow researcher, and so the doctor felt a certain kinship.

"Y-Y-Yes.... that's f-f-fine," Benjamin nodded with a broad smile, before looking towards Eliza in a melded expression of frustration and irritation. "I'm n-n-not the w-w-water b-boy.... m-muscle w-woman," he tried to fire back another nickname.

If he'd been trying to insult her, all he'd accomplished was a broad smile on the Captain's face. "No no," Eliza corrected him, "Not like THE water boy. You did water things right? You mentioned, swimming and so on." She chuckled, barely quiet as they lurked over the spider fort, "Muscle woman. Damn straight, String Bean." It only resulted in yet another alias.

"Nicknames aside," Maksim said, still feeling the pang in his stomach from being called Ruskie, "bombing the spiders would destroy not only our chance of learning more about the Spindileggius themselves, but also possible centuries of Aos Si artifacts." Maksim's grey eyes lit up as he grew more passionate, his accent no longer in check. "Think of the things we could learn from them, their society, their language! The technology alone would..." Maksim's confidence failed as he realized he had no authority in this situation. He was sure that the rest of the group could sense his greenness. Maksim cleared his throat and ran his hand through his dirty blond hair, casting his eyes to the ground.

Oh, that made more sense - regardless, Benjamin looked like a sad cat as he begrudgingly crossed his arms and looked towards Maksim. His eyes lit up slightly, almost in adoration, and he couldn't fight the smile forming on his face. "H-He's c-c-correct. W-We could learn s-s-so much... a-about them," he nodded, seemingly enthused by Maksim's outburst. "W-We don't n-need to... b-bomb them... if... we can... befri...befriend them. A-A-And learn... frrrrom them."

Maksim glanced up, surprised at someone agreeing with him. He said no more, but smiled bashfully as his eyes returned to the ground. Maksim was glad he had spoken up instead of silently following Hernandez's orders. Maybe his position at the AU wouldn't be so bad, after all.

"Look," Eliza sighed, "We can try to cutesy diplomacy work, but I'm keeping my gun on them. If it comes down to it, y'all are worth a lot more than some oversized bugs." She shrugged, noting something else, "Though it would suck to lose the elf stuff, I wanted to hold an elf gun."

Xavier sighed as the bickering goes on as the group continues forward, he reflexively checks his data slate to see if any updates on anything have come through. Seeing nothing, he turned his head towards the group, "Listen, my small part of this says we don't worry about diplomacy until we run into something that isn't pointing a gun at us. I for one would rather not die today, especially in deep space, at the hands of a sentient spider thing. The best place to start is what is our goal gonna be? We trying to make for the cave? The base? Or what?"

"The cave, vault, thing," Caleb said, as he struggled to pack up the camera, "is next on the list. While we walk, I'll upload the footage and maybe...try and get diplomacy greenlit so we're not court martialed. Especially because we still don't know where the anti-orbital weapon is."
 

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"Bonne chance, Captain Schembri," Jérémy said, saluting his fellow officer before taking on organizing the next leg of their hike, while Caleb stood off to the side with an uncomfortable comms specialist, explaining and arguing over Bohemond's meagre satellite network.

The 'discussion' went until the group had gotten to the cliff just above the vault door, which was still open.

"Yes, sir," Caleb said, sounding like he really wanted it to just be over with. "Thank you, sir. We'll get the job done. Captain Schembri out." Taking a moment to double check that the line had been disconnected, he sighed. "Well, I think I got the rest of you guys off the hook. But it sounds like I might get busted down to Private if things go sideways. And Dr. Boden'll be shot if we die. So, feel free to take that as encouragement to get back alive or, well...."

"Comforting last thoughts?" Oberleutnant Hernandez asked with a chuckle.

"I didn't say it," Captain Schembri said, pulling a private aside and unpacking a fiberoptic line from their pack. "I'm not hearing anything from the vault, so we're still on plan A. Thankfully, we'll be able to communicate outside thanks to this. My squad'll go in, since we got all the scientists, and you guys set up a watch, let us know if spiders show up."

"Will do, sir," Jérémy said as he set about arranging his squad.

"Let's get this over with," Caleb said, pointing the team down the cave as he connected the line to a transmitter and started unrolling the rest of it.

As the group walked down the cave, there were few signs of activity in the two weeks from their last visit. Only a few bits of spider silk and new bronze-colored scrapes along the basalt wall were any clue that they weren't the last visitors to the crypt. After a few moments, they reached the green-lit vault, which had seen some clean up, mostly being the crystal shards that had entombed Kadinle being on the edge of the room. The displays were still up and running, though they were dimmer and flickered more than it had previously, though the Aos Si script was still visible.

