Location: NT-13 “Lamprey” Dyson Sphere Station (Incomplete), Edge of Terran Protectorate ​ Shift Timestamp: 01:58 February, 30, 2560 ​

‘The amazing part is,’ a voice in my head spoke up as I slipped through yet another set ​ ​ of maintenance shafts and corridors that looked exactly the same as the last ones I’d just ducked out of, ‘the whole power grid is still working.’ ​ ​ I nodded at that, and got back to work slapping wall mounted Security flashers onto the walls, outright using some Clown’s SUPER Glue to get the job done in as short a time as I could. It didn’t stop the robots from using the damn places, but at least it kept the more biological threats from trying their hands at rooting me out personally. Waking up in this life had been not good. … Azure ‘starlight’ seeps like syrup though cracks in the glass ceiling, through which a massive sapphire blue ‘star’ could easily be observed from the viens the station that were the maintenance halls. The floor shudders in time with the churning of machinery somewhere far beneath my feet. The air, if I were to pull off my hermetically sealed helmet off for a moment, has the strange tang of unknown chemicals and over-processed air that speaks of any space station, but the undertones of copper and something wholly unpleasant, something like rot and excrement and worse, are unique to this place. I stopped as a door opened in the distance and without even thinking I unholstered the gun from my chest sling. To say that this place was utterly crammed with things that made nightmares have nightmares was a gross understatement. I’d seen such horrors in these halls over the last month that the only thing helping to keep me sane were a personal AI downloaded into my discount Omnitool and a voice that only I could hear. ‘I can’t sense any Thaumantic fluctuations so it’s not a Cult member.’ A different voice in ​ ​ my head noted, this one masucline and strong while the first had been feminine and soft. ‘They’re likely another one of Azimuth’s borgs.’ ​ ​ I nodded slightly in agreement to that. The entire station's maintenance sections were crawling with all kinds of cybernetic creations that the Station AI used to ‘cleanse’ the station of ‘organic weakness’ and the AI could actually find me fairly reliably by the erratic Bluespace frequency that I constantly emitted. If that wasn’t enough there was a Nanovirus running around making people into cyborgs, and thus subject to the Station AI, named Azimuth. An AI that was a biophage, or some other word for an inorganic creature that wishes to turn all organic life into the ‘purity’ of the machine. “Don’t ssshoot.” I blinked at the sound of a voice that wasn’t synthesized cutting through some of my trepidation. “I tracked you,” I tensed a bit and readied myself, “via your uplink, ugh sssshit. I like yorkshire tea.” At that odd phrase I glanced down at my wrist mounted PDA which just vibrated without reason. ‘Syndicate Uplink Detected. Today’s Syndicate Code: Yorkshire Tea, Space-Coke, Chaplin. ​ Today’s Syndicate Responses: Teal Galaxy, the Blue Place, Shitcurity.’ I nearly let the gun drop ​ to the floor but I kept it up even as a colorfully clothed Tiziran, a lizard person by Terran reckoning, moved over. I flicked my off-hand to stop them and even as they did so I noted the Clown mask, an essential part of any Clown suit but more than that the Clown and Mime gear were hardened against atmospheric warfare. ‘Eh, I like the teas this one teahouse had, you know the Blue Place?’ I smoothly went ​ ​ through the Spess Sign and after a long moment the Tiziran nodded and we both relaxed. “Where’d you get the Detective’s revolver and coat from?” The lizard person wondered as she, I finally got a lock on the feminine undertones of her voice because Clown clothes were about as unisex as clothing got, cautiously took another step forward. I also noted her Tiziran hissing lit was much less pronounced now that she was relaxed. I gently pushed the hammer back into its ‘safe’ placement and slid the gun back into the holster within the depths of the trenchcoat I was wearing over my other gear. I shook my head before tapping near my ear. “Yeah, it’s listening, but then again it’s always listening.” ‘She’d have a point if you hadn’t prepared for this, but that just means that no one has ​ found your little bolt holes, well not her at least.’ The voice in my head noted and I barely ​ stopped myself from nodding at that. Instead I just waved the Tiziran to follow after me. ‘You ​ going to tell her about me?’ ​ I glanced down at myself. I was, to put it lightly, a mess. The Detective’s trench had been thrown on over the explorer’s webbing and Engineering RIG suit I’d managed to pick up from some old Mining vendor, granted I’d gotten quite a bit from that vendor thanks to the Miner Vouchers that I’d found in the lockers so most of my kit was kit-bashed from primarily those vendors. The matte black mechanized boots made me quite a bit faster than I had any right to be. The RIG was tough enough on it’s own to have pulled me through quite a few close calls over the last month, and the webbing held most of the tools I’d needed so far without slowing me down. Over that I wore the faded armorplas Detective’s coat that the Tiziran had noted. On my back was the Miner Conscription Dufflebag that I’d gotten out of the vendor, now full to bulging with all kinds of odds and ends and with many non-traditional bands on it that were difficult to make out more detail on in the dark of the maintenance tunnels. My face was behind the RIG’s mask with the atmospheric hood up. I was basically coated in minor armor from head to toe. After a while we came to what seemed to be a normal endpoint to the Maintenance corridors. I waited a moment and then the ‘door’ slid open in a smooth motion revealing the wall had been a false wall, but in truth a section of the Station wall that had been cut out, and then with a few Bluespace Emergency Shelter Capsules used acted a supply cache for some Pirates at least it had at some point. Thankfully, the bastards hadn’t torn apart the vendors they’d dragged here from Silence knows where, because while I was pretty good at the old wrench and screwdriver, putting together programmed matter fabricators without the matter fabricators in question was straight up impossible. ‘We can speak openly here.’ I noted as the clown gawked at the ‘safety’ that seemed ​ ​ almost within reach. “Why’re you still using Spess Sign?” She wondered even as I lowered the hazard hood and pulled my gas mask off to show my face. “Honkmother above, I’ve been saved by a Mime.” “I am, and thankfully you’re a Clown so you know what it means when I speak to you.” I said and suddenly the muted sounds came crashing back into ‘proper place. I couldn’t hold off the grimace, just as she couldn’t hold off the giggle that came from seeing me endure coming out of the Silence. Her people did a lot to make mine scream, laugh, or whatever to draw us out of the Silence. The Great Silence was a blessing only given over to those who could enter the quiet meditation of a Mime and it allowed one to wield the powers of Silentintium, however to exit the Silence was not traumatic, just very disorienting and it took at least ten minutes of quiet … to restore the Silence afterwards, meditation which was in short supply during the Clown-Mime War. “So, what the hell? I’ve literally seen so much shit here, what gives?” She wondered before I could even answer her first question and just as I went to answer she asked another question. “Also, who the hell are you?” “My name is Sauteur, and I am like you in a few ways.” I replied with a grin even as I moved over to one of the drink machines and with a click the machine’s Bluespace matter fabricator started producing Nuka-Cola for the portable generators that kept these little caches alive. I doubted that the device was able to keep doing it forever, but thankfully Nuka-Cola had enough uranium in it that it worked as a fuel source for the various hidden S.U.P.E.R. P.A.C.M.A.N. generators that the pirates had used to power these little caches. I set my heavy duffle down on a small metal fold-out table, and as I went through it the clown got a good look at the absolute abomination it’d become over the last two months. A tool belt, a medical belt, a security belt, and a janibelt had been collectively sown into the sides of the bag in an effort to keep more stuff conveniently on hand during my adventures. Not something I would have been able to do in game, but a reasonable thing given the circumstances. I had to wear a lot of hats to make it this far. “Are you some kind of crazy person or something?” She asked in a very peculiar cadence that made me smile under my mime mask. “I’m sure that they would say so, yes.” I paraphrased back at her and she gave me a grin, which thankfully was a lot easier to tell because she wore the more expressive Clown Mask that managed to convey her emotions much better than a reptile usually would be able to. “However, you have asked my name and I have given it, so I would like yours in return.” “Oh, uh, yeah. I’m Gropes-the-Mime.” The embarrassment played out in how her tail went from moving about animatedly to nearly drooping instantly. “I imagine there’s a story there,” I began before shaking my head and switching the subject, “but that’s not for now. For now we well, not feast so much as eat decently.” I … indicated the various snack vendors, drink machines, and the microwave all stacked up near the table in an overly crowded corner. “Dealers choice.” As she picked her poison, Cup Ramen I noted, I began to explain what I’d managed to piece together about this strange place we’d found ourselves in. Lamprey was a tale of tragic proportions, and I had seen it through the memories of my new life. Basically, the blue dwarf that the Lamprey Dyson Sphere was supposed to enclosed turned out to be, in fact, not a star at all. The massive Bluespace crystal was so utterly colossal that all bluespace detection systems just seemed to think the damn thing was a star. The crystal couldn’t even be mined, because the mass of the Bluespace crystal thinned the Bluespace-Realspace divide to the point that when you would enter a certain elevation above the surface you’d end up warping to the exact same elevation on the opposite side of the giant blue rock. There was functionally no means by which to get to the damn thing. Even worse the damn things gravity well acted as another Bluespace loop, when