FTL

[WP] Since FTL was invented, people like you were tasked with intercepting previously departed slower than light ships to upgrade their systems and redirect their course. You were often met with some grumbling and frustration, but you never met people who refuse the upgrade like this latest ship.

*****

"Don't go in engine room."

Airon raised his hands defensively. "I'm just here to help, nothing too serious don't worry. It'll get you all back on track."

"Get out." The man was tough and grumbling, but more strangely he just looked different. He was hunched over and hairy than the average joe. His body was wider than most weight lifters and his arms slung out more sideways than normal. Arlon hadn't been allowed to see other crew members yet, but he suspected similar symptoms. This floater was bad.

"Please." He was used to resistance about the upgrades, but this was just straight up denial. He'd been ostracized in the loading dock for two hours now, only now being granted someone to speak to personally. "You guys have been out here for a long time. We can change that."

A long time -- more like five hundred damn years. It was the oldest floater still flying through space, it'd taken Arlon a good four months of FTL just to catch them, and that was FTL!

"No change! Leave!" The man was practically barking at him. Guarding the way to the engine room like a shepherd.

Alright, Arlon thought. This is all too strange, something is really wrong here.

Arlon relaxed his shoulders and tried to seem as unthreatening as possible. "Can I at least talk to someone else? Please?"

"No!"

"Can I have some food?"

"No!"

Alright, you want me to get clever? Fine, I'll get clever. "Okay okay, I get the message. Let me get one last sleep on my ship and I'll leave when I wake up. You all follow an artificial sleep cycle still?" Anytime you got floaters that had been out for a long time they were bound to start changing some things-- Arlon was sure that this one had changed a lot of things.

"You have four hours, burned."

Burned? What the hell did that mean?

Arlon eventually went back to his ship and began to formulate over his plan. The strange man retreated behind an old auto door and he was left alone in the bay, but he was sure he was still behind watched.

He looked back over his notes, he'd been sent on this mission because he was the best inceptor in the sectors. He was the best not because of his mechanical skills, but because of his creativity. Floaters got weird after being separated for so long, really weird. It didn't matter though, he'd never allowed a floater to stay rickety once.

Intercepting was an important and expensive job, FTL travel this far out was arduous, so they were trained like one man special ops teams. They couldn't allow another Rouge Floater Crisis to happen again, so he even had permission to blow the ship if he deemed them too far gone.

"Okay," He said to himself, swiping through the ship's long history. "523 years gone, probable that the people have replaced all of their internal human history with some sort of hysteria, the burner comment seems to support this. Local biological evolution seems to be the worst I've ever seen, that one man alone looked more like an ape than anything else. More strangely than that though, about two hundred years ago the ship managed to double its speed and change its course back to federation sectors. Dangerous. No floater as ever upgraded their ship in such a way before, they were up to something."

"Alright." Arlon zipped up his ops suit and clipped on his railgun. "Let's really see what's going on here."

He vizzed his suit momentarily, making him transparent. It could only last a couple of seconds, the power burn was too much for simple kinetic charging to keep up with, but that's all he needed. He breezed by the coverage zones of the cameras he'd already numbered and made his way to the door. With a simple bug on the panel he was in and moving like a shadow.

It was worse than he thought. He had a blueprint of the massive ship, but as suspected they'd changed some things... A lot of things. They'd obviously torn down all the walls and reused metal to create... Tunnels? That felt like the only way to describe it, Arlon was crouching as he made his way through strange winding cylinders made from rusty scraps. It was like the hallways of mole tunnels.

Eventually he heard commotion and felt heat from the engine room, a lot of heat. That's not right... Retro engines were cold fission, there should be no heat.

"Star burned blast?" He heard someone grumble down the hall.

"Eh."

"Big takes?"

"Grand Heater pulls."

"Hung."

One of the first things to change in floaters is dialect. He'd been surprised at how understandable his first interaction was, but now it was obvious that he was simply meeting a diplomat. Why do they have someone trained in their old dialect? What in the world is going on here.

He crouched in closer, he needed a view. His secondary pistol was out just in case, it'd become obvious now that these people were way too far gone, he'd have to destroy them, but not before he got answers. He followed the heat until it got almost unbearable, and the sound of whirling screeching metal took over. From down the hallway he could see a doorway that emanated light. There it is.

He walked closer, but right before he turned the corner he saw something leaking from the doorway... Was that blood? He peaked inside, mouth opening in shock as he tilted his head up to see the entire fleshy monstrosity that was pumping out... fuel? "That... That can't be human..."

Someone was behind him. "Star burned greed."

Thwack! Things faded black, words crawled into his ear as he fell unconscious. "Feed Heater. More BloodFuel."

*****

THE END.