Maksim's heart beat faster as he gazed around the room. He hadn't seen anything like this before, not even in his textbooks. Maksim ran his hand through his short hair, his mind caught between awe and fear.

"невероятный..."

Eliza's lips tightened, a scowl on her face as she entered the cavern. Bad memories invaded her head, but she didn't let them hurt her. There will be time enough for anger later, so like any healthy person in the military, she bottled it up, put a cap on it, and assumed one day she'd die and that would solve the problem. "Nerds, do your work if you have to," she whispered, "But do it quick. One tag from those spiders and you're as good as dead."

Xavier noticeably persiped under his helm, sweat gathered on his face, as he seemed to be looking at each spider he can see or not see. His hands are wrapped tightly about his side arm. His lips move wordlessly as this whole situation came straight up from hell as far as he can tell. This definitely existed wholly within bad day territory. He tried to take deep,calming breathes to bregin himself under control. But his mind screen cannot shift away from the members of the last space station he was on. Many light years away.

Maksim's eyes drifted from the ceiling of the cave to the surrounding team. He noticed Xavier's facial expression and furrowed his brows. He recognized that look.

Maksim leaned over to Xavier and put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright, sir?" he asked quietly.

Xavier turned, pistol extended for just a moment at the voice, is fist clenching the grip of his pistol before it drops to his side. His eyes still holding that distant far away look. A moment passes, then another, the gun still trained onto Maksim. Then, almost as if its over, the pistol falls to Xavier's side and his face goes utterly blank. No emotions as he holsters the pistol and walks a few paces away from the group.

Eliza's entire assult rifle was pointed at Xavier, waiting for the look in his eyes to tell her if he decided to shoot. He didn't. Fucking hell, just what they needed. Almost on instinct, Eliza moved to stand between Xavier and Maksim, her eyes trained on the damaged soldier, but her weapon pointed down again. Perhaps the danger had passed, but this shit doesn't just go away. Yet another problem on a ice cream sunday of bullshit, the cherry on top. She looked over the captain, eyes wide, a silent question: "You seeing this shit?" A bit harder to communicate was her inner thoughts, thinking, "Fuck, who let this guy in? Shit, I should have done the paperwork huh."

Her eyes drifted to Maksim, face uneasy. "I don't think you should take it personally, Makky."

Xaiver looked over at Eliza, and in the coldest, deadest voice imaginable, "Have you heard of the Outpost 3127-b?"

She looked back to him, grip on her weapon tight. "No, bud, I haven't, the galaxy is fucken big. This ain't the place for this shit, alright? If you feel like you can't do this, you can head back to the ridge and hold down the fort. Take a breath, remember where you are. We got a job to do. Can you do it?"

"You are a cold hearted bitch you know that? Not everyone can shrug off everything under the umbrella of a job. I had to watch my wife and daughter get eaten by a space worm right before my fuking eyes. That may not mean shit to you but a part of me died that day. A part of me that I will never get back. I was stuck in space for nearly a full day before a shuttle picked me up. So pardon me if I don't exactly want to be here! I'm here because this was supposed to be my last tour. One more year of service and I could retire. Then these stupid space spiders decided they are little geniuses and ruined everything. I cannot stand anything that isn't human ever since then, so those spiders are at the top of my don't want to deal with list. Now, you ask me whether or not I can do the job?" Xavier pulls his pistol and fires hitting a rock about 15 paces away. "If you want me to kill the fuckers, I can do that. You need me to get us out of here by essentially hijacking a ship? I can do that. But you want sympathy for them or whatever, and you can shove off."

"What the fuck are you doing?" Caleb asked, putting down the fiber cable and stomping over to Xavier. "Do you want the spiders to come over and kill us all? Then please, keep firing your damn pistol at nothing. At the end of the day, we're trying to go the more peaceful route so we don't all die before reinforcements show up. So, everyone is going to keep their issues to themselves, not point guns at each other, and follow orders, alright?" He sighed, turning to the scientists. "Maksim, Benjamin. Do a little triage, figure out what information is important, take pictures of it, and send it back to Base Alpha. Keep that up until we have to pack up. Captain Bakarra, stay here and keep an eye on the nerds. Mr. Rhoads, you're with me, keeping guard up at the entrance. Let's get it done so we can go home." Orders given, he started up the tunnel, tucking the fiber-optic to the side as he walked.

