Abyssal Ascent (Part I)

Ramona Reyes lived by three very simple rules. They were her guiding light to surviving the life of a pirate in the void of space. Three magic rules that if broken would lead to almost certain chaos, injury, loss, even death.

“We’re approaching NanoSec’s Hyperion research station. Ramona is all your hardware up to snuff?” a voice chimes directly into her mind from the ship’s central communications unit.

Her eyes light up neon red as internal audio processors return her partner’s call, “Working on it. Blade’s sharp, my augments are at 100%, just waiting on this damn software patch to download.” The cyborg woman’s clawed finger tips rest by a jack that connects her cranium to her personal computer.

“ETA on that download?”

“Done,” Ramona unplugged the jack from her computer and it tethered into her head. “Engage our cloaking device once we’re in visual range. Then we’ll jam their comms to prevent reinforcements. We’ll strike silent and swift.”

“Ramona, with all due respect, you don’t do ‘silent and swift’,” the gruff voice chimes back.

The monstrous cyborg woman smiled and rest a clawed steel hand at the sword on her hip, the door to her private quarters opening at-will thanks to her internal computer’s connection to the ship’s central CPU. “Something’s bound to work in our favor one of these days, cabrón.”

Rule one for surviving a life of space piracy: attachment is a weakness. You can like your teammates, you might even trust them in the thick of madness, but it is the short-lived fool who mistakes those bonds for camaraderie.

The ship’s crew were little different from co-workers working in an office or a firm for one of the megacorps. They weren’t your friends. The connections you made were ephemeral and ultimately replaceable. Forget this rule and at best your heart gets broken. At worst you and everything you know and love goes up in flames. No one was exempt, not even a childhood best friend, when the bets are called and the cards are down, few can resist the allure of money.

And it doesn’t matter what or who they have to sacrifice for that wealth.

“You waiting at the airlock?” Ramona queried as she left her cabin.

The reply was not immediate but she’d worked with this fool long enough to know that sometimes he took his sweet time responding. “Not yet. Just finished activating the cloaking device, engaging the jammer… there we go, be right there. I’ll suit up quickly.”

“Good. That’s a skill you squishy organics need out here,” Ramona smirked and leaned against the wall by the airlock. Out of habit she reaches for a pack of Lucky Star cigarettes, she pulls the box out and stares at it blankly.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed when the airlock opened and her taller, more muscled colleague entered the chamber. “Smoking’s a no go, Ramona. We’re trying to do this op with stealth and precision.”

“Sure, sure. Just tempted was all,” she slips the box back in her coat. Nicotine addiction hadn’t really been something she felt anymore since attaining 100% prosthesis. It wasn’t great for her circuits but it was something her systems were mostly capable of neutralizing. She wasn’t sure why the death sticks still had a hold on her, “Not like you’re any better with booze, Ingvar.”

“Maybe so but not on the damn job,” the hoarse voiced older man ran a steel hand through his fair hair haired mane, pulling it into a tight ponytail before starting to don his voice suit. “You sure you don’t want to borrow a firearm?”

“Don’t need ‘em,” Ramona insisted, smirking defiantly with her clawed finger tips deftly tapping the hilt of her enhanced melee weapon. “In fact I do better without ‘em.”

“Figured. Just thought I’d ask,” he slips the void suit’s helm over his head and enables the neural interface, “I can’t imagine being entirely reliant on melee or ranged attacks.”

“And I can’t imagine you lasting long in this line of work with that Team Mom attitude,” Ramona chided as Ingvar added a protective webbing vest. The older man scowls.

“This attitude got me through the War the same as you.” Ingvar sighs and loads upon with a pair of silenced .22 handguns, along with a pair of bandoliers. “Just because you’re no longer meat and bone, it doesn’t give you the right to look down on us organics.”

“Fine. But survival doesn’t give you the right to lecture,” her lips curl into a vicious smile. “Feel free to keep at it if you’re not attached to your tongue.”

Rule two for surviving a life of space piracy: it is best to be both feared and respected. But the wise pirate always chooses fear over respect. Fear is what allows a Captain to command with impunity. Fear is what forces frigates and stations to surrender without a single blade drawn or shot fired. Fear was everything.

“Seems the War made us very different people,” Ingvar sighs wistfully as he slips a stun baton into a holst at his side. “Hard to believe, really… you used to be such an idealist.”

“Mierda. Spare me the drama,” Ramona approaches the airlock, a visor snaps into place over her face to limit the exposure of internal parts to the void of space. “Let’s get this bread already.”

“You used to be a lot more patient too,” Ingvar groans and after checking over both his and Ramona’s equipment, the latter from afar, he approaches a console in the wall to cycle the atmosphere from internal to external. “Set comms to channel 91.X.”

