Tali: Static and Steel by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Tali-Static-and-Steel-1261736929#image-1

Tali: Static and Steel ANIMATION

The Glass Womb

The sound was wrong.

Tali'Zorah vas Neema knew every groan and whisper of the Neema's life support spine. She had practically been born in the echoing chambers where great pumps pushed atmosphere through a thousand kilometers of ductwork. But this was a new sound. A wet, rhythmic thumping, like a giant's heartbeat muffled by a meter of ceristeel.

She pressed her helmet's audio sensors to the cold wall. The thumping was coming from Junction 7-Gamma, a secondary oxygen scrubber array that fed the civilian habitation rings. It was supposed to be silent.

"Keelah," she whispered, the Quarian prayer for home feeling thin and brittle in this place of metal and recycled air.

She patched into the Flotilla's command channel. "Admiralty Board, this is Tali'Zorah. I'm picking up anomalous acoustic readings on the Neema's life support trunk. Requesting permission to investigate."

A burst of static, then Captain Rael'Zorah's voice, tight with controlled concern. "Tali? We see the same fluctuation across six other ships. It's spreading. Mechanical failure is impossible; the systems are redundant. We think… we think it's sabotage. Environmental suits are mandatory. Take a security detail."

Tali looked at the empty corridor. The Neema's skeleton crew was all in the central command, trying to figure out how a cascade failure was happening without a single alarm tripping. There was no one to spare. "Understood, Captain. Tali out."

She unsealed the access hatch to the maintenance crawlway. The air that whispered out was not the sterile, recycled mix she knew. It was warm. Moist. And it carried a faint, sweet smell, like rotting flowers in a hydroponics bay that had been left to die. It was a smell that had no business existing on a starship.

The crawlway was a cramped tube of conduits and hissing pipes. Her helmet light cut a stark white path through the darkness, illuminating the dusty floor. Then she saw the first one. A slick trail, like a giant snail's, glistening with a phosphorescent mucus that pulsed with a faint, internal light. It led deeper into the gloom.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. This was no mechanical failure.

She followed the trail, her shotgun held in a white-knuckled grip. The thumping grew louder, more insistent. It was a synchronized pulse now, a dozen hearts beating as one. The temperature climbed, the moisture in the air fogging the edge of her faceplate. The sweet, rotten smell intensified, becoming cloying, almost sickeningly sexual in its heavy, organic perfume.

The crawlway opened into the Junction 7-Gamma chamber. It was a cavernous space, dominated by the massive, cylindrical scrubber unit. And it was alive.

The walls were no longer metal. They were covered in a pulsing, membranous film, crisscrossed with thick, black veins that throbbed in time with the thumping. From this organic mat, things were growing. They looked like distorted Quarian forms, slick with mucus, their limbs too long, their heads bulbous and featureless except for a circular, lamprey-like mouth filled with concentric rings of teeth. They were attached to the walls by thick umbilical cords, and they were feeding. Their mouths were clamped onto the primary oxygen scrubber intake, their bodies swelling and contracting as they drank the processed air meant for thousands.

One of the creatures detached itself from the wall with a wet, sucking pop. It turned its featureless head towards her. It didn't have eyes, but Tali knew it could see her. It sensed the warmth of her suit, the beat of her heart. It took a shambling step forward, its too-long arms reaching for her.

"Keelah se'lai," she breathed, and fired.

The shotgun blast tore a chunk from its torso, spraying black ichor across the pulsating floor. The creature didn't scream. It just crumpled, its body already being absorbed back into the membranous film. But the sound had alerted the others. A dozen more detached from the walls, their lamprey mouths gaping.

Tali didn't hesitate. She turned and ran, her boots slipping on the slick floor. She slammed the hatch behind her, spinning the manual wheel to seal it. The sound of wet, heavy bodies thudding against the metal echoed through the crawlway.

Back on the command channel, chaos reigned. Reports flooded in from every ship. The creatures, which Tali’s mind desperately tried to catalogue as some kind of organic sabotage drone, were
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