flying out of the gravity field you’d loop back to flying towards the opposite side of the crystal. By the time the readings had been sent back the Megastructure was already on it’s first legs of coming together, so NanoTrasen did what any soulless Megacorp would do and just shut down the project and left the assets to pick up space dust until they could think of something to do with it. Of course, the location became a hotbed for operations of a less legal sense after that, the Megastructure may have only been a skeleton, a cracked and broken eggshell really, of the glory that it could have been but it was still more livable space than many pirate bases could boast. Of course, this being a NanoTrasen station meant that it was pretty much self-sufficient as long as maintenance was taken care of on the engine systems, but the old Thermoelectric systems seemed to get enough backwashed heat from the giant rock to keep the stations on functionally forever, or until something important failed, which of course happened. The place was old, ancient really, and had been abandoned dozens of times over by the time that the real bad stuff started to happen. Nowadays, the pirates and other ne'er-do-wells used the place as an elaborate form of torture against NanoTrasen employees when they kidnapped them. “So, physically it’s functionally impossible to leave once you got to Lamprey, the only way out that I could tell was Bluespace Telescience and extra dimensional fuckery.” I finished the explanation while laying down all the data-logs and such that I’d pieced the information from for Gropes-the-Mime to pursue at her leisure. I tore into a Donk-Pocket and tossed her a pill bottle as she went to finish off her Cup Ramen. “Take one red pill and then link the blue pill to your PDA and suit sensors before taking it too; the red one gives you regeneration and the blue one is an anti-nanite nanite. With those in place you’ll be able to recover some weight,” I gave her what reasonably was a very fragile green as she glanced down at her thinner than average tail, “kept away from the food since you saw someone go chrome?” It had taken forever to break down the Roburger for that Nanite, but it had been worth it to eat at ease again now that I was immune to Azimuth’s little ‘upgrade’. I noted that Gropes-the-Mime was quick to synch up the blue one and as she went to eat it first my hand came out and caught her. “I said Red first, Gropes.” I admonished lightly. “The anti-nanite nanite is based on a roburger nanomachine and they’re pretty brute force in their work. Without the healing the … Red gives you’ll be on the ground hacking up your lungs or something within the hour.” I explained and she nodded, ever so slightly horrified at her prospective fate. “Right, should’ve asked why the order.” She noted as she snapped back the Red with a swig of her drink, Dutch Purple Tea with no sugar I noted silently. The Blue quickly went down as well and after a few minutes of uncomfortable grimacing as the anti-nanite got to work securing her body against other nanites Gropes-the-Mime nodded seemingly to herself. “I noticed that the borgs hesitate to come around some shafts and tunnels like these, the ones full of wall flashers and other shit.” I grinned at that and her own smile was fragile, brittle even. “Why’s that?” “The Azimuth AI can track me via a shifting Bluespace signal I put out.” I said simply while walking over to the drink machine and getting myself some more Space Cola. “So, I figured out the frequency and hacked a few radios with bluespace crystals I got from a ” I … paused as the sense of impending doom and horror swept through me as a memory of the abyssal emptiness of the sea of stars gapped overhead. “I mined out of an asteroid.” I shook the feeling off and kept my mind on the here and now. “A few wall flashers to keep the creepy-crawlies from just barging in, and the pirates I guess, made a few sections of the maintenance tunnels ‘mine’ so to speak.” “How do you keep up with it all?” There was a certain sincere awe in her voice at that. “Nanocam wallpaper at key chokepoints set to look like some old gang tags and some upgrades I’ve made to my NanoTrasen PDA over the years.” I replied simply. “Ever heard of Vaultech or Weyland-Yutani?” I asked before I held out my arm to let the Tizian look at the heavily modified Pipboy 3000 mounted to my wrist and continued. “Vaultech is an old name in the Terran world, they build stuff that’s loads more robust than NanoTrasen standards, and it’s biometrically locked to my biometrics. Generally just a better option for all the shit that I’ve been doing. Rugged as fuck too.” I let out a little grin at it. “Took me some time to put it all together though. Vaultech has some odd proprietary tech in their bullwick,” I said as I tapped on the device that looked like it belonged in a retro-futurist’s tale, “most of their major stuff is because they didn’t give up on vacuum tubes when the advent of silicon chips and then they managed to make it their major advent instead of an utter failure. Some people give them shit for that, but they’ve stayed a Triple B Megacorp since before the advent of NanoTrasen, though they haven’t quite made it to the point of being a Hyper-Corp like