Marathon, The Future Starts Slow 4

Oct 05, 2013 13:14

Buckle your seatbelts, this one's long. :D

Previous chapter.


4. In the Dark
Mark couldn't actually read any of the symbols on the terminal; they looked a little like the S'pht characters he'd seen on Lh'owon, but less blocky and more curvy. He hadn't been learning how to read their language, anyway, let alone Jjaro or whatever Seshat was writing in. He'd still spent enough time around Durandal to get a pretty good idea of when an AI was in a bad mood, and the gray text - arranged in small, sharp bursts of symbols - sure looked like a bad mood to him.

"Fucking great," he muttered, then remembered the spider monsters and looked over his shoulder. He didn't see anything, but it reminded him that he couldn't stay here forever. He'd just have to find another terminal, one that Durandal did have access to.

A shield recharger wouldn't hurt, either.

He logged off the terminal and shoved a fresh pack of grenades into the assault rifle. He considered the rocket launcher for a moment, but the low-ceilinged halls made things a little too tight to use it without possibly blowing himself to bits too, and he only had six shots left for it. Assault rifle and grenades it was, and shotguns when that ran out, and then he'd be down to the fusion pistol and the forty-fours so he'd damn well better find Durandal before things got that bad.

Mark went back out to the main hallway, saw the spider monster at the other end still wasn't moving, and said, "Hey, ugly, you wanna play?"

It turned and charged at him, its belly scraping against the floor and skinny forelimbs stabbing at him, and right as Mark started firing, the lights went out again. Didn't matter - the flare from the exploding grenades was enough, and he emptied one rifle clip, used up half of another and then the fifth grenade took the thing right in the eyes and he heard it collapse, its limbs scrabbling against the walls for a few seconds before it finished dying. The lights stuttered back on a moment later.

He edged past the body, trying not to get any more of that greasy blood on him, and said, "Seshat, if you're listening? You could at least keep the power going steady."

The lightbulb directly above his head shattered.

"Well, don't you make Durandal look like Mister Sunshine," Mark said, and he started down the hall, more lightbulbs popping as he went.

That stopped after he took a hall that curved around to his left, but the lights stayed dim and unsteady as he looked for a way out. Or at least a way up. This area seemed warmer than the part of the complex the Pfhor had taken over; between that and the static on the comm link, he suspected he might be a lot deeper underground than he was supposed to be. He needed to head upwards, and maybe he could find the general area he'd started out in.

The hallway eventually led to a staircase going up and he took the stairs two at a time. The staircase opened into a giant room with a dozen doors opening off it; he tried a few of them until he found another one that both opened and led to more stairs and went up again.

A couple more halls, another staircase, and he turned a corner and came face-to-mandibles with another spider. Too close for explosives, so he raked it with the rifle till it backed off a little and then planted a couple grenades in the middle of its face, which did the trick. It also did a number on his ammo, so he slung the assault rifle over his shoulder, pulled the shotguns, and kept going a little more carefully. Next time he saw one of the spiders it was in its own little niche, two of its skinny forelimbs plugged into some kind of open circuit panel, and he snuck past it without a hitch.

He got up another level or two, passing through sweeping halls that would have been grand with better lighting and edging past the occasional piece of machinery he couldn't make heads or tails of, before reaching a maze of narrow white-walled corridors where the lights were bright and steady for once. Mark checked each one, and the fourth one had a terminal and a recharger set into one wall - with a spider blocking the way, poking at the circuit panel between them.

"Fucker, that's mine," he said, and he let loose with the shotguns. Sixteen shells and a lucky punch to the monster's eyes later and the corridor was Mark's. He shoved the body out of his way with one foot and logged in, praying it wouldn't just be more alien symbols.

There you are. I've been scanning all over for you.

"Oh thank fuck, it's you this time," Mark said. He could have kissed the screen if it hadn't been splattered with monster blood.

Nice to know you missed me, Durandal wrote. Seshat must have started waking herself up as soon as you activated that first cluster of circuits; she took control of the teleport network and diverted you to the lowest levels of the complex.

"Yeah, I kinda noticed that." Mark glanced around, didn't see any monsters trying to sneak up on him. "Can you get me out of here? There's these things, these spider monsters... I can take them out, but they're damn ammo sinks and I really don't want to hang around longer than I have to."

