Anomalous Transmission, 512 MHz
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KNCR-C25601 is the captain of the Cantor-256, a Nation frigate patrolling the space between Heimat and Rotfront. After a seemingly uneventful journey, the ship receives an anomalous transmission, relayed to Kranich by her chief radio officer. Listening to it proves to be a fatal mistake, and after a vision of her ship under a crimson sky in a crimson desert, she wakes up to find that something terrible has happened to her vessel. She takes it upon herself to save as many of her birds as possible and find out what happened to her ship while she was unconscious.
It's what the Nation would want from her, after all.
Kranich sat in her office, her fingers gently thrumming on her mahogany table as she watched the stars outside the bridge of the Cantor-256. Life had been boring as of late; nothing exciting had yet befallen her crew during this patrol between Heimat and Rotfront. That was a good thing, she thought. Even if tensions had flared up between Nation and Empire as of late, a patrol without incident would be a welcome occurrence.
Her eyes next laid upon her desktop zen garden, which sat next to her Aldebaran Model VI computer. The three crimson stars of the Nation stood out on the black exterior. A few nuggets of polished hematite lay on the white sand, arranged in a small circle.
As she altered the sand with one of the companion instruments, her computer buzzed in morse code, the screen flickering on as it translated for her:
KA
CS CS CS RAUMFAHRZEUGVERWALTUNG DE RADIOSENDER RN KN
The captain replied:
RADIOSENDER DE RAUMFAHRZEUGVERWALTUNG = OP IS KNCR-C25601 KN
The onboard radio office responded:
RAUMFAHRZEUGVERWALTUNG DE RADIOSENDER = GT KNCR-C25601 = OP IS ARAR-C25612 = UNIDENTIFIZIERTES SIGNAL ERHALTEN KN
“An unidentified signal, huh…” Kranich muttered to herself. She typed out her response:
QIF UNIDENTIFIZIERTES SIGNAL = IS KSRLICH INT KN
The response came after a few seconds, and it perplexed her:
QIF 512 MHZ = NOT KSRLICH NOR NTNL KN
Kranich sighed.
NOT KSRLICH NOR NTNL INT KN
C = SIGNAL DE OORTSHE WOLKE KN
?
C = SIGNAL DE OORTSHE WOLKE KN
VE = OP WIRD EINTRETEN RADIOSENDERAUM SK
Kranich turned the computer off, wondering what the hell kind of signal the ship heard.
“Zwölf,” Kranich said as she entered the radio office, “do you know what the signal contains?”
“Yes, captain,” the Ara replied. “It seems like a transmission from one of the Nation’s number stations based on the data but that should be impossible given its location.”
“Huh. Play the transmission.”
The Ara obliged. The radio’s speakers crackled to life as three notes played on repeat for a short while. Then, a message:
ACHTUNG!
ACHTUNG!
39485… 39485…
Kranich felt a wave of nausea overcome her as she sat in the chair adjacent to Zwölf's. Zwölf felt a similar sensation.
60179… 60179…
“Stop the playback!” Kranich ordered, but to deaf ears as the Ara slumped over, her body clanking against the floor. She reached out to the computer, but her body shook as she struggled to even stand up.
24326… 24326…
She felt the cold tiled floor against her exoskeleton. From the corner of her eyes she barely saw the outline of Zwölf’s hair. She called out to her Kolibris, begging for aid.
01064… 01064…
As the sound of the world faded away, a collage of visions that the Replika was unequipped to comprehend flashed in her eyes. System warnings flashed all over her visual interface before a wall of blue overtook it, before fading to the blackness of unconsciousness.
Kranich rubbed her head. Red sand stretched before her, contained under an equally crimson sky. In the distance, a pillar of basalt jutted out from the desert. Behind it, her ship laid half-buried in the sand.
“My ship… My ship!”
Slowly, she heaved herself up, her polyethylene-coated hands sinking into the sand.