NT though. Still while NanoTrasen tech is cutting edge for processing technology and research there’s just about no way to break a piece of Vaultech short of engineering the problem yourself or tossing the damn thing in lava.” “You hybridized this Vaultech with Nantrasen technologies? How?” She wondered. “As I said, lots of hats.” I answered vaguely. “Wait, I didn’t say that, sorry. Been alone in my head for a while.” I caught myself but she waved it off so I just continued. “I’ve been working with the Syndicate for a long time now, and they’ve kept me moving from one role to the next, as much as I hate giving up the Silence it’s been useful to not be known as a Mime while doing some clandestine things with Mimomancy.” I waved a hand at the exit and the greater Lamprey, full to the brim with crazy shit. “When we got slapped here I just went back to my old Ghost Recon days.” “You were Ghost Recon?” Gropes-the-Mime shivered. For good reason too, Ghost Recon was a group of Mimes who’d made a name for themselves as the most ruthless things this side of a Spider Clan Ninja after the Clowns dragged our homeworld out of alignment with the Goldilocks Zone using some kind of super weapon they called the Killing Joke which forced all of our kind to flee in terror to their world, the only other inhabitable world in the system. We lost so many people during the exodus to the Clown world and so vengeance kept most of us warm during those long cold nights in the midst of a war against our extinction. I shook off the memories of blood steaming off of snow, honking, and Silence with the ease of long practice. “Yeah, when NanoTrasen took over and slapped down everyone dumb enough to be a nail that stuck up I went deep cover for my people using Syndicate resources.” I shrugged as I went on. “Seemed like the right thing to do. The Homeworld doesn’t need old salt like me getting all up in those old wounds and busting them over with the Cold War going so well.” “I guess. I just joined up with NanoTrasen and got really fucking done with all their Ligger shit.” I didn’t comment as the Tizian went on a diatribe about the racist fucks that ran NanoTrasen. Terran’s were a fucked up bunch in general, but they were also experts at pushing the technological reaches of the universe to their limits. It didn’t help that I was once Terran and I felt that most of the racism was just par for the course. Humanity didn’t do well with the Other nor the Unknown, and when things didn’t fit into the little boxes they had for such things there was always friction. “Anyway, if you’ve got this kind of set up why not just go after the AI directly?” She managed to swivel from her rant to the previous subject so smoothly that I had to check my neck for whiplash. “Because, there’s a ton of other threats to worry about?” I ‘asked’ ironically. “Let’s see, the pirates who teleported us here are still hunting us down for sport, there are wild xenomorphs on this station, other than the nanite virus there’s a biological pathogen that turns people into monkeys, I’ve personally fought off a couple of Abductors,” here I paused to pull out the odd laser pistol and science tool that those two had tried to hit me with from my duffle, “I know for a fact that some of the crew who’re left at this point are Revolutionaries, there’s a cult uprising somewhere out there, and the less you know about the things on the captured planetoids that this place uses for mining the better. There are a million, million ways to die on Lamprey Station and I’ve been mostly focused on survival these last two months.” “I guess that makes sense.” Gropes-the-Mime replied as she glanced over to the wall where the old black and red anarchy symbol had been spray painted on. “So, you were in a Gang as well?” Her voice was entering that innocuous zone of ‘I don’t know if I should believe you or not.’ but I just nodded. “When Ghost Recon was disbanded I went to the Syndicate, I’ve been with them since the thirties.” I said by way of explanation. “I’ve had regeneration since just after I was first assigned in NanoTrasen, Healing Virus they called it, so yeah I don’t look my age.” I paused … for a moment, letting that sink in before I continued. “I’ve pretty much seen it all at this point. Learned the Gang tricks from a barman on Eris Station, some twenty years ago. The main quirk of it is that the Bluespace signal they use is pretty much locked onto old Terra, specifically you can’t get anything NanoTrasen from the system, only old Vaultech and Weyland-Yutani shit.” “Huh, I’d always wondered about why the gangs all seemed to use ten milimeter pistols instead of something local.” Gropes-the-Mime contemplated the Pipboy. “Can you get me one?” “Yeah, sure, wanna join my gang?” I asked as I began changing the frequency on my built in bluespace radio on my Pipboy. “Sounds fun.” The Clown joked lightly and I smiled back. “Then I do believe this is going to be the start of an amazing partnership.” I replied even as I spent some of accumulated influence on pulling a Pipboy 3000 out of the past to the present. “We’ll have to head to one of the mining planetoids to get you kitted out with some other gear, but for now let me take your PDA, keep the ID, and we’ll have it set up in a jiffy.”