Limited Options

Present:

• Anastasia "Stasi" Tepes. Zhodani Soldier from Querion – Shane
• Pi Crust. Solomani Pilot from 728-907 – Darryl
• "Riley" Patrick O'Reilly. Sword-Worlder Pilot from Winston - Richard
• Anton Tositova. Solomani Gunner from Entrope - Ian
• Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
• Hoff Ende. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Winston - Kevin
• Belle Ende. Sword-Worlder Medic from Winston - Steven
• Itzy Ende. Sword-Worlder Soldier from Winston - Chris
• MARMALADING Gnostic Hands. Solomani Scientist from Entrope – Jamie
• NPC: Scurry. Drone Gunner from Winston

by Jeff

Surrounded

We had built ourselves an ultrasound receiver unit and a separate ultrasound speaker unit using Emerse's Tamagotchi as a translation interface - a clever bit of engineering that Spanner had been quite proud of. Our attempt to instruct the slishers to help us had failed spectacularly, and now they knew we were somewhere in the city.

The ultrasound receiver crackled to life with an eerie warbling sound. Simultaneously, Itzy's head cocked to one side, his face going pale.

"Noises," he reported, his voice strained. "Like... voices, but not voices."

The Tamagotchi's small screen flickered, processing the ultrasound frequencies into text: "Two legs, we know you are here. Show yourselves."

A chill ran through the group. They were calling us out. They knew.

"Maybe we should show ourselves?" Spanner suggested, looking around at the others. "I mean, they're asking. Perhaps we could negotiate?"

"Are you insane?" Riley took a long pull from his whisky flask. "They want to implant us with spider eggs, not have a chat over tea."

Anton slips out of the H-building

"We don't know that for certain—"

"I'm not volunteering to find out," Anton interrupted, already moving toward the door. "I'm going to see what they're doing."

The debate continued behind him as he slipped out into the rose-tinted streets of Spire City.

The Net Closes

Spanner remained at the door, watching the empty street outside. Then movement - a squad of five slishers, their tentacles writhing, rushing down the street at surprising speed. But they weren't coming toward the building. They were heading away from the city centre, toward the plains beyond.

"Anton," Spanner whispered into her comm. "Five slishers just went past, heading for the city edge."

Anton acknowledged and changed course, following the squad at a safe distance. His enhanced stealth skills kept him in the shadows as he tracked them through the metal corridors.

The slishers reached the city perimeter and spread out, taking up positions that blocked the exit to the plains. They weren't searching - they were standing guard.

Anton worked his way around the city edge, checking different exit points. Every single one had the same setup: five slishers, positioned as a barrier, preventing anyone from leaving.

"We're sealed in," he reported quietly into his comm. "They've got every exit covered."

He began the loop back toward the hideout, passing near the H-building. Interesting - no slishers there at all. The building stood empty, abandoned after our previous intrusion. But the main tower still crawled with activity, slishers moving with purpose around the structure where the giant spider had stood guard.

The slisher guards were closing the net

Then Anton noticed something that made his blood run cold. The slishers at the city perimeter weren't just standing guard. They were moving. Slowly, methodically, they were working their way back toward the centre, searching every building, every alcove, every possible hiding place as they went.

He did quick mental calculations. At their current pace...

"We've got an hour," he reported. "Maybe less. They're doing a systematic sweep inward. We need to move. Now."

Relocation

The party grabbed their gear and Emerse's wrapped body, moving quickly through the metal corridors. Anton led them on a circuitous route that avoided the searching slisher squads, and twenty tense minutes later, they slipped into the H-building.

"At least another hour before they search here," Anton said, checking the street outside. "Maybe more if we're lucky."

"Then let's not waste it," Spanner said, looking at the dormant portal ring. "We need to understand how this works."

Spanner moved to the control systems, her mechanic's eye taking in the setup. She activated the power, and the room hummed to life. The portal ring began to glow faintly, and various panels lit up with bioluminescent displays.

"Interesting," she muttered, studying the computer device more closely. "This isn't just a control system. It's an ultrasound generator with a built-in translator."

"We just spent ages building one of those," Riley said dryly.

"Yeah, well, this one's better." Spanner pointed to what looked like a mushroom-shaped microphone and small bracket fungi mounted on a fungus mound - the speakers. "It accepts keyboard or voice input and translates to ultrasound. But the range is limited - just this room. We'd need to link it to our comm devices to broadcast further, and that would take time we don't have."

She ran a quick test, speaking into the mushroom microphone. "Test, test."

The ultrasound receiver they'd built crackled, and the Tamagotchi displayed: "Test, test."

"It works," Spanner confirmed.

Then the receiver crackled again with that eerie warbling. The Tamagotchi translated: "Two legs, show yourselves."

Everyone froze.

