Vortship - Tumblr Posts
@vortship started following stxr-bxster
“...Why do I suddenly feel the urge to kick a grub like a lob-ball?”
Krigg’s never had much of a maternal instinct, or proclivity to handle hatchlings in any capacity, despite having been through the station’s fostering system with often younger grubs. Despite being commonly identified by other of her specie as having a rearing type, she had just never developped those urges. Junior cadets at the academy, she could somewhat manage - the age gap wasn’t so great they were completely alien to her, and they usually took positively to an older trainee teaching them the ropes.
But after reaching adulthood, hatchlings and teens, especially their more unwise antics, had gotten... annoying. She had some patience for them, as anyone should, but...
Brother, when they thought they were slick and started playing the “fuck around and find out” game, they made Krigg want to start throwing hands.
@vortship
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrip-
Krigg casually discarded the removable pin of her cup of instant broth noodles over her shoulder, reclining back into the pilot seat of her ship. In a string of hisses and faint bubbling noises, the cup’s built-in heat pack brought the contents to a pleasant temperature. The covering followed the pin suit, and she eagerly dug into the warm food, bringing a heaping ball of soupy noodles to her mouth.
Slurrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppp-
Hmmm. Not bad. Krigg chewed slowly, watching the view of the big blue marble her ship was orbiting. It had life on it - because of course it had, but she’d decided to sneakily plant herself behind a clump of space debris and to stabilize the Revenger there for a few rotations. She didn’t exactly NEED to go planetside, or to even come into the planet’s orbit, but it was always a little more convenient to continue one’s journey after accumulating some passive momentup from going a few times around a planet.
Plus, she wanted to recharge the ship’s solar batteries. So might as well loaf around on low ship power and take a little relaxing break from cruising through the cosmos in a straight line.
Beep!
Or not. Krigg got up on one elbow from her leaning posture, stopping mid-chew. She looked over to the ship’s dashboard, where passive scans were reporting transcripts for some unusual comms arrays. She leaned towards them, squinting. Something about the wavelenghts and equipment that denoted made a faint itch pop in at the back of her mind - oh she knew those signals, she knew them, she KNEW THEM-
“...The hell are THEY doing there?” She grumbled. Oh, now she remembered. And she was more confused - Irken signals, in the litteral ASS END of nowhere, far away from conquered space?
Krigg grimaced. She didn’t like those guys in a very personnal manner. She thought they were honestly creepy. But if this was just a probe broadcasting things, the prospect of tearing it apart for the hell of it was enough to put a giddy little grin on her face.
Oh, what the hell. She could use some action. Slowly, Krigg backed up the Revenger from its hiding spot, toggled on the optical camo, and zipped Planetside, claws drumming eagerly on the ship’s controls. Maybe this WOULD be interesting!
vortship:
Human hackers really thought they were hot stuff, didn’t they?
Pretty presumptuous for a species who only went to their own moon once and just got cameras on their phones a few cycles ago. Hal wasn’t worried. Sitting on her knees with her legs splayed out behind her, clacking away at a broken, sticker-laden keyboard, Hal decided she’d show this one who the superior tech-whiz was… whiz… what did that word mean anyway? It sounded funny. Obviously this was someone hired by that human tech billionaire to stop her from emptying his bank account into a ‘Save the Whales’ fund. Not for nothing but he had tried to cheat her, and she had warned him. Did he think she was bluffing?
Well, she was, at the time, but it turns out whales are big and cute and sing songs and have best friends so now she’d love to give them more money.
Music blasting, she furrowed her brow. Hal wasn’t going to be distracted by anything. No way was she going to go topside and check on what that strange whirring noise outside was- wait a minute. Strange whirring noise? The girl’s gaze took on a hint of concern, she knew that sound. A ship? Here? Humans didn’t have ships, just those weird long tubes with the wings. This definitely didn’t sound like one of those. Ugh, billionaire bro would have to wait- this might be a sign of something very bad.
“…aaaaack no no nonono!”
Time for some damage control. Some major ‘human’ damage control. She’d venture to bet her disguise was so amazing, no bounty hunter or galactic authority would know The Halinor Nima set up a secret base here. Donning her disguise, she headed up to the surface where the strange ship was waiting. It didn’t come from any species she recognized… it looked too heavily modified to tell. Florp, this being was going to attract all kinds of unwanted attention!
“Oh wow an alien etcetera etcetera!” she could move past that part, right? Cool.
“What. The hell.”
Krigg had a rather ugly expression of disgruntlement on her face as she squinted through the cockpit glass and the faint shimmer of the optical camo at what the ship’s scans has been tugging her slow descent towards. Now in stationary flight, she was given the full luxury of taking a look at what was leaking those foreign signals across the atmosphere like a burst pipe.
A house. A ding-dang HOUSE, with walls an icky shade of bright purple, a janky-looking antennae on the roof, and that looked like it had been dropped from the sky in the middle of dense woodland.
Krigg leaned back into her seat with a groan, reaching to run her hand over her face. Well, whatever the source of the signal was, it was smack dab on top of that vexingly placed dwelling. Over, under, or around - the Revengers’ scanners were made to pick up things across space, they didn’t do so well with pinpoint precision of such a tiny scale. If she wanted more details on what the hell was going on, she’d need to take her goggles, and actually make landfall.
She could park the Revenger somewhere - she trusted it was pretty much airtight, as far as transmissions went. The radio and scanner shieldings were secure. Only way she could get into trouble would have been some dumb shmuck stumbling upon it and actually SEEING the bloody thing.