The Replika crawled, then walked to the pillar. As she ventured closer, a gate and a set of stairs leading up to it became resolvable. Atop it, a figure, its body made from flesh and sinew, stood.
Kranich’s hooves clanged against the rock as it turned to face her, one of its arms placed behind its back. An identification popup appeared on her interface: the figure was an Adler model, ADLR-S2301. Not one of her crewmembers.
“You’re…” the Replika said in amazement, before it was replaced with suspicion. “You’re not my commander. You don’t belong here.”
“That is of no concern to me. I need to pass.”
The Adler chuckled.
“This is a threshold. One that my beloved commander never returned from.”
“The hell do you mean?” Kranich demanded.
He remained unfazed. “Ever since I saw her body return from it, nothing has been the same. I don’t know what she saw out there, and I cannot allow you to pass.”
“What for?”
“If you pass through, what little is left of the world will be lost forever. I won’t let that happen.”
“What are you talking about? I have a crew to lead!”
Seeing as this Adler was too far gone to even comprehend what she was saying, Kranich pushed him aside. The Adler revealed a knife from behind his back and lunged forward, stabbing her in the eye as she turned around in surprise.
Kranich threw him down the stairs, feeling warm oxidant trickle down her face as she stepped through the archway before collapsing.
"Verdammit!" she shouted as she felt for her face.
SYSTEMZUSTAND KRITISCH
She tried to dislodge the knife from her skull, but the pain coursing through her veins was too great. As she grew fainter, the warnings about low oxidant levels piled up, before she shut down entirely.
The next thing Kranich knew, she was in an infirmary. After her systems rebooted, she felt various IV tubes stuck to her body and an oxygen mask on her face. She deduced that, thank the Revolutionary, she was in her ship’s medical ward.
“That… was one hell of a dream,” she mumbled. “Thank goodness the ship is alright. But what happened to me?”
Her muscles grew less numb and her breathing less labored as the pain all over her body subsided. She pulled the oxygen mask off of her and lifted herself onto the floor. However, the room felt strangely empty. Her Bioresonance module didn’t pick up signals of any Eules that had surely tended to her.
“The hell is going on here?” She asked. “Andromeda? Are you there?”
Her chief of medical staff did not reciprocate. The lights in the infirmary flickered for a moment, putting the captain on edge. She noticed that all the beds, despite having been used, were empty. Some of the blankets were strewn on the floor, and all of them (except for hers) were covered in a dark tar.
Kranich shook her head and exited the infirmary. The medical corridor, too, was empty. She reached out to her Replikas with her Bioresonance module again. Nobody answered.
Confusion took hold of the captain. Why weren’t her birds, her staff, answering? Not even the Kolibris’ song, which normally hummed in the back of her mind, was present. A stillness had settled within her ship, one which left the captain utterly alone, millions of kilometers away from their destination in Rotfront.
Before she could take another step forward, a clang echoed from below her. Then another. And another.
Tiles on the floor vibrated with each bang coming from the maintenance vents. Kranich, unfortunately, was not in possession of her personal revolver, which she would have taken out at that moment. Then, one of them slid out of place, with a figure climbing out of the newly-created hole.
An identification popup appeared on Kranich’s interface: ARAR-C25601, head of the maintenance team, had emerged from the vent, but she looked nothing like she remembered. Her face had dissolved, revealing the skeletal structure normally concealed behind her skin. Her arms had been forged into paddle-like appendages which skidded against the tiles. The Ara shambled toward the captain, her back bent at an unnatural angle.
“Eins, what the hell—”
The Replika swung her arm against Kranich’s armor, opening a gash in her shell and causing the captain to recoil from the attack.
Kranich held her chest in pain as two more Aras, Zwei and Drei, crawled out of the ceiling. In a split second, she rammed her way through her attackers, though Eins nearly struck her again as she bolted for the end of the corridor. As soon as the door opened, she ran through it, closing it behind her just as the Aras were about to enter through. The stairwell to the upper decks didn’t have any activity, which Kranich was thankful for as she leaned against the wall.