Maksim was silent for the entire exchange, eyes wide and hands frozen still. He flinched when Xavier fired the pistol, snapping out of his daze. Everyone's voice was nothing but background noise until Maksim heard Caleb call his name out.

He nodded, not even sure what he was agreeing with, and stumbled over to Benjamin.

Benjamin gulped and looked towards Elizabeth and then Maksim. "C-Come on... n-nerd..." he said, gently, to the Russian, patting his shoulder awkwardly before removing his datapad and selecting the camera function. He then fitted a small camera to his head, like an odd hat, and grabbed a pair of magnified glasses out of his bag that made his eyes look really fucking weird.

And, as expected, he then made a beeline towards the script.

Eliza was silent, now more grumpy than usual. She followed behind the nerds, still casting glances at their problem member until they were at a safe distance. Finally, she could be vigilant for other threats. Her weapon was at the ready, and she kept close to her nerd bois as they made a beeline to do their science. It was almost cute, their enthusiasim despite the dangers, reminding her of lost friends. She wouldn't let that happen to these two, not by spider, not by broken men.

Xavier holstered his pistol and stared daggers at Eliza for a moment then would step in line with Caleb. He remained silent and unapologetic as he awaits for the show to get onto the proverbial road. The faster this is over, the better it will be.

With Caleb and Xavier out of the way, and Eliza playing mother hen, the scientists were free to focus on the panel of alien writing. Like in the reports from the last expedition, the display showed the status of the Theradectan's stasis pods, all viable workers released, and the general power level of the complex, critically low. There were also a number of tabs on the left side of the display, each labeled with an as of now inscrutable icon.
 

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"M-M-Ma...Max," Benjamin shortened Maksim's name, struggling with his stammer momentarily, before pointing at the script. "They're not... d-doing... too g-good," he murmured, eyes flicking back to the soldiers. "If they..." he began in a quiet tone, but then leaned forwards so he was even closer, "if they find out... they... w-will kill... the s-s-spiders."

Eliza, despite being nearby, wasn't too intently listening to the conversation, her ears perked for danger. She wasn't deaf though, hearing them whisper amongst their nerdy selves. And damnit, she was a curious spirit too! She leaned in, looking at the writing on the ancient console. It might as well be Greek, another language she didn't know, but it was kinda pretty in it's form. "What's up? I can't read elf, or uh, Aoi Se, or however you pronounce it. Did know an elf though, he was cool. Tried to skip out on the bar tab, but I was more mad he got to it first."

Maksim looked at Benjamin, concerned, then at Eliza, then Benjamin, then back to Eliza.

"Ahaha, fascinating story! I myself knew a few Aos Si in Kitezh," he said, trying too hard to sound nonchalant. He turned back to Benjamin, unsure of whether to let the soldier into their conversation.

"Uhhh..." He ran his hand through his hair for the third time this mission, keeping his voice lowered. "I mean, maybe this is kind of a good thing? With the spiders at such a disadvantage, they might be more willing to--uh, what's the word, подчиняться--comply with us."

Benjamin, being his incredibly conspicious self, followed Maksim's gaze every time that it changed. He frowned at Elizabeth. "Aos... A-Aos Si. N-Not... that..." he made a dismissive movement with his hand as if to reference the Aoi Se slip up. "I'll w-work on my... g-guns... you work on.... w-w-words," Benjamin instantly winced, realising that didn't sound very nice at all. He looked back to Maksim sheepishly as he began to speak once more.

He then frowned slightly, recoiling a little - he'd thought that the man might be similar to him. Well, he still could be, but... just less of a pacifist. Was Benjamin even a pacifist? He was only doing this for information, not because he had some huge moral attachment to the spiders.

"I d-don't..." he stammered a little more than usual, before removing the goggles and wiping his forehead with his wrist. "W-We should... t-tell the others... a-a-a-anyway... impar-impartially. It's not... our... p-p-problem if... the spiders... die," Benjamin concluded. His tone was instructive, as if it was his idea to tell the others and not Maksim's, but it was evident that this was an attempt on Benjamin's behalf to justify whatever may happen to the spiders after this.

Maksim's eyes widened. "I mean, I suppose we have to no matter what..." he glanced towards where Caleb and Xavier were. Maksim didn't want to keep any secrets from his superiors, but was telling them going to lead to the extinction of the spiders or a possible alliance?

