73. Into the Whirlwind

Jaden checked on her jarred bug. It clattered against the glass, safe and sound. She swept up the remains to feed them to the ever-eager Quattro. Nox followed her down to engineering and watched Quattro scoff down the remains, all the while keeping an eye out for the shadow she’d seen on arrival. A being of energy maybe, that had been sneaking up behind Marius and Fureva-Yung.
 
Suddenly, a tuneless whistle echoed to them from the hallway. Without a thought, Nox flitted to the door and made a telepathic connection with whatever was making the noise.
Now what, She thought to herself, Hello? Maybe if I just let it know, we can hear it. And through the link, she repeated the tuneless whistle the being was making. The whistle manifested as noise in the hallway, only to be repeated and repeated by the entity feeding back on itself. Everyone clutched their ears as the feedback grew louder, howling through the ship. Fureva-Yung, sensitive to sound at the best of times, and Nox, collapsed into insensible heaps. At least Marius saw Nox fall backwards into a heap, and so did Nox as a form of her picked out in millions of motes of dust turned and watched her body fall away.
Oops!
“Nox! Not again!” Marius said as he looked into the corridor to see tiny whirlwinds picking up dust and debris. It seemed to be gathering in one corner. The wind (though no breeze came from the door leading outside) picked up and started pulling along chunks of synth even metal along the floor. In engineering, the motes that currently made up the conscious Nox were being torn away by the wind. She tried drawing them back to herself by force of will, but the wind was too strong and she started fading away.
 
Maris dove for the spot where he’d noticed the windblown particles collecting, trying to stop whatever it was from forming. Fureva-Yung, barely able to stand, had enough thought to pick up the body of the unconscious Nox and take her out of the room. What was left of the corporeal Nox bamfed back into the cargo hold. The wind still tore at her form taking what little she was left.
Stop! You’re hurting She screamed down the telepathic link.
In the whirlwinds around him, Marius could make out the shape of Nox’s face and hear her screaming, “Stop it! You’re hurting!”
“Break the link! The telepathic link!” He yelled, as pieces of metal and synth started embedding themselves into his skin. The ability he once thought embarrassing, and eventually came to appreciate as his, was being used against him as the pieces started connecting to him and each other. He could feel the being like a weight on his mind. Mentally, he pushed back and the whirlwind shuttered as it was hit his electrical shielding. Fighting his own muscles, Marius made a concussive bomb, tossing it up into the heart of the whirlwind before rolling away.
 
The tiny particles that made up the whirlwind blasted away from each other as the bomb exploded. Around the corner from the brunt of the wind’s force, Fureva-Yung gently placed the body of Nox down and focused a Shattering shout for the centre of the dust. In the storeroom further down the hall, the motes that made up the conscious Nox began to buzz. She’d seen Fureva-Yung’s shout enough times to know what that meant and she quickly dropped the telepathic link with the being and left storage in search of her body.
 
Jaden by this time had pulled out her stun baton and exposed its internal workings to the wind. With a click of the switch, she sent an arch of electricity leaping through the cloud of swirling debris. Big pieces fell to the ground as the creature lost integrity, and the winds slowed in their pace. In the windstorm, a form, vaguely humanoid appeared. It turned to where Fureva-Yung stood in the doorway and sent an arch of green energy toward her. Fureva-Yung ducked behind the wall and the energy blast flew past her as the shattering shout rocked the whirlwind, making the form inside it shudder.
 
More chunks attached themselves to Marius, making his movements stiff and slow. Still, he swung his heat fists at the centre of the whirlwind, his fist cutting through the form. It swayed away from him as if hurt as he slowly rose to his feet.
 
In the hallway, Fureva-Yung saw something behind her and swung around to see the barely perceptible form of Nox. Grabbing her lifeless body, she thrust it at the dust Nox so she was eyeball to eyeball with her own body. For one who found her body an ugly, smelly, gross things at the best of times, to focus on the mucus membranes around the eyes was more horrifying than finding herself a dust cloud. Scanning her body and reaching out with her telepathic link Nox tried reclaiming her body. The dust form of Nox collapsed into a pile of dust.
 