The decayed state of her Aras left her with a multitude of questions and a terror which she didn’t know she could feel until now. Just what had happened after she’d played that transmission? What was even in that transmission that made her fall unconscious in the first place? She sighed, oxidant drying up against her black armor as the coagulant flowing inside it clotted her veins.
As she stared up at the stairwell, she knew her mission: find out what the hell had happened, and save as much of her crew as she could. She was their leader, after all.
“No use waiting,” Kranich whispered, heading up the stairwell. The grated steps groaned a bit under her hooves, though she was accustomed to the sound given that she was over seven feet of metallic might in the form of a woman.
As the captain, she knew the Cantor like the back of her hand. The armory was on the next floor but on the opposite end of the ship lengthwise. She hoped that one of her Stars or Redstarts would be around there somewhere, still alive and untainted by whatever blight had befallen three of her Aras.
The door to the Protektor Accommodations deck hissed open, revealing a hallway cluttered with garbage and discarded ration boxes. Some of the ceiling tiles had fallen onto the floor. Lights flickered intermittently as the smell of rot entered Kranich’s nose. A dead Star lay next to the door: STAR-C25604.
Kranich knelt next to her guard, examining her body to determine how she died. A set of gashes cut across her lower torso, oxidant having long since dried. Some of it pooled up onto a note which lay in her hand. Kranich picked it up:
“Check up on the captain today. Even if our situation is desperate, the fact that she’s still alive means there’s still hope. Write down her condition on the back of this note and hand it back at home camp.
-STCR-C25602”
She flipped it over, revealing the back to be blank. Kranich shook her head as she returned the note to the Star. She leaned against the wall, searching for any threat that might lurk in the halls, but this corridor was quiet. Knowing that some of her crew may still be alive gave her enough hope to press on.
The locks to each of the doors were in working order. Ammunition storage had been scavenged multiple times, evidenced by the wear on the floor and many discarded boxes of ammunition lying on the ground. Several guns were missing from the arsenal, too.
“Verdammit, no revolvers,” Kranich sighed.
Instead she settled on one of the Type-75s. Not the best gun to have, but it’d work for now.
After retrieving some ammunition for the gun, she continued down the corridor, entering the residential section of Protektor Accommodations. Some of the fluorescent lights had fallen, scattering broken glass across the floor and leaving parts of the hallway dark. Wires dangled from the ceiling.
Kranich’s steps reverberated through the hallway as she approached one of the Star dorms. Putting her ear to the door, she listened for any movements on the other side. They came in the form of faint footsteps.
She unholstered her revolver and opened the door to the other side. A shambling Star, STAR-C25607, let out an uncanny shriek as she brought up a riot shield to protect herself, wielding her baton. Kranich could take her.
The three star-shaped gems embedded into Kranich’s forehead glowed as the Star dropped the riot shield, squirming as her right arm was brought behind her. A slight headache wrapped around Kranich’s head as she aimed a single shot into the corrupted unit’s face, bringing it down where it flailed in agony.
A second Star emerged: STAR-C25611. Kranich checked the charge on her Bioresonance Module.
TSURU-1.2.11 BIORESONANZ-MODUL
LADUNG: 55%
“Thank goodness. It’s enough,” she thought, letting out a soft sigh.
She used the module again, forcing the Star’s backside to crash into the ground. Kranich stomped on the unit’s head, rendering it limp.
Just as the other corrupted Star regained its bearings, Kranich shot it again. After it crawled a few centimeters, it dropped dead.
TSURU-1.2.11 BIORESONANZ-MODUL
LADUNG: 7%
“Shit. Gotta wait for it to charge again… Fuck, these guys take a lot of energy to subdue,” she said, rubbing her forehead.
She estimated that it would take an hour at most for her module to recharge. Normally, a Gestalt or subordinate Replika would have taken about 2 or 3% of its charge off. 45%? That was unprecedented. Using it on those two felt like pushing against an asteroid.