"Hold on, hold on," Eliza shook her head, one hand up to stop them. "What are we telling them? Or not telling them, or whatever. What's the screen say? How do we know we have the upper hand? Far as I can tell, a bunch of E.T.s in the shape of giant spiders have laid waste to most of our operation, so tell me how the ever-loving fuck nuggets we have the upper hand? What does the elf screen say?"

Benjamin jumped as Elizabeth began speaking, even though he had just conversed with her a moment before. "Shut-shh..." he waved his hands in an attempt to quiet her, nearly hitting her with the goggle frames as he did so. "It's... a... all of the... l-life support... s-s-s-statuses. A-A-And critical p-power information..." he murmured, eyes flicking to Caleb and then back to Elizabeth. This must have looked incredibly conspicious, Benjamin noted sarcastically to himself.

"Tsk, bitch, YOU need to work on your words." Eliza rolled her eyes, bringing her voice to a quiet yet still somehow loud voice. It was loud in a local area now, which was better than before. "Wait, for the spiders? So, if we wanted to... what options do we have with this? Kill them all, potentially, or at least bluff that we could? We need options Brain Bois, and y'all are the one's to give them to us."

"That's what I'm thinking could be a possibility," Maksim murmered, "With them being in such a weakened state, they might be more open to peace." At least, Maksim thought, that's what he hoped they would be. Killing off a species was not on his list of things to accomplish here.

And that was the first time Benjamin felt, and appeared, angry. A dark look came over his eyes and his height seemed to change as his posture did, rolling his shoulders back slightly to calm himself. "We could... kill them. Or we c-could... have information." Benjamin noted that he stammered less when he was angry, but he still spoke slowly, just in case. His voice seemed different too - more deliberate, less scatty.

Eliza was looking at him strangely, still, to some extent, looking down at him. She wasn't scared, little brain boy couldn't do much to her, or maybe even to Brain Boy 2, as entertaining as that fight would be. She looked at him with a smile and shrugged. "Yeah, that's why I'm asking, what's the play here? I don't want to commit genocide, but I'm also not gonna pretend to feel bad if we kill the spiders. Info is good, at least for y'all and the science team back at base and then eventually people like me, but it's not worth your lives." She raised a hand, gently waving Benjamin down. "You look like an angry koala, what are you doing?"

"I'm not- I'm... just s-s-standing," he took a small step backwards, 'shrinking' again. Although he didn't like the stammer comment, he couldn't freak out here. He'd just... go for a swim afterwards. Clear his mind. He rolled his shoulders again, a deep breath, and then returned to 'normal' Benjamin. "I don't look l-like a ko-koala... r-r-right?" he turned to Maksim, before shaking his head. "This isn't im-important. Spi-spiders."

Maksim's eyes ping-ponged between Eliza and Benjamin as they talked. He snapped his attention back to Benjamin as he addressed him. Honestly, Maksim thought that Benjamin looked confident and capable, that is until he shrunk back to his unassuming demeanor.

"N-no, sir! You look...not...like a koala." Maksim wasn't even sure what a koala was.

"Well I didn't mean literally like a koala," Eliza sighed, "I meant figuaratively." She sighed dramatically, motioning with her hand for Ben to stand up taller. "Come on big boy, stand tall, you're one of the smartest people in the room but you stand like you're worried someone's gonna beat you. You got the brains of a... fucking hell, what animal is smart? I guess us. We'd be the smart ones. Look, you got the brains of a person, a smart one, but you stand like a beaten rat boy. Come on, stand up. Taller."

"S-Since when d-did you become a.... chiro... chiropractor," Benjamin said quickly, standing up a little taller, before looking towards Maksim with a little spark in his eye. "Y-You uh... I'm not... s-sir... it's... not... I'm... not..." he waggled his hands about a little, before fitting the goggles back on to disguise his blush. "Koalas are... smart..." he murmured, adjusting the zoom on his goggles. "And y-you might... b-beat me. I don't know..." With that, he whipped around and bent down towards the script again.

"S-See here..." Benjamin pointed to the script, ushering Elizabeth and Maksim closer. He spoke in Aos Si, or at least what seemed to be Aos Si. "L-Life support... a-and critical power. That's the uh... t-trans... lation. Translation."

Eliza chuckled, looking over the screen of information she couldn't quite comprehend fully. "Man, elf speak sounds so sexy," she said casually, "Like Spanish when certain people speak it, it's not fair."

