Frontiers and Pioneers (sci-fi, NSFW(violence,possible teases), robots)

@Cerebrate  
Rameshvara: “Seems every synth is finding a food they’re most-fond for as of late.” _{”…mine’s beignets.” ^.p.}
 
Ripli: Shrugs while cronching into a finished cornetto, promptly starting with another while also ushering the two aboard to their seats in the passenger bay, while the kobold crew seen outside rush about on the hangar deck, preparing for takeoff.
 
In moments, the craft begins to levitate upwards until high past the skylight, unveiling the outside to their view.
 
With enough altitude, the shuttle then shifts its thrusters horizontally, boosting off towards the far north.
 
[ 🎶 ]  
 

 
Rameshvara: “Tapped satellite feeds’ve shown the spot we’re headed to is dead and deserted, at least on the surface, but no deep-penetrating scans. A drone sent out there noticed what looked almost like the linings of an AB-dome, before the recording cut out; when it returned, the camera lens was glazed over like it’d been scoured by an acid bath.”
 
“Whatever it saw may’ve just been a detached hemisphere drifting in the wind, or some classified Fed-tech in action. With what happened with the camera, who knows, really. Feds are still jamming the entire arctic circle to snuff out isolated pockets of rogue drones hiding in the ice, so at a certain point we’ll be off the global mesh. Like first landfall.”

@Coriolanus  
“tapped? have you seriously built a backdoor into a system you have full access to?”

@Cerebrate  
“If that were really the case, then we certainly wouldn’t be dead then, right, about… now.”
 
Nothing happens, the muffled sound of engines and air cycling continuing unabated…
 
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s because this part of the plan worked-” The shark says, while pulling a tarp off a section of tied-down cargo, revealing a partially-disassembled Federation starfleet’s hunter-killer drone.  
 
A power cable plugged into the center of the floor leads into an open port on the side of the small, unmanned drone, keeping it partially active.
 
“…its IFF tag’s keeping this shuttle disguised. You’d be amazed how much’s been propped up in the airspace just to keep the arctic cordoned off both ways. On the way back, we’ll release this back out into the interdiction-barrier–with it’s recording devices removed, along with no ammunition, or radio codes to squawk for backup, of course.”

@Coriolanus  
“wouldn’t it be easier to convince it it had an equipment malfunction and is actually squawking for help? if a drone is known to have crashed that’S one thing but if it disappears off the grid just like that they’re gonna investigate.”

@Cerebrate  
he quickly kissed her cheek before running off to go find him

@Cerebrate  
Rameshvara: “We could ditch it somewhere safe once back outside the arctic boundary, have it ping through the white-noise that it’s made an emergency landing, yes. I just don’t want the thing to turn on and track us back to home is all, nor leave it for wild bots to reverse-engineer…”
 
The shuttle soon nears the remains of Lumin’s hideout. At first, the area appears to be no more than upturned outcroppings of packed ice, but as the craft descends, the view suddenly changes as if a lens had been lifted, transforming into a flattened gridscape, with a steady white plume rising up from an industrialized square-plot at the center.
 
Rameshvara: “Well, whatever that screen is overhead, it looks like it’s presenting a false image up into space. This place’s landscape should be completely ravaged though, considering it was only bombarded a few nights ago… Ripli, let’s not put ourselves in the way of any ice, if it starts calving again for any reason. Set us down unto that moraine along the northern edge. We’ll walk the rest of the way,”
 
Ripli: “Yessir.”
 
To Imos. “-to where that smoke is rising at. It’s right where Sada’d ventured in through before.”
 
As the shuttle touches down on an open field of gravel and bare stone lightly-snowed over, Imos can see what look like partially-intact artificial structures within a gulch southward, in the way they’re to travel. In every other direction, the landing zone is surrounded by escarpments, with two ramp-like landforms east and west leading up to the wide-open fields of ice and snowdrifts.
 
[ 🎶 ] ^{*The structures within the gulch:*}  

 
Rameshvara, as he fits in through the top of an enormous agape powersuit:
 
“You’re the more experienced pioneer.”
 
“Should we travel through that built-up ravine south, or make way across the open tundra?”

@Coriolanus  
“it’s usually advisable, especially for organics, to avoid harsh winds.”

@Cerebrate  
“Creepy bombed-out ruins it is, then.”
 
Entering the ravine, they navigate through what’s almost like a scrapyard, rife with derelict machinery poking from half-destroyed or repaired buildings, but no sign of rogue bugbot or stonekin remains anywhere… In a large plaza-like center however, surrounded by high cliff-faces, the two find what looks like a gutted anti-grav hovercraft, half-buried and slowly becoming nothing more than a dune-like snowdrift…
 
Moving past this, the path they take soon rises on a steady incline, their cleated boots now digging into solid ice, before finally surmounting what seems like a low volcano, with constructed towers and machine-pillars of unknown purpose sprouted everywhere, and the unidentified smoke they’d seen on descent pluming up from a deep caldera before them.
 
With his natural armorsleeved arms, the shark produces a small ampule from one pocket of many across festooned canvas-rigging, passing it to one of his suit’s larger remote-controlled limbs to capture a bit of the smoke for sampling.
 