Jaden looked at her baton. The battery was flat. No surprise, she’d used it as it was never intended. She threw the baton back into Bellyache and pulled out an io trying to create the same effect. Though not as dramatic as the broken baton, the io burst struck the coalesing creature, and knock parts of it away. Seeing the impact she was making, Marius pulled out his own baton, and handed it to Jaden. Struggling against his own limbs, Marius knew if she didn’t stop this thing and quick, he was going lose control over his own body.
 
Nox’s eyelids flickered open and she looked at an upside-down battle-scene. She raised her head and saw the big head of Fureva-Yung, a concerned expression on her face.
“Can you put me down, please?” Nox asked politely, knowing she failed at some fundamental level in this encounter. Fureva-Yung complied and carefully placed Nox back on her feet as the last few moments of the battle were being waged in the other room.
 
Marius, charging up his fist until they glowed red, punched out at the whirlwind being. Though made of millions of particles and fragments of debris, the whole cloud glowed red with the heat from his hands before the winds suddenly stopped and it all fell into a pile of dust.
 
After the feedback and howling winds, silence descended like a lead weight. Fureva-Yung, her head still ringing from the initial attack slumped to the floor beside Nox.
“Yeah, let’s just take a breather,” Marius said, pulling now inactive parts from his flesh and went investigating the whirlwind debris.
 
Nox stood thinking over what she’d experienced connected to the being.
What if I could just leave my body like that whenever I wanted?" she thought, concentrating on the link between the conscious being and the particles. Suddenly, Fureva-Yung reached out to catch Nox's unconscious body once more as her consciousness rose from the dust at her feet.
“Oh, I get it. It was the manifestation of a template of a being…something leaked from the datasphere and made physical by the manipulation of small particles. I wish we’d got to talk to it,” She said excitedly as she tried to pull more of the dust to herself to build up her incorporal form. Suddenly, the dust collapsed into a pile again, and for the second time she found herself in Fureva-Yung’s arms.
 
Amongst the piles from the whirlwind, Marius found a few interesting cyphers and the group spent their break imagining uses for a cypher that teleported you a short distance each time you were hit.
 
When Fureva-Yung felt strong enough to continue, she marched to the last unopened cargo hold and put her magic arm against the door. The door complied, as best it could before Fureva-Yung helped it with her magic crowbar. Inside the hold was one large shipping container, at least a metre wide to a side and twice as high. It had no sign saying what was inside, but Fureva-Yung found a small tag with a coded label of alternating black and white bars. Her bracelet scanned the code and confirmed what they had hoped for, a crystal prison.
 
Carefully, they opened the crate and looked at the large crystal attached to a metal base.
“We’re going to need some way to interface with that when we get to Celeron,” Jaden, always thinking, started sketching something into her notebook.
“Right now, I’m wondering how we get this back to Tiltspire,” Marius asked, concerned.
“I could try bamfing it back,” Nox said dubiously. It looked heavy and dense. She wasn’t sure if her teleport could move something so…complicated.
 
“What about the other truck?” Fureva-Yung finally suggested and went to the larger storage area. One vehicle was destroyed. Where the bugs hadn’t eaten it away, the explosion had blown it to pieces. But the second vehicle still stood in pristine condition, just waiting for Fureva-Yung’s magic arm. With the use of warehouse equipment the crystal and its crate were moved from the smaller storage room to the flatbed of the truck. Fureva-Yung opened the large doors to the storage, letting in the real breeze from outside. It scattered the last of the dust away into corners where it stayed.
 
Piling into the vehicle, Fureva-Yung revved the engine and dropped the handbrake. The truck shot out of the ship like a bullet from a gun, landed on its all-terrain wheels and headed south and Tiltspire leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.