Infinity: The Monday Signal – Last Signal

Corvus Belli präsentieren ein letztes Signal der „The Monday Signal“ Kampagne für Infinity.

Infinity: The Last Signal

Officially, the docking facility carried a designation of letters and numbers assigned by bureaucrats who had never walked its corridors. To most people it was simply another port hanging in the black above Shinju: ships arrived, ships departed, fortunes were made and lost. Ruby Monday always loved places like that.

 

No one paid attention to yet another stranger moving through the crowd, especially not one as eccentric as she was. Her body was more machine than human these days so clothes mostly felt redundant but the stolen dockworker’s coat lent her an air of anonymity in the crowd. It also did wonders to hide the cleaver and grenades on her belt. She drifted through the station with her hands buried in her pockets, her pace unhurried, though every instinct urged her to run. For days, the buzzing beneath her skin had grown steadily louder.

 

Most people imagined pain as something sharp. Ruby’s wasn’t. It was a low vibration buried deep inside her bones, as though somewhere within her skeleton an invisible tuning fork had been struck and somehow the noise was eating her alive. The closer she drew to her destination, the more that vibration faded; fading like an echo with each step. She didn’t need leads or clues this close, she simply followed the lessening ache. It led her to a broad observation gallery overlooking one of the station’s many secondary docks.

 

A freighter rested within the docking arms while crews hurried to finish loading the last of its cargo. It was old, its hull marked by decades of repairs, but it had been cared for. Someone expected it to travel a long way. Ruby barely noticed the ship. Her attention was drawn to the feeling blooming inside her ribs. Somewhere inside that vessel they waited. All three…

 

For a long moment she simply stood at the glass. Months ago, she had hidden the BoneGates where no one could ever find them. The trio of small artifacts had been the luckiest find of her career. Each barely larger than the grenades in her pockets, the set made her practically invincible to the traps and defenses in the ruins she delved. Not to mention the calming effect it had over the tech overwriting her body. Making Bubbles docile had been the icing on the cake.

“Idiot.”

Ruby had been cursing herself for days. Life expectancy was short for a Sāchā so her ‘deadman’ messages made an amusing, if not nihilistic, sort of sense at the time.  In hindsight it was hubris in its finest form; not that Ruby did anything by half-measures. In the end, she had simply been arrested. Well… arrested by an AI powered bot army that demanded she guide them through yet more alien ruins on the moon. In all fairness, she had not foreseen THAT. Despite the chaos that followed, ALEPH had made good on their offer to wipe her record and dismiss all warrants. Not all of it was her fault after all…

Ruby laughed aloud, ignoring the passerbyes and the strange looks thrown her way. The vibration became almost unbearable when her prize had left the planet. It was like standing beside a concert speaker while every note played just slightly off key. Being this close was a sweet release. Then she noticed the escorts. A Bakunin patrol craft drifted into position beyond the dock. A Corregidor gunship answered from the opposite side, while the sleek silhouette of a Tunguska security vessel watched from farther out, keeping respectful distance without ever relaxing its vigilance. Ruby’s mirth faded and she exhaled slowly.

 

„So…“ A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. „…all three of you, huh?“

 

The freighter eased away from the station with practiced grace. Its escorts formed around it almost immediately, three very different ships moving with practiced precision; a clandestine Krug in miniature. Ruby watched until the convoy crossed beyond the station’s traffic lanes and began a burn toward open space. The farther they traveled, the worse the pain became. She gripped the railing until her metallic knuckles whitened in a cruel parody of flesh. The relief that had guided her here was stretching thinner, like a wire pulled almost to its breaking point. Every meter the convoy gained pulled at something buried inside her body. The buzzing became a howl that rattled her teeth and settled behind her eyes. She shut them.

 

„Easy…“ The next thought never reached her lips. She didn’t need words. The implants woven through her nervous system answered before she consciously asked. Music bloomed inside her mind. The melody was a warm and immediate change, replacing the static with rhythm. Bass rolled through her chest while soft vocals settled over the aching frequencies like fresh snow. The pain didn’t disappear. It never did, but the music gave it somewhere to go. When she opened her eyes again, the convoy had become three distant lights escorting a fourth into the darkness beyond Shinju. Her breathing slowed and she released the railing, noticing the imprint her hand left behind. Ruby smiled despite herself.

 

„Run.“ Her voice was almost lost beneath the song only she could hear. „I love a good chase.“

She slipped her hands into her pockets and turned away from the viewport. The station continued around her exactly as it always had: dockworkers shouted, engines rumbled, and travelers hurried toward departures that suddenly felt so very ordinary. No one noticed the woman walking against the crowd with music in her head and impossible technology screaming silently within her bones.

They had taken her BoneGates. In all fairness she dared them to. Out amongst the stars they would be beyond reach but the ache in Ruby’s bones remained, dulled by the rhythm flowing through her implants but never truly gone. Somewhere beyond Shinju, three impossible machines were slipping farther into the darkness.

 

„So much for doing this alone.“

 

The words escaped as little more than a sigh. Ruby closed her eyes. With a thought. The Technorganic lattice woven through her brain reached silently into the quantronic datasphere, searching until it found a connection she had spent far too long pretending she didn’t need. She hesitated. Pride was a funny thing. It had gotten her through more than one impossible day. It had also stranded her on more than one impossible night. With a reluctant breath, she opened the channel.

///Hey, Pandora.///

For a heartbeat, there was only the quiet pulse of the connection and the music filling the empty spaces in her mind. Then an achingly familiar voice purred.

///Hello Ruby.///

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