LustForDecay

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

"You'll have company down there; a whole ethereobiology holobook's worth of strange and wonderful friends. I'm no zoologist but our drone handler knows a thing or two about wildlife in the ether. He's a bit of a traveller of the outer currents and all; this sort of thing was his wheelhouse even before he was tossed in our collective garbage dump."

A skeletal finger joint twisted in its socket as he raised a hand as if to point at Salvatore, King, and Ilshar. The appendage that would've done so instead bent backwards and jabbed at the scielto. Its skull swivelled to watch the squad, framed by a ring of its drones vertically arranged around its body.

"Husk will do for my callsign. It's a miracle the systems inside even work but that means that the main station's have likely seen some use and whoever jammed those ships in there was aware of it. This isn't some floating junkyard, science project getaway. Comms towers like the ones we're assigned to should've broken down and been overrun ages ago. Credit to whoever is on deep-void homekeeping duty, because they're going to be making our work infinitely easier."

From the wall, the craggy celaderaka watched Echo closely. It strode his way with militant motion while its shotgun was fed the last few shells. Temperature fluctuated as it neared and the microform drones would feel the prickling spikes of cold.

"Your canon-rifle; old and rare Yrrkradian model I believe. I have not seen since the years when Tergalarkan was an Emperor rather than an ordinary politician."

As if overpowered by the atmospheric conditioning systems, the veil of coldness disappeared and his voice scraped and grinded at the air. It was as if he had rusted sickles in his throat. Not pointed and not aimed; the machinery in his body nearly clashed with its host in terms of how old the latter was against the current gen make of the former.

"A unztadtlige platform is never not in demand for its services. So what brings the emperor's iron first among our esteemed number?"

Alice's voice brought the scielto's attention. It signaled her before it spoke, sending a sensation akin to a communications ping straight to the nebulous powers at her command. The scielto itself turned its head to her not a moment too soon.

"Ship-dweller, if I am not mistaken. You have not the making of voidspawned planet-walkers. A pleasure to see those who prefer the outer dark."

The alien's body descended until its almost vestigial, footless legs like worn match-tips tapped against the ground. It was a lanky figure and even the illusion of its skin did not give it much in the way of volume to its branch-like limbs. Its voice felt as if the very air around itself melted into a syrupy series of long legato tones.

"I suggested a team of vacuum-dwellers, but alas, my words are ignored by our ever-knowing benefactors. Perhaps that is the sort of thing you simply cannot ask in these corners. The cost of civilization is convenience."

Husk spared a glance at Kleo's outbursts and his teeth twitched and bobbed within his knife-tooth maw. Worms coursed about where a tongue was supposed to be and they had long since conquered. Two of its left pupils locked onto Salvatore's visor.

"Say Mr. Voidhanger, how many levels of inbred is she? I heard what I thought were words but that's being generous; on a reexamination, it is better described as a slurry of pseudo-verbal vomit."

His lips curled and he turned away from Salvatore to swagger towards Kleo, head raised and his compound eyes watching her every move.

"Is this strange dialect the result of another generation's worth of genetic purity testing? Hey, human, how many of your uncles worth of seed did your mother swallow and did they install a faulty gene-mixer into her womb to try and make sense of it after the fact? I'd ask if they gave you that toy in your hands out of pity but I have a better one."

The fluids in his veins sloshed and squelched between the connective tubes leading between his body and his energy rifle, slack in his hand.

"Do you feel better about being a purer, frailer expression of humanity, certainly carried on by the hard work of your teammates, or is that the incest-inherited mind-sludgefication that prevents you from spouting anything more than catchphrases even old NATO stalwarts would balk at? Actually, don't answer that, I doubt I'd be able to decipher the gibbering excrement you squeeze through your lips that-"

A shadowy blur smacked against the back of his head and he stumbled away, turning his head to look at a freakishly long limb - at least nine feet in length, jointed all over and ridged with small carapace thorns. It had extended silent and patient as Husk spoke out of the body of the enormous arthropod. The rifle in it shead chunked and cocked, uncocked, and a telescoped round could be heard unjamming from its sputtering internal mechanisms.

