Stranded: Unfrequented

Chapter 3: Obsolus Nightmares

"Metrious."

"No way, even the remains of Metrious we have were never even a third of the size of this... thing."

"Rock skin. What else would you call it?

Ref shook her head. "Xeno. He's too big for a mutation—no Obsolus has ever grown that big before."

"Maybe they had them back then," Quinton said. He'd walked around the giant frozen corpse several times before deciding on the species.

"No," Ref said, shaking her head once more.

"You don't want to believe it, fine. That doesn't change that we're looking at proof that there were big Obsolus."

"Xeno," she repeated.

Quinton rolled his eyes and she glared at him. "Fine, our Xeno is a giant that looks oddly like a humongous version of the Metrious remains back on Promethean."

Ref turned away to investigate the nesting area. Her best guess as to what this location was inside of the support between the ship and the outer hull. The area had been hollowed out, jagged spikes everywhere that looked almost like the containment cell. "Did they have it locked up?"

"Apparently. What was going on with this ship?" Quinton squatted and attempted to lift the arm of the ancient dead, but even his Castar-twin suit didn't have the strength to pick it up. "Can you imagine what this thing would be worth?"

"Don't care. I want to get out of here."

"Scared little Ghirp?"

"Better afraid than stupid."

Quinton looked indignant for a moment. "Fine." He walked over to the systems, which had probably been installed here after the nest had been cleared. Several flat wafers were scattered about on a table nearby that he picked up and rifled through. "What are these?"

Ref went over to look over the wafers. "Never seen anything like them... is that a label?" They were numbered, a thousand and higher, but didn't seem to follow any sort of sequence.

The Junja-Kith grabbed a handful and stuffed them into one of his pouches. When Ref stared at him he shrugged. "Maybe they are worth something."

The movement registered in Ref's wide eyes. She couldn't ignore movement, almost as if that was a necessity of survival wherever her species had hailed from, and movement here on the battleship wasn't something any of them could probably disregard. Turning slowly, she watched with comprehension and felt the fear in her core grew to terror that seemed to take on a life of its own.

Similarly, the Metrious seemed to resume whatever life it had before their arrival.

"Quin—ton. What is..?" The words were difficult to form. Her mind was racing, but she could hardly breathe as if the atmosphere had suddenly drained out of the room.

The Junja-Kith turned towards her and then back to the former-corpse. When its head swiveled in their direction they were both fleeing on all fours back the way they had come without even a first thought.

----

Upon leaving the command core, Rather's spirits had risen without the visage of ship-wide murder before him. They were rich and could probably buy a small portion of Promethean when they returned if no one wanted to continue working in the Out-Fields. He might even be able to employ several scavengers and work as a manager for a larger-than-normal fleet that could strip-mine the inner fields.