Work Text:
Days are quiet aboard Hokoro Orbital. For some it was too quiet, but such was the way of the Kovax who were all stationed there. Atlas knew that they were painfully quiet, even at the best of times. WorkGek Norinmy watched them go about the bar. He didn’t understand why they were here, none of them had any real purpose of drinking. Though there they were. Machines in crisp space suits, everything neat and tidy, sipping on alcohol that might kill a lesser man.
Bio-lights flickered as a group ‘spoke’ to each other. Norinmy had worked with enough Korvax over the years to know that this was a signal of amusement, what scant few joke he’d gotten his coworkers to laugh at had shown in the same way. Rapid flashing lights along their head and visor.
They were strange people, but good dedicated workers, and he’d always liked working with them. Korvax superiors couldn’t be bribed but when they were just your co-worker you could always pawn off work onto them on the excuse of your weak fleshy body couldn’t match the surety of steel.
Korvax don’t scream.
It was a thought that kept ringing through his head as he downed another drink. His eyes drifting back to the station workers all enjoying each other’s company. Or was it the company of themself? Norinmy stared. They knew. They knew what happened. The Convergence knew the exact moment every last one of their own were killed.
“Friend-Entity, you must come with me.” Norinmy gripped the steel cup, memories coming unbidden. “You are in danger.”
Entity Drov. Ever the dutiful worker. Always spotting Norinmy for his own lax standards of safety, always seeing right through him when he’d claim weakness. They’d just shake their head and pick up his slack.
Drov, the loyal friend. No matter what scheme or game he was angling to pull would just smile and bow their head. No one liked playing cards with a Korvax, they’d just count them after all. You might as well just play against an actual computer rather than one of them. Drov though, Drov was just happy to be included.
Even as the ship shook around them. Explosions ringing out from the lower decks, Drov had never let go of him. They’d held his wrist in a vice like grip and ran down the corridors. Norinmy half-running half-dragged behind them like a spawnling’s toy.
They’d came to a screeching halt, Drov thrusting a hand forward and simply ripping the door of his locker off and shoving his gear into his arms with an expectant look. They, of course, could survive in a vacuum, their chassis was basically the best exo-suit that money could buy already.
He’d thrown it on with all haste, the battle raged just outside, the comms were screaming just as loudly as their guns, if they got out of this then it would be by the skin of their teeth.
Laughter in the bar threw Norinmy from the memory. A strange figure standing in the entry way. It stood about as tall as a Korvax did, he would of thought it was just a Vy’keen youngling if it weren’t for the fact that it was far too slim in its figure. It was talking with another, this one in a similar exo-suit to some of the station workers though very clearly wasn’t a Korvax either. Something about it was setting him on edge. He turned away from the stranger. Ignoring the vibrant exo-suit, all wrapped up with a flowing cloak and hood.
Don’t get involved, don’t get involved.
His shoulders hunched and he hunkered down at the bar. The acrid smell of burnt metal overwhelming even the sweet drink that he’d yet to finish in front of them and the pheromones of other Gek around him.
He could feel Drov’s hand around his arm again, servos locking him into a vice grip that even if he’d wanted to escape the mechanoform he would have had no choice.
“Where are we going?” His words came in a breathless rush, his feet barely touching the ground as they ran.
“Friend-Entity Norinmy is in danger.” Drov intoned flatly. “The probability of your survival without intervention is low, this entity has decided to intervene.” They didn’t even wait for him to answer before a door slid open and they hurled him bodily into a room. “Hide. They have already breached the hull.”
The ship rocked violently again, knocking Norinmy back to his hands and knees, forcing him to scramble to hide in a maintenance access hatch. He dropped the keys again and again. His fingers suddenly stiff and unwieldy. When the hatch opened he crawled inside and pulled it back closed — or he would have had the damnable thing not stopped just a few centimeters before it should have closed. Grabbing hold of the other end he pulled on it. Trying desperately to get it closed.