The rest of his squad took a moment to glance but otherwise, continued on with their original activities.

Slowly the vrexul stood up and Husk's head turned, slapping away the blunt side of the serrated mantis-like limb. Somehow it retracted back into the enormous, biomechanical body as the largest member of the squad took to the forefront. The posthuman muttered something foul and incomprehensible but even his words seemed to vanish under the insectoid shadow. Its head was positioned in such a way it would be seen as "looking" at King to answer his question but behind its ocular domes, silhouettes moved and tracked the rest of the Envenomed.

"In scenario where you are cut off - us four become two - Husk and our close quarters expert, Rahadin-" The vrexul's clawed hands scraped over its shoulder as it stood rigid for a second. "Split from us, retrieve your squad and your data. Remaining two can handle the electronics. Automated defences a threat if we stray away from Sargasso. Exfil and guncraft signature masked and in guise of debris respectively."

The vrexul was not using its actual voice to speak. It was too clean, only partially distorted, artificial but fluctuating in such a way as to mimic a human, and the sound that emerged did not buzz out of its body but from speakers arranged around its upper shoulders and chest.

"Vice versa - I... we... can create a nearby exfiltration spot. All that is required is moderate-accuracy coordinates."

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

"Whatever in the armory is yours, provided you can carry it. Familiarize yourself and read the manual; League issue frequently demonstrates itself ill-fitting for your line of work. Sink or swim, as your kind like to say."

The Invictoid's eyes turned from the sole human of the team to the anguillid alien, still in its stupor over previous duties to an empire to many now in decline. To that, the skeletal spectre paused, arms crossed and striding past hologram and the splinters of living light from the spherical biocomputer. Its head swivelled before settling back on Rho-Hux.

"A funny thing about that. There had been no time to organize a command structure with the urgency of the prior mission. The voidhanger however, proves himself capable and devoid of the signs of lobotomization most pure-skins and their adjacents are plagued by. There is your authority - feel free to challenge it or more fittingly, earn his place as your own."

From the corner of Salvator's sight, the pupils of some frozen emotion (contempt, arrogance, disdain, fear) crossed with his sight. The Invictoid left and in his trail the machinery that had manifested retracted in its hovels and holes like the glands of some insect having finished their purpose. Conversation diminished and the clatter-buzz-hum of the command centre returned. Where the sphere-leader once hovered it had drifted off into the jungle of wiring and jutting appendages of the ceiling to melt into the mindlessness of whatever gestalt consciousness systems it reigned over above.

---

The walk to the armory had been uneventful in the realm of angular black metal and occasionally shifting isopod-like bioplating that was the Intransigent vessel. Yet there were signs of something fouler beneath its contemporary cutting-edge visage. The smell pungent like oil yet earthy like damp forest at first and the sound of not merely cocking and clicking firearm but equipment that chittered, trilled, and sucked. Not the sonic profile of civilization but something primal it had long since evolved from.

The quad-doors retracted.

Another human-like-yet-not; features skeletal but covered in the signs of corrosive rot and infesting cybernetic plague. Cybernetics colonized fester-dark biomass, emerging to form plating aligned with tarrhaidim-type bio-kevlar energy-ballistics padding. Humanity was present but buried beneath the invasion of fungoid flesh that had long since staked its claim and machine components dividing it from what was left of their original self.

Rectangular pulse projector in his hand, pulled off of an unfurling spider-leg every bit living and machine as they - lights pulsed as if awakening to the foul dream of a world of dishevelled combat organisms and shining before the eyes of the fellow envenomed as they entered. Flaccid worms flopped out, twitching in pathetic hunger before the coiling bony digits seized them and stabbed their barbed mouth tips into ports across transhuman's lower back.

