Private Ghost Whispers

[Loomi]

Ghost Whispers
Galactic Alliance Space
Tags: Cailen Corso

Destress calls came in all the time. It was a large perilous galaxy after all, after all, filled with all kinds of dangers that could force a vessel to make an SOS. It wasn't often that those signals came from uninhabited vessels though. This was a very standard operation as far as the Jedi were concerned. A CR90 had sent out a call for aid and a team was dispatched to assist, two padawan learners. When they arrived they received no response when they hailed the vessel. So the pair docked with the vessel and boarded.

Loomi, of course, was nervous in all of this. Everything had been strange lately ever since she had returned from Ukatis. Her body had changed, though it wasn't really all that different aside from the wings that she had grown. A rare mutation amongst her kind it turned out, and what turned out to be a fairly useless one. They were far too small to allow for flight and rather fragile all things considered. That just made her feel more awkward. Between the wings, her antennae, yellow skin, and mechanical legs the Godoan was a complete confusion to the eye.

It gave her a bit more pressure to do well in front of her peers.

They stepped into the CR90 and it quickly became apparent that something was wrong. The ship was dark and the air was so cold a thin layer of mist had set in the halls. Only the red emergency lights illuminated a path forward. Loomi frowned, nervously looking to the other padawan present.

"I-Is it supposed to be this cold?" she asked with a shiver. "I-I know that space is cold, b-but this seems a bit much for just a lapse in power..."

Or maybe she was just paranoid. The teen often was.

 

[Cailen Corso]

​

A cool shiver ran down Cailen's spine as they entered the dim halls of the ship. The skin on his arms had pricked beneath his sleeves, and he suddenly wished fingerless gloves weren't a staple in his mission attire.

"No, this is... strange," he answered, his tone a bit confused. Cailen had spent his entire life around ships and tech; They never got this cold unless something was seriously wrong, and even then...

He pursed his lips and blew out a thick puff of mist.

"I'm not sure what's causing this. I wonder if the ship's life support failed, or maybe the thermal gauges are busted."

Cailen looked to Loomi and gave her a kind smile. He could tell she was nervous, and he was too, truthfully. A distress signal alone is enough to get your nerves wired, but an abandoned ship with minimal power and an icy chill in the air? That would put even a Jedi Master on edge. Cailen nodded toward the red-glowing hall ahead of them, and took a few small steps into the ship.

"C'mon, we can do this," he said.

---

Tags: Loomi ​

 

[Loomi]

Galactic Alliance Space
Tags: Cailen Corso

"No, this is... strange,"

Loomi was practically shivering now, rubbing at her exposed shoulders. She was not dressed for this kind of temperature, but at least she wasn't crazy.

This was wrong. They both were pretty sure of it.

"O-okay," she nodded, her antennae flattening nervously as she tried to muster her confidence. "I-I'm ready, I think."

Very quickly her blade was drawn, and the two would begin to slowly make their way down the corridor. The Godoan's mechanical legs made a soft clunk with each step, sending soft vibrations out from the metal floor below their feet. The entire ship was this way; Dark, cold, sterile, and dimly lit. Worse was the sickly feeling about the air that made her stomach turn. The young pair of wings on her back flitted anxiously as she clutched onto her strange blade.

"M-maybe someone did this?" she suggested. "Th-the crew is nowhere to be seen, i-it could be sabotage-"

The Godoan froze in her tracks. Movement. She could feel vibrations further ahead that were not their own, the echoes of movement in the force. She frowned, stepping back slightly as chills went down her spine. They were slow. Shuffling almost. No doubt about it though, somebody was up ahead.

"T-two people ahead," Loomi muttered. "They... feel like they're moving weird. I don't like it."

 

[Cailen Corso]

​

"I sense it, too," Cailen said, his feet coming to a stop. He couldn't judge their movements, though. But he did feel a strangeness in the Force. Something was not at all okay. He looked to Loomi, then back to the corridor ahead. He wanted to call out to them, but the words lumped up in his throat. Instead, he stepped closer, trying to see better through the red glow that peered through the mist.

He could hear them now, shuffling along through the hall. Were they wounded?

"H-hello?" Cailen called ahead. "I'm Padawan Corso, and this is my friend, Loomi," he said. He gave her an uneasy smile, but he knew it wouldn't do much to calm her. It was more for his own sake, really.

"We're here to help you."