"They're still broadcasting," Hoff said quietly. "They really want us to—"

"We're not showing ourselves," Stasi cut him off. "We're getting off this nightmare planet."

One Last Test

"We should test the portal properly," Spanner said. "Send something through. Something... significant."

Everyone's eyes turned to the blue-leaf wrapped bundle that was Emerse's body.

"He deserves to go home," Belle said softly. "Even if we can't."

Riley moved to the coordinate entry panel, his eidetic memory serving him well. "Cauthon Institute coordinates coming up. Give me ten minutes to set them properly."

While Riley worked the 128 mushroom switches, Belle and Itzy moved to Emerse's body. They carefully unwrapped the large blue leaves, peeling them back to reveal...

The Horror

Emerse's body sat up.

Not slowly. Not groggily. It sat up like someone waking from a pleasant nap, movements sharp and purposeful.

Itzy stumbled backward, his hand going to his sword hilt. Belle froze, her medical training warring with the horror of what she was seeing.

Emerse's face - or what had been Emerse's face - was covered in fungus-like growths. They sprouted from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears, quivering and shaking like leaves in a breeze. The growths were a sickly purple-grey colour, pulsing with some internal rhythm.

"Oh god," Belle whispered.

Then "Emerse" stood up.

The mushroom growth from his groin had become enormous, a massive fungal structure that covered half his torso, and it copiously drooled the petrochemical liquid. Smaller growths erupted from his arms, his legs, his neck. He - it - turned toward Belle with jerky, unnatural movements.

And attacked.

Belle barely had time to react, her dodge attempts clumsy and slow. The thing's fungus-covered arm slammed into her shoulder, sending her sprawling.

"CONTACT!" Anton yelled, raising his rifle.

Ben grabbed the Zhodani women and hustled them toward the back of the room, away from the fight. "Stay back! All of you!"

Riley's pistol barked, the shot catching the Emerse-thing in the chest. It staggered but didn't fall. Anton's rifle joined in, the heavier rounds punching through the fungal growths and spraying spores into the air.

Stasi drew her sword, the blade gleaming in the rose-tinted light filtering through the building's gaps. She moved in from the side.

"Aim for the legs!" Hoff shouted. "Bring it down!"

Stasi's sword swept low, cutting through the thing's left knee. It collapsed, but even falling it lashed out at Belle again, catching her across the head. She went down hard, unconscious.

Anton fired again, dangerously, into melee, but he lucked-out and hit it.

Stasi's blade came down in a brutal overhead strike, cleaving through the main fungal growth. The Emerse-thing spasmed once, twice, then went still.

Silence descended on the H-building portal room, broken only by heavy breathing and the hum of the active portal systems.

Then: "Two legs, show yourselves."

The ultrasound receiver's translation jerked everyone back to reality.

Cleanup

Ben rushed to Belle's side, his mutated form moving with surprising grace. Without hesitation, he began licking her face, her arms, anywhere the fungus-covered thing had struck her. His healing saliva worked quickly, and within moments Belle's eyes fluttered open.

"Wha... what happened?" she groaned.

"You got knocked out by a zombie mushroom version of Emerse," Riley said, already holstering his pistol. "Welcome back."

Meanwhile, Anton, Itzy, and Riley carefully dragged the twice-dead Emerse-thing toward the door. The body was surprisingly light, as if the fungal growths had replaced muscle and bone with something less substantial.

"We need to dispose of this," Anton said. "Can't leave it here."

"Burn it," Itzy suggested. "Out in the street."

They dragged it outside, laying it in the middle of the fungus-carpeted road. Riley looked at the massive fungal growth sprouting from the groin area, still oozing that petrochemical-smelling liquid (Jet A1).

"You know," he said thoughtfully, pulling out an empty whisky bottle, "this stuff would burn really well. Might be useful as fuel..."

He moved to collect some, then stopped, looking at the bottle, then at the fungal excretion, then back at the bottle.

"Actually, no," he decided, putting the bottle away. "I'm not that desperate. Yet."

Anton pulled out a match. "Everyone back. If this stuff is as flammable as it smells..."

He struck the match and tossed it from a safe distance.

They watched the smoke rise

The Emerse-thing ignited with a small explosion, a whoosh of flame that sent a billowing cloud of black smoke into the rose-coloured sky. The fungal growths burned with an intense heat, the kerosine feeding the flames.

They watched the smoke rise, thick and dark against the eternal twilight.

"That should get their attention," Spanner said.

But the slishers didn't react. No change in their search patterns. No squads rushing toward the smoke. It was as if they couldn't see it - or didn't care.

"They don't use visual tracking," Hoff realized. "They're using ultrasound. The smoke means nothing to them."

"Great," Riley muttered, taking another pull from his flask. "Just great."