Mechanisms of biomechanical hunger chortled and fluids sucked their way through. Just in time for them to turn and face their comrades for the first time.

More shapes hidden amidst the cylindrical trees of clenching and unfurling arachnoid limbs. The lights above were dim and a sickly purple, fluctuating into brighter neon yet the copse of artificial life that held the tools of the trade casted long shadows over them.

Colossal vrexul sitting upon the floor yet whose bulk alone was boulder-like, primarily limbs having split into numerous finer appendages as they maintained a weapon that might as well have been jagged metal and predatory beetle body rendered as a projectile spitting junk-cannon. Its head shield-like, a mask with empty dome-like eyes that stared at nothing yet everything, apathetic to its array of curving limbs emerging from sides and back. To each one was assigned magazine, grenade, portable drone, nutrient-mulch sac - occupied by all manner of a living arsenal's necessity.

Bladed-bodied, jagged shell, patterns like flames sculpted into a craggy armor of stony carapace - celaderakan warrior, their external skin-exoskeleton marked with cleft and crevice. Peering eyes could see the cybernetics within but hear not buzz and whirr but humming pulse. A touch of coldness as anyone neared him, the space itself feeling crowded even as he leaned alone against the wall. Scatter-rend shells beat out a steady rhythm loaded into pouch magazines, sucking in the shells when they touched the edge of its receiving port. No eyes with which to glare but his gaze was felt; predator to prey or observer to subjects, difficult to determine.

Surrounded by the x-winged drones, the way their bladed flight appendages cut through its body reflected the shape of its skull, a scielto hovered a foot above the ground. Gun-holder platforms hovered around with diagonally symmetrical anti-grav projectors attached to frames holding a variety of modified infantry rifles. One swung upwards, blurring as any envenomed looked upon the barrel that now pointed between their eyes for a scant second. Its features were obscured yet not by purely ethereal means. Its gnarled almost bark-like body was obscure by both a transparent membrane and a series of overlapping cloaks night-blue in colour yet whose translucency fluctuated at a whim.

The post-human's mouth opened and closed as if testing its own jawbones - many, many jawbones. A lower jaw that was comprised of smaller arm-branches that split it apart and reformed it. Hints of cracks travelled across its head and something gazed at them from behind the mask of decomposed humanity it wore. It was but a brief flash of something worm-like, almost an illusion before those some cracks hermetically sealed; the very metal-bone aggregate of its self sealing them.

It stood before the door the team had entered. Guarding its own or the welcoming committee; the others remained at work, watchful not just of their allies but the one who greeted them. Its eyes had not one but multiple tadpole pupils and it watched each member of the squad as if for inspection.

"I question your methods more than your effectiveness. SBC's last broadcast had a funny bit about the innocent apartheid troopers shot 'executioner' style... with wounds matching those of League issue submachine gun rounds."

It did not need to look at Kleo to detect her; multiple sensor systems within its cybernetic body had felt them enter before they had entered the door, scanned biomechanics and ethereal signature. A blank slate; a being of purely flesh and blood.

"Strutting around in a high class antique; they don't make unaugmented brigades nowadays - not good for much beyond putting down civilian militias. Maybe that's why your friends at the village didn't follow you further, ultimately for the best."

Its voice was human. Throaty, tinged with phlegm from a dry drone hovering underneath every inflection. Its stature was imposing at five foot ten yet it did not come off as domineering - its body sleek and power condensed into a shape one could almost say slender if only not contrasted by the rugged brutality of the celaderaka or the imperious mass of Echo. Before an ordinary human, it was moreso a looming spectre.

"So, you're the ones doing the actual spleunking and we're on voice-in-your-ear duty. Personnel dossiers are off limits, but I'm guessing the 'rocht isn't the pathfinder here. You got some vacuum-walkers I see... that construct recovered from a black box somewhere? Not the first anomaly that swung by here."

