Disconnection
"You're not...hunting me down or anything, right?"
Visk scrambled backwards, his eyes alight with concern and a little bit of fear. As he pushed off the side of the rug, its edge got folded over slightly.
Nari blinked away her surprise after a moment and shook her head enthusiastically. "No, absolutely not! I had no clue you were even here until I met you."
Visk calmed down a little and stared forward at the scav. "Sorry...I'm just...Taro's logo was on the escape pod I woke up in, which proceeded to crash-land. If they're willing to fire me into a planet, then I'm worried they might be trying to...uh, dispose of me. You pointed a gun at me, too, which doesn't help."
"That's fair," Nari acknowledged. "For all I know, maybe Taro does want something with you. It's a really big company, though, and I'm just part of the scaving division. Whatever's going on with you is beyond my pay grade."
"Is Taro a...scav-ing company?" Visk inquired.
"Nope," Nari confirmed. "At least, not primarily. Its original thing was industrial manufacturing and construction, hence the name. Scaving is just part of the materials department."
"Also, it's scaving, like 'caving,'" she added. "I know it's stupid that the 'scav' part is pronounced differently! Some of my teammates will not hesitate to correct you, though."
Visk shrugged, wordlessly asking why should I care about that? Nari sighed and shook her head.
"Anyway," she continued, "As for the gun, I have it because ruins can be dangerous sometimes. Alien fauna and all that. I pointed it at you because I thought you weren't who you said you were. There's some folks exploring ruins who really don't have my best interests in mind."
"Do you still think I'm lying?" Visk asked.
"I'm...not really sure, but I don't think so," the scav said sheepishly. "There's...uh, some astropolitical circumstances that made me nervous initially, but you read as genuine to me."
"Well, if you're not gonna threaten my life again, we can be chill," Visk huffed. "I could use any help I can get."
With that, the liralen stood up and turned to grab more meat from his pot. After a moment, he sat back down, his upper hands once again full of the..."food."
"Do you not have a, um...fork?" Nari asked awkardly.
The liralen shook his head. "Gods, I wish."
Visk popped a bite of meat into his mouth as he glanced at her. "So, how long've you been stuck here?"
She scratched her head. "Not entirely sure - haven't been keeping track. I think about four hours?"
"Not very long, then," the liralen mumbled. "I've lost track of the days by now, so if you've got any clever ideas to get us out of here, I'm all ears."
Nari frowned and glanced back toward the entrance to Visk's lair. The metal was as reflective as ever, and was starting to turn a pastel orange as the sun set above. Wait. The sky.
"I might have one," she remarked.
Visk's ears perked up curiously. "What're you thinking?"
"I've been trying to get to the roof of the structure, so I can get a good signal of any comms buoys. If there's one in this system, I can contact my crew." She pointed toward the sky. "Roof."
"Good call," the liralen nodded. "You alright to climb?"
"Yeah, I'll deal," Nari shrugged. The thought of her falling down that ventilation shaft briefly flickered in her mind, though after a moment she was mostly able to brush it away. Mostly.
She leapt up toward one of the fan blades, grabbing onto its edge and heaving herself up. The curved surface of the blade wasn't a particularly stable place to stand, so she dug her claws in for traction and jumped over to the edge of the fan's chamber, slipping underneath the fabric ceiling and lifting herself up to the roof.
Like that of most Precursor ruins, it was flat and featureless, a plane of black metal glittering with a reflection of the celestial sphere. A few stars dimly painted the sky, and to one side she could see the sun, a half-circle of light blasting a majestic orange glow across the horizon.
She wasn't here to stargaze, though. Activating her holo, she quickly navigated to its Net settings, and watched in anticipation as the loading indicator spun around. That anticipation soon gave way to disappointment as the indicator disappeared and a red X appeared in its stead.
Frustrated, she tried it again. And again. Nothing.
"Any success up there?" she heard Visk ask from below.
"Nope," she hollered back, dejectedly turning off the holo. "Coming back down."
After another brief glimpse at the sky, Nari leapt back down the fan drum. She felt wind rush through her wings, and for a moment, it almost felt like she was flying...
Then she hit the ground, safely but a little harder than she would've liked, and heard a metallic ding ring out as said ground winded her. Ouch.
No time to delay, though - it was already getting dark, and she'd prefer to be back here before it got too late. With a grunt, she heaved herself off the floor and turned to face Visk.
"Where's your escape pod? I have a plan."
"The clearing should be right past here."
The duo stood before an enormous, elaborately engraved double door made of some unknown metal. Overhead, Nari could faintly make out a motor and sensor, but if they were still functioning, they certainly didn't show it.
"This thing's a pain in the ass to get open," Visk remarked. "I was getting chased by a swarm and had to close it last time I came in. It'll be easier with an extra set of arms."