“Does bioresonance have anything to do with this, I wonder,” she mumbled, picking up a note off of the floor.
“Tomoe, face it: you and Gankyil are getting sick. Both of you will have to leave. Based on what Andromeda’s found out about the sickness, you’ve got two cycles before you succumb to it. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing else you can do to keep camp safe.
— Walküre”
The names matched up with the two units in this room, along with one of her Protektor Controllers, STCR-C25602. The sickness was new to her, however. It was a no-brainer to deduce that it befell her crew after she fell unconscious.
She set the note on a table, retrieving another that happened to lie under a lit desk lamp.
“It’s been about four cycles since the captain fell asleep. The remaining Kolibris are growing more agitated. We’ll have to keep an eye out in case any of them start to spiral.”
“An inexplicable sickness and the Kolibris growing more agitated…”
Kranich pondered how those two events could be correlated. If bioresonance was behind this—and she was confident that it was—then the Kolibris would most likely have been among the first to go haywire. She hoped that at least one of them lived. The silence of their song suggested otherwise.
Exiting the first Star dorm, she walked into the adjacent Redstart dorm, which served as the place of residence for all ten of the Replikas designed specifically to sabotage any wayward Imperial ship that was unfortunate to cross the Cantor-256’s path.
RSAR-C25601 through RSAR-C25603 lay dead on the floor, having bled out their oxidant through large gashes on their exoskeletons. Their Kosmonaut helmets had been split open like eggs, their visors shattered. Curiously, ARAR-C25605 also lay alongside them, having been hit on the head with a blunt object.
A locker bolted to the wall shook. Something inside it wanted it to get out. Before Kranich could react, the door flew open with such force that it embedded itself into the opposite wall. Emerging from it was a Replika, taller than even Kranich and wearing a white bloodstained mask that reminded her of an Ara’s helmet and her namesake’s beak simultaneously. A cape draped over her, seeming to have been made from a curtain drenched in white paint. Her HUD identified the Replika as it bellowed an ear-splitting shriek: STCR-C25603.
“Ca… Captain…!” the Storch said, brandishing a large club as she ran towards her.
Kranich ducked out of the way, letting the crazed Replika crash into the bunks behind her. Her mask momentarily fell off, revealing a metallic skull with hollowed-out eyesockets. It was anomalously painted white.
“Agh… Cap…taiinnn!” It groaned as it stood up, clutching her mask.
Kranich shot her, but the bullet missed her head and instead lodged into her bulletproof chestplate.
“CAPTAIN!”
The Storch put on her mask, enraged judging by the tone of her voice. Kranich ran out of the room, the door almost closing behind her before it opened, the Storch reaching out for her.
Using the last bit of charge in her bioresonance module, Kranich threw her across the room, closing the door behind her and running as far away from the Redstart dorm as possible. Just as she ducked into another Star dorm, she heard the Storch’s footsteps in the corridor.
“Who’s there?” she heard a Replika from inside the dorm ask as she stood up, her hooves treading upon the floor. From behind one of the bunks, she saw STAR-C25603 emerge, her revolver trained directly at her. However, upon seeing her captain, she let out a surprised gasp, letting her revolver point at the ground.
“Captain? How are you awake?” She said, gaping in awe.
“I don’t know. I’ve been up since only very recently. More importantly—”
Loud banging echoed off of the door, accompanied by the muffled shrieks of the masked Storch.
“Oh fuck… It’s that one again.”
“You’ve dealt with her before?” Kranich asked.
“Yes. One of the Aras that survived was supposed to trap it, but we’ve never heard from her.”
Kranich’s heart sank as she put the pieces together. The Star noticed her change in expression.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Kranich nodded.
The door suddenly opened, revealing the white-painted Storch. She charged Kranich, swinging her club at her. Before she could react, Kranich was pummeled to the floor by the Storch, her neck aching due to the impact. The Star unloaded a few shots at the Storch, but the bullets were deflected by the armor she wore.