He listened for a response, but none came. Only the dragging of feet against the floor, but now, it seemed it was coming toward them. Cailen's hand lowered to the twin blades on his belt.

"Are you alright?" he dared to ask the silhouettes that shifted closer, like crimson ghosts in the mist.

---

Tags: Loomi ​

 

[Loomi]

Galactic Alliance Space
Tags: Cailen Corso

"C-Cailen," Loomi hissed, tensing up. "S-something isn't right. Th-they feel cold!"

The two individuals in question turned, revealing a ghastly sight. Their faces were withered, shriveled up. Had they not had open eyes they looked like walking corpses. The force moved through them, but not the bodies. Rather, it was something within that was alive, piloting the husks of members of the crew that were very clearly no longer with the living.

"Everything is fine, children..." one muttered. "Just stand still."

Loomi's singular eye honed in on the one that was further back. She saw it: some kind of tendril had just gone from one nostril to the other. What was it?

She didn't have time to think. In an instant the two individuals broke out into a sprint, snarling like wild animals. Loomi raised her blade, preparing to defend herself and her companion. Whatever this was, she very much didn't want to find out what would happen when it reached them.

 

[Cailen Corso]

​

Cailen's cyan blade ignited, casting bright light against the shamblers that were coming at them. He swung decisively, slicing the closest man's hands off at the wrists. The snarls turned to screeches of pain and rage, and then he saw it - a worm-like creature, snaking from the man's nostril and into his open mouth. Cailen didn't have time to shudder. He struck again, bisecting the man diagonally across the chest.

He spared only a moment to confirm it was truly dead before his eyes shot up. The second shambler was going for his friend.

"Loomi!" the Padawan shouted, "look out!"

---

Tags: Loomi ​

 

[Loomi]

Galactic Alliance Space
Tags: Cailen Corso

Loomi hesitated for a moment, but she quickly got a hold of herself, readying her blade and stepping forward. The water-like surface of the weapon shifted, becoming solid and easily gliding through the reanimated corpse. More importantly she had felt for the worm within, honing in on the vibrations it made as it moved around the host it had found itself within. A shudder went down her spine as she watched the corpse drop. They were already dead, but...

"I-I'm okay," Loomi insisted with a sigh.

She frowned, crouching down to assess the strange worm that had been in the body of the dead crew. Some kind of parasite.

"W-what is this thing?" she asked with a shiver. "W-where did they find it?"

Whatever it was, it was clear now that this was the source of the problem.

 

[Cailen Corso]

​

Cailen's bladework seemed to have caught the worm when he cut down the shambler, but Loomi's attacker - or, what was inside her attacker - was luckier. He watched from above as the creature writhed on the floor, naked and vulnerable without its host. He couldn't stand to look at it.

"Whatever it is," Cailen said, stomping the worm hard beneath his boot, "it's not on our side."

The worm let out a faint hiss as it was crushed. Cailen shuddered, bringing his eyes upward and looking to the corridors that stretched ahead. There would be more for sure, but maybe a few of the crew had survived? Hidden in a sealed room, or even in the escape pods.

"W-where did they find it?"

"Could have been anywhere," Cailen said with a roll of his shoulders. He'd never heard of brain worms like this before.

"Maybe the ship's logs have something. Travel records, or a cargo manifest. There's gotta be something."

---

Tags: Loomi ​

 

[Loomi]

Galactic Alliance Space
Tags: Cailen Corso

"Maybe the ship's logs have something. Travel records, or a cargo manifest. There's gotta be something."

"Sh-should we send a message back to the order?" Loomi asked. "If some kind of outbreak is happening, m-maybe they should know about it."

Loomi was eager to prove her worth and start pulling her own weight, but she didn't want to be the person who messed everything up as well. It might be smart to take some precautions. Other than that though, she did give a confident look to her companion.

"But... I'm willing to go for the logs if you are," she affirmed.

Cailen seemed to know ships pretty well. She trusted him.

 

[Cailen Corso]

​

“Good idea,” Cailen said, fighting his boyish urge to play hero and suggest they split up. He could handle the parasites - the hosts? - but he knew better than to risk the mission to prove he was a strong apprentice.

Master Noble didn’t need a corpse as evidence of the gains he’d made these last few months.

“Let’s push a signal to the Jedi, then we go for the logs. I’ve seen ships like this before… I think I can find the terminal and slice in, as long as the emergency generators are still juicing up the subsystems.”

If they weren’t, then the Padawans were in for a sketchy trip to the engine room… in the dark… with those… things…

Cailen gulped when Loomi wasn’t looking.