Blasted Safety, the one time it isn’t needed it decides to work!
Over the din of the alarm heavy footsteps rang out. Norinmy held his breath, praying that nothing could sense the terror seeping from his pheromone glands. Clapping his hands over his mouth to prevent a scream, he couldn’t trust himself to go down deeper into the corridor, not without giving himself away.
Footsteps. Two sets of them. One the heavy thump of a mechanoform. Mirroring their organic peers in their way. A booted foot came into view through the sliver of space. Drov was backing away, talking in that harsh electronic noise that made up the Korvax language with their hands raised and head bowed. The other, the other had the whine of hydraulics. Clicking gears and scraping metal on metal. The smell of ozone and burnt metal overwhelmed the room. A metal monster cobbled together from the salvaged parts of sentinels, wrapped in a brilliant blue robe.
And then it spoke.
It was the screaming of a dying starship. A cursed radio signal trapped between jumps attempting to lure pilots to their doom. The inevitability of a black hole.
Drov’s tone got faster, panicked as Norinmy had learned. He saw them shaking their head emphatically. By the Atlas they’d picked up a lot of gesture from their organic peers hadn’t they?
It spoke again, and Drov grew more distressed.
The heavy footsteps of the machine echoed in his head, stopping just before the hatch that he’d hidden in and spoke one last time. Silence was its only answer.
With a noise that sounded like a huff it fired its bolt caster. A new alarm screamed as the atmosphere was suddenly sucked out of the room, the door to the hatch finally realizing that the situation was a lot worse than its programming realized and clicked closed before he could be sucked through the gap into the vacuum of space.
Finally something clicked in his mind and he was able to flee, scrambling down the corridor in an aggressive wiggle towards the hanger.
“Hey buddy, are you okay?”
Norinmy jumped, nearly falling out of his seat as he looked sharply up to the being speaking to him.
Vibrant robe and hood, a wrap just over their face hiding a mechanical horror just behind it. His heart raced. Not again, not again.
“Get away from me!” He screamed as he jumped to his feet, knocking over his glass.
To their credit, they backed away. Holding their hands up. Disturbingly naked hands. No Korvax would ever allow their chassis to get into such a state.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, sorry.”
The noises it made, the hiss and whine of its body as it moved. It was the same kind, but… but that couldn’t be the same one. The strange being went back to the other equally strange being and began to speak to it quietly. His hands shook, and his heart was going to claw its way through his chest.
Quickly he paid his tab, not noticing or caring if he overpayed. They didn’t chase after him so it didn’t matter anyway. Racing away from the bar and back into the station’s hanger he struggled to find his breath again.
Drov sacrificed themself for him. Him. They found out who the pirates were and made a choice that no matter how he played it back in his head he couldn’t convince himself that he would of done the same for his friend. It was pathetic. Here he was, hiding once again in the section of the hanger set aside for corvettes, sobbing over a entity that he’d only had one voyage with. The Convergence still had their soul, didn’t it? All the memories and data that made up Drov?
Not that they would ever give them back. It was just him now. According to the local authorities he was the only survivor of the battle. That he was lucky to, given the pirates specific hatred of his kind.
And Drov knew. Maybe one of their kindred among the Convergence warned them, maybe they found out from one of their coworkers there in the cargo bay. But they knew.
And he couldn’t even save them. Lost to memory and scenarios he played back in his mind. Again and again asking himself “what if” and failing to find any possible universe where he and Drov made it out alive together.
Drov died in silence. The vacuum of space never stole away last words or a dying scream. Korvax never screamed. Not now, not in the time of the First Spawn.
He left himself there in the hanger. Left to mourn the friend he didn’t appreciate in life and cower from the monsters that stalked the halls.
Whatever it took he would find the Dread-Pirate and exact his revenge. He would take everything from it, and he would ensure that Drov’s death wouldn’t go unanswered for. He would find the Dirge of the First Spawn.