That sent Benjamin somewhere and a blush formed on his face, but he managed to hide it by quickly rotating himself towards the console once more. "I uhhh... y-yes. Yes," he stumbled over his words, before looking back to the two of them. "A-A-Any answers to the.... the uh... m-moral dilemma?"

Maksim waited a few awkward moments before piping up, not feeling exactly qualified to voice his answer to such a big issue. "...Well, I say we tell Captain Schembri. He seems like a level-headed person who would hear us out. We've found the spiders' weak point, which means we have a bargaining chip. If we approach this the right way, no one has to get hurt. Besides, the other option is to not tell him, which I'm pretty sure the AU handbook says we would get court-martialed for at the very least," Maksim said, his voice beginning to panic a little in that last statement. He cleared his throat. "But, that's just my opinion."

Eliza shrugged, sighing. "Ehhhhh, if they find out about it yeah. From a military standpoint, keeping vital information secret is punishable by at least getting court martialed, and if they don't have time for that whole process we're getting locked in a room, or shot." She tapped the screen, not knowing what she was doing, before looking at the boys. "We gotta tell the Captain, or our collective ass is grass. But, you being the smart bois, you can suggest things and it'll sound smart, so... you can spin it how you want. Benny's the only one here who can read them, so you kinda get some..." she pondered for a second, before smiling sneakily, "Creative freedoms with the truth."

Maksim's head was still trying to process what exactly would make their ass grass, but he turned to Eliza in surprise. "A-are you saying we lie to them? To Captain Schembri?"

"Noooo," she smiled, "I'm saying you could. It's an option. It's a potentially dangerous option that could result in terrible consequences, but that's up to you."
 

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He winced. This was definitely, most positively, not what Maksim thought he was going to be doing on this mission. Or ever. He couldn't wait to get back to the base and do his self-affirmations in the mirror.

He turned to Benjamin. "We would only do that if we absolutely had to, right? And we don't have to...right?" Maksim trusted Captain Schembri. He was a leader, and that meant that he was an understanding and trustworthy person in his book.

Benjamin frowned, once more rubbing his forehead with his wrist. "It's l-like in a... a c-court of law.... our d-d-duty is to.... provide... infor-information. What p-people do with it... that's uh... their... pr-pr-prerogative."

With that, he cleared his throat... twice... and then spoke in a fairly loud yell. "WE HAAAA-HAVE SOMETHING!" and then quickly added, "SIRRRR".

"You know, you can just turn on the radio, right?" Caleb replied, his voice coming out of their comms. "Coming."

Eliza winced at the screech, looking at Benjamin with amusement. "There's no way you didn't know, come on."

A moment later, the Captain and Xavier were back in the room, with the officer's eyebrow raised. "What'd you find?" he asked.

"Ooh," Benjamin sighed, flushing red again. He'd only just got rid of his previous blush. "I just.. thought... I m-m-may have... forgotten..." he replied in a stammer, before shaking his head quickly and raising his hands as he began his explanation.

"S-s-s-so... this is uh.... a.... well it's in Aos S-S-Si. It's a... p-p-panel... with information a-about the status of uh... spi-spiders in... uh... stasis." He paused, eyes flitting to Maksim and Elizabeth. "A-Also... power is uh... critically low."

"That would explain why the lights are dimmer," Caleb said, looking around the vault. "And I guess their batteries could have gone down in the who knows how many years they've been here. Is there any info on what's drawing power? Or the status of the anti-orbital weapon?"

Maksim looked at Captain Schembri, the panels, Benjamin, the floor -- anything or anyone that wasn't the man who pulled a gun on him a few minutes ago. He couldn't speak or read enough Aos Si to be helpful in this situation, but he glanced at the symbols anyway. "Do we...um...do the panels mention anything about that?" he asked Benjamin.

Xavier, who had returned with Benjamin, remained in the back of the room slightly. He allowed the others to speak, getting caught up to the current point of information. Putting some potential pieces together, Xavier kept what he thought of to himself. It is possible that the anti orbital weapon denied power from other systems if the power supply itself was on its last legs. On the other hand, the anti orbital weapon may have its own power supply and be operational in either sense. A final scenario, would be the power supply reached critical status where the station area itself can be operated at any semblance of normal levels. This would explain the critical level of power on life support.

Benjamin whipped around and patted a few tabs that were raised from the main console. A new, much more detailed screen appeared, and Benjamin blinked a few times as he read over the main text, murmuring bits of Aos Si under his breath as his brain furiously worked to translate it as quickly as possible.

"The uh... w-w-weapon is... charged. But uh... p-p-priority power... is to the uh... the l-life support."