Nari nodded silently and moved to the right door, held all her arms up to its surface, and began to push. Visk did likewise. For a few seconds, it looked like it wasn't going to budge, but after some consistent pressure, it began to creak open. After what felt like far too much effort, it was open enough that they could both squeeze past it.
A light breeze brushed over Nari's scales as the cool, fresh air of the outdoors washed over her, a welcome change from the dusty corridors of the ruin. It was twilight now, and the green daytime sky was beginning to fade to more cerulean hues as stars pierced the heavens.
In the dim light, Nari could vaguely make out the landscape before her. She and Visk stood on a vast crimson plain, red bushes and small groves of trees meandering across the grass. Sandy rocks and cliffs towered in the distance ahead of them, an odd spire extruding from the surrounding hills.
It was obviously artificial in nature, an enormous garden grown wild in the absence of its tenders. The field was surrounded on all sides by a titanic wall, circular in shape. The other side of the wall was distant enough that it almost faded into the horizon, its bottom misted in a pale green fog.
Nari had never, in her years of scaving, seen anything quite like this.
"Okay, you wanted to check your net thing again?" Visk asked, drawing Nari's attention away from the view.
"Yeah, can't hurt to try. Let me just…uh…okay," she replied, navigating back to the connection settings. After a few seconds, that familiar red X reappeared. Dammit.
Glancing at Visk, she shook her head in disappointment. "Nothing here. Let's try the pod itself, though. If we're lucky, it's got an active connection to something. If we're unlucky, we might at least find some valuable information."
"Sounds like a plan," Visk agreed. "Follow me."
"So…this is it," Visk shrugged, gesturing at the crashed pod.
The duo stood in a clearing of sorts, surrounded on all sides by cliffs. The ground was sandy, though a sparse covering of crimson grass prevented it from being completely barren. Velvet trees and vines lined the walls, casting faint shadows onto the grotto below in the starlight.
Nari glanced back toward where they'd come. Through a tunnel of twisting rock, she could make out the plains and the wall in the distance. If she squinted, in the gloom of the night, she could almost spot the doors she and Visk had been at a couple hours ago.
"Tunnel" was kind of a generous descriptor. The rock formation in the center of the plain had a cave system at its base, the ground twisting in strange ways and giving the structure an almost spongelike appearance. One of these holes served as the passageway they'd taken to get to the clearing.
Nari turned toward the pod and squinted at the logo on its side. "That's a Taro Manufacturing escape pod, alright," she confirmed. "I don't know the exact model, but it's not one I've worked with before. They're usually pretty standardized, though."
Nari took her holo and held it up to the pod to look for any wireless connections. As she fiddled with it to open the right app, she caught Visk in the corner of her eye peering at the device.
"What's that thing on your arm?"
"Oh, it's a holo," she explained. "Uses some tech to project a holographic image into your eye. I use it for scaving stuff mostly."
She turned to face Visk. "I know it doesn't look like much from your perspective! I can show you better when I'm done, though."
The liralen nodded as Nari tapped at the holo. She glared at it for a few seconds, then grunted. After another moment, she started aggressively tapping at it, then scowled and turned back to the liralen.
"If it's got any sort of network connection, data, anything, it's certainly not wireless. But I'll poke inside the pod and see if I can see anything."
With that, the scav half-leapt over to the open door on the front of the pod, then climbed inside. Visk stepped toward the entrance himself to see what she was doing.
With Nari's flashlight illuminating it, Visk was able to actually see the interior of the pod for the first time. Its smooth metallic walls were lined by arrays of complex technology - amongst the noise, he could make out a speaker, some tubes, and a small box protruding from the floor. Visk winced as he realized this thin structure had been the only thing between him and hard vacuum.
As he watched, Nari opened a panel on top of the box, and pulled out a plasma cutter. With it, she cut open the side of the box. Then, she held her holo up to whatever was within, fiddling around with some unseen controls.
After a few minutes of swearing and very heated tapping, she groaned, turned around, and pulled out some capsule-shaped gray object from the box before leaving the pod.
"Any success?" Visk asked, glancing up at her from the entryway.
"Nope," she sighed, looking down at the floor. "I couldn't establish a physical connection, wireless connection, anything. This pod does not want to give data to my holo."
"I did take the drive out of the flight computer, though," she added, lifting up the capsule. "So if there's anything stored on it, we can take a look if we get back to civilization."
"That's still useful," Visk assured her.
"It is, if we get back to civilization," Nari noted. "Amaki probably could've done this better. At least it's something."
Visk didn't respond. After a bit too long of a silence, Nari glanced over at the liralen. He was looking to the side, toward the rocks, and her heart dropped as without warning, his eyes suddenly closed.