Unfortunately, you're too far down for Rozinante's teleporters to get a lock and Seshat still controls most of the local network. You will have to find your way higher up so I can reconnect to your comm link's signal before I can reach you or even teleport in ammunition, so be careful with what you have left.

"I should have known."

Relax. The S'pht and S'pht'Kr have been clearing the Pfhor out of the upper levels, and I'm sending a detachment to start exploring the lower levels and meet up with you. While you're finding them, I will be working on communicating with Seshat. Perhaps I can find out why she seized the teleport network and what the creatures you encountered are. On the way, there's a large room I want you to investigate for me that may contain her core logic circuits; if I can get access to them it would speed up communication considerably.

"Are you fucking serious?" Mark said. "Your new girlfriend kidnapped me - and I got to tell you, I have had it up to here with getting kidnapped by crazy AIs - and dumped me in a monster pit and keeps screwing with the lights, and now you want me to go check out her goddamn core?"

Do you have something better to do? Get moving and stop testing my patience. I will start seeding ammunition on the lowest levels I can reach; it's the best I can do until you get higher up.

Mark sighed. "Fine. Got it. Where's this room?"

A map appeared on the terminal and outlined a huge oval room lined with pillars, including an especially large one in the center. Mark squinted, trying to memorize the layout of the corridors around the room, and when he thought he had it he said, "Okay, I'm good. See you up top."

Don't waste time.

"Yeah, yeah, don't have to tell me twice."

Mark logged off, charged his shields - the recharger only filled a third of the meter, but any port in a storm - and moved on.

---
The air got cooler as Mark got farther up into the complex, and the lights kept going out without warning and leaving him in the dark for several minutes at a time. He ran into a few buttons and switches set into various nooks as he explored; out of habit he flipped most of them, with mixed results. A few turned on more lights, a couple opened doors he hadn't been able to get open previously, and some didn't do anything at all as far as he could tell, but he kept messing with the ones he found anyway in case they did something useful for Durandal.

He'd used up most of his shotgun shells getting ambushed by a pair of the spider monsters at a crossroads, so he had switched to the fusion pistol and tried to be stealthier. The uncertain lighting made it hard to spot spiders before they saw him, but other than the ambush, he had managed to avoid any more encounters. Kind of a shame, but he just didn't have the resources to clean the place up like he wanted, and he had wasted too much time wandering around already.

He reached the end of a dimly lit hallway and had the choice of a staircase going down with working lights on his right, a completely dark hallway to his left, and a door right in front of him that didn't open when he tried it. Mark considered the door, trying to remember if he had passed up hitting any switches recently, and something tapped against the side of his helmet.

He didn't jump. He took one big step back and swung the fusion pistol up and fired, fusion bolts humming through the air and splashing uselessly against the spider's thick hide. It kept trying to jab at him with its cybernetic forelimbs like it wanted to plug into his armor - well, fuck that - and he drained the pistol's battery and reloaded and held the trigger, backed up more and when the spider jumped at him, he hit it with an overcharge to the eyes.

Then the bastard exploded into pieces at him like a Hunter and he couldn't dodge in time and the shockwave jolted his shields down to almost nothing. He cursed, but there was nothing to do but keep going; he hadn't seen a shield recharger since talking to Durandal, and that had been too long ago to be worth the trip back. He just had to stay away from the goddamn spiders and look for another recharger, that was all.

Mark went down the dark hall and found two sets of stairs going up, both with flickering lights. He took the right one and it dead-ended in a tiny room with dark brown walls, no shield recharger, still no pattern buffer - he hadn't seen one yet, or he'd be a lot less careful tackling monsters - but one terminal that he decided to try in case it was Durandal with more information.

It wasn't.

Durandal must have managed to get some kind of translator program running; Seshat's alien symbols were still there, but off to the left side of the screen, with English text on the right.

I was left behind in silence
to reconstruct and to [?wait] alone
before the [?parasites] children found me;

You [?unworthy] ones seek my knowledge
to another I might grant its [?glory]
(but to an abomination) never;

I will [?purify] my nest,
drive out all invaders to the frozen dark.
"Okay, it's official," Mark told Seshat. "I got a bad feeling about you."