"Life support?" Caleb asked, raising an eyebrow. "What could be drawing that much power? The spider hasn't been asking for charging, so I wouldn't think it was for oxygen or anything..." Frowning in thought, he keyed his comms and said, "Base Alpha, Captain Schembri here. Could you ask Kadinle what the Theradectan's life support systems all entail? Over."

After a few moments of static, the reply came back. "Captain, Base Alpha," a comms officer replied. "We'll get on that, sir. Over."

Lowering his hand with a sigh, Captain Schembri said, "Alright, science boys. Tab through all the screens, take pictures of them, then let's get out-"

"Hernandez to Schembri, we've got a patrol of two spiders coming this way, over." the Frenchman said over the comms.

"Do we have time to get out, Leutnant? Over," Caleb asked, putting his rife to his shoulder.

"Negative, they're in sight of the tunnel. We're pulling back," the Oberleutnant replied.

"Acknowledged, we'll stay put. Over," Captain Schembri said, before keying his comm off. "Fuck," he muttered, before turning to the rest of the group. "Alright, looks like we might have a chance to see if diplomacy works. Get into the near corners, we'll have them focus on me." Pulling his rifle strap off his shoulder, he offered the weapon to the non-officers. "Who wants this? Probably would provoke them if I had this."

Maksim hesitantly stepped forward, but once given the rifle he handled it with the confidence of someone who was trained with firearms. He slung it over his shoulder and turned to the others.

Eliza was suddenly worried about the entire situation, at least more than a few seconds ago. Offering the Captain up on a platter didn't seem like a good idea, no matter how nice a peaceful outcome might be. It was a long shot. She looked around, utterly conflicted, before offering a sidearm from under her half/shoulder cape towards Benjamin. It was the service pistol, a basic bitch kinda gun but she wasn't gonna give the nerd a revolver, he'd take his own arms off. "Take this and never speak of this again, they get close, don't hesitate."

Benjamin had already begun taking photos when Hernandez's voice crackled over the comms. In a state of panic from his seemingly imminent death, Benjamin dropped the tablet, somehow managing to catch it again before it fell. He shakily took a few more pictures, unsure of whether they would be a high enough quality due to his shaking hands, before stowing the tablet away and beginning to move towards where Schembri had directed them to be.

It was then that he was stopped by Elizabeth's arm, wielding a gun. Okay. Mutiny. He would rather die like this than from spiders, at the hands of a comrade. Suddenly, he snapped back into the 'real' world to realise that Elizabeth was only offering him the gun and not trying to actually kill him. He nervously took it, holding it rather awkwardly in his hand before giving her a short and silent nod of thanks.

"Good boy. Stay behind me, and if it don't look good, send all data to base and die a warrior's death." She huffed, still conflicted about parting with any of her weapons despite the good cause of arming the nerds, but she shook it off and posted up near the entrance, her weapon trained on the opening where the spiders would be coming from.

Caleb looked at his fellow Captain, sighed, and said, "Eliza, if they see you doing that, they'll just pull back, call the rest of their friends, and we're fucked. If you're going to point your gun, do it in the corner."

She narrowed her eyes at the Captain, sighing. "Or they'll feel a sense of self-preservation like any creature and actually listen. We don't know Captain. We don't know anything. All we can do is hope to high heaven that their spider in captivity means shit to them at all." She lowered her weapon to alert carry, but she held it ready still.

"I c-c-can try uh... A-A-Aos Si. They might uh.... l-like that..." Benjamin whispered in more of a hiss, still holding the gun like it was a bottle of milk.

"You do remember that the Aos Si were their effective slave masters, right?" Caleb asked, pulling his radio off his suit. "Base Alpha, this is Captain Schembri. Are Dr. Boden and Kadinle ready for their part of the show? Over."

"O-oh. N-no... that uh... m-m-maybe not," Benjamin wished to die from embarrassment. That did make a lot of sense, to be fair, but Benjamin had gotten a little to excited about languages... as per usual.

"To be fair to the brain boi," Eliza said with a wry chuckle, "They'd probably understand it at least."

"Captain, this is Dr. Boden," the scientist said over the radio. "We're ready to go. We did a few tests, and Kadinle said to turn up the gain on both ends. The Theradectans will be able to pick out their speech despite any static. Incredible hearing capability. Oh, over."

"Glad to see someone's enjoying this," Caleb muttered, shaking his head as he upped his radio's gain, which brought an increased amount of static. "Anything else to add before our guests show up, over?"