The Tamagotchi's Demands

With our current reliance on the translation capacity of the Tamagotchi, we were working through our limited options when the device suddenly emitted a sharp ultrasound pulse. The translation appeared on its tiny screen, but this time it wasn't from the slishers.

"Please brush my hair," the Tamagotchi demanded in text, its tone somehow conveying urgency despite being just words on a screen.

"What?" Spanner stared at the device.

"PLEASE BRUSH MY HAIR," it repeated, more insistently.

"Trust Emerse to program his device with a hair fetish," Riley muttered, shaking his head.

The Tamagotchi demands a brushing

The demand repeated a third time, and Spanner could swear the Tamagotchi's digital pet looked distressed. She sighed, grabbed the tiny brush attachment from Emerse's kit, and gave the virtual hair a few gentle strokes across the screen.

The device made a satisfied chirp and settled down, becoming cooperative again.

"Right then," Spanner said, trying to ignore what had just happened. "We need to make contact with the spider. Direct communication."

The Message

The plan was simple, if terrifying. Program the ultrasound speaker with a message, have Anton sneak close to the giant spider, broadcast it, and get out before being caught.

"Two-legs willing to talk to fourteen-legs," Spanner programmed into the speaker, setting it to repeat on a loop.

Anton checked his gear, his yellow X-Boat suit somehow still bright despite everything they'd been through. "The spider's about half an hour from here, watching over its mate. I'll get as close as I can, trigger the message, and run."

"Don't get caught," Riley said, which was perhaps the most obvious advice possible.

"Thanks for that," Anton replied dryly.

He slipped out into the rose-tinted streets, moving with practiced stealth through the metal corridors. The searching slisher squads were getting closer, their systematic sweep continuing, but Anton's enhanced skills kept him in the shadows.

Twenty-five minutes later, he spotted the spider. The massive creature stood sentinel over the squid-like female, which had settled into a hollow between buildings. Presumably pregnant, preparing to give birth to who-knew-how-many spiderlings.

Anton triggers the ultrasound message

Anton found cover behind a nearby building, held the speaker at arm's length around the corner, and triggered the message.

"Two-legs willing to talk to fourteen-legs. Two-legs willing to talk to fourteen-legs. Two-legs willing to—"

He didn't wait to see the reaction. He was already moving, sprinting for the nearest safe building as the sounds of rushing slishers and the ground-shaking boom of giant spider footsteps erupted behind him.

Anton dove into an empty structure and pressed himself into the shadows, controlling his breathing, staying perfectly still. Slishers rushed past outside, their tentacles writhing in agitation. The spider's massive form moved by, each footfall making the building shake.

Then silence. They were searching, but they hadn't found him.

Not yet.

Waiting

Back in the H-building, the first thirty minutes dragged like hours. The group argued in hushed, tense voices about the wisdom of their plan.

"This is insane," Hoff said. "We're inviting a giant spider to come here and probably eat us."

"We don't have many options left," Pi countered. "Communication is our only leverage."

"They want to use us as spider seeds," Itzy pointed out. "Send us through the portal to infest our home systems."

Stasi had been pacing, her Zhodani military training evident in her tactical thinking. "The people at the Cauthon Institute could help us. Bombs, guns, equipment. We need to make contact."

"Riley, program the Cauthon coordinates again," she ordered.

Riley moved to the control panel, his fingers working the mushroom switches. "This is either brilliant or suicidal. Possibly both."

While he worked, Stasi grabbed one of the large blue leaves - dead organic matter that could pass through the portal - and began writing a message on it with a piece of charcoal from their supplies.

Grenades and gunfire from home

The portal hummed to life, the shimmering field forming within the great ring. Through it, they could see the familiar entrance to the Cauthon Institute, could see guards scrambling into position—

Machine gun fire erupted through the portal.

"DOWN!" someone yelled.

Bullets whined through the room, ricocheting off the metal walls. Then grenades came through, live and deadly.

"SHUT IT DOWN!" Hoff screamed.

Spanner lunged for the power controls, but one of the grenades detonated first. The explosion caught Hoff, throwing him backward. He hit the wall hard and slumped to the ground.

The portal died.

"Hoff!" Belle rushed to his side.

"I'm okay," he spluttered, coughing. His armour had taken most of the blast, but it had been close. Too close.

Stasi swore in Zhodani, a string of words that needed no translation.

At exactly the thirty-minute mark since Anton had left, the ultrasound receiver thrummed to life.

"Two-legs, show thyself."

First Contact

Spanner stood at the door, her hand on the handle, her communicator plugged into her ear so the others could relay translations.

"This is crazy," Riley said again.

"Probably," Spanner agreed. "But we're out of options."

Spanner confronts the Spider

She opened the door and stepped outside.

The giant spider towered over the H-building courtyard, its massive bulk blocking out a significant portion of the rose-coloured sky. Multiple eyes on prehensile stalks swivelled to focus on her. Each leg was as thick as a tree trunk, covered in chitinous armour that gleamed wetly in the eternal twilight.