“Tri… skelion…” the Storch groaned, eyeing the Star. “Triske… lion…”
As Kranich attempted to rise, the Storch swung her weapon at the Star, but she dodged, the club denting one of the bunks. Helping Kranich up, the Star ushered her out of the room just as the Storch regained her bearings.
“Don’t know what happened to Schwannweiss, but she’s gone mad in a different way to some of the others,” Triskelion said as she and Kranich ventured through the Protektor Accommodations deck.
“I see. Tell me, is there anyone else alive other than you?”
“Yes, captain. We’ve set up camp near the bow of the ship, in the Worker Accommodations deck. Our numbers have shrunken, but we’ve managed to hold out. There’s about twelve of us or so, including me.”
“Good,” Kranich said, letting out a sigh of relief. “Have you called for reinforcements?”
“About that…”
Triskelion frowned, but just as she was about to speak, the Storch broke out of the Star dorm. Kranich and Triskelion picked up their pace, making sure that the white-painted Replika didn’t see them.
“Damn, she’s persistent,” Kranich whispered.
Fortunately, the Storch didn’t follow them. Once they felt they were at a safe distance, Kranich and Triskelion let their guard down. They entered the Storch dorm, which held all the remaining Storches excluding Walküre, their bodies lying lifeless on the floor. As the doors closed behind them, one of the ceiling tiles slid out of place, revealing a corrupted Ara which dropped out of the gap.
Triskelion shot her with her revolver, delivering the final blow to the head as Kranich stood by, ready to fire her Type-75.
“We should be safe for now,” Triskelion said, sitting on one of the beds. “I should add that Walküre is still alive.”
Kranich sat next to her. “Thank goodness. Now that nothing’s out for us, can you tell me what happened since I fell asleep?”
“Ah… well, I don’t know all the details, but after you fell unconscious, something started screwing with the radio transmissions all around the ship. Each time we tried contacting Nation outposts, our signal got jammed. Even our radio modules only work at short range. That’s why we haven’t been able to call for help. Then the sickness came. At first it was only the Kolibris, but soon most of the ship got sick. The medical wing got overwhelmed. Soon, all the Gestalt crew on the ship perished, but something weird happened to the Replikas who got sick. After they died, they rose from the dead and became hostile. That brings us to now. We’ve got no idea how far we are from Rotfront, and we can’t access a lot of the ship, either. Somehow, the bridge got locked behind administrator access despite some of the pilot Replikas having had permission before, so we can’t change course. Unless…”
Kranich checked her person. Sure enough, she still had her administrator ID card which she always carried on her outside her office. Triskelion let out a sigh of relief upon seeing it.
“Thank goodness,” she said. “We should get back to the survivors.”
“Agreed.”
Just as the door to the Storch dorm opened, Kranich and Triskelion were face-to-face with the white-painted Storch. Kranich jumped back as Triskelion kicked her away, unholstering her baton. The Storch hit a wall, then charged at Triskelion. Triskelion’s baton and the Storch’s club clashed, emitting a clang that reverberated through the corridor. Kranich regained her bearings and checked the charge on her bioresonance module.
TSURU-1.2.11 BIORESONANZ-MODUL
LADUNG: 19%
“Shit…” Kranich muttered as Triskelion and the Storch traded blows. Triskelion managed to get ahold of the Storch’s mask, ripping it off and throwing it across the hall.
“My… my face! What did you do… to my face!” the Storch shouted as she tackled Triskelion to the ground, wrapping her hands around her neck.
Kranich sprung into action, aiming her Type-75 at the Storch. She used her bioresonance module, forcing the Storch to face her, her empty eyesockets catching some of the remaining light in the corridor. Before the charge on it ran out, she unloaded as many shots as she could from the pistol, with each one puncturing through the titanium-reinforced bone. The Storch let go of Triskelion’s neck, clutching her face as oxidant flowed out of it. Triskelion, after regaining her breath, pushed the Storch off of her and stomped on her skull. The Storch shrieked, flailing around as the Star shot at her with her revolver, causing her to go limp.