...But even then, was it even worth the effort? If the house was on top of the probe, she might as well give up right then and th-
Oh, would you look at that, someone was home, and waltzing out to look square at the ship. As though breaking the prime directive NEEDED to be part of the whole situation. Krigg groaned, sinking somehow even lower in her seat and flicking on the audio recievers of the ship as she noticed the local look up at the ship. Hopefully, her translator could keep up with her-
Surprisingly mild reaction to a big, shimmering, color-changing ship-shaped form in the sky. Huh. Krigg slowly got back up to a sitting position, and this time, her permanent grumpy pout had something inquisitive to it. Naw, if the local primitive sapient was used to aliens, the more logical reaction would have been throwing junk at her ship in aggravation, or being at least kind of spooked.
Her finger hovered over the audio reception... and moved over to the scans, pressing down with a tap. Actually, maybe there was a third option to a probe or a whole invader. Stolen tech. And the least convincing acting game she’d ever been witness to.
“Now, hold still a minute. This should only tickle.” Krigg’s voice blared out in intergalactic common from the still cloaked ship, somehow managing to sound lazy despite the crackle of static popping from the loudspeakers over it. And the slow rumbling buzz of the engines. Well, it wouldn’t tickle per se - more like make her feel like she was vibrating like beans in a can. Which, technically, still tickled. It was basic proximity sonar, after all. And a few other things. None of which caused cancer in living beings at least.
A wily smile crept up Krigg’s face as the ship fed the results through the screens. “...Well, that’s one topological analysis that doesn’t quiiiiiiiite track, does it? Question is, are you spitting out why, or am I gonna’ have to come out and check?”
vortship:
Hal managed to squint through the dust this being’s ship kicked up as it lowered closer to her base. The girl waved her arms in a panic, piping up in protest, although it appeared to be too late. This person was landing, and whoever it was, Hal probably wasn’t going to like it. Should she even bother reacting like a human would to this display? Or cut the act entirely? Either one was worth a try right now, and neither seemed like they were going to work.
More prison, years more prison, she’d have under her belt if what she was certain was a bounty hunter found her here, on this dirt rock lightyears from her home. She’d probably never see freedom again with the number of crimes under her belt- showing no signs of stopping. She hadn’t stayed out of trouble on Earth for too long either, it always seemed to seek her out. Well- not exactly, maybe she sought it out. Just a little bit. Her mind wandered to what she planned today’s activities to be, saving those poor whales at the expense of some tech bro… it hadn’t taken her long at all to get up to the same antics she got up to on Vort.
But the ship didn’t land, it stopped seemingly in mid air, and from it, she heard a voice. A tickle? What was she-? The girl grit her teeth as she suddenly felt shaky and weird. Oh no. She was using some kind of super weapon, wasn’t she? Hal wasn’t unfamiliar with bio scanners, they had them on Moo Ping 9, afterall, linked to every delinquent’s bio-signature to prevent escape. They weren’t too hard to fool either, had she known ahead of time this nightmare was going to unfold. Her mind was merely in a dazed panic, jumping to the worst-case scenario. Wait, topographical analysis… she had to mean her own ship… the one sending out no-doubt Irken signals. Hal breathed a small sigh of relief.
Time for some horrible damage control.
“I’m no Irken if that’s what you’re seeing!” Hal yelled over the ship’s whirring, “Ugh, okay here, I’ll show you!” Hal took a precautionary look around, no humans as far as she could see. Good, at least that was one less thing to worry about.
Taking a deep breath, she reached into her pocket for the controls to her hologram. The image of her standing there distorted briefly, then disappeared entirely. The tiny creature it left in it’s wake had pink skin, gray horns where red hair once was, and most notably, hocked, zig-zag shaped legs.
“Vortian!” she explained, gesturing wildly to herself, “Not Irken!”
Krigg’s front body slowly leaned towards the ship’s cockpit, staring with wide eyes through the glass at what had just popped out from the hardlight holographic disguise - nothing to sneeze at, just good tech in general.
“What in the florp-fearing fuck.” She’d worry about the fact that very much came through the ship’s speakers, which she’d very much forgotten to turn off, later.
A Vortian. A tiny, squeaky Vortian girl - they weren’t particularly big to start with, but this one was just a little smaller than what Krigg remembered about the race. Which arguably, wasn’t a whole lot. They lived in fuckland compared to where she’d originated from in the galaxy, so the number of Vortians she’d seen in her travels was low enough that her knowledge of their race was summary at best.
Small, obligate carnivory, exceedingly skilled technicians, allergic to most processed goods containing too much fluorite... Antennae grew with age. And this one was missing a segment or two. Juvie?
“Okay, okay - I believe you, I believe you! Chill, nymph, chill!” Krigg would worry later about whether being called a Nymph was offensive to members of other species. Clawed fingers flew across the controls, inputting a series of commands to her ship’s stabilizers. A slow buzz rattled across the craft, followed by a hiss of powering down engines. The Revenger, however, did not go any further down, and remained frozen in place in mid-air, not making a sound above a low murmur. Kill the engines, engage all the shieldings, gravity-lock the ship... check.
A moment of silence passed. Krigg reached over to pass her paw over her head.
“Geez... You need to check the shielding on whatever you nicked off from those weirdos.” She began, sitting up properly. “I got Irken tech signals while on high orbit, and I just thought it was some random science probe I could loot. I was wrong, but you trying to hide it was just plain sketchy - thought you were some form of smuggler, or defector, or something like that. Then again, I’ve never seen a Vortian dumb or bold enough to yoink their shit like that!”
Krigg let out a peal of laughter, slapping one knee in delight as a smirk slowly crept up her face. “You don’t have to worry about me, I might do bounty hunting, but I don’t take their credits. They yuck my yum by just existing. I just got curious about the wayward signals - and now I know why those are a thing!”
“Say...” The grin turned mischievous. Krigg could smell an opportunity. “Think you could part with some junk?”