89. Entering the Spaceship

The feeling of utter freedom brought by the Tek Armor was almost intoxicating for Liam. Wearing such equipment made him equal to a Demigod if not more depending on the point of view.

His Tek Armor was more advanced than the regular one, what a normal set could do, this one could do it better, faster, and smoother. This led him to be able to zip into the eternal blizzard of this icy hell that was Naratskxepay.

His speed never stopped increasing as he moved in a straight line to his destination, it averaged at Mach 6, the powerful wind and hail storm stopping briefly by the sheer pressure and force he generated, and he could feel the environment harmlessly bounce on the energy shield around.

Though moving at such speed was very energy expensive due to his body's general lack of aerodynamics and it was overall not simple to do so, to begin with, it could only be done in a massive area void of obstacles to accelerate and decelerate, because otherwise he would smash everything and anything in his way without even realizing.

Liam couldn't perceive the world for what it truly was at such speed, it was just as much of a blur as it would be for anyone, there were biological limits that flesh simply couldn't bypass.

But that inconvenience didn't stop him from thinking beforehand and calculating his movement in advance, to a degree. Still, this power armor didn't make him a speedster like in comics or movies for one bit, there was speed but not much else at least when going to speed beyond reason such as what he was doing presently.

It was only for moving over large distances and nothing more, maybe if he wanted to destroy cities with pure kinetic energy while he played the cannonball with the force field at full power but that was as outlandish as it gets. Warheads were better for this kind of job anyway, in space however it held more value as he could go even faster so potentially be used against spaceships but that was just as outlandish.

In any case, with such speed he was moving himself he barely waited ten minutes until he arrived at his destination nearly on the other side of the moon.

The decelerating phase ending he hovered two meters above an incurved wall of hardened snow, one of the many in this region were kilometer-long spikes of ice sharpened for millions of years by the harsh wind laid in the thousands.

His silver eyes were focused upon this particular area as through the visor of his Tek Helmet he gazed at a man-made tunnel leading deep under leading to a place that was far outside of his visor range.

Lifting his left hand the Tek Gauntlet shifted as if phasing in and out of reality, holographic hexagons appearing for the briefest of seconds as he brought dozens of shimmering detached parts of an object from his inventory, those parts shifted and led to the gauntlet bulking up whole time its function altering for what task at hand.

The shift was finished in a microsecond as the now the bulkier digits and the middle of the palm opened like blooming flowers revealing in each three crystals of light connected at their tops that immediately started to crackle with energy and shot six arcs of orange and blue plasma.

This was the Tek Drill, a gauntlet to put above the left Tek Gauntlet, it was a Tekgram of his own design that functioned in a way quite like the mining drill, thereby why it was named as such but in it there was as well certain key component of the Tek Phase Pistol.

But compared to the non-Tek variant the power, control, precision, speed, range and so much more were incomparably superior. It was a design that he was working on before the Tek Replicator even if this one was 'very simple', but just like most of what was considered Tek creating or modifying it wasn't done in the snap of a finger.

Equipping the Tek Drill made it so that using the functionality of the left Tek Gauntlet below to accumulate and release kinetic energy is but an impossibility, or at least impaired to the point of uselessness for the time the Tek Drill was on.

Liam flexed his fingers and moved his hand in specific patterns as he weaved the crackling plasma infused in Element into malleable beams that he used to carve a rectangular entry slightly taller than he was in the snow, the snow not falling as it was turned to deep blue ice by the same beam he was controlling.

The beam could take or emit energy on molecules and atoms on a local level to a certain extent so while he mined the snow he melted the one on the side at the same time he was freezing it back up to keep the structural integrity of the hole he was digging from collapsing.

As he finished his endeavor the echoes of sonic boom reached the sensor of his power armor, and the empathetic bond told him Eywa had finally arrived.