Triskelion sat against a wall, noticing Kranich sprawled out on the floor, one hand clutching her head as she groaned in pain.
Kranich saw the basalt archway again, her eye now blinded as the Adler who had wounded her loomed above. She dislodged the knife from her skull, causing more oxidant to run down her cheek.
“You return,” the Adler stated as Kranich stood up. “Why do you persist?”
“Because I have a duty,” Kranich replied. “A duty to lead my crew.”
Adler chuckled. “A promise, perhaps? I see how it is. But it is futile in the end.”
“Futile?” Kranich said. “I know that there are some survivors on my ship. I can’t leave them to die!”
“Look around you. Everything’s been taken apart. Letting you pass would, ironically, serve to bring to ruin what you want to save so much.”
“No,” Kranich objected. “Saving something means saving them from ruin, too. As captain, I have a duty to ensure the safety of my crew.”
However, as Kranich turned away from the Adler and took another few steps past the gate, she suddenly collapsed. Her limbs went numb as she tried to flip herself over. The Adler approached her prone form.
“In the face of ruin, trying to fulfill your promise will only serve to hasten your demise,” he said as Kranich’s vision faded away.
“...Captain! Captain, are you with me?”
Kranich jolted awake, expecting another corrupted Replika to be standing over her. Her heart relaxed as she saw that it was only Triskelion.
“I’m fine now,” she said, noticing the massive headache coursing through her head.
“Are you sure? You were crying for a long time.”
“I was?”
“Yes.”
A moment of silence passed between the two Replikas. Kranich noticed that, of all things, tears had run down her face. She wiped her cheeks as she noticed the feeling in her heart, one that had made itself apparent since she woke up. It felt like a weight trying to drown her within an ocean, the sky above it overcast and dark. She explained it to the Star, though her diction was frustratingly limited.
“...does this feeling have a name?” Kranich asked.
“Yes. I think it’s called despair.”
Kranich followed Triskelion through what remained of Protektor Accommodations, heading through a connecting corridor to the Recreation Area. Upon entering a billiards room, the stench of rot and blood hit Kranich like a wave, causing her to stagger back as she noticed a pulsating red mass blocking a doorway.
“What the hell is this?!” Kranich said, trying not to gag.
Triskelion wheezed “You’ll get used to it,” under her breath. “We don’t know why this flesh showed up either…”
They hurried out of the billiards room and into the mensa, where trays full of empty or rotting rations lay scattered across the floor. Two Eules lay dead on the ground.
Kranich sat by one of the tables as she caught her breath. She hated this. The sound of her breathing became the only thing she perceived as the rest of the ship faded away.
Triskelion paused her navigation of the mensa once she noticed her captain pulling on her hair in frustration.
Her voice filled with concern. “Captain?”
Kranich mumbled something that Triskelion couldn’t hear. The Star sat next to her, whispering in her ear. “Captain, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t do it,” Kranich said. “I can’t.”
“What do you—”
“I can’t do it!”
Kranich suddenly stomped on the floor with her right hoof, startling the Star. She curled up on her chair and muttered incoherencies under her breath.
Kranich leant against a stone wall in the rain. The Replika looked up at someone (A teacher? Commander? She couldn’t remember.) shouting at her. She wasn’t good enough, the person said. She needed to do better. Other people (Gestalts?) stared at her with their judging eyes.
“I promise to do better,” she uttered out of no volition of her own.
The commander’s voice, garbled and unrecognizable, did not contain an iota of satisfaction. It demanded from her.
More.
More.
“More effort is required. There is still much work to be done with your athletics, ▒▓▓░░▒▓▒░▓. I expect a higher performance from you next time, Captain. Captain?”
“Captain?”