“Right,” he said, more to himself than to her.

“Let’s do it.”

---

Tags: Loomi ​

 

[Loomi]

Galactic Alliance Space
Tags: Cailen Corso

"R-right," Loomi nodded.

She was quick to activate the emergency fob that they had been given, then it was off into the depths of the vessel. Loomi frowned a little at Cailen's confident tone. He was putting on a brave face, but the Godoan knew he was afraid too. She was becoming more and more susceptible to the emotions of others by the day. Her latent empathic abilities made it hard to bluff to her. Not that she'd point out such a thing, of course. That would be rude, and she didn't want to make it seem like she was being intrusive on purpose.

Loomi didn't know how to turn the empath stuff off.

They'd continue towards the bridge, the frigid halls only getting darker. Strangely enough though there were no further crew members to be seen. Loomi immediately got to theorizing.

"M-maybe the temperature was dropped because they need the dead crew to stay fresh," she noted. "I-If they've decayed too much they may not be able to... control them, I guess." A shudder went down the teen's spine. "Th-they may be running out of hosts."

So they activated a distress beacon to speed up the infection process. Or at least that was the best working theory she had. It was better to try and understand a situation when tackling it then to go in with an empty head.

"Maybe," she shrugged uncertainly. "I-I don't know entirely how these things work."

 

[Cailen Corso]

​

“Maybe it wasn’t the hosts who killed the heaters,” Cailen posited.

“Maybe… maybe the worms can’t survive when it’s cold? The crew could have set the distress beacon before freezing out the ship. Kill them off before someone like us came and stepped into a whole nest of them.”

It was idealistic. Naïve, even. But he wanted to believe some part of the crew had survived.

He shrugged to himself, keeping his eyes on the floor as they stepped. He didn’t want anything snaking up his legs. They had no idea what these things were, and even a single hitchhiker brought back to Coruscant could be… bad. Really bad.

He shivered at the thought, trying to stay focused.

They rounded another vacant corner, bringing the sealed door to the bridge into view. A single red light glowed ominously over the access panel. The keypad was smeared in a dark red liquid that ran down the wall to the floor, then deeper into the corridor. Cailen gulped as he stepped closer, trying to determine the security level from the panel’s casing.

“I-I think I can get by this,” he said, kneeling away from the blood.

“Yeah. It’s pretty standard stuff… I just need a minute to crack it.”

---

Tags: Loomi ​

 

[Loomi]

Galactic Alliance Space
Tags: Cailen Corso

“Yeah. It’s pretty standard stuff… I just need a minute to crack it.”

"O-okay," Loomi shivered. "J-just... make it quick please."

She was very much on edge. Loomi leaned against the wall for a moment in an attempt to conserve her energy when she felt vibrations again. Slow movement. Her antennae twitched as she quickly got back to attention. It wasn't long before three more figures appeared, bodies shriveled and eyes sunken. The Godoan reached out in the force and... nothing. They were dead as well. Loomi reacted quickly, drawing threads from the force and quickly yanking down the emergency blast door that stood between them and the zombies.

"I-I think they know where we are," she murmured.

 

[Cailen Corso]

​

Cailen noticed Loomi's change in demeanor before he saw the zombies, but it wasn't long until he caught their movement in his peripheral.

"Almost- there-" he said, biting the side of his tongue as he spliced a pair of freshly cut wires together. They sparked, sending a jolt of electricity through the keypad that changed the screen from orange to green.

A moment later, the blast door slammed into the floor. Cailen startled at the sudden noise, but there wasn't time to do anything else but run. The splice would only last so long, and he couldn't keep the corpses from tampering with it from the outside once the bridge was sealed behind them.

"C'mon!" he told her, prying open the heavy doors with his hands. The emergency power was strong enough to unlock the door, but not to slide them open.

He finally let out a shuddered breath when they were inside the bridge. It was just as dark as the corridors outside, but the air felt slightly warmer here. The life support seemed to still be operating at some capacity, which was a good sign for any potential crewmates still alive onboard. Cailen stepped carefully toward the center of the room, eyeing the hard shadows on the edges of the bridge with sharp eyes.

"The data logs would be on the captain's terminal," Cailen informed, slowing his steps as he looked around.

"Let's hope he didn't have a password."

The boy flashed Loomi a corny grin, hoping to lighten the mood a bit.

---

Tags: Loomi ​