“Done,” the two stood watching as the atmosphere was drained out of the room and back into the ship’s systems. It takes several minutes for all the oxygen, nitrogen, and CO2 as well as their creature comfort pollutants to be drained from the chamber. At this time the grav-locks disengaged and allowed both Ramona and Ingvar to float freely. The external air lock opened. “...finally, takes forever to cycle through.”

“It’s… five minutes, Ramona,” the older man sighs, catching up to the eager hound of war he once called a friend. The two approach the research station, a satellite in the orbit of Hyperion; one of Saturn’s many moons. For a moment the two are quiet as they get their bearings.

The NanoSec research station seems to have gone dark; not a single light illuminates any of the reinforced double pane windows. Had they been given coordinates to an abandoned station? Ingvar disables the comms jammer warily and switches to other channels to see if he can hear anyone. But he’s met with the deafening mix of silence and white noise.

“Esto es raro…” Ramona approaches one of the windows, warily, peeking inside to see if she can get a glimpse of anything. But the station is utterly dark, it’s likely that whatever happened here, a power failure is part of the equation. “...this is our golden ticket?”

“My contact in NanoSec told me this was where they were researching some valuable xenobiology or another,” Ingvar approaches the station to try and see if he can’t get a glimpse with his own eyes. But he’s not willing to risk turning on his head lamp and blowing their cover. “C’mon, our best bet for a subtle entrance is the Shuttle Bay.”

“One moment…” Ramona’s eyes flashed from scarlet to gold as she engaged her heat vision, though she found no visible heat signatures inside the room she peeked into. As she switches over to night vision her eyes flash from gold to green. “...there’s some kind of white tangle of something silky. Like cobwebs but a lot of them.”

“Let’s keep our heads on a swivel then,” Ingvar advises before he carefully starts navigating towards where Ramona assumes to be the Shuttle Bay. “Follow me, I’ve studied the station’s layout before we deployed.”

“You really are a boy scout, cabrón.” Ramona sighs and trails along behind Ingvar, “Fine. Not the first time I’ve copied your homework.”

Ingvar chuckled, “C’mon. Let’s be serious.”

After tedious minutes that felt like hours of maneuvering through zero G carefully so as not to be lost to the void of space, they eventually reached Shuttle Bay.

“Finally,” Ramona complained. “Should’ve put our ship closer to the damn Shuttle Bay.”

“Hold it, Ramona, there’s a Shuttle docked…”

“Yeah? So?” the cyborg scoffs, “Isn’t the Shuttle Bay where a Shuttle should be?”

Ingvar shook his head, “According to NanoSec's stationside procedures there should only be a Shuttle present when unloading workers for a new shift, loading workers for the end of a shift, or…”

An unsteady silence hung between them. Ramona tilts her head.

“Or what? Don’t keep a girl waiting.”

“...or if an emergency evacuation is in order,” Ingvar cautioned. “This certainly complicates things. Ramona, let's try and find a panel to jack into the shuttle.

“Hah, you think something happened to these corporate rats?” she approaches with a grin barely visible past her tinted visor. “That’d be hilarious. And a lot more exciting.”

“You used to be a lot more compassionate too…” Ingvar almost sounds sullen as he watches his synthetic former friend pull a jack out from her head, plugging into a maintenance console on the Shuttle. “...here these are the encryption keys you’ll need.”

Several numbers appear on the cyborg’s visor, her eyes dim as she focuses on cracking through the local firewall. “Let me guess, got ‘em from your source?”

“NanoSec insider, yeah.”

“And you trust your source not to screw us over?”

“Like I used to trust you, Ramona. Not everyone is so cynical, some folks still honor their word.”

The cyborg chuckles, “Not for long if they want to last.”

Rule three for surviving the hectic life of a space pirate: honor, pity, compassion, mercy, these are the virtues of the dead and forgotten. If ever these polite fictions were apart of life they died with the habitability of the Earth’s ecosystem. All that’s left are stars, planets, asteroids, and moons all ripe for conquest, all to be stripped down to further a consumerist machine that now eclipsed the entirety of the Solar System.

“I’ve cut through the firewall,” Ramona rests a clawed hand on her weapon, fingers twitching, eager to draw her blade. “Working on cycling the airlock for entry.”

“Glad to see you cautious,” Ingvar planted a hand on the stock of one of his handguns warily. “After all, we don’t know what we’ll run into here…”

“Saw some webs with the night vision,” Ramona smirks and unplugs the jack, letting it tether back into her head. “Would be wild if we’re fighting giant spiders or something.”

“Ramona, that's just stupid,” Ingvar sighs, “The comic books and manga have really rotted your brain something fierce since the War.

The airlock hisses open. Both pirates float into the Shuttle and once within, Ramona engages her night vision to sleuth out another maintenance port to jack into. “Just said it’d be wild, maybe even fun. We’ve all got our escapism, Señor Boozehound.”