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

Upon Salvator's question the skeletal entity's eyes seemed to rearrange; the sockets themselves splintering and shifting like shield-backed insects. Its "eyes" splintered, rearranging themselves into clusters of lightly luminscent tips pointing beams of light at various wound-like sores across the holomap. The anomalies froze as linear branches of purple light emerged and blossomed into rapid-access data arrays, capable of being instantaneously downloaded to appropriate systems.

"Two distinct forms. The first is interspace burrowing between the chasm and the material plane by various void-organisms and the second is internal malfunctions, electro-ethereal."

The lengthy tendrils and withered towers were lit up with irregular highlighting in a bright orange in semi-rectangular frames. Areas of space were highlighted in a bless blinding, slightly yellow tint. Shapes of creatures lengthy and trailing fin-like protrusions like hair moved in repeating animations, blipping in and out of the purple sores.

"We believe there to be central data storage centers on these vessels. We will provice extraction devices with anti-viral and anti-ECM capabilities. If it proves excessive, you willl mark coordinates for extraction and later access. In the worst case scenario, you may be asked to destroy the vessels."

The sphere of sapient rot turned its pointing needle-eye towards the gestalt being as its outer core of swarming flies and skittering fragments blurred with every word.

"Estimated 14 vessels, retrofitted corvettes, pre-Reckoning with variety of void-shielding and counterscanning technology. Potentially Conglomerate; outer fleets working as the eye of Nexial Core leader-units."

The air filled with the sound of something like rain but there was metallic micro-clatter where there should be soothing water. The rigid tubular eyes of the invictoid spread as their entire cranial portion dedicate to sight morphed into an array of differing lenths and pointed protrusions.

"Presumed strength over a battallion size on vessels but roughly four platoons-worth have been recorded over the last week entering. Intercepted coms suggest 50% of squads have been lost. Automated defences are confirmed to be active within along with unknown entities; simply deemed 'anomalous' on remotely accessed reports."

Grainy video-capture images manifested before the squadron. Humanoid shapes trapped in a digital blur as definition tightened and specificity of details emerged.

Combatants

"Regional militia in origin, adapted for ground and exospace combat. Soldiers turned scavengers and convoy hunters - pirates to some, hired guns to others. Experience and equipment likely varies but they are presumably lead by elite veteran infantry amongst petty criminals and irregulars."

Another set of screens manifested. Two dimensional morphed into three. Grotesque shapes, malformed as children's clay, faded into being.

Ethereal Organisms

"The Sargasso is infested. Preliminary scans detect primarily pseudo-stationary, simpler ethereorganisms primarily, most of which are not overtly hostile. Predatory creatures are suspected based on report, presumably agitated due to presence of armed forces. Pirate infantry have not penetrated the station's depths and we suspect territorial vehicular-sized organisms may be preventing some of them."

The Invictoid paused before turning his head to scan every member of the crew as their eyes reassembled, metal and augmented bone rearranging as they returned to their skinless, iron self. As if it had been but an optical illusion.

"At your discretion. Dead zone area. Things go missing in the station. None admit. None deny. Nothing is ever actually there." Its head swivelled to face Kleo. "Your cranial matter is mostly intact. Perhaps employing it to consider the outcomes would be useful for plotting ideal courses of action. Hostages can be useful alive moreso than dead... but perhaps consider that your expertise in ethereal matters will be vital for dealing with supernatural threats. It may be time to take point."

The skull-head swiveled over to Ilshar now.

"Observation over a month-long period by hyper sensory organism schools attached to chasm-skimmer fleets suggests a period of relative stability. Realspace has been distorted around its field of ether-radiation but compared to fluctuations of prior years, this is unusually immobile. There is the potential that gestalt ether-massses akin to coral colonies have managed to engage some sort of gravitational stabilization protocol."

It paused as it turned over to the other voidhanger in the room.

"We will be investigating the Sargasso as determined by internal analylsis and vote. As such, we will require specific preparations. Vacuum operations and ethereal irradiation countermeasures kit are mandatory particularly for non-void hardened squad members, of which we are receiving another addition. To add to that, the second team is meant to assist you with such.