No words were exchanged but a chuckle from both as they dove in, it was complete darkness but their Tek Helmet made it so that sight was given to them no matter what while their boots stopped any prospect of slipping while they walked, the soles of the Tek Boots formed smart hard holograms that acted as anchors for any surface that shifted and adapted all the while following the wearer will.

Around fifty minutes later after they both had treaded a steep slope downward, the unusual couple stopped dead on their track in a spacious room with no exit but the one they passed through.

Looking deeply at the room wall Liam started to take out one Cryopod at a time from his inventory and freed the five tames he took from their temporary 'prisons'.

Each of his tame, even the most active, stood still. The atmosphere was solemn as the post-human pointed his Tek Drill at the wall, plasma exploding out and digging cubic meters per cubic meter of mostly solid water at incredible speed.

Laying behind this seemingly random wall was one of the 'entrances' to the unknown alien structure he had detected by sheer randomness via the satellites he set in orbit years ago and today was the day an in-depth exploration in person would be done, at least the most important part of it that could be reached.

It was simply too massive, and this statement would be the understatement of the century. By his estimation, if this structure or spaceship as it was what it was, was to be in pristine condition it would rival small countries in size.

But it wasn't in pristine condition, the exact opposite. It had crashed violently onto the moon and splintered into millions of pieces but as it was such a size to begin with pieces like the one he was digging into were still massive beyond reasonable measure.

Ultimately it was a good thing the spaceship was in that state, even if it would have given more data as such a megastructure could only be from a type of civilization he didn't have any way to fight against if it came down to it, presently that is.

What caused it to crash though… That he didn't know, and it crashed onto this moon an unknown amount of time in the past, but at significantly long enough time had gone on for it to end several dozen kilometers deep. It looked more like it rammed into the moon voluntarily or the pilots lost control, somehow…

There were reasons to be wary, he didn't want to potentially release some super space virus or release whatever the cause for that happening if it's still alive/active, if there is any. It was but guess and hypothesis as it might just as the crash well be of suicidal origin, everything, and nothing was possible here but he still had a potential culprit for who did this.

Anyway, the part they were going to explore was the largest fragment of this spaceship, a fragment he mapped from the outside in its near entirety with specialized satellites but as for the inside, it was more complicated, the metal-like materials composing the shipwreck kilometers thick hull were a pain to screen through even with Tek.

But that was mostly due to the depth it was located and the constant state of blizzard above that had a tendency to commence massive thunderstorms that would last weeks.

Nonetheless, he still mapped most of it but aside from seeing that it was hollow with massive pillars for support while half of the place remaining was in rubble, or crushed nothing was in great detail and it wouldn't have been possible to have such detail, to begin with. Scanners from outer space aren't magic and wouldn't reveal all. At least for what resource he could and was ready to use.

Still with this data he collected he built a map and several routes that gave a general direction of where was what by the use of educated guesses, like the command room.

He could have deployed Scouts and will after but he wanted to explore this himself with Eywa and the most competent of his tames first.

It might sound reckless beyond measure and to a degree this will be correct but nothing that might be in this dead vessel held enough energy to be of any threat to the forcefield in their power armor, even less so to them. The most dangerous scenario would be the shipwreck suddenly collapsing on itself.

Yet still, if a case against all odds were to happen and it turned for the worst by some impossible means… Each of them held in their possession a one-time uses miniature Tek Teleporter he called Tek Recall that held the purpose of bringing them to a designed Teleporter. In this case, the one at the Element Nexus.

The Tek Armors would not like the trips and potentially lead to a few more or less minor injuries but better this than being trapped or worse dead. It was an incredibly complex system using laws beyond traditional quantum physics so there was room to improve aplenty but that was its current state.

This 'emergency button' was based on a core feature of the Enforcer, a type of Tek lifeform he still hadn't brought into the world; these creatures possessed the capacity to teleport in any way they desired but within limits.

It was a calculated risk and he was good at math beyond humanity's scope of understanding.