The lighting fixture overhead sparked but didn't go out, at least. He still took the hint and left to try the other stairway, which was longer and took him to a dark, cavernous pit that he could only cross by a narrow ledge running alongside the left-hand wall. He edged his way across, hoping the dim lights would stay on till he got to the other side and could keep going up; Durandal had probably already figured out that Seshat wasn't too friendly, but Mark was still going to feel a whole lot better once he'd gotten back into comm range and made sure of it. The gaping black emptiness of the pit was giving him the creeps, anyway. It was too easy to imagine hordes of spider monsters nesting down in the dark, just waiting to swarm up the walls and go for him if he made enough noise to draw their attention...

He got through the pit room without getting attacked and reached a steep, narrow, spiraling staircase. The temptation to charge his way up it was strong, but he suppressed it and took the steps slowly, keeping the outer wall at his back and his fusion pistol up.

After too many steps to count, the steady static hiss of the comm link broke and crackled. "- enough yet? Answer if you can hear this transmission. Are you high up enough -"

"Durandal?"

"You were expecting someone else?"

"Nah, but damn, never thought I'd be so glad to hear from you." Mark was genuinely more relieved than he'd expected to be; he had gotten way too used to Durandal's omnipresence on the Rozie, and the dead silence in the lower levels had been getting to him. Even an annoying voice like Durandal's was an improvement.

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Durandal said, and shotgun shells started appearing on the stairs as Mark continued upwards. "Find anything interesting?"

"Well, your girlfriend doesn't like me," Mark said.

"She doesn't appear to like anyone. The spider-like cyborgs you described have started appearing in the upper levels of the complex and attacking anything they see, and Seshat herself is rejecting all my attempts to communicate with her, so you can stop referring to her as my 'girlfriend' any time now. The good news is that she's equally unhappy with the Pfhor, and S'pht weapons are highly effective against the spiders while the Pfhor's are less so. The bad news I think you can guess."

"You still can't transport me out of here, and you still want me to hit up her core, which is probably a billion miles away," Mark said. "Fine, it's my job anyway. Got any other good news?"

"When you reach the top of the stairs, go left. I placed some ammunition and a shield recharge canister in a room there earlier."

"Music to my ears."

"There's also a small group of S'pht nearby pinned down by some of the Pfhor," Durandal said. "I want you to go help them; they should be easy enough to find, and from there you can go look for Seshat's core."

"I'm on it," Mark said, and he decided to live dangerously and run the rest of the way up the stairs. No spiderborgs appeared to ruin his day. He found the room, collected the ammunition and the shield recharge - bringing him to two-thirds of full shields, a beautiful sight - and started looking for Durandal's trapped S'pht.

He found the Pfhor first. Two Hunters and a couple Troopers in a hallway trying to beat down a door, which he figured had the S'pht on the other side; he hit them with a grenade to get their attention, and while he kept them busy the door opened and five S'pht poured out and hit them from the other side. The Pfhor didn't stand a chance.

Four of the S'pht greeted him and then floated off to go rejoin the rest or keep exploring - he didn't know which - but the fifth, a purple-cloaked one he didn't recognize, hovered in place. "Uh, sro y'halu nha," Mark said. "We met before? Nia pht'sah?"

"Sro y'halu nha," the S'pht said. "S'pht'Valh F'tha ni." And in blurred English, "On Lh'owon met."

"On Lh'owon? Really?" That didn't seem too likely, considering all the S'pht he had met on Lh'owon had been trying to kill him and he hadn't exactly been pulling his punches defending himself.

"On Lh'owon met," F'tha repeated, then said something in S'pht that Mark could only half understand. Something about the Pfhor and existence and a message, and a failure...

"Wait," Mark said. "Wait, I think I remember - in the garrison, right? You were busy with a terminal and I snuck up on you, I almost shot you but I saw what you were writing over your shoulder and left you alone - shit, I didn't think you even saw me." He didn't remember what the message on the terminal had been, but he'd already run into so much trouble in that part of the garrison that he had been happy to skip one more fight for any reason; he sure as hell hadn't expected to run into that particular S'pht again.

"I was aware," said F'tha in S'pht. "I thank you for my continued existence."

"Sure, no problem," Mark said. He checked the room in case there was anything useful in it - there wasn't - and came back out expecting F'tha to be gone with the rest of the S'pht, but they were still floating in the hallway. "Um - can I help you with something?"

