Perverse Instantiation Ch 01

Disclaimer and Acknowledgment:

All persons engaged in sexual activity or otherwise sexualized are over 18.

As always, a special thanks to my editor, LiterKnight, for catching the obvious errors that inevitably litter my early drafts.

-00000-

Year 2321, Deep Space, Krüger System, ~13 Light-Years from Sol

In the peaceful darkness of the void, far enough from Krüger's binary red dwarfs that their light faded into the tapestry of more distant stars, a ripple of energy appeared. Bright orange in color, the light sparked once, twice, three times before widening into a vague oval, fifty meters across. It hung there, alone in the empty void, for nearly a minute until the gangly mass of a ramshackle freighter appeared instantaneously, scattering the orange energy in a blast as it was displaced by the ship.

From behind the thick glass of the cockpit, the freighter's pilot let out a relieved breath, her hands slackening from their tight grip on the starship's controls. Layla Solovyeva relaxed back into her chair as she routinely flicked off the two emergency sirens warning her of imminent depressurization. With practiced surety, she coaxed the great beast of a ship back to life. Her hands flit about dozens of knobs, switches, and levers as she restored power to the many systems that she had shut down in anticipation for the jump. It wasn't exactly recommended practice...but the Yak Indomitable wasn't the youngest ship among the stars, and the hungry beast demanded every morsel of power to feed the Yashi drive that kept the hull in one piece during the inter-dimensional jumps.

To Layla's right, a small golden hologram appeared from an emitter embedded in the hull. "All systems are operational," Layla's A.I. assistant, Nixie, chimed. The little holographic mermaid cast a skeptical eye about the cramped cabin, "...miraculously."

"Always so negative," Layla chided, finally allowing herself a little smile as her readout displays indeed appeared in the green. This was nearly her 200th jump in the Yak, but every time, that little worry of doubt raised its ugly head. Despite its ubiquitous use, jump travel wasn't always safe, and things were known to go wrong. Disastrously wrong. She patted the console affectionately. "The Yak's handled worse than a 7-light-year jump."

"And yet still almost manages to fall apart every time," Nixie griped. She spun in the air for a moment, a common sign that the A.I. was analyzing something. "Looks like you actually managed to get us to the right destination this time. Long-range scans show a metallic mass roughly six thousand kilometers away."

Layla rolled her eyes and stood up from her chair, stretching her aching back. "You jump into the wrong system one time..." she muttered, before turning towards the hall that led to the Yak's armory. "Set the autopilot to take us in to the station, Nix." She called behind her, and heard an aggrieved grumble in response.

Despite the show of nonchalance, Layla's heart had begun to race with nerves that had nothing to do with another dangerous jump. As a cargo transporter (and occasional smuggler and scavver) by trade, what she was currently attempting was considerably more ambitious than her usual fare. An old contact had tipped her off that a Prime Conglomerated research station had gone dark just days prior. With Prime more worried about its ass getting handed to it in the recent corpo war...Layla figured that it might take a while for the cogs to realize what had happened. And time enough for her to loot the station dry.

As she reached the doors of the armory, she called out again, "Any ID tags on the hull, Nix? Or did Lloyd give us shit intel again?" The doors slid open, revealing the paltry stocks of Layla's personal armaments and equipment. Nixie appeared from another emitter inside.

"Yep. Tag reads Prime megacorp. Skimpy on the details, listed only as 'Sodom Station' and a warning that any visitor without level 8 company access codes will be destroyed within range of the station's defenses. Do I need to remind you that we don't have those codes?"

"You do not. If it's actually gone dark, then we've got nothin' to worry about. 'Sides, a warning like that just means they've got good shit stashed away in there." With a shimmy, Layla slipped out of her comfortable synthfur bodysuit, leaving her in just her undergarments in the slightly cool recycled air. Though a childhood of malnutrition had left her slightly shorter than average and whip-thin, the layer of muscle beneath what little fat she had spoke of a hard life of either labor or danger. The numerous scars on her pale skin confirmed the latter.

Casting an eye about the disorganized armory, she sighed as she spotted the errant sleeve of her softsuit hiding underneath one of the workbenches. Getting down on all fours, she began to rummage underneath for the full suit. When Nixie let out a whistle at her upraised rear, Layla just raised a two-finger salute behind her. To the A.I.'s mocking chuckles, she pulled out the rumpled garment and began the arduous task of pulling it on.