A tendril of light, no a segmented limb that was sanding itself down into shape and form in real time, emerged from the ixaxxar's body and it nearly swung. It hooked end pointed at the towers that a 3D model of a manta-leaf beetle shaped dropship neared. The cutting edge slid down, drawing lines and illuminating various portions of the tower-structures and surrounding areas.

"We have plotted a pathway with HUD trackers and directional markers."

The Invictoid pointed with a spindly index finger to a line that ran perpindicular to the blade-towers their associated squad was set to deal with. It was not a perfect line, curving and twisting, dipping and rising. It did however lead to something around the centre of the dustball mess of a station. The glowing spherical tip at the end of the navigation line splintered off into an array of differing locations, radiating off it pulsing red shape.

"The second team has the task of clarifying information. The towers are capable of receiving and transmitting; how they stayed intact is anyone's guess. They will be 'filling' out details and modifying your presumed travel path as they secure the towers and make use of its scanning systems. A number of neurolink drones, ethereally reinforced tranmission channels, and electronic warfare measures will be used on their en."

The rot-orb retracted its orb but all could feel its various eyes sweeping over them as if it was merely viewing toys and the accessories they were to carry.

"Platform 2884 will not be bringing Warform onto Sargasso for this reason, Yrrkradian Agent Rho-Hux. Exercise additional caution within outer regions of vessel. Denser materials comprise internal surfaces but be wary of realspace breaches containing Chasm-gaps. Potential atmospheric and realspace-ether pressure differentials may prove explosive if containment is sufficiently damaged. Certain areas are noted to be hard vacuum and deprived of life support; a minor issue with the exospace modifications you will all be receiving for your equipment."

The 3D model enlargened as the digital perspective zoomed in on their travel path. Areas were highlighted in a flashing pinkish-red like uncooked market meat. Along their path there were roughly four different areas heavily scourged by debris impact or bioethereal growth. Yet green lines were traced over them - suggesting they could potentially travel not through but across the station's surface as well due to these damaged regions.

"If there are additional questions, recommended to be voiced. Second team awaits in armory. Familiarize yourself moderately."

The Envenomed: Military Science Fiction Deniable Operations

"We will be investigating the Sargasso as determined by internal analylsis and vote. As such, we will require specific preparations. Vacuum operations and ethereal irradiation countermeasures kit are mandatory particularly for non-void hardened squad members, of which we are receiving another addition."

The chorus of echoes emerging from the skeletal machine's voice drew the attention of the glowing eye of rot, the solid light within the ixaxxar shifting from a pinkish red to an almost egg yolk orange and yellow. As if funneled through a beaker the living light, akin to some sort of sludgy lava, its brightened core tapered itself forward into a pointed needle shape directly at the head of the Evenomed squad's leader. The robotic motions of the machine-human ceased as a digitized whirring drilled itself out of its head from the absorption of raw and tumultuous data.

Information would manifest a short half-minute later. The data-spool table lit up, the dimmed holographics blurring into a static cloud with the transmutation of digitized information into a three-dimensional perceptible shape. The dimness of the room increased, blacknesss contrasted by the growing shape transforming from amorphous digital light into something more... definite, albeit in a looser sense.

Space stations had been a common feature of most large organizations and arguably reflected in the natural world just as easily. Starfaring artificial debris, biological debris, ethereal or even abyssic waste ejected into realspace; even without sapient travel through the stars one would always find eventually enormous clumps of amalgamated matter sometimes not entirely bound to material reality. The designs of the various great powers of course had a far more aesthetically appealing design; the sharp and bladed appearance of Intransigence troop bases with their innumerable extendable multi-jointed arms, the smooth angling and gentle curvature of League economic hubs bustling with a constant outflow of vessels, one probably did not need to be reminded of black cities either.