Spanner gulped and looked up at the nightmare made flesh.

Inside the building, the ultrasound receiver picked up the spider's communication. Stasi's voice crackled in Spanner's ear, relaying the translation.

"How many two-legs you are?"

Spanner held up her hands, using her fingers to indicate sixteen. Unlike the slishers, the spider actually had eyes. Hopefully it understood visual communication.

"Where are they?"

Spanner pointed back at the H-building doorway.

"Send them out."

Spanner crossed her forearms in front of her chest - the universal human symbol for "no." Please let it be universal, she thought.

"Send them out," the spider repeated, its tone unchanged.

Spanner signalled no again, then tried to indicate that communication would be easier if the spider could listen inside the H-building. She pointed to her mouth, her ears, then back to the door, trying to mime the concept of better translation equipment inside.

The spider's eye-stalks waved in what might have been confusion or might have been irritation. It was impossible to tell.

This limited communication continued for several minutes, with little apparent understanding on either side. Spanner was running out of gestures when movement caught her eye.

Anton, somehow having made his way back through the searching slishers, was sneaking along the wall of the courtyard. The spider was focused entirely on Spanner, its massive bulk turned away from him.

Anton slipped past and ducked inside the H-building, carrying the ultrasound transmitter.

"Here," he said, passing it to Hoff. "It's way too hot in here."

Before anyone could respond, he slipped back outside and disappeared again into the city.

"Is it just me," Pi asked, "or is Anton acting strange?"

Outside, the spider was becoming agitated. Slishers began to approach Spanner from multiple directions, their tentacles writhing in clear threat.

"Time to go!" Stasi's voice crackled in her ear.

Spanner bolted for the door, diving inside as the others slammed it shut behind her. They piled furniture against it - tables, chairs, anything that might slow down an assault.

The crashing and banging started immediately. The door wouldn't hold long.

Negotiation

With the returned transmitter, they quickly set up a better communication system. The H-building's computer could now translate both ways, allowing for actual conversation instead of crude gestures.

Hoff spoke into the mushroom microphone. "We're ready to talk."

The banging on the door stopped. The spider's response came through clearly.

"Send them out."

"Not until we can be assured of our safety," Hoff replied.

"You will be safe."

"That's not very reassuring!" Riley interjected. "What do you want?"

"Viable coordinates."

A chill ran through the group. Coordinates for the portals. Coordinates to their home systems.

"We only know a few coordinates," Spanner said carefully, "and they are to our homes. We can't give you those."

"Yes. Those will do fine."

The casual certainty in that response was terrifying.

"What will you give us if we provide one viable coordinate?" Spanner asked.

"Your lives."

"What if we can give you two viable coordinates?"

Silence from the spider.

Spanner tried a different approach. "What do you actually want? What is your end goal?"

"Viable coordinates."

"What constitutes viable coordinates?"

More silence.

The thumping on the door had resumed during the conversation, a steady rhythm that promised the barrier wouldn't last much longer.

The Problem

Inside the H-building, a hurried discussion broke out.

"Wait," Riley said, moving to the portal controls. "I thought entering a random coordinate just opened a portal to some random point in space?"

The portal gate just didn't form

He began rapidly trying different coordinate combinations, watching the portal ring.

Nothing.

Different coordinates.

Nothing.

"It doesn't work that way," he realized. "An incorrect coordinate means no portal forms at all. There's no random destination. You either have a valid coordinate, or you have nothing."

"And there are millions of possible coordinates," Spanner added grimly. "The Servitor only gave us three."

The implications were clear. They couldn't bluff. They couldn't pretend to have coordinates they didn't possess. The spider would know immediately.

"We can't give up our home system coordinates," Hoff said. "That would doom everyone there."

"Agreed," said Riley, Hoff, and most of the others.

Stasi shrugged. "I'm not human. My home system is Zhodani controlled. They can handle some spiders."

"That's not the point—" Pi started.

"Focus," Spanner interrupted. "We need to keep talking. Buy time."

She spoke into the microphone. "What is your intent with viable coordinates?"

Silence.

"Please stop the attacks on the door while we negotiate."

The thumping stopped.

"Thanks," Spanner continued. "We are looking for viable coordinates now."

A pause, then: "How many viable coordinates do you have?"

"Not so many," Spanner said, which was technically true. "Until we have viable coordinates, is there anything else we could provide?"

"Yes. Other viable coordinates."

Pi, who had been listening quietly, spoke up. "It's not so smart, is it? Just keeps asking for the same thing over and over."

"Maybe," Hoff said thoughtfully. "Or maybe it knows exactly what it wants and won't be distracted from getting it."

The door shuddered under a renewed assault. Time was running out, and they were no closer to a solution.