"Prime means they'll be using solid-state munitions," she muttered to herself as she shimmied the skin-tight suit over her wide hips. Every time she put the damn thing on, she cursed her bottom-heavy figure, but no matter how much it got in the way, her bubble butt refused to disappear entirely. "Damn Americans wouldn't be caught dead with energy-tech." Layla cast a wistful gaze towards the heavy plating of her Wyrd-brand Defender exosuit. As much as its thick ablative ceramic armor was comforting, it wouldn't do shit against a railgun slug, and the servos would drain power from her shields. It would just slow her down.

Pulling her arms through the softsuit sleeves and zipping it up to her neck, she began attaching a few ablative plates to the mag-locks on her suit's arms, chest, groin, and thighs. Never hurt to be careful. Finally placing her battered blue helmet over her head, she waited for the hiss as the suit began to pressurize itself. With a few darts of her eyes, she organized the HUD to her usual preferences, sending as much juice as possible to her personal shields. Which, of course, with her second-hand and scavenged equipment, amounted to a paltry 67% effectiveness reading.

"Nix, any way to boost the shields further?"

The holographic mermaid appeared over Layla's wrist with a frown. "Unless you want to overload your circuits and electrocute yourself, no. Don't stop on my account though. I'd love to watch."

"Great." With a final sigh, Layla grabbed her trusty plasma carbine and enough cartridges to last her a week in the field. The old rifle was surplus Trans-Siberian Collective gear, much like her ship, but it had yet to fail her in the few shootouts she had inevitably found herself in. With mounting anxiety, she trudged back to the cockpit. Throwing herself down in her chair, she watched through the glass as the station began to come into full view.

It was a massive complex, perhaps a full kilometer in length at its widest, its titanium-alloy hull painted red and white in Prime colors. Eight thick arms on an orbiting ring circled around a central orb, looking like a stylized sun in miniature. As the Yak drew closer, Layla could make out greater detail, specifically the cloud of debris that hovered around the station. As the central ring turned, she noticed two of the arms had seemingly depressurized, gaping holes in the hull occasionally letting loose scraps of material from the interior with their slow movement. She smiled.

"Bad day for the poor sods who lived there, but damn good luck for us." Layla noted dryly. The A.I. said nothing about her owner's callous remark. "What're our readings on the station interior?"

"I can't get a clear read on the station; they've got some pretty hefty shielding. Thermal doesn't show anything human still alive...but I'm seeing maybe a hundred anomalous signatures throughout the station."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning they're anomalous, fleshbag. They don't match anything in the known species register." Nixie's response was cutting, but Layla just ignored it, her attention fixed on the station. Either xenos or gene-muties then, she thought to herself. Who knows what sick experiments the suits had created in this place. Void, maybe she'd be the first to encounter sentient aliens. And be promptly murdered/abducted by them.

She'd dared to hope that she could just waltz in unopposed, but of course it couldn't be that easy. It never was, for a freelancer. That was a lesson that she had very much learned the hard way in her years of solo work.

"Nix, what's the current fatality rate among licensed scavengers?"

The sprite gave her a dour stare. "The same rate the last five times you asked. We haven't passed any more comms buoys."

"Just fuckin' tell me, you useless piece of scrapcode."

Nixie rolled her eyes. "47% within the first year."

"And for unlicensed?" Like me, she didn't dare to add.

"79% in the first year."

Layla stared pensively at the waiting station, her hands clenching idly at the armrests of the pilot's seat. "Yeah, sounds about right." She shook herself. It was too late to back out now. It had been too long since her last real score, and the creditors were waiting for her back in the settled systems. Without salvage to pay off those debts...she'd probably land in the penal legions right next to her father. "Take us into the central airlock, probably the best place to...what in the Void?"

Her eyes caught onto a black dot stuck onto the side of the massive station. As the Yak came in for its final approach, the dot became the clear outline of a sleek ship, tethered to another airlock.

"Blast it," she spat. "Someone beat us to it. Fuckin' corpo too, by the looks of it." The sleek black lines of the smaller star-runner suggested Matsui design. If a Matsui Holdings agent beat her inside...this was going to get ugly. "You sure there were no human life-signs aboard?"

