Things Don't Just... (FT)

The Rhean scientists are brought to the Raptor in time to hear the story.

Shein just raises a brow. "Talking to Thorgood?" He shakes his head. "Never mind. Maybe if you do just let him talk through you, someone here will understand it and the solution will be found more quickly?" Either he's thinking she's completely off her rocker or putting some stock into this.

Teresa winces. "Only sort of talking to Thorgood. A copy of his whole consciousness wouldn't have fit in my brain. I just wish he picked less annoying parts of his personality. And he doesn't have the solution. Only the most 'elegant' way of stating the problem. I'll commit it to writing wherever you want it."

Shein nods and hands her a datapad. "Here."

The Rutian scientists show up, hopefully to help make sense of all this.

They take notes.

Thorgood lays out the problem through Teresa, who puts it in the datapad.

The Harlequin who has been hovering near the Rutian probe seemingly dormant suddenly opens his eyes. "The engagements on the Other Side fare badly. The Hunted fear that the war may spill over to this side and ask that the ThisSiders be warned."

The telepath relays the news.

Shein lets the scientists deal with the datapad, though he does talk to Teresa. "Now that the problem has been transcribed, I do want details. Exactly who is this Harlequin and what is his role in all of this? How did all of this happen anyway? I got what you said about remnants, but how did they manage this?"

"The Harlequin are a species that share a common ancestor with the Burninites, actually," Teresa says. "They live in the Warp, which is kind of like the space between universes, which is where our people are now trapped. The Harlequin are a mysterious species. I'm surprised they've deigned to talk to you at all. They almost never contact us, either as an individual or as a group. I've heard they're quite imposing as a group. Anyway, I digress. As to their role in all this, we're not exactly sure. We think their abilities to transport themselves anywhere and survive both in and out of this universe has something to do with a possible link between them and the Laughing God, who we believe used to hide from Slaaneesh in the Warp before Slaaneesh's recent demise at the hands of your gods and our combined telepathic forces.

"I'll combine the second two questions and tell you it as I understand it. So the Dark Burninites, the degenerates of Burninite society before the Fall, used to act basically as roving pirates until some long-extinct civilization hunted them away. We think it was a race we call the Tau, but histories immediately following the Fall are scattered. They found some way to escape into the Warp themselves, and regrouped. They're more advanced than we are. More evolved. Also, inherently evil. Their minds are twisted beyond recognition. Apparently after building their strength some, they practiced by trying to commit genocide on the Harlequin. They failed, but do now control most of The Warp.

"Burninites are the sworn enemies of the Dark Burninites, who see us as hopelessly inferior to them. Slaaneesh himself likely ordered our destruction at some point, which is probably the basis of some of their hatred. The disdain is mutual; they represent just how decadent Burninite civilization was before the end. They're the worst of the worst.

"In any case, we expected their attack when we saw it coming, and marshaled our fleet to counter. We should have won easily. But somehow they found a way to transport us all, or almost all, into the Warp. Many were killed by the transport process, and the Dark Burninites destroyed two of our moon bases simply by not diverting enough power to transport them properly. Now the way I understand it, the walls between universes are invisible to us in The Warp and they are constantly rippling. So many of us were destroyed by smashing into invisible walls we could not see nor detect.

"They took the upper hand. They had surprise and home field advantage at that point. Thorgood was able to modify Trans-Warp Drivers to work inside the Warp relatively quickly, and we evacuated to the Craftworlds, so we escaped destruction and abandoned the planets to them. Losses number in the millions, not yet the billions, thank the Gods. But we're basically playing the mouse in a game for our lives in the Warp. When they catch us, we fight to flee again. They'll win eventually though unless we find a way back."

She pauses for a moment. "That pretty much covers it. Have you any water by any chance? I'm parched."

She cocks her head to the side, possibly listening to something Thorgood has to say.

Shein nods to a member of the crew. The Comideran woman goes to get some water for Teresa. She's not gone long.

In the meantime, Shein frowns a little. "I'm going to assume the contact is because we have telepaths. If we didn't, I'm sure we'd eventually have been ignored. At least that's probably the logical explanation." He shrugs. "So, it's a matter of getting the good guys out and leave the bad guys there?"

"Well they seem to have a way to travel in and out of the Warp, so such a method exists. We just have to find it. Once they lose the advantage of having us in their den, as it were, we can take care of it. So not so much a get us out, leave them there as just a get us out," Teresa responds.

Then, three things happen.

First, Teresa clasps her head as though she has just gotten a migraine.