"Kadinle here," a monotone voice said over the radio. "We got a 'text-to-speech' program running for me. I'll try to keep you up to date on what's being said this way while I speak to my compatriots. And yes, I wanted to let you know that the main power draw should be our machinery that makes food out of the algae, over."

"Wait," Captain Schembri said, looking between the radio and the panel of alien gibberish. "You're saying that the spider's problem is not enough power? But if they did have enough, they could turn the algae into food?" He let a sigh of relief out, before remembering his radio etiquette. "Oh, over."

"Precisely," Kadinle replied. "Do you have a large amount of energy? And why is the Brilliant God's Gift jumping up and down?"

"Yes!" Dr. Boden said, the 'Gift' in question. "If we could figure out how to hook up the Churchill's spare fusion reactor up to their tech, we could solve both of our problems at the same time."
 

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"The brilliant people are all jumping up and down now," Kadinle added. "That's a good thing, right? Over."

Maksim attempted to keep his eyes trained on the entrance while listening in on the conversation at the same time, but he turned to the radio when Captain Schembri mentioned turning the algae into food. Maksim was a light eater, but even he had to admit that the low food supply was becoming a big problem.

"But how could we convince the spiders to allow us to set up the fusion reactor to their tech?" he asked, but then paused and thought for a moment. "Unless..." Maksim didn't want to say it, but he realized that diplomacy might only get them so far. There's no way they would share their tech with us that easily. Is violence the only answer here? Maksim thought. He shook his head. There had to be a way to successfully negotiate with them somehow.

"Ask spider boy if he can run diplomacy for the current problem." Eliza growled lightly. "Spider's incoming, remember? We can rejoice if we fucken survive."

Xavier listened to the conversation up to this point and hasn't had much to add. He does not like the spiders but he prefers being alive to being dead. He looked over the various other members of the group, seeing how their reactions to the latest development compares to his own.

The emotionless text to speech almost made Benjamin cry - the little spider friend. He missed him, at least Kadinle didn't try to kill them when they appeared in the lab. He was a friendly spider, and these spiders approaching were... unlikely to be as friendly.

"The t-t-text to speech m-machine shall have... to uh... b-be reconfigured. I-I-In fact... you could just uh... g-give Kadinle a m-microphone, Dr Boden."

"Don't worry, Dr. Hase, he has a mic," Boden replied, with Kadinle's hisses and buzzes coming through the radio loud and clear.

"The TTS is for us, bud," Eliza stated, eyes sharp like a hunter's on the prowl, or maybe like a defensive creature in a corner. "We don't talk spider."

"Schembri, this is Hernandez," the French officer said over the radio. "The patrol is seems to have noticed that someone's in the vault. Looks like they're sending one in and keeping one outside. If things go bad, we'll try and kill the outside spider before he can raise the alarm. Over."

"Acknowledged, Schembri out," Caleb said, before looking around the rest of the group. "Well, here goes nothing," he added, doing his best to keep a brave face on, before triggering the mic again. "Base Alpha, Schembri. I'll let you know when the we got our spider in sight. If Kadinle could explain how the radio works and tell them to give a sign of when they want to transmit and receive, that'd help a lot. Over."

"Will do, Full-Heart, over," Kadinle's TTS replied.

The Captain sighed as he remembered his butchered name, but shrugged and sat down on the stone floor. "Nothing to do but wait for our guest," he said, setting the radio in front of him, while keeping his right next to his pistol holster.

A few moments later, the group could hear the tapping of the alien's mechanical exoskeleton on the tunnel floor, quickly followed by back and forth chittering from the two spiders. The transmitter was jerked closer to the tunnel as the fiber line grew taunt.

After a minute or so, the tapping returned, which was then followed by the appearance of the Theradectan, who looked like a shadow against the tunnel wall, with only the light reflecting in their large eyes making their presence known.

"Base Alpha, Theradectan in sight," Caleb said, holding both his hands up as the spider came closer. "It's up to you. Godspeed, over."

In the agonizing seconds before Alpha responded, the spider walked into the vault proper, freezing as the rest of the team came into view.

"Guys, keep the guns down," Captain Schembri said, looking at each person in turn as he kept his hands in the air, in what he hoped was a universal sign of peace.

Maksim kept his gun lowered even as the Theradectan came into view, not wanting to do anything rash. He could feel himself beginning to tune out as the situation grew tense, but he took a deep breath and attempted to focus. Угомонись. Угомонись, Максиа.