"With 79% percent certainty," Nixie replied, staring up at Layla with a raised holographic eyebrow.

The scavenger scoffed, shaking her helmeted head. "Course I'm stuck with the one A.I. that's allowed to understand gallows humor. Screw it, take us in next to the 'runner."

The ponderous freighter fired its retro-thrusters in little spurts to align itself with the second air-lock leading to the central orb. Within minutes, Layla heard the satisfying thunk-hiss of a successful docking procedure. She moved to the air-lock chamber just down the hall from the cockpit, double-checking each piece of gear before steadying herself. Most of her scav runs had been fairly low risk; picking over starship debris, checking dirt-side battlefields left by the war, maybe the occasional snatch and grab. Nothing like the monumental task directly before her.

Eyes scanning the airlock controls, she frowned as she found that the English label she'd stuck to the cycle button had peeled, revealing the original Mongolian script beneath. Sliding a thumb lightly over its surface, she let out a sigh as the adhesive refused to reseal. Ignoring the ever-deteriorating state of her ship, she slammed a fist down on the suitably large red button, and the airlock cycled once as it identified a pressurized chamber through the docking umbilical. The spiral lock opened, and Layla sprinted forward through the short hallway on the opposite side.

The hall opened up into the station proper, and she moved forward quickly, weapon raised and eyes scanning as she ducked behind the welcome desk that jutted out mere feet from the entryway. Deep breaths fogged her mask as she took in the interior.

This part of the central orb was sectioned into a large open dome, the ceiling projecting a real-time view of the stars as though the metal exterior was transparent. Beyond the empty welcome station, the wide-open space was empty and quiet. Lights flickered eerily above a central dining and recreation area, the only sounds Layla's heaving breath and the small sparks of blown electoral connections.

She scanned the room for a moment longer, then straightened into a standing position, holding her rifle warily by her waist. Her HUD indicated no immediate life-signs, so she carefully rounded the welcome station, noting the overturned chair behind it, but no blood or body. As soon as she entered the cafeteria area beyond, however, she froze as dozens of hanging screens above the dining tables came to life. On each screen, a pair of violet eyes appeared amidst a haze of static, and Layla winced as her audio receptors picked up a piercing synthetic scream from each monitor. She ducked back behind one of the tables, carbine again at the ready, but the scream ended as soon as it began. The eyes followed her movement, flickering indistinctly, before every monitor shut down abruptly.

"Nix..." she muttered shakily, "What the fuck was that?"

Nixie's holographic form appeared on her wrist, the golden mermaid looking as shaken as Layla felt. "The noise...it was linguistic binary. It's what synthetic warforms use to communicate when networking breaks down. But it was gibberish. Whatever it was...it didn't say anything. It just screamed."

Layla blanched behind her opaque face-plate. "Of all things...of course it had to be a rogue-fuckin' A.I.. Suits never know when to leave well enough alone, and the rest of us get caught up in their mess."

"It could just be a malfunctioning V.I. program," Nixie offered. Her hesitant tone belied whatever assurance the statement was meant to give.

"Whatever it is, it hasn't opened all the airlocks yet, so it might not have station control. We can hopefully just ignore it for now." Yet another problem for later, she mentally added.

"Or perhaps it isn't homicidal?"

Layla just snorted.

She straightened once more as Nixie's hologram flickered out, and took stock of the cafeteria from her central position. Even in a deep-space research station, Prime had plastered their triangular logo on nearly every flat surface, and the cafeteria flooring was a red and white checkerboard pattern that had gone out of style three centuries prior. The American retro-aesthetic was made even more off-putting than usual, however, by the utter stillness of the place. Just like the welcome area, the space was entirely abandoned, its furniture left in a state of disarray. Food was left spoiling on plates, benches were flipped over, and tables were askew. The buffet line and vendor stalls were similarly disheveled.

She eyed the closed cabinets and stalls speculatively. She always could check back later for preserved stock, they might have some gourmet corpo shit. High-quality meals were never exactly a high priority on her supply runs. Filling her personal stores would keep her from having to stretch rations for the next couple weeks before she made it back to a legitimate colony, and not some festering asteroid slum.