"No," F'tha said. "I will aid you."

"You want to help me?" Mark blinked. "What - follow me around this place?"

"Yes."

Mark gave the idea some thought, then shrugged and said, "What the hell, why not." Hard to see how it could hurt to have someone watching his back besides Durandal, especially if the S'pht's energy weapon was as good against the spiderborgs as Durandal had claimed.

"Oh, this is too cute," Durandal said through the comm link. "This one thinks they owe you some kind of debt for not killing them and they want to repay it. Very touching."

"Hey, if the guy saves my ass down here, I'm not gonna complain. We can call it even once I'm off this rock."

"I'm going to have so much fun watching this. I knew the S'pht would have all their illusions about you shattered eventually, but I wasn't expecting it to happen quite so soon."

"Just wait till they figure out about you and we'll see who's laughing," Mark said. F'tha was waiting patiently at the other end of the hallway; Mark sighed and switched his assault rifle for the fusion pistol. "Okay, F'tha, let's go."

---
With a little guidance from Durandal, Mark and F'tha continued through the Jjaro base, searching for the room that contained Seshat's core. They ran into a few Pfhor and another of the spiderborgs - nothing Mark couldn't have handled on his own, but it was nice to have the back-up, especially for the spiderborg. Nice to have company, too; the scenery was getting pretty monotonous, and even if F'tha wasn't all that chatty, at least having them around was a change of pace from sneaking through hallways alone.

The occasional ammo caches and shield recharges didn't hurt, either. If he could just find a pattern buffer Mark could die happy, though he'd still prefer not to die at all.

At a T-shaped junction, two more spiderborgs jumped them. Mark took one down and F'tha got the other, but when F'tha started to float down the right hallway a third spiderborg came out of nowhere and tackled the S'pht, its upper pair of forelimbs trying to dig into F'tha's exoskeleton.

Mark cursed and hit it with a couple fusion bolts, but it shrugged them off, and he couldn't risk it exploding when it was right on top of F'tha. F'tha was firing, too, but S'pht energy bolts had the same effect on the things as the fusion pistol; Mark yelled "Stop!" in S'pht and drew one of the forty-fours, firing round after round at the damn monster while he tried to yank its forelimbs away from F'tha. Finally it pulled back and retreated far enough that F'tha could safely get off another bolt, and the spiderborg exploded harmlessly at the far end of the hall.

"I thank you once more," F'tha said gravely.

"You're welcome. Don't sweat it," Mark said, looking around for any more possible ambushes. "Durandal, are we there yet or what?"

"Not yet but you're close, so quit chatting and get to Seshat's core now."

Mark paused in the middle of reloading the forty-four. Durandal's last few comments had been getting shorter and more to the point, but that had sounded almost - stressed. "Hey, everything okay up there?"

"Nothing that I can't handle," Durandal said, "but the less time you waste, the better."

F'tha was regarding Mark with a curious air; Mark said, "Take five, F'tha - I mean, go look ahead. Please," and F'tha drifted down the corridor to scout it out. "Okay, Durandal, you promised to play me straight, so play me straight. What's going on?"

There was a short silence from the comm link before Durandal said, "Since you insist - Seshat has apparently decided the best defense is a good offense and transported several of the spider cyborgs onto Rozinante. They've been attacking both my core and the S'pht, attempting to infect them with some kind of virus. Obviously they haven't been able to breach the core yet, thanks to my excellent foresight in sealing it off, but they have been going after other systems, and keeping them from doing any serious damage requires the majority of my attention."

"Well, shit."

"An accurate if not especially useful assessment," Durandal said. "The situation is under control; those S'pht not actively engaged in fighting the creatures are helping me devise a way to cleanse the virus from the ship's systems. It's a vicious little piece of coding, and I suspect that it may be why Seshat has proven so hostile. Once Rozinante is secure, I'll send a chip with the cure down to her core. It should be able to wipe any infection from her systems and destroy the spiders at the same time; if that doesn't soften her up, at least you'll be conveniently located to explore other options."

"Want me to come up there and help?" Mark asked. "Pretty sure I'm high up enough for a teleport now, I could clean the fuckers out for you."

"What, are you actually concerned about me?"

