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| Machinations | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 23 2012, 11:06 AM (20 Views) | |
| Gordreg | Sep 23 2012, 11:06 AM Post #1 |
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The Hangar at Looper Island’s western end was well concealed beneath the ancient weatherworn rocks, rugged and mottled with looper-guano, which provided slight protection from the elements and the fury of a north-ocean storm. It had been built with size in mind sometime long before Octavia had found her way into the company of the Galcianite band she now found herself working for, the reasons for which had never been entirely revealed to her, and which she doubted many in the company she kept knew the answer to themselves. Nonetheless, the excessive size of the berthing facilities here had proved crucial to her work in welding two captured tankers into one massive vessel, the Charbydis, a lumbering ship with quite woeful rate of turn but with a surprisingly acceptable top rate of speed. Since the end of the mission to Yafutoma and the return to the looper island base, the Charbydis had not once left the hangar. Instead, her small team of technicians and engineers had been keeping themselves resolutely occupied with maintenance and upgrade and refits to the ungainly ship, removing a few of Octavia’s purpose built ‘capture-device’ weapons that had proven to be failures under actual battlefield conditions, whilst improving and repairing those that were still effectively in use. The location of two of the removed weapons now bristled with cabling, thick wires humming with electrical charge that crept from out of the former turret-bases and spilled out all over the ‘prisoner’. The creeping cables had wound all over the dormant structure of the captive machine, some attached to intricate monitor devices stuck fast against the mechanical flanks of the mechanical being, others leading into cages where secondary controls could directly manipulate all manner of cutters and welders and shock-devices bound into the multi-tools that hung directly from each cage’s belly. A few even crept into the interior of the semi-deified machine itself, worming their way inside through slight cracks or battle-scars that had been left in the machine’s superstructure since it had gone dormant again, and attaching themselves inside. These had been the hardest, and not a day had seemed to come when Octavia hadn’t found one of these intruder-cables cauterised or cracked or other how disabled by the mysterious mechanisms apparently still active deep inside the otherwise dormant body of the shimmering, still machine. From here, she thought as she looked across from the control tower of the Charbydis, the machine resembled nothing more then a wanderbird trapped amidst a coil of noodles. Then she blanched slightly, scolding herself for such an irreverent thought. The machine was not only old, it was far more ancient then the whole of the culture that had birthed and raised her, a timeless creation from the last days of the first civilisations, before the rains of destruction had put them to end and wiped away their secrets beneath a moonstone tide. If there was any one thing or person worthy of respect upon this Moons-forsaken island at the guano-end of nowhere, Octavia considered, it was this machine. The Blue Storm, The Phoenix of Winds, The Lightning-Bird. The Gigas Bluheim. . Octavia’s finger strummed along the brasswork façade of the control console, a irythmic tapping counting out the seconds as the readings on the dials turned toward optimum. Respect for the machine she might have had, but respect had been an essential sacrifice to scientific process. Clinically, she turned her gaze to check upon the chronometer, and flicked another of the dashboard-switches at the appropriate time. “Powering up D-16.” She announced to the world in general through her damaged larynx, and heard her own voice as it bounced through the electronic broadcaster to the hanger at large, carrying tinny static in the reverb. Her eye flicked again to the panel of meters and gauges, watching as one particular gauge began to climb, the twitching hand of the mechanical dial turning past the lower settings to begin a steady climb. “Powering up D-14.” Came the announcement as another small light winked on upon the control board. “Powering up D-12.” Octavia continued, the mechanisms of her artificial small finger giving a flick to each control-panel switch in turn. “Powering up D-10. All main-power systems offline or switched to auxiliary. Powering up D-6. Current is concurrent between all generators, we have green lights across the board. Powering up D-4, prepared for surge… D-2 is charged. We have commencement, we have commencement…” And she pressed down the final switch. Her tongue flicked briefly as her fingers forced the button down, tasting a slight tin-edge to the air as generators