Kranich regained her bearings, feeling Triskelion’s hand against her neck. She uncurled herself, her hands sitting on her lap as the Star’s concerned eyes met hers. She slowly pulled her heart out of the painful abyss of her soul as she spoke.
“Triskelion… Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, captain. I understand that all this is a lot to take in, to say the least,” the Star said, Kranich nodding. “I know how you feel. I felt the exact same way when my comrades became sick, but I managed to survive with the others. I know for a fact that you’ll be a beacon of hope to them.”
Kranich hesitated before saying, “I… needed to hear that.”
A warning flashed across her HUD:
ACHTUNG!
PERSONA-DEGRADIERUNG (5%) ERKANNT
“Ah, verdammit,” she muttered.
“Let me guess… Persona degradation?” After the captain nodded, the Star added, “Don’t worry, all of us have some degree of degradation now. All that matters is survival.”
“Right. Let’s go to the others.”
“Understood, captain.”
Kranich lost count of how much of her crew had died or become corrupt by the time they passed by the small hangars on the Cantor. So many of her crew, birds she couldn’t have saved, laid motionless or attacked them on sight. Each of their designations flashed on her HUD as she saw them, yet she refused to turn off her auto-identification system. It was a reminder that she could have done more, yet failed to—
“Captain…?”
“Ah, sorry,” Kranich said, moving on from another dead Eule. “I just… I knew all of my birds, and… seeing them all gone is—”
“I promise you, captain, that we’ll survive this together.”
“I… I know. It’s just— never mind.”
They proceeded to the very front of the ship, next to the observatory. Triskelion stood by the door as she explained. “The observatory’s where we’ve set up camp. None of the corrupted Replikas except for that Storch we took out know how to open doors, so it acts as a perfect safe space for us.”
The Starling knocked on the door to the observatory. Kranich noticed the specific pauses between the knocks:
..... .---- ..---
“Just to be safe,” Triskelion remarked.
Once the door hissed open, Walküre emerged from the other side and gasped upon seeing her captain.
“Holy shit, is this really happening?” the Storch asked.
Andromeda spoke from behind her. “What’s going on out the–huh?! Captain!”
The Eule leaped at Kranich and embraced her as all the other survivors came out to see her. Kranich saw that the survivors, all of whom muttered to themselves about their leader’s reawakening, were composed of:
As she reciprocated Andromeda’s embrace, so too did the Eule give her happiness. She began to cry in joy, thankful to see some of her birds still living.
ACHTUNG!
PERSONA-DEGRADIERUNG (7%) ERKANNT
“Thank you, Andromeda,” Kranich said, wiping tears off her face. The two hugged for what felt like hours before Kranich finally let go.
“I missed you, Captain,” the Eule said. “We all did.”
Kranich cleared her throat and spoke. “I… I did too. Until now, I never realized how much I cared for you all.”
Zwölf talked next. “After what happened in the radio office, I’m thankful that you managed to live. With you around, we can get to the bottom of whatever’s happened to our ship.”
“I must,” Kranich replied, another seed of anxiety sprouting within her gut. “As captain, it’s my duty to ensure your safety.”
“That’s our captain,” Walküre said, pride emanating from her voice. The other Replikas spoke in agreement with the Storch.
“So, mind telling us what happened while you were out unconscious?” Bollwerk asked.
“Yes. I dreamt of a basalt gate under a red sky in a desert. I saw our ship in the sand, and a pernicious Adler stood in the way. He stabbed me in the ey–”
Kranich winced, a headache washing over her as she clutched her eye—the same one the Adler had stabbed in her dream–and nearly fell over, Triskelion catching her just in time. Lilie’s eyes widened.
“An Adler?” she asked. “We didn’t have one in our crew, correct?”
“No,” the captain said, her headache fading. “All logistics were handled by the Storches.” Walküre nodded in agreement. “Their designation didn’t match our ship: he was from an S-series facility.”