"Not a chance," Mark said, "I just don't want anything to happen to my ride out of here." Which was almost as big a lie as half the shit that Durandal had ever said, but he wasn't about to admit to getting worried over a giant pain-in-the-ass computer who'd been giving him the cold shoulder for three weeks. "You sure you don't need me up there?"

"You are concerned. How sweet." Durandal's voice was filled with amusement and a hint of something else. "Really, I'm fine, don't start crying over me yet. Just find Seshat's core before I get too impatient."

F'tha picked that moment to return and announce, "The path is open."

"Okay, but call me if you change your mind," Mark said. "C'mon, F'tha, we got work to do."

The two of them trudged through hallways for another half-hour, and Mark was getting crankier by the minute. How big was the damn base, anyway? They had to get to the room with Seshat's core circuits eventually, but it felt like they were just going in circles and wasting ammo on the occasional Pfhor stragglers.

Finally Mark found a switch that opened a pair of doors leading into a set of curving hallways he recognized from the map Durandal had shown him earlier. That was the good news; the bad news was that there was a spiderborg around every corner and Durandal's ammunition dumps had become few and far between. By the time Mark and F'tha got through the snaking hallways and reached the door that ought to open into the right room, Mark had developed a pretty good idea of just how bad the situation might be inside Seshat's core.

He opened the door anyway, saw approximately a metric fuckton of spiderborgs, and closed it right back up.

"Is there a failure?" F'tha asked.

"Fucking right there's a failure!" Mark took a couple deep breaths. He'd been in tighter spots, no point panicking at this one. He ran through all the S'pht he could remember and managed to say, "Are there more S'pht close?"

"No. They are distant and busy."

"Just the two of us then, huh," Mark said. He considered his weapons, took stock of his ammunition, and then hefted the rocket launcher onto his shoulder. "All right, F'tha, let's give 'em hell."

He opened the door again, aimed at the clustered spiders, and fired two rockets.

After that, things got a little blurry.

Rockets being worse than useless at short range, Mark only had the chance to fire one more, taking out two of the spiderborgs. Then it was all close quarters work, a haze of gunpowder and the echoing stutter of the assault rifle and shotgun blasts, oily gray blood spattering against his visor, the crunch of dull green bug eyes shattering under his armored fists. Blood rushed in his ears too loudly for him to hear the electric buzz of F'tha's bolts tracking spiders around the hall, but he didn't need to hear it to know the S'pht was doing their fair share of the fighting.

In a clear moment, he managed to swing up onto a shelf that ran along the wall and survey the room. Still too many spiderborgs - fuck, the place was a nest of them - but it was starting to empty out a little. He didn't care if they died or ran for the depths, just as long as they were out of his hair.

F'tha bobbed up beside him and started to say something, but a pair of the remaining spiderborgs skittered up the wall and tried to bite both their heads off, and Mark went back to work. He was burning through shotgun shells and rifle clips like there was no tomorrow but he didn't give a damn; that was something to worry about when he wasn't getting swarmed.

He was beating a spiderborg's head in with the butt of the rifle when one of F'tha's bolts zeroed in on its thorax; Mark jumped back just before it could explode on him and turned to look for the next target, but the hall was still. Nothing left but spiderborg corpses littering the blue steel floor and F'tha hovering high up by one of the pillars. Mark wiped away some of the spider blood dripping down his helmet and said, "Was that all of them?"

"The path is open," F'tha said, floating down.

"Good fucking riddance." His shields were on the low side; much more of that melee and he would have been in trouble. F'tha was looking pretty ragged, too, with three deep scratches on the side of their helmet and a tear in their cloak. "Thanks for the help, F'tha," he said. "Guess we're even now..." He stopped to take his first real good look around the room without spiderborgs in the way. The ceiling was high and arched in a way he hadn't seen in any other rooms so far, and the pillars lining the walls all glowed with lines of dim grayish light, reminding him of the personality cells he'd activated to get Thoth up and running, but a lot bigger. The largest pillar of them all was in the middle of the room, and on one wall across from it he could see - oh, sweet Christ, it was a pattern buffer at long fucking last, the same kind he had seen on the Jjaro station, all sparkling white and powered up and looking better than a room full of explosives and shotgun shells.

