At a different sub in the docks, crews are searching for the cargo OSK is trafficking through D-VI. A group of Biazetai Boyz fiercely force a crowbar into the slit and pry open the hatch. "When the fuck did this come from?" sneers a smooth faced commando wearing a blue beret as he kicks open the door with a brutal grace. A dozen squirrels scatter in all directions chased by hot lead sputtering out of a sub machine gun. Their mangled little bodies scattered like fury hamburger. "Call in the Dharma cleaning crews." says the commando.
They turn to 9cubed sitting in conversation with 105 - "Time for you to try out the new prototypal suit the old kook gave us." Says Dr. B. "Oh this'll be good - see if these 'Mermaid tear' we picked up in Thantifaxath are worth a shit." replies Dr. C. with a smile."There's not even air until you reach the Lucifuge past Masak Mavdil."
UFOs and their occupants come here not from other planets but from another order of reality. Layne called this place Etheria and declared that it surrounds us yet is usually invisible." "Not real UFOs, just frequency modulations off squids that live in the clouds. "ain't this tunnel some shit?" they agree, as the harvest ensues - running on hate syrup - unpack a piano rearrangement of source gear "...shit which is anti-life." absorb some artistic being over one more radionic cluster - "Hecate needed DOR to automatic ends." Copies. "You non-linearly archive some beast's psionic signature, 9cubed?" Dr. C says - he's greeted with laughter as a response but there's no time to deal with words when escape is so imminently needed. "Determinacy of cogs..." a voice from somewhere cross-modulates into the interface with a lo-fi hiss.
943.5 and a astral-signature duplicate of 257 enter the OSK Nerual 27 augmentation Refinery, starred down by a sentient AI droid, he looks them over and upon completing scans of their persons, seeing their artificial credentials says "Ah, you guys are here to help with the work load, even this late in the evening? Good thing, we're in a crunch. If you got time to use those tools we could sure use you." In the background divided spaces are occupied by similar droids working at nanosoldering stations, performing their art with submicroscopic and sonic delicacy and appearing driven by the light-sound broadcast of a multidimensional holographic structure on the eastern facing wall.
Ikipr and 943.5 pace one another atop the an OSK broadcasting tower. "Agent 257's two-way link to Orbital Control got severed long ago I heard...Is she...you?" Asked Agent 943.5 following his intuition. He looks at the scorpion in his hand, struck with an urge to consume it whole, but gracefully pets it's textured exoskeleton instead.
"If only you knew what how close you were to losing something endlessly important to composition of your vessel" A hissing voice break in and whispers through 257's Legort-Clone.