Then, the ship receives a hail with an IFF from The Spotlight, though sensors do not detect the presence of Thorgood's ship anywhere in the vicinity.

Thirdly, the Harlequin that was previously communicating with the Rutians snaps to attention, one of those lance-looking weapons appearing in its hand, and whirls around, but a Dark Burninite ship appears behind him, immediately showering him with fire. Despite being such an extraordinary creature in many ways, it reacts the same way any other being would to being peppered with fire. The Harlequin dies, its body torn apart by the ship.

Again, less than a second having passed, the ship turns to face the Rutian fighter and probe that the Harlequin was talking to...

One of the scientists sends out a message back to Rhea recommending they send a Star Destroyer or two over.

And the fighter disappears. The probe, however, doesn't.

Shein takes all this in stride. He's used to weird at this point. He also agrees with the Rheans.

A half hour or so later, a pair of Star Destroyers arrive to the group's location.

(OOC: Rut, it seems that Thorgood is actually trying to communicate with the Raptor. You didn't comment -- should I assume you've received the message and accepted, ie post the contents of the message?)

(OOC: Oops. Yeah, I missed that.)

The hail is received, though just about everyone is confused regarding it. It's answered by a hesitant "yes?" from a female Comideran. Shein rolls his eyes at the Comideran, but doesn't correct her. New crewperson maybe?

The two Star Destroyers begin their approach to cover the Raptor.

"This is ProtoConsul Thorgood of Burnination," the transmission says. "Am I to understand that you're actually receiving this from a location either in Burninite or Rutian space? This is the Raptor, right? Oh, my personal auth code is Alpha Charlie Delta Bravo Sixteen, if you were going to ID me."

The probe registers this: several more Harlequins appear and fire on the Dark Burninite ship with their lance devices, destroying it. However, they are immediately surrounded by more Dark Burninites, then torn apart by fire.

More Harlequins appear, surrounding and destroying THOSE ships.

How many of them are out there?

At that point, Shein takes over with the communications. "Sorry about that, Thorgood. Not every day we get a transmission from out of, well, nowhere. Yes, you have reached the Raptor and I recognise your voice. Now, not that I don't believe Teresa, tell me exactly what is going on. We've got both Rutian and Rhean scientists here and they're listening."

The probe is just floating there, recording everything.

And the two Star Destroyers are there, just looming over the scene.

"Actually, Teresa's probably in pain right now. Having part of my consciousness in her head is safe only so long as there's the border of the universe between us. Do me a favor and play this sound in her ear for a moment," Thorgood says. At about this point, the Raptor receives a data transmission of what looks like a particular low-frequency sound. "It'll wipe me from her head and clear her mind."

"And if Teresa hasn't told you, we're very short on time. Can I talk to your scientists? I found a way to send data through the edge of the universe, and I think that my solution can be expanded to fit physical objects as well. I'll send you my work. Give it to your scientists working on this. We don't have the equipment here to figu - What? Hang on one se... *explosion noises*" The uplink cuts off abruptly. There is a file that was delivered at the end there, but it's corrupt.

They play the sound, then go about attempting to figure out whether the file can be saved. Even a little bit can always help.

Of course, there's a lot of cursing from Shein regarding the explosion and cut link.

Teresa perks up immediately. "What happened?" she asks. "I must have blacked out for the past 5 minutes or so."

The techs find that the file can be saved, but it simply displays seemingly random characters when run. They determine that it is likely that the file can be at least partially recovered, however, if they're given a little time.

The techs go about doing that while the really science minded ones go about trying to solve the problem of getting the Burninites out of where they are.

Shein answers Teresa's question. "Thorgood was in your head."

"Was? Past tense?" She blinks, "Oh, he must have contacted you. Did he leave his data? He seemed to think that if you had his work you'd be able to get everyone out much more easily."

A Harlequin appears right outside the Raptor. It isn't bearing one of those lancelike weapons they use when destroying Dark Burninite ships, but it looks urgent. Or, rather, it looks like a strange creature as previously described, but if you were to imagine what urgency would look like in such a being, this is probably pretty close.

It tries to mentally communicate with the vessel...

And there is a telepath on board, however, those on the Raptor are completely stunned that this Harlequin managed to find them. Even the telepath is shocked.

Shein manages to answer Teresa's question. "Uhh, we got a file, but it's corrupted...." He's watching the Harlequin outside the ship instead. "And how the hell.....?"

The Star Destroyers get ready to shoot at the thing before realizing it's harmless, for a certain value of harmless.