throughout the base gave a momentary whirr of synchronicity. The lighting dimmed as the electrical charges from every Black-Fleet engine or generator hooked up to the grid crackled through the birds-nest cabling, the dials on the monitor flickering wildly as they caught wind of the power-surge through their neighbours. Inside the abandoned work-cages warning lights flashed as they registered the climb in electrial level to above a lethal degree of voltage, the energy of the Looper island base arcing through the system of wires and capacitators, winding the way past the monitor-devices already shaking as they they tried their best to register the surge. Buzzing along the reinforced copper wires, the electrical tide followed the path of the current to the only possible conclusion, snaking inside the hull of the dormant archeotech machine and jumping from the year-forged copper wiring into systems, circuits and moon-lode devices built a millennia ago by the greatest old-world minds. There was a stilted mechanical screech, an electrical cough trying to strangle itself. There was flare of lighting, a purple spark jumping across the hull. Across the starboard wing a heat-haze rippled into existance, a wash of blue flame licking out at random as the energy coursing though the machine’s body tried to discherge itself. The light at the front of what might tentatively have been called the Gigas head flickered briefly on then shut itself firmly off again, only to igite brightly a moment later as the machine unleashed another unearthly mechanical scream. Staring from the window of the control tower, Octavia felt a small lump in her throat at the sight of the scene she had herself been prime architect behind. Her months of groundwork and study leading to this moment had really not given her reason to expect anything other then this outcome, but still… it hurt to have her theories proved so defiantly right, and her dreams crushed beneath the unyeilding weight of reality. Bluheim was fighting. Fighting against the engineers who had painstakingly drilled micro-breaches throughout the neigh-impossible alloy of the Gigas hull, fighting against the wires surging it full of electrical and moonstone energies, fighting against the monitor devices even now merrily exploding as surges and fragmented discharges burned them slowly to cinders. Fighting with all the powers the ancients had given it against this attempt to induce an artificial activation, fighting to keep itself in the state of blissful uncommanded dormancy. Worse, it was fighting with the powers they were feeding it, too. So much of the energy she had hoped the Gigas would have been using to activate was instead rolling directly into the Weapon systems to be rid of it once more. Even now rippling tides of blue flame were burning out all the power-cables along the left wing, some archeotech laser system eratically spitting out in uncontrolled direction to scour great gashes into the cavern walls. Only one of the montor devices still left was actually reading an increase in the energy charge now, a system deep within the main Gigas hull that seemed to be gathering energy almost as fast as the other systems tried to dump it… Octavia gasped with a sudden realisation of impending doom, and jumped into action. “Kill the test!” she bellowed, palm striking the large red button on her control console. “Kill all power! Break all connections! If we’re lucky, we…” She didn’t manage to finish. The Gigas Bluheim finished for her as the pale blue nimbus that had gathered about its body unseen amidst the devestation suddenly ignited with a brilliant orange flare and a seering bright aftermath. Octavia felt the whole ship shake as wind-pressure guages that had been quiet on the beatherd and covered Charbydis lept right across to the far end of their scale, followed by a sickening lurch as the pressure broke the Charbydis from her mooring. The fall was not far – she had been moored barely five meters above the cavern’s floor in any event, just far enough to fit all manner of essential machinery in below to tend to the ship at anchor – but it was certainly forceful. There was a sickening crunch as the dead-center of the ship struck rock and twisted, the two original superstructures seemingly trying to bend free of one another as the wind-force pushed at them in different directions. The connecting bridge atop it slumped, and took Octavia with it, spilling her backward across her own bridge to bang her head heavily on the sternmost wall. And then there was only silence and the sparks of cut wiring, the remaining connections severed, the form of Bluheim going limp in captivity as it re-entered the dormancy it had fought so hard to sustain. Octavia’s vision swam, dimly hearing the alert-klaxon ringing throughout the Looper Island base, tinny in the distance. And then she blacked out. |
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8:55 AM Jul 11