Cautious Respite

8.3.5 SW
20:20/21 SW-CP-Local Time
Reactor Complex > Generator Station > Energy Output Control Room

Vera couldn’t move her legs and was starting to lose consciousness as white fluid spilled from her head.

Jensen and Irving pulled her out of the corridor and into the control room as Flynn kept his rifle trained on the withered alien crust. Seeing her wounds, Maryam flinched for a second, surprised at what she was seeing. It was not at all what Sharpey or Maryam had expected.

"Vera! You're a... synth?" Maryam started.

"Yeah yeah... let's skip the drama, she's an unregistered synth. Can we forget about mentioning anything about her to Admin and just fix her up?" asked Jensen.

Maryam stared at them in surprise, then looked to Flynn Sharpey .

"Pretty fucking please?" Jensen implored. "She's already been destroyed once before by something like this."

"Who the hell ARE you people?" Maryam asked in exasperated curiosity. "You've seen these things before?"

"Yeah. No! I don't know. Not exactly! By the look of it though, this thing may have come from the ship we were salvaging. The damned company sent us on a suicide mission to recover an old derelict that went missing ages ago. While we were on that ship we saw some FUCKED UP shit. There was a white, alien... THING... similar to that one but pale and... just different, and there was another, smaller one... burst out of one of their crewmember's heads. We got the hell out of dodge and then some kind of mutated man... looked like it was deforming into one of these things... nearly wiped us all out..." he touched his nose where Roku had performed the surgery to remove one from his head. "Oh, Jesus... not again..." Jensen said with heightened anxiety. "Irving, you can fix her right?"

"I... I... I mean. I don't know, I think so! I'll try!" Irving stammered and searched his bag for his tools.

Jensen peeked out into the hall and slipped his arm out to grab Vera's incinerator before pulling it back inside while Sharpey took one last look down the corridors and closed the door, locking it.

"This looks pretty bad." said Irving. "I can fix her, but it's gonna take hours. I don't think we can risk taking her all the way back to the settlement. I need to get started right away, but... I really don't want to be trapped in here with those things."

After hearing that Irving said he could fix Vera, Flynn Sharpey looked at Jensen.

“Jensen, you feeling alright? You good to watch the door with me?" Flynn pointed his gun at the door just waiting for something to come in so he could shoot the shit out of it.

"Yeah… I’m good to watch the door, but I’m using this flamer from now on. Seems like bullets just bounced right off that thing." replied Bruce Jensen.

The parts of Vera's face that could still express emotions looked sad, then resigned.

"It might be too risky for the rest of you to stay. You can leave me here. It's... ok. Heck, I might be able to help you from here if you connect me to the console in a way where I can manage this place's systems."

She then looked specifically at Maryam.

"I'm not some kind of monster. Not like the thing that just attacked us. You know, I saw it lean down and sniff me before it began pulling itself back up into the air duct. It wanted meat... or something like it. If I didn't care about you all, I could have just walked out of here."

"Don't worry Vera, we don't care that you are a synth. Just a surprise," Irving said in a shaky voice to the android.

Maryam’s expression softened at Vera’s defense, “No, I wasn’t… I wasn’t implying anything about you specifically, Vera. Just that I thought there must be something else you two weren’t telling us. Frankly, I’m just shocked by the fact that you aren’t human. I expected to see a lot of blood. No… this is actually a good thing, cuz if you HAD BEEN human, I wouldn’t be able to help you.”

"Irving, what can we do to help aside from keeping every last motherfucker outta here for you to work?” asked Sharpey.

Irving turned his head to Sharpey, whilst struggling to simultaneously focus on his tools, "I don't know, if anyone can think of anything to help. Please... Please let me know."

“Well, I don’t know shit about fixin’ up a droid, but I can sure as fuck make sure none more of them motherfuckers get in here while you do what you do.” Sharpey responded as he scanned the room with his gun in a nervous but controlled manner looking for any signs of movement or anything out of place.

“Has anyone ever seen a “thing” of that nature before? I haven't and I wouldn’t mind knowing more specifics about it. What it is? What they do? Are they solo things or they travel in packs? Like what in the fuck ARE they and what do we need to be prepared for?”

“Like I said, we never saw one like THAT before, but there was another. Pale, white, no eyes. Just another freaky version of this black one maybe. Fire seems to scare ‘em off or kill ‘em quick.” Jensen said, setting the pulse rifle down and arming himself with the incinerator.

“There were these little egg looking fungus pods that spit out spores into the air and… And uh… not to freak you all out even more but uh… somehow these things get inside you, through the air. At least… the white ones did. Fuck… I would really feel a whole lot better if we got the hell out of here to Doc Roku. She had to do surgery to remove one growing inside my face.”

Irving wasn’t sure how the two aliens were related exactly, but the case was very likely. It was no surprise that Weyland Yutani wanted whatever was on that ship. From what he had read about the facehugger alien, it also impregnated its victim, but it was done directly. And he imagined this black thing was its offspring. But he was in no position to share that information with anyone without giving himself away as the spy AND one of the primary causes for this mess on Sutter's World. He never should have opened those crates... Would it have been any better to save it for Cowboy to open back at some space station?

Irving tried to calm himself and turn everyone's panicked minds off the thought of another of these things being nearby. "Whatever that white thing you saw was... Let's just be glad that we don't have to deal with that thing too, right? Let's just focus..." he paused "...focus on this." He raised his hand and wiped some sweat from his brow.

Jensen looked back over his shoulder at Irving, “You all do your thing. We’ll hold the fort. Once you get Vera on her feet, we book it out it of here. Finish her repairs in town. Let the rest of the Security team handle it. Though… you got me wondering how this is all gonna go down with the Marshal out of commission… No offense, Sharpey.”

Sharpey kept his eyes trained on the door but glances every so often at his 6 to make sure nothing has gone awry behind him.

Irving had never worked on a live synthetic before. That fact coupled with the residual nerves from the encounter had his hands shaking, but he pushed through the anxiety and using his tools, he carefully repaired the servos that controlled Vera's lower extremities, allowing her to walk. She had a slight limp that would continue until she could be fully repaired.

Meanwhile, Maryam hacked into the controls using her PDAT and some hard wires. She brought up the electrical grid externally onto her screen and managed to complete the job of rerouting power. There were alternate lines created in preparation for the upgraded fusion reactor. The main lights jittered back on.

"Ok. I bypassed the downed lines using some of the new underground system. The backup lines are only partially finished but the right ones are place to reroute this particular section. Thank God."