“How peculiar…” the Elster muttered, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
Kranich peered into her mind, seeing nothing but a struggle between recognition and rejection. Foreign memories.
“Have any of you had dreams like mine?” The captain asked.
All the survivors, save the Elster, shook their heads. Lilie clutched her head and fell onto the ground, her artificial body clanking on the tiled floor. Fuhrfrau rushed to her aid, muttering “Oh dear, not again!” under her breath as she tended to her.
“Lilie’s had it real bad,” Walküre said. “Ever since everything went to shit, she sometimes goes into outbursts and says names of various Gestalts, none of which are–well, were—in our crew.”
“Alina… where is Alina Seo…” Lilie groaned, her eyes dilated and staring into nothingness. Kranich felt her sadness, her grief, her longing for better days–
“Breathe, captain.”
Andromeda laid her hand on the captain’s shoulder, reminding her of times when the two were together in her office, chatting together to uplift her mood after locking herself in.
“Was I…”
“Undergoing a feedback loop? Yes,” Andromeda finished.
ACHTUNG!
PERSONA-DEGRADIERUNG (8%) ERKANNT
“Damn,” Walküre said. “You might be just as degraded as Lilie by the time this is all over.”
Kranich sighed. “That doesn’t matter right now. We need to find our ship’s bearings.”
“About that,” Valknut began, “me and some of the others tried entering the bridge, but it was locked. There’s a lot of fleshy walls around it, too.”
“What? There’s flesh over there too?” Kranich said in disbelief.
“It’s all over the ship,” Hildr replied. “I even think some might be poking out of the hull.”
“But the keycard slot for the door is still uncovered,” Valknut continued. “If we have an admin key, we can access it.”
“I have it,” Kranich said, presenting the administrator’s key. All the survivors’ morales swelled at the sight of it.
“Thank goodness!” Waage exclaimed.
“Hell yeah!” Bollwark cheered. “Now we can plow our way through and get in!”
“Except that we don’t have much ammunition here…” Triquetra countered, causing the Eissturmvogel to utter a short “Verdammit, Star.”
“So, how shall we go about this?” Kranich asked.
“Because there’s a ton of shambling Replikas out there, we need to choose our path to the bridge wisely,” Walküre explained. “We don’t want to waste valuable bullets on them, and there’s also the fact that they can rise from the dead after taking enough lead to kill a person.”
Kranich’s eyes widened in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“It’s true,” Fuhrfrau answered, tending to the now docile Lilie. “I saw one of my sisters rise in front of me when I was scouting for supplies.”
The Ortolans cowered at the mention of this.
“My theory is that it’s some bioresonant stuff,” Walküre speculated.
“That would make sense,” Kranich added. “My bioresonance module gets its energy drained from it whenever I pin down one of the corrupt Replikas with it.”
“Shit, really?” The Storch exclaimed. “That’s bad. Really bad.” Kranich could only nod in agreement.
“I’d like to say something before we plan out our expedition,” Triskelion interrupted. “Since we’re in this together, we need to give you,” she said, her eyes on the captain, “a name.”
“A name? Kranich has worked fine, so I don’t see why I should stop using it.”
“Yeah, but Kranich is such a bland name,” Andromeda countered. “It only makes sense to give you a wonderful new one!”
“You’ve been a great leader for us, captain,” Waage added. Bildhauerin built on her sister unit’s statement. “You’ve known us all so well, so why should we just call you Kranich?”
All the Replikas (except for Lilie, who rested against the wall) nodded in agreement, much to Kranich’s confusion.
“I think that Tetraktys fits you,” Triskelion said. The other Stars nodded along with Zwölf.
“Tetraktys sounds wonderful!” Andromeda exclaimed.
One after the other, the Replikas uttered the name, each one nodding in agreement.
“So, where will we start, Tetraktys?” Walküre asked.
The newly christened Tetraktys stood in astonishment for a moment. She took a deep breath, accepted her new designation, and began to talk through her plan.