He would even bring doomsday to this location if he must with the several experimental anti-hydrogen warheads to be launched from orbit and a smaller one in his inventory, paranoid maybe but again, it was within 'reason'. At least for Liam, antimatter was not even hard to obtain with the modules attached to one of the Valkyrie.

"Let's enter, Meri, Septen, Orien, and Occiden first, then it will be Gladius followed by Eywa and me.", Liam said in a matter of tone none could argue through the voice com as he closed his left hand and the beams of plasma vanished to reveal a tunnel leading to a torn open hole on the frozen hull.

The four tetraperons flew and it was by Gladius its wings that should be useless unfolded just as the armor covering them did, creating large wings of hard blue light that possessed several propulsors granting the great austrapede the capacity to jump higher and hover over short distances.

Following the clawed bird inside Liam and Eywa were greeted by an unforgettable sight, the ground was a massive desert of ice where the unbroken pillar grew shouting in the vast sky as they either connected to platforms above or continued onward toward the ceiling.

A ceiling that was far from empty as in the middle of it all laid a closed sphere connected to thousands of cables both small and big that spread from it as if it was a heart or brain, those cable veins or nerves, and the spaceship a body.

Broken bridges and pillars that once connected it were also seen, it was an incredible structure that showed perfect knowledge of architecture.

The first few basic scans from his Tek Helmet did not reveal how the walls were made but there was an abundance of rare material that seemed to have been once held together by a living tissue that was now entirely ice that played the same role.

This and the general appearance of everything gave the impression of being in the heart of a gargantuan beehive, and what would be a hive without its drones.

In this case, dead frozen drones lay right next to them in the thousands, it was such a large number in such a small area they likely were billions of them in the entire spaceship.

Liam didn't know if it was sad or not but he didn't come here to lament the fate of long-since dead aliens that were as of now considered a potential threat and that he didn't know anything about. Crouching down next to some of the most intact bodies he observed and scanned them, he wasn't alone in doing as Eywa was doing something quite similar.

There were two major body types one that was as small as a human child and the other as tall as Na'vi aside from size, both shared morphological similarities, a large head, two eyes, four limbs, likely bipedal stance, and neither mouth, ears and nose were visible.

The larger ones possessed seven tentacles on their back, their hands had four digits while their feet had only two compared to the smaller ones who didn't have the seven extra limbs on their back and had two digits at the end of both pairs of limbs.

"There is only one kind, this larger body is a biological armor.", Eywa said rather coolly, she was greatly puzzled by what she was sensing, particularly what was in the sphere above.

Her memories were far from infallible and these creatures made her remember fuzzy moments of her past but she needed more information to be sure that it wasn't only the beyond-deteriorated Psionic remnants of the dead that was vaguely familiar and not what she had in mind.

However, she was quite sure what she had in mind was correct.

"Fascinating indeed, they all seem to be bioengineered though… Just like this entire vessel.", Liam added upon her words, aside from their morphology they wouldn't get more, both knew that.

Ice will preserve biological matter but only for so long and that wasn't counting the ice wasn't rich in very alkaline material like here which wouldn't do much better to tissue than a strong acid. It was more of an image of what once was an organism.

It was, in essence, close to fossils as the freezing was faster than the denaturing of molecules, and saponification of tissue for the most part. Most of the bodies were simply unrecognizable.

Of course, her current state of mind didn't escape Liam and this was one of the reasons he brought her Avatar here, and she wasn't oblivious to this fact.

She did speak to him of an event from long ago, by her standard, that she barely remembered the detail of which by her recollection led her to act in a burst of panic.

She emitted a Psionic blast of potency she never had done before for the express intent of utterly destroying the minds of whatever threat suddenly appeared close to her, a threat with similarity she had sensed light years away at multiple locations that always led to immense loss of lives.

And so Eywa lashed out at those beings that suddenly appeared. Unlike humans they were using Psionics, they were very sensible to it and their general intentions were evident to her, if she hadn't acted on the spot with her most primal instinct, fear, she would have very well been killed.

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