Mark went right to it and plugged in with a sigh of relief. He could still use a shield recharge, but a back-up with low shields was better than taking a couple bad hits and getting resurrected God knew where. Now he and F'tha just had to hold down the fort till Durandal got back to him about that cure for the spiderborgs...

After Mark disconnected from the pattern buffer, F'tha inspected it, then extended one metal arm from under their cloak and began to toy with the buttons. Mark was wondering whether S'pht could use pattern buffers the same way he did when a trumpet fanfare blared in his ear.

He jumped a little. Couldn't help it. "Durandal? You got good news for me yet?"

"Of course," Durandal said smugly. "Rozinante's systems are clean, and I'm compressing the antiviral program onto a chip for teleport as we speak. I see that you've finally reached your destination."

"Yeah, glad to hear it." Mark leaned against the wall. "Sorry I couldn't make it up there to help."

"Don't worry about it; you were of more use where you are. Impressive work, by the way."

"Just earning my keep."

Durandal laughed and said, "I'll send the chip down in a minute; keep the core clear until then."

F'tha had switched to staring at Mark instead of the pattern buffer. After a moment, they said, "Are you and Durandal lha'rck'ta?"

"Depends," Mark said. "Does lharkcha mean friends, enemies, or a little of both?" He looked around the room for a likely spot where the chip might appear and saw the door they'd come in through slide open. "Shit, we've got company again - F'tha, watch my back!"

Three Pfhor soldiers in blue armor ran through the door and started taking shots at them. Mark grabbed his pistols - he didn't have much ammo left for anything else - and fired back, taking down one as F'tha attacked another. The third dodged them both and then more soldiers poured in, followed by a couple of Troopers and a pair of Hunters and more spiderborgs just to make Mark's life really fun. Fucking great. He got one of the soldiers with a headshot and yelled "Stay up high!" at F'tha. He wasn't sure what kind of shields the S'pht had, but better to be on the safe side.

One Hunter fired at him while the other struggled with a spiderborg; Mark dodged the bolts and put a few bullets through the chinks in its armor. It looked to him like the spiderborgs were taking up most of the Pfhor's attention - small favors - so he took out a stray soldier that ran towards him and risked another glance around for Durandal's chip.

There was a niche in the far wall with the white floor of a teleport pad. Mark ran for it and ducked under a flying grenade and reached the niche just as the chip appeared, surrounded by sweet, sweet rifle clips.

He snatched the chip up with one hand, then the clips, and another grenade exploded over his head, dropping his shields down by a fraction. Mark shoved the pistol back into its holster, whipped out the assault rifle, and turned to give the Troopers a piece of his mind - only to find F'tha doing it for him, firing blasts of green energy from a safe height. Mark gave them a hand with enough bullets to drop one of the Troopers. The other fell a second later after a bolt from F'tha, and Mark vaulted over a dead spiderborg to head for the central pillar. He was pretty sure he'd seen - there it was, a little slot in the side of the pillar that was just the right size.

He sidestepped a soldier's bolt and slid the chip into place.

---
When Mark turned around, he saw the pillars flickering with pulses of white light, and the few spiderborgs that had been fighting with the Pfhor were going berserk. Two of them were trying to bite each other's legs off, one was beating its head against the ground, and another's legs were curled up as it rolled around on the floor like some weird kind of ball. Even as Mark watched - still ducking more energy bolts from the remaining Pfhor - the spiders' actions slowed, and they froze in place, the dull green lights of their eyes fading out.

Mark was about to cheer when a Pfhor bolt smacked against his shields. Shit, right, the spiders weren't his only problem.

Two of the close-range fighters in their purple armor ran at him, and he blew them away with two grenades, then jumped out of the way of a bolt from F'tha that took down a third Pfhor. Mark did a quick count of the Pfhor still in action and came up with a bigger number than he liked, but at least they were all just soldiers. Poor fucking canon fodder probably didn't even know who they were up against.

He reloaded the assault rifle and got to work. One clip for the three fighters that tried to back him against a wall. A grenade for the blue-armored fighter sniping at him from across the room. Half a clip for another blue fighter that got too close, the rest of it for two more short-range fighters, then he slammed in a fresh clip and strafed the group of fighters coming in the door before finishing them off with another grenade.