"Visk? You alright?" she asked. Visk didn't respond at all, his eyes closed tight as if he was sleepwalking.
After a few seconds, he stumbled and opened them. Regaining his footing, he stared directly at her, his face suddenly painted with an icy urgency.
"We need to get out of here. Now."
Visk had rushed out of the rock formation in a hurry, Nari close behind. She wasn't sure what this was all about, but Visk seemed genuinely concerned, and she wasn't really in a position to be taking any chances right now.
Between breaths, she was able to sneak a few words to him as they sprinted. "What're...we...running...from?"
After a few moments of silence, Visk glanced back at her for a second. "Swarm!" he hissed.
Nari gulped and picked up the pace.
After a few minutes, she heard it. A very faint rattling in the distance, unsettlingly familiar but still mercifully far away. It seemed they might have time to make it somewhere safe, and frankly, she wasn't even sure it was heading their way.
Visk, however, was certain it was coming toward them. The liralen had broken into a brisk jog toward the double door from earlier, retracing the duo's past steps. Nari had followed; she didn't really want to feed herself to the swarm, and Visk seemed to know a lot more about it than she did.
Several minutes of stressed running later, Nari glanced over her shoulder. Over the shadows of the hills, she could see a faint blue glow flicker on the horizon, swiftly gliding across distant fields.
The swarm.
She put a hand on her pistol, then looked forward at her goal: the door. Initially, it had taken her and Visk a couple hours to walk all the way to the escape pod from there. This time, they were going a lot faster; they'd already almost made it halfway after about 20 minutes. Still, her legs were starting to hurt a bit, and keeping up this pace for another half an hour did not sound appealing in the slightest.
She didn't really have a choice, though. Given Visk's warnings, getting caught in the swarm wasn't an option she was willing to entertain.
A bead of sweat running down her face, she glanced toward Visk. The liralen didn't have much on him, just that grappling hook...
Huh, wait.
"Visk!" she yelled out, hoping he could hear her over the sound of his footsteps. She was pretty far behind at this point.
"Yeah?" he hollered back after an agonizing moment of silence.
"Do you think that grappling hook could help us get to the door faster?"
He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Takes too long to activate. It's only really good for crossing pits."
"Shit."
"Yeah."
The duo continued to run in silence for several minutes, gently following the contours of the terrain. The air was still comfortably cool, and the azure glow of nebulae above softly illuminated the ground, painting the place a ghostly purple.
As they ran, the rattling in the background steadily got louder. Eventually, Nari's nerves got the best of her, and she glanced back toward the escape pod, only to see the swarm positioned somewhere between the rocks and her current location, steadily getting closer.
"This thing is-" she began to speak.
"Close?" Visk remarked. "I know."
Her heart pounding in her chest, Nari broke into a sprint, trying desperately to close the gap between her and the door. As she passed Visk, she heard his footsteps grow quicker too, and soon he was beside her, stumbling slightly as he hopped over a tree branch.
Still, the rattling grew louder. Nari didn't want to take a look this time.
Only a couple minutes from the doors now. The rattling was deafening at this point, and Nari had pushed her tail up against her back. It felt like her scales were standing on end, and though Visk was clearly trying to hide it, she could tell he was just as worried.
Nari pointed her gun back in the direction of the escape pod and blindly let loose a couple shots. She wasn't sure if it hit anything; for all she knew, even just turning around to look might cost her what precious few moments she had to reach the door.
With one last dash, the two adventurers finally reached their destination. The duo slid through the doorway, and before Nari could blink, Visk had swiveled around. He grabbed a handle on the open door with all four hands, then dug his feet into the ground and leaned back with a scream. Eventually, the doorway slammed into place, making a metallic groan somehow louder than the swarm outside.
That swarm hit shortly afterwards, pinging against the door like a torrent of iron raindrops. Visk fell to the floor and started panting, out of breath from the events of the last hour.
Nari sat down on the ground next to him and buried her head in the palms of her hands, grunting wordlessly.
They sat in silence for several minutes. Nari peeked out from behind her fingers; the door had held, and the dust they'd kicked up running in here had begun to settle, as the patter of the swarm slowly dissipated and eventually disappeared.
Visk sat up and broke the silence. "Two for two on the swarms."
"I hate it here," Nari mumbled.
Once she'd stopped hyperventilating, she let her wings down and peered up at Visk. "It's not gonna come back and smash through those doors, right?"
"Doubt it."
"Well, uh, we're safe for now then. Hopefully." The nerian sighed. "No dice on the comms, but I did have another idea. I'm not thrilled about it, but it might work, and if it does, it'll work soon."
She crossed her upper arms. "At this point, I think I'm willing to take that bet."