Space Odyssey: Spectre

Jace looked around in surprise as the screen he was looking at went red with a strange symbol appearing on it in black, almost like a warning symbol. The lights on the roof also went red. Then appearing above them was the old and withered face of Lord Hoodwink, but this time he looked a bit older and worn out than when they first saw him.

KAR-THUNK!

Jace spun around and looked at the hangar entrance to see that the metal door had slammed closed. Preventing their ship from taking off if they tried to fly out of the hangar.

"If this message has been triggered then that means you have arrived at this station and used enough power in the hangar I left open to trigger it. Now normally I would be up for testing and probing curious specimens such as yourselves." Hoodwink spoke with a concerning amount of certainty.

"But unfortunately I doubt I could catch someone as strong as you. Even if I did, it would clearly be too dangerous to keep you alive during my study of you. So I am just going to have to get rid of you before you manage to catch up. So this is goodbye. It was a pleasure to speak with you, Spectres Jace and Nina." Hoodwink's face then disappeared as they suddenly felt the gravity around them lurch to the side for a moment. Then it stabilized just as quickly.

"Boss!" Tako called out.

Jace flexed his arm and the arm blade came out of the additional attachment he had on this armor. He stabbed it into the wall panel and began to directly interface with the facility. "On it!" The doors around the room suddenly opened up, including the one next to Jace.

Coming through them were the square automatons that he had seen back in the Leonair Kingdom. The blocky squares that had one of the hands replaced with an arm gun. These ones were all the same as those he and Nina had seen. With the single intimidating glowing red eye.

"Shit!" Jace cursed and raised his carbine. Firing off several rounds moving his gun as he shot to hit several different spots on the automaton. Most of the bullets bounced off of it but some cut through something and splattered the wall in its purple blood. "Bullets will bounce off the metal plates so focus on the joints and places in between the metal plates." Jace called out. He focused on the electronic systems as the blockhead he just gunned down was blocking the door from the rest of those automatons from entering for the moment.

Jace then began yelling curses in quick succession as he realized what Hoodwink had done to the ancient Requiem station. He searched and found all of the hangar controls were hardwired to the large hangar on the top floor.

"I have to go to the top floor! Secure the hangar! I will be back." Jace called out and then pulled his arm blade out of the wall panel and retracted it. Having already memorized the layout of the place and the route he had to take he ran forward.

"Yes sir!" He could hear someone yell out as he jumped over the blockhead automaton he had gunned down. There was a group of them lined up in the hallway. But he ran past them instead of engaging them.

They had a limited amount of time before all of the station's systems failed and it fell into the central anomaly of this system. Then they would all be dead. So instead of fighting he ran past them. They were too slow to keep up with him anyways.

He rounded a corner out of sight of the blockheads. He arrived at an elevator and pressed the handhold, putting a bit of electricity in the handhold to trigger it. The door opened to reveal a tube that was tall and about the size of a single Requiem creature.

He stepped in and put his hand on the handhold on the inside. It quickly began flying upwards. He felt his body sink into the ground for a moment. Then it stopped and the door opened. He stepped out of the elevator and looked down the hall where lights were blinking on and off while some were hanging from the roof loosely.

SHING! BANG!

Behind him he heard a loud screeching noise and watched the elevator he just rode up in go screeching down with a large dent in the roof. Peeking down from above what he could barely make out was a creature with slithering skin that had a row of teeth that were opening up.

Jace rolled into the hallway and spun around firing at the creature. His bullets hit the creature as it landed on the ground after jumping out of the elevator shaft. Spurts of blood shot into the air as his bullets went through the thing.

It recoiled as it was injured and then ran around a corner out of his sight. But it left behind something that looked like a giant wiggling worm or leech. It squirmed for an additional second before going still as blood pooled around it.

Jace turned his attention back to his current objective. He would have to keep an eye out for whatever that creature was. He walked down the hallway and arrived at a door to the hangar. Instead of just opening it he opted to kick the door as hard as he could.

CRASH!

It flew out of the doorway and crashed through the room. Slamming into a barrel and toppling it. He stepped into the hangar, the lights were already on and it was almost completely empty of any people or those automatons. Aside from the several dozen metal drums that were opened or rolling around the room. On the opposite side of the hangar entrance leading to space was a giant clear tube that was mostly clear.

The giant clear tube had several things slithering inside of it moving along the sides and a bunch at the bottom. It looked like the worm or leech thing like he had seen come off the creature earlier. He ignored it for now and walked through the hangar. The hangar itself was not his actual destination.

His destination was the control room next to it. So he opened the door on the other side of the room by kicking the door out again. Then he walked to the next door and instead of kicking it he stabbed his arm blade into the door panel on the wall next to it.

It slid into the door panel and he quickly interfaced with it and opened the door. He cautiously raised his weapon and walked into the small room. It looked clear from enemies so he walked to the consoles. The consoles had plenty of wires torn out and strewn about the room. Seemed it was partially modified so humans would have an easier time using the Requiem systems.

Jace ignored the modifications to the console and just stabbed his arm blade into the console. He connected directly to the system and began finding what he could still access. It appears this station is already in the process of complete system failure from a mediocre virus. Unfortunately is an irreversible process since the station was already in a precarious situation to begin with.

He still had access to the hangar doors fortunately. So he opened the doors up. Then he grabbed a bunch of scrambled data that was stashed on the system and unaffected by the virus. As well as the schematics of the station before he pulled out his arm blade.

Hoodwink really did not leave much for him to work with. But he would have to make do with what he found for now. He turned to the door and frowned at the large figure standing at the door staring at him in curiosity. It was the same thing he saw at the elevator. But he could see the creature much more clearly this time.

It was like a giant four legged creature. But its body was made up of those pinkish slugs that were squirming around. In its mouth it did not have teeth like he had thought originally; instead they were the pointed heads of some of these slugs. The creature stared its 'face' at Jace for a moment before it sprung forward.

Jace was slammed into by the creature, he was thrown into the wall. His rifle flew out of his hand as the creature slammed into him. Jace grabbed it by the face with both of his hands which slowed its attack but the leech skin began wiggling and moving to him.

Jace channeled the electricity in his body into the creature. His armor's heads up display fritzed for a moment like snow on a monitor as he had to hold back all of his electricity from surging through his armor at the same time.

The electricity trickled through his armor and caused the creature to rear back in surprise. Wiggling and falling to the ground as all of the slugs began individually wiggling and throwing apart their cohesion. Jace dropped to the ground and then grabbed his rifle before dashing out of the room.

"Is the door open?" Jace asked over the communication channel.

"Yeah and we are done with almost the last of these robot things!" Ulin answered quickly. "But something is wrong, some stuff is just starting to float when we still have gravity."

"Ah, shit." Jace cursed as he ran through the hangar and noticed what she was talking about as the room had become a mess with the metal drums and wiggling slugs floating in the air. He began running through the room to the other doorway he came in through. "Sounds like the gravity of the station is malfunctioning."

As he was halfway through the room the power to the entire station turned off. The atmosphere barriers seemed to operate on a separate system, because they did not turn off with the lights and gravity. He began floating through the air, his momentum carrying him through the air to the other doorway.