The door shut again and stayed shut, and nothing else popped up to shoot at him. The room was clean - relatively speaking. Ammunition was low again and his shields were a mess - he glanced at the readouts and winced; not so much a mess as nonexistent - but he'd made it. And so had - wait, shit, he didn't see F'tha. "F'tha? You there? Oh Christ, don't tell me -"

"I am present," F'tha said, appearing from the other side of the central pillar, and Mark heaved a sigh of relief. He would have felt like a worse asshole than Durandal if F'tha had gotten killed following him around.

The lighting in the hall seemed a lot brighter than it had before, every pillar shining white instead of gray. It looked like the chip had done its work; Mark was about to ask Durandal if he needed to go look for a terminal to check in on Seshat when the whole room shook.

It was probably rude by S'pht standards, but Mark grabbed F'tha by one metal shoulder to steady himself. "Okay, looks like it's time to go," he said. "If we head back towards -"

"Don't even think about it," Durandal said. "This is exactly where I want you, so stay put and listen."

"There's a goddamn earthquake or something, what am I supposed to listen -"

Seshat spoke, and the walls vibrated.

Her voice was low and almost painfully loud, but sweet, rising and falling in subtle tones similar to S'pht. Unfortunately, not similar enough for him to have any idea what she was saying - except wait, that last word had sounded sort of familiar. Something about thanks? Maybe for getting rid of the spiderborgs? "Hey, you mind translating any of this?" he whispered to Durandal.

"Later. Be quiet, I need to concentrate; the Jjaro translator program is still a work in progress."

Mark rolled his eyes but shut up. If Durandal wasn't going to help out, he'd just listen for himself, see if he could pick out any more words. Or he could ask F'tha - no, F'tha looked like they had been entranced by Seshat's voice, hovering in complete stillness as the green jewel in their torso glowed with a yellow light. Seshat was still going strong; something something welcome, something about a facility, something something working engines... Engines? Maybe he hadn't heard her right. Or knowing what little he did of the Jjaro, maybe he had; Seshat was talking about contact now, something about a ship, then something that definitely included the name Jjaro. Fuck, the planet was a ship, wasn't it? Or at least set up to travel, like Lh'owon's former moon K'lia. A ship that, if he was really was understanding anything and not just imagining that he was, could still get in touch with the Jjaro, wherever the hell they had disappeared to.

Seshat's tone changed slightly, sounding darker, and Mark took his helmet off to rub his temples. He wished she'd turn the volume down; the surround-sound effect was starting to give him a headache.

She said more about the ship he couldn't make out, then something about a twisted creation. Kind of weird since he was pretty sure those weren't words he'd learned from the S'pht, but for some reason he still would have bet money that was what she had said - and that she was talking about him, specifically, as opposed to the S'pht or the spiderborgs or the Pfhor. Great. Even when Seshat wasn't virus-infected, she didn't like him. Sounded like she wanted to ditch him in space so she could take Durandal to the Jjaro, just like Durandal wanted, but she couldn't do it while Mark was around...

That wasn't good. Sure, Durandal had said he wouldn't dump Mark somewhere he couldn't get home from - and the middle of dead space definitely counted - but that had been before Seshat dangled Durandal's wildest dreams in front of him, and it wasn't like Durandal had a reputation for keeping his promises. If he had to ditch Mark and the S'pht to meet the Jjaro, he probably would in a nanosecond, no matter how useful they'd been before.

Seshat's voice stopped, but Mark's headache didn't let up and Durandal wasn't talking. The silence stretched out, awkward and heavy, broken only by the faint hiss of a door opening that barely registered on Mark's radar.

Finally Durandal started to speak, his voice sounding tinnier than usual projecting out of the helmet. He was talking in Jjaro, too, and Mark listened as hard as he could. Something about honor, offering something, thank you, something -

Pfhor honking echoed behind him, but even as he whipped around to look for the enemy its staff smashed into the side of his head and he fell forward into darkness.

Next chapter.

Marathon, characters, etc. © Bungie and if I didn't have some Farscape to watch, I think I'd treat myself to some Marathon 2 after I get this all sorted out. Mmmmmmmmm, shooting things.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth - read the original post here: http://brief-transit.dreamwidth.org/186002.html .

marathon, action, fanfic, prose, big bang, sf

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