The airlock hisses shut behind them and gravity pulls them down to the shuttle’s floor as the room is forcibly filled with the necessary atmospheric gasses to sustain life. As they’re waiting to enter the possibly derelict station both Ingvar and Ramona tense up at the sound of knocking coming from the Shuttleside airlock.

“Guess this place isn’t derelict at all,” Ingvar draws his weapon and points it directly at the airlock. Ramona draws her sword from its sheath inspired by the katana styles of the eld samurai of Earth. But this blade was a technologically sophisticated weapon: magnetic grips in the hilt, a vibromotor to allow the blade to cut through the thickest combat armor, and advanced circuitry that can heat the blade up as low as 150 to an excess of 1,000 degrees Celsius.

That latest feature is the sword’s newest upgrade; and the one Ramona was most eager to test out. Even with the ventilation of the void suit, Ingvar could feel the oppressive heat his cyborg partner’s weapon exuded.

As the airlock opens Ramona’s eyes light up green with night vision and she charges in only to find that once she entered the Shuttle Bay’s boarding zone it was completely and utterly empty save for countless cobwebs strewn over everything and anything. Ramona wolf whistles and lets the blade cool down, “...webby. You sure you don’t want to rethink the spider theory?”

“Think it’s a bit generous to call it a theory,” Ingvar turns on the headlamp on his void suit to get a better look at the utterly webbed Shuttle Bay. “...but with all this webbing I think we can at least elevate that idea to a hypothesis.”

Ramona squints, “What’s the difference?”

“Simply put; a hypothesis is an educated guess based on given evidence,” Ingvar glances around, pointing his gun wherever he turns his headlamp. “And a theory is-”

“Shh,” the cyborg holds a clawed finger up to Ingvar’s visor. In the silence, he could suddenly hear something subtle, like the skittering of spindly limbs. “You hear that?”

Ingvar and Ramona navigate through the jungle of webs with their eyes peeled. Both pirates stand back to back, attempting to discern where that skittering noise was coming from. It seemed to be all around them: in the walls, under the floor tiles, in the ceiling. “...hmph, okay maybe we do have a spider theory on our hands.”

“Great discovery you nerd, now what do we do about it?” Ramona hisses, bringing her blade up to a blood red glow with the selfsame oppressive heat. “Hows about we start by burning away the webbing?”

“Not yet,” Ingvar looks over towards his gung-ho partner, “We don’t know if there’s anyone aboard. We can’t afford to compromise atmospherics with excessive smoke.”

“We’re pirates, Ingvar,” Ramona complained, dimming the blood red glow of the blade. “Survivors aren’t our goddamn problem; money is.”

“We might find a NanoSec official among those left,” the older man smirked back at his cohort. “Could take a hostage and get a nice payout.”

“That compassion’s going to get you killed, cabrón.”

“Your lack of compassion can just as easily get yourself and everyone around you killed.”

Ramona emits a hiss and a chuckle, “Heh, you really are a thrice-damned Boy Scout.”

Her night vision suddenly picks up on motion. It’s within a large mass of silk webbing that seems thickly layered in a vague humanoid shape.

“Your lucky day, Ingvar,” she approaches the silken cocoon, glowing green eyes meeting up with her partner’s visor. “We might've found a survivor. Maybe they’ll be an official.”

“Ramona don’t get so close! We don't know what-!”

The silk tears open to reveal the twitching mutant form of something that was neither human, nor arachnid, but terrible fusion of both. This wretched arachnoid abomination leaps out and sinks its fangs into Ramona Reyes's neck and throat.

"Mona!" Ingvar squeezes the trigger and fires three bullets into the arachnoid humanoid chimera, knocking the creature off Ramona. "Damn it, what the hell is that thing?! You okay Mona?!"

The mutant creature hisses and skitters to its elongated limbs, but it screeches as Ramona snaps around and gashes her vibro-blade across the creatures's eight-eyed face. It screeches in profane suffering.

"Mona!" Ingvar flushed for a moment before frowning, "...they got your vox transceiver?"

Ramona nods, though her eyes never veer from that not-quite-human creature, bleeding a soupy, emerald green fluid from its wound onto the floor. The now muted cyborg gets to her feet, fingering the wound in her synth-flesh revealing insides of silicon, steel, copper, and glass.

"Stay frosty, I don't think it's down."

Ingvar points his weapon past Ramona at the arachnoid creature and squeezes the trigger, it zig-zags away, leaving an emerald green trail of it's twisted humours. It tears open a vent and slithers into the shadows.

"Damn it! Got away..." Ingvar approaches the vent, the sound of multiple masses skittering in the vents become more apparent to the both of them. "...hmph, seems like this is a bit more complicated than just giant spiders."

Ramona's eyes light up as she beams a thought into the comms channel, "Can't complain. It's a lot more interesting too."

(To be continued.)