Sentient Worm

Zariman - part 2

Zariman - part 2

Grimly, Taylor returns to the living quarters after seeing off all the Grineer that she's come across, as well as dealing with a cascade and flood, as well as clearing out the landing bay they arrived on. Behind her she's dragging a construction beacon that she carved out of the floor in the engineering section.

At the squealing sound of metal on metal, Margulis looks up from the void shield she's constructing on the remains of the promenade below the living quarters. A moment later she's flying up to the balcony.

"Taylor, are you alright?"

Taylor shakes her head, "Not really, I found Kira near engineering. She's; she's given herself to the void now."

"Have you told Quinn?"

Taylor nods, "They were on the mission control channel. I tried to kill her, but she kept retreating into a void shell whenever I got her shield down. I followed her a few times, but she was able to play keep away long enough to heal back up. I wouldn't mind, but this is what passes for an Omnimat here."

Margulis floats over and crouches down as she scans the device with her implants, "This is a Dax emplacement."

"I thought it might be after everything you've said about the towers. I'm starting to think that this was actually a colony ship that the military co-opted to run experiments on before it left the system."

Margulis nods, "It was, it was a big enough thing that I was even aware of it. That's part of why I'm so upset with Yonta."

Taylor nods, "How's the reservoir coming?"

Margulis barks a laugh, "It's not. There's so much void interference here that I'm having to build a void shield before we can even start. Ideally I'd just head back to the orbiter and set it to build one for us over the course of a few hours. But Ordis isn't due here for a few days, along with reinforcements."

Taylor sighs, "Where's Anet?"

Margulis waves at the entrance to the living quarters, "In there I think, she's also been going up and down the different levels of the ship to see if there's anywhere else we can take as a breach head to more living quarters. You know that once you've secured the reliquary drive and re-enabled the void shields there, you're probably going to kill the survivors too."

Taylor touches Margulis to quickly join and allow her feelings to be known. Once she's withdrawn again she looks over the edge, "Do you think you'd be able to make a new portable lab?"

Margulis shakes her head, "Not until I've got a working void shield. I'd imagine that I've run into the same issue that the engineers originally ran into, as the void is warping everything. Pemmy's fine, as the generator draws from the void, so the whole thing is already shielded. But I'm having to almost build the emitter by hand. I'm just glad I don't have Orokin hands anymore, otherwise it would be impossible."

Taylor looks over the balcony at Pemmy thoughtfully, "How big is emitter going to be?"

"Probably 2m tall and around 1m in diameter at its widest point."

"Could you make a small emitter inside Pemmy's shielding and use that to build the larger emitter?"

Margulis stares at Taylor, "Taylor, I am a researcher. That's the first thing I tried once it failed. There isn't enough space inside the shield to make one."

"How about turning Pemmy into an amobea?"

"Explain."

Taylor shuts off her senses so that she can remember high school biology alongside the lessons that Anet has been shoving into her head about how to build ecosystems. Slowly she says, "Amobea's are a single celled predator that eats smaller single celled creatures. As they eat, they grow larger until there's enough of them that they can duplicate their internals and then narrow their outer layer until it splits. Maybe instead of having Pemmy create things on the outside, you instead make it behave like an amobea and slowly grow until it can create a duplicate of everything important before splitting."