Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Chapter 19

2/3.

That's how many of them were captured. But, with their fates currently unknown, we look at the one person who wasn't caught, Eve.

Eve's PoV

Eve had healed up with the healing serum. Her flesh was still slightly marred with the wounds she had sustained, but it wasn't severe. Her clothes took the most damage after her body was healed. She was tired and hungry, a side effect of the serum. She reached into a side pouch and pulled out her specialty 'rations.' It looked like a vial with thick, gelatinous glowing ooze within it. The vial was filled to the brim with it, not even enough to slosh around in its confines.

She reached behind her head; from there, her tentacle hair opened up to reveal a beak-like maw. A tongue lashed out from it, curled around the vial, and drew it into the depths of Eve's insides. It was like a pill, opening up and dissolving the moment it was in her body. She shivered as she absorbed the super-dense energy paste she had created. Her body brimmed with energy just deep underneath the surface. She was back at 100%. She checked her route with her Scouter. She was nearing the end of it, and two blips showing Genesis and Gree's tracks were there.

But the oddest thing was that they were piled on each other. What happened?

Well, there was no way to know until she got there. She kept it up for a while, moving through the station over debris. The closer she got to the station's open hole, the colder it seemed to get. Several minutes later, she was looking open a mined-out multi-level hole in the side of the station. It wasn't a small hole either; it was rather huge. It dwarfed her in size; it was about the same size as the ship outside - its tip easily seen through this monstrous hole. Just what did they need with all of this material? She didn't know. All over the crater, there were scavengers wearing suits or spacesuits. They were slicing into the metal of the station proper, pulling away the material to large transport ships. These transport ships then flew off toward a massive middle platform hanging in the hole's middle. It had a large base set up on it, a mini docking bay for all the transport ships.

From that platform is where the blips of Genesis and Gree were held. She could see them in her scanner but not through her eyesight. They must be within the giant structure. From that large structure, even larger spaceships landed and would take from a vast stockpile of chopped metal and other electronic pieces. They'd then lift off and head toward the ship. They were using a lot of fuel to run this operation…where were they getting it from?

She was stunned long enough to realize she was on a walkway overseeing the entire area. She then shot back into the hallway she came from to hide. She needed to get one of those closed spacesuits. Those stretch-to-fit-one-size-fits-all ones. That tech wasn't uncommon. Due to how many aliens had strange builds. She took some stock of her gear, then realized she didn't need one to blend in.

Running through grenades, bombs, drones, and force fields, she looks for something to help her out. She plucks out a choker with an "Aha!" This is what she was looking for. A Cloaker. This device she had made to cover her entire body in a field that made her blend in with the surroundings. She just needs to be careful about getting close to people. She puts it around her throat and clicks a button on its side. Within seconds a shimmering field of energy surrounds her body. Even to her own vision, she's invisible….mostly. But she still shimmers like a rippling surface from too close up.

She looked over the operation on the floor. There were a lot of people everywhere in this massive hole. The crew was much larger than the main ship must have had room for. She peers off into the distance - this wasn't just one capital ship but a minor fleet. How did a scav group like this obtain this much power so quickly? There were at least three smaller ships - but those were obviously meant for extra crew. Not to say that they didn't have firepower upon it. How has no one heard of such a rapid rise? They were pretty powerful with how things were turning out for them. Eve stood there for several minutes to overlook their operations to get an idea of what was happening.

Even smaller patrol ships were coming out of the main mothership. Over time Eve realized - there were more of them coming out than coming in. Just what kind of technology were they using to manufacture ships so easily? Whatever, she had a goal to do. She had to get onto the middle platform. Eve needed to rescue her allies. She gets out of the hallway she is hiding in. Eve needed to get some action. She jumped off the side of the walkway, then began to hop between outwardly jutting metal beams and more to land on the floors closer to where other aliens were actually cutting through and mining metal out.

She landed near a group of five, each surrounding one of the smaller ships that ferried metals to and from the central platform in the middle of the hole. She waited, watching them and keeping herself flat against the floor. The five kept mining away, using high-heat cutting tools and other hand-held mechanical ones to pull apart the station piece by piece. They must've been at this for quite some time, seeing how they're all moving without fear. It was just a job for these people. Several minutes passed as they kept tossing pieces onto the large transport vehicle. When the final part was loaded, it let out a loud 'FWEEP!'. It started to rise into the air with its cargo which Eve decided to exploit.

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She ran across the unstable ground and leaped onto the vehicle, grappling onto its side via' a stray bar. It only dipped slightly but then pushed off the ground and started to fly to the platform. As she got closer, the platform made her realize it was bigger than it seemed from far away. It was more like a multi-story ship. Its purpose is to refine and clean up the metals and electronics to place in much bigger transports and let them go off to the main ship. A few minutes later, her vehicle slips into the platform through a loading bay. The inside was like she expected.