“…This stuff, it’s foglets. Airborne micromachines, covered in quantum dots, like in contemporary TV-screens and monitors, or programmable paint… I guess that explains that false-sky film overhead. This isn’t the entrance Sada used though, but I’ve got readings on breadcrumb positioning leftover from her visit.”
 
“The way she took isn’t far from here… but should we investigate here? See what’s churning out this foglet-cloud?”

@Coriolanus  
“investigating here may be the better idea, already because it may get at our backs otherwise.”

@Cerebrate  
“Way I figured, if we’d see anything out here still moving, I’d get to use this;”
 
While saying, he unholsters and presents a handgun-like device. “…this here, keyed to the protocols to paint a target for orbital bombardment. Fed space fleet’s begun it’s molniya passover recently, so we’ve got plenty of time to decide if we’ll ever have to use this.”
 
Carefully stowing the WMD-hotline safely away, he unpacks a spindle for weaving cable, activating it to begin feeding a line down into the icy caldera. He then anchors the spindle into place with four spikes driven into the ice with one of his powersuit’s fists.
 
“I’ll go first, then tug on the line when I’ve reached the bottom…”
 
Lowering himself first down into the chasm, the shark leans back to test the cable; his cleated boots digging into place, while keeping a pair of amply-large icepicks deployed from his large remote-limbs ready if the line were to break loose… Slowly, he walks down vertically into the pit, disappearing into the opaque, billowing clouds of micromachines. For a while, nothing happens, until suddenly the cable slackens.
 
It then sways against the caldera wall, as if someone were whipping it side-to-side.

@Coriolanus  
a flying drone detaches from imos’ suit to check what’s happening.

@Cerebrate  
Live camera-feed cuts out as soon as the drone leaves more than a few feet away. Scouting on it’s own volition, then returning, recorded footage shows a mass of armor, cybernetics, and bone–assumedly Rameshvara–swinging the rope, while surrounded by what look like large metallic pinecones scattered across the cave floor.
 
The footage only shows in backscattered X-rays, as down within the cave where the particulate-cloud is densest, the foglets seem to be rendering vision opaque to every other wavelength. At the end of recording, as the point of view soars back up the caldera, the shark can be seen shrugging toward the drone, then continuing with swaying the rope as a signal.

@Coriolanus  
“you okay down there?”

(What in the cowabunga is goin’ on ’round here)

@EclecticInspiration  
(pokin’ at chasm full of fancy dust. ”Is it me, or does the air seem a little… ‘chunky’?!“)
 
@Cerebrate  
Holds dead-still for a second, waiting for a reaction to the echoed calling.
 
He then replies, via directional speaker; “I guess it’s safe, as long as you’re breathing through a filter. These splayed-open pods around here… they’ve got pipes leading into a smaller hole in the center… I think I’ll sever them. You coming down, though?”

@Coriolanus  
“coming, the fog seems to be opposed to camera transmissions.”

@Coriolanus  
(But what happened before that? Last time I was here, we were having some sort of kumbaya with weird cat people)

@EclecticInspiration  
(We found more CATS! More or less a deal has been made to help the cattos with medical as they say a young child has a mysterious illness

@EclecticInspiration  
(this was uncovered happening in the mountain lab, the lab itself is also expanding to other mountains northwest, Amy’s learning the ways of the Cattos, and there’s a clandestine mission happening in the northern dead-zone to find a possibly-ded guy.)
 
 
@Cerebrate  
Breaking the pipes, the foglet-cloud lifts out of the pit, while a steady low buzz that’d been emanating from the pinecones ceases.
 
Able to communicate across EM signals again, the shark transmits on short-ranged T-rays, while also using that same wavelength to bathe the room, scanning into the stone.
 
“…I guess I cut the hive’s feedstock supply, just now. There’s a big vertical seam of tungsten right-below us… I think this is the impact sight for a kinetic penetrator, right here. Crazy… there’s also a door, over there-” Pointing, he walks out of view as Imos descends. Reaching the bottom, he sees the shark tear a gate off the hinges, opening a long tunnel through smoothened ice. A dim-blue light glows far down it.
 
“It looks cramped… and I’m too big to let you slip past me. should you go first, or I?”

@Coriolanus  
(Dafug? Sheeeeeeeet, I’m a touch lost, so I’ll probably come up with some BS that’ll have kept my characters busy or sum shiz. Anything for Riggs or my other characters, or anything they should know?)

@EclecticInspiration  
(I missed you

@NyantaStarhunt  
(I missed ye too, catto. The trainees here can’t replace y’all.)

@EclecticInspiration  
I mean unless you guys get a catto of course not, however over the weekend Riggs and starhunt could have a small adventure?

@Coriolanus  
“much as i appreciate having you in harm’s way when it comes for me, i have a much shorter adjustment period to new bodies, besides, having someone that can move freely is probably better in the front.”
 
he takes point, an ionizer gun pointing ahead.

@NyantaStarhunt  
(I meant the trainees here at basic. It’s a possibility but I’m not yet sure. I still feel pretty out-of-the-lööp)