Eliza kept her weapon down, but she never let it go. She never would, not out here. She kept herself in front of Benjamin, and her eyes never left the enemy.

Like the others, Benjamin angled the gun down, but the shaking of his hands betrayed the fact that he did not have any idea what he was doing. If fighting ensued, Benjamin would be completely out of his depth. In an odd way, he was grateful for Elizabeth positioning herself in front of him, like a strange human shield, but he also felt... bad. He should have completed more combat training, and that was his fault.

The tension was cut when radio burst with Kadinle's chittering and buzzing, which brought the newcomer's focus entirely on the device. The black chitined alien started buzzing in return, but soon stopped and just listened.

"I'm explaining radio and the basics of what's going on, and repeating it in case it takes my comrade a bit to pick up on what I'm saying." Kadinle's TTS said, while the spider kept chittering. "Going to be a little slow on the follow up for you bipeds, talking and writing at the same time is a pain."

"No kidding," Caleb said with a chuckle.

A few moments later the radio stopped buzzing, which left the vault silent. The black spider scratched it's lower jaw for a few moments, before pointing at Caleb with one of it's pincers and then raising it.

"Guess that's the signal," Schembri said, keying the radio and returning the point and lift gesture. With that, the Theradectan started buzzing, during which it swung it's pincers back and forth.

"Huh, is it talking with it's hands?" Caleb asked, looking between the rest of the group. "Er, pincers?"

Maksim was staring at the exchange with wide eyes, taking in and trying to process everything he was seeing.

"...Yes, it appears to be how they communicate."

"Oh," Caleb said, facepalming his facemask with his free hand. "Yes, I know they talk with the bristles on pincers. I meant the spider moving it's hands while they talk. Like, you know, how Italians do it."

After a couple of minutes of buzzes and chitters, the black spider stopped and gestured at Caleb to stop transmitting.

"Just stepping in here to let you know we're good, over," Captain Schembri said, before switching from transmit to receive.

The radio started back up with Theradectan buzzing, but was quickly accompanied by Kadinles's TTS. "To summarize for the non-spiders, this is Thakozois, one of our higher ranked warriors. He's glad I'm still alive and interested in the technology that you have, especially since, like you've seen, our systems are extremely taxed. He's interested in what you have to offer, but will have to go back to our matriarch to get approval. He wants to know some more details about my current condition, which I'm relating now, and to talk the logistics of how to continue negotiations. He assumes that you'll want to be in a place where you won't be as easily cornered. Once I'm done answering his questions, I'll say over."

"I like how this guy thinks," Caleb said, waiting for the radio to quiet down again. "Very to the point."

"Um, Mr. Kadinle," Maksim quietly spoke up, "Could you ask him if they know exactly why their systems are so taxed?"

"You know, why didn't we just use another radio frequency earlier to run this faster?" Captain Schembri asked, sighing as shook his head. "Hindsight's a pain."

After a few moments, Maksim recieved the spider's TTS. "Thakozois already told me, Maximal. Our systems require mana to work, but it's in low supply in the system for some reason. I'm actually surprised that your systems do not require it, as the colonizer's needed it as well. Over, but still talking on the other line."

"Wait, mana?" Caleb said with a shake of his head. "We need to get that translator checked."

Eliza barked a laugh, listening to the machine. "Autocorrect is a pain, and the spider's got stubby little feets." She laughed, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. She was staring at the spider, watching it, just waiting for it to make a wrong move.

Mana? That's a Melanesian concept. Life force? A biological source of energy? Or some force of nature like thunder and lightning? Could they be talking about some form of electricity? Maksim thought this all in lightning-fast Russian. Wait a minute...Maximal?

A few moments later, the buzzing ended and Kadinle's TTS said, "Over."

"Captain Schembri here," he said, "Let's go with my original plan of meeting outside of the vault, everyone brings a few trusted lieutenants and get to the point where we can have a ceasefire at least, then bring all the important people together later. Over."

After a few more rounds of back and forth, Thakozois nodded in agreement, nodding to the front and sides, before turning around and scurring out through the tunnel.

"Okay," Caleb said, standing up and brushing the dust off his pants. "Let's follow and get out of this killbox. Hernandez," he continued, keying his radio as he put it back in it's regular place, "Has our guest left? Over."

"They have," the French officer replied. "Off at a fairly fast clip too. You think it'll work out? Over."

"Here's hoping," Captain Schembri replied, gesturing the group out of the vault. "Let's get ready to greet the next group. Over."
 
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