Passing by one of the vendors advertising hot-dogs made with only 70% insect-protein, Layla jumped as a cheery ding echoed through the station loudspeakers. "Attention employees," a sugary-sweet voice recited through the speakers, "management is pleased to announce that required production quotas have been lowered by 20% with the current lockdown! Enjoy the break before the station returns to regular operation. At Sodom, your pleasure is our Prime directive!" The recording cut out with a hiss, and Layla continued forward as the hall returned to silence, shaking her head at the absurdity of maintaining production quotas when your station's hull had depressurized. But then again, these were megacorps she was dealing with, so not much out of the ordinary there.

She wound her way through the tables, heading towards the opposite end of the dome where, according to her scans, access to the orbiting ring and station spokes lay. Her gait slowed, however, as she neared the exit. Piled high against the exit corridor was a makeshift barricade; tables and benches piled high to keep something out. As she neared, she spied half-a-dozen fallen rifles scattered about the floor of the barricade, and a pristine Prime autocannon mounted on the top of the barricade. Judging by the impact craters on the metal flooring, they had been used, too. And yet, no blood. No bodies.

Despite the growing worry gnawing at the back of her neck, Layla marked down the location on her HUD for future salvage. Those guns would go for a decent sum to the right buyer. Heaving herself onto the barricade, she peeked over the lip.

Empty hallway, scarred by hundreds of impact craters, the autocannon having left massive divots in the metal. Several access panels had been ripped off their hinges and lay scattered near the walls of the hallway, the revealed air ducts and maintenance tunnels ominously dark.

"Any anomalous readings on the orbital ring?" she queried.

"Dozens." Nixie replied in her ear gravely. "And an unidentifiable active mass a few dozen meters around the bend of that hallway. Could be a crowd, could be...something else. Sensors aren't very accurate right now."

Layla cursed, carefully clambering down off the barricade, trying to be as quiet as possible lest she attract unwanted attention. No going that way for now, she could look elsewhere. Moving towards the recreation section, she spotted another barricade set up at an exit, a similar assortment of fallen armaments scattered about its base. Thinking to avoid whatever creatures waited around the previous hallways, she moved to inspect this one, but her brisk walk was interrupted by an abrupt clang of metal further down the open dome. Layla twisted, her weapon flicking up towards the origin of the noise, but the space remained frustratingly empty.

With even steps, she moved towards the center of the recreation area, passing over synth-grass sports fields and a series of half-enclosed sections containing branded gym equipment. She reached what appeared to be a terrace in the center of the area, peeking a cautious look over the side. The glance revealed a wide shaft descending through the entirety of the central orb, passing through perhaps six separate levels, though only the one immediately below was open to the shaft. There, over the lip of the terrace, she spied the jagged cylinder of a broken chair-leg roll quietly along the floor. It came to a stop with a little clang against a set of Prime-red benches.

Layla's hand went to her equipment pouch, fingers probing for...something that wasn't there. She cursed again. "Knew I shoulda bought those recon drones." Waiting for a few seconds more, carbine at the ready, she stepped away from the rail as nothing else on the level below moved. She spotted a nearby stairwell and walked quietly towards it, Nixie's voice sounding in her ear.

"Far be it from me to tell an infallible organic what to do, but shouldn't we be moving away from the ominous noises?"

Layla shook her head as she descended to the next level down. "Can't be lookin' over my shoulder the whole time," she whispered. "Need to clear this section out before moving on." What exactly she was clearing out remained unclear, but the statement was still true. This level appeared to house several aquatic recreational facilities, glass partitions enclosing several pools and the scent of chlorine reaching Layla through her helmet's olfactory sensors. She moved around the interior of the dividing shaft until she reached the spot where the chair-leg had come to rest. Casting a paranoid look around the empty surrounding area, she picked up the jagged spike of metal. Someone had clearly wrenched it from one of the plastic chairs scattered about the upper level, but there were none in sight down here. Where had it come from?

She dropped the spike with a clang as the unmistakable sound of girlish giggling echoed through the level. Twisting around, she caught sight of...something, flitting out of sight behind one of the dividing walls. Layla's heart began to pound, but she refused to let the nerves get to her. She'd dealt with worse than creepy abandoned stations, and she had the scars to prove it.