Machinery was here to siphon the metal to bring it to a larger area. First, the machine pieces, wires, and raw metal were all sorted by other machines by scanning the refuse. Then, small mechanical hands would jut out and start pulling away any and all finer pieces inside of the pile and let all the metal chunks flow toward a furnace. This furnace melts down everything into a singular solid form. It removes all the impurities before pouring them out into bars. These bars rapidly cool and leave behind relatively perfect bars of metal. Even if this space station was a rusted hunk of metal, this entire setup could give them a lot of pure metals just through these actions alone.

She's still determining where the finer pieces of machinery go. Still, she can expect them to get the same treatment in some different way, shape, or form in another room. She realized she's been staring as the transport she was on had started to get unloaded. She twitches and moves away from the machine. There were hardly any people walking around. Those that WERE around here were aliens without any suits. They were fixing up smaller machinery while replacing machinery with different parts. Some of these looked better than what was being replaced - total upgrades to their tech.

Wait.

She thought about it. If they had this -massive- platform, had all of these people and hard labor working for them...not only that, but if this was how in-depth their operations were here, it must be the work of one of the three technological artifacts they were sent here to look for. There's no way that they could have done all of this. A scav group is never usually this collected. In fact, it made it seem like they were quite literally building a massive fleet. They could do it, too, once they pull all the metal out of this station. For what ends, she didn't know. This artifact must be the one creating everything they were using. How did it work? Did it refine technology through sheer usage of it? Did it fabricate stuff out of thin air using materials offered to it? 

She clenches her fist. She sees why the Professor wanted this thing. Imagine how powerful they'd become if they could fabricate stuff with raw materials. They could move to any defunct space hulk or scrapyard and repurpose everything easily. It wouldn't even take years to make everything they needed, and the time spent on repairs and creation could be better spent elsewhere. She understood why THEY were sent here. The Professor was hoping they'd bring it back, no questions asked, with Genesis heading this mission. This was a powerful object. They have rushed out the door without knowing what the objects in question do - if only to make us not covet them.

Eve grinds her beak slightly. This was infuriating. Does this mean even the head of the security team wasn't to be trusted either? The asshole had to not understand just how strong these Scavs became with the artifact. She decided to stop pussy footing around. She activates her scouter to track down where her allies are. If she couldn't save them, she might as well go home to be killed. This led her to rush down corridors. There were hardly any people around. In fact, going down the pathed-out ways to reach the others had minimal people. Several side rooms later, she managed to find an open double door. A prison section in this ship? She walked in, and there was a large security panel headed by a multi-armed, multi-eyes octopus-like alien being. It didn't even have legs; it was just this huge...mass.

Along with that, there were several armed guards around the room. She felt them out with energy and realized these guys were nothing compared to her. She pulled out her dagger from its sheath silently. While cloaked, she approached people from their blind spots before expertly stabbing them into their vitals with a ki-infused knife strike. It'd slide in like a hot knife through butter with its reinforced piercing edge. Before the first one dropped, she flipped out a pistol from its holster and aimed at the massive octopus. A single bark of it and a highly condensed ki-blast shot towards it and melted a hole through its body. The metal behind it turned into slag as it slumped over.

The guards were in a panic as she uncloaked. It took a few seconds for two of them to go down. They flipped on their rifles and began to fire at Eve. The woman shot forward low to the ground to dodge the first salvo aimed at her. The body she had stabbed through was filled with holes over their exposed flesh. The armor blocked all of the shots. The armor must've been ridiculously powerful, then. She shouldn't aim for anywhere on it. Her superior agility got her to another guard, who screamed and tried to bash her with the rifle.

It was all in vain as a dagger pierced his lower jaw into his brain. She plucked it out and began to slaughter the guards. It was just confusing to her as to why they were all so...weak. Where did the Scavs go with their expert fighters and well-trained men? Who were these clowns? With the last one killed, the jail room was emptied out of life. She searched them for any keycards for the doors down the jail corridor. She managed to find several with general access and one with higher access. She plucks the higher-access one out of the dead man's pockets before going down the corridor.

Some people were behind forcefields. Not every cell was full, but it seemed like a good few folks were here other than her allies. She rounded down a corner and kept moving forward. On her right, finally, was a jail cell with an increased intensity to the forcefield. Two people were beaten up and looked like hell. Genesis and Gree. They hadn't woken up yet, either. She opened up the forcefield and headed in using the keycard she had just obtained. Using her last two healing syringes, she opens them and stabs them into their thighs.

The duo's equipment is missing; all they are left in is their clothing. Eve finally found her teammates, but now she just needed to wait for them to wake up.

But an alarm started to blare...