What manifested before them was likely something Yrrkradian in origin. Rectangular like shapes emerging from a maddening body of overlapping geometric shapes; a gigantic series of motherboards layered into one another, connected via either large cubical shapes or jutting and occasionally angled passages that extended into slanted, blade-like towers. It was a harsh and some might say brutalist way of design yet it had a certain prideful, domineering arrogance to it. Industrial by nature but the way those metallic spires rose made them appear lord-like and prideful.

That is how most would have described this traditional, older form of Dominion design if it had not been so aggressively overrun. The densely packed consistency that defined it had long been tarnished by a nightmarish away of wreckage found both within realspace and the ethereal murk beyond. What had not been warped and transformed by the stresses of outer and void-space travel had found itself buried in a maddening slop of assorted elements. Withered husks of massive ships lay half crushed and melded into its bulk, frozen in place as if they were great sea creatures breaking through the water's surface. A mossy-layer of accumulated, discoloured debris and hardened bio-ethereal gunk crept over crashed ship and corroded exterior alike, ready to blow away and scatter if some large debris slammed into the bulk and sent them scattering in a foul flourish.

That was fairly minor compared to the two most unusual aspects of it. It was not buried merely under vessels and miscellanea. Gigantic patches of spore-like mass not of plant-like consistency but mushing bulk of rotted, moldering flesh had spread from ethereal infection across its body. Tendril-like "branches" trailed out of them, frozen in the holographic image but in the mind's eye begging to sway in dance in the stillness of space. Competing for roomm were enormous, mis-matched sections of bulk not cannibalized from other stations but forcefully jammed into its body. One could see the enormous cratering wounds or massive cuts in the body where their bulk had crushed their way through, massive sections breaking off and jamming like darts into the infested mass.

The Sargasso, much like the old Earth saltwater plant it was named for, was the spitting definition of an utter mess.

The Invictoid's head swivelled off to face the team before it strode over to the holograph. Without need for motion or physical interaction, the holographic display spun and an array of additional data spread itself out. Data tags and figures silhouetted in contrasting primary colours against the cold blue of space either dotted the massive derelict or hung around its perimeters. Notable among them were afer-image ping-marks - presumed pirate vessels, suspiciously orbiting UFO's, and shoals of organisms, shimmering and indistinct as their twisting travel paths were marked.

Large, purple blobs on the holograph indicating some sort of large ethereal disturbances flickered and faded as timescales were reversed and forwarded. Some blinked in and out of existence, others grew more defininte and thicker in consistency. Whatever they were, the creatures appeared to avoid getting too close to them.

"There will be a second squad of the Envenomed that like yours, will have attached long range fire support and infil-exfil craft. The team is being briefed as we speak and will be operating in the same area; they will be moving to investigate a Yrrkradian control centre embedded deep within the structure, presumably connected to one of the spires. As such, they may be able to provide a degree of additional support with whatever systems they can seize control of. I would recommend that you familiarize yourself with them before the mission."

The diagram shrunk a bit as the pseudo-automaton's form became visible again, no longer obscured by the shaped light.

"I presume more than a few of you have questions."

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

<Snipped quote by LustForDecay>

Just double checked this link here, it works.

@TaintedMushroom

Thanks!

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

Try again?

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

Possibly late but, I am interested in the rp if you are still accepting people and are willing to have me.

@Theyra

@LustForDecay

I can't seem to join the server could you DM the link please and thank you.

@Eviledd1984

We'd love to have you both. I have replaced the discord link in the OP. Try again now. We currently are on some downtime due to preparing for the next mission and myself being busy with my day job.

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

@Eviledd1984 I can wait. I appreciate the enthusiasm.

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

@Eviledd1984 more than workable. I am currently at work (lots of extra shifts this week) but feel free to break them down for us in a way that could work for the lore document. You can hop on the discord too.

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

@Eviledd1984 I'm not 100% sure, never really felt shapeshifters fit in with the general aesthetic but I'd like to hear the rest of the idea.