Chapter Text
Bruce Wayne was the lone heir of Wayne enterprise, the pioneer of interstellar asteroid-mining. One of the first corporations to venture out and profited massively because of it. However, being at the forefront of unexplored space also put them in danger. Bruce Wayne was orphaned by a pirate raid on his family’s transport cruiser as a young boy. Their deaths weighed on him heavily as he grew up, and fostered an obsession. He studied astral navigation and took to the skies as a bounty hunter. Vigilante of the void, and protector of the outer system colonies of Gotham. His ceaseless pursuit of pirates and smugglers led him to his current situation.
Bruce’s hands flew across the flickering control board, as he tried to assert what little control he had into steering his ship. A pursuit through the Narrows asteroid field damaged his ship, and sent him careening uncontrollably into uncharted space. The debris had torn through the hull like shrapnel. Severing hydraulics, communication arrays and half of the maneuvering thrusters. Leaving him at the mercy of the exponential thrusting force of fuel venting off his starboard side. Each pulse of escaping propellant acted like a thruster burst, pushing him deeper into the dark of uninhabited space.
Bruce took a deep breath, the air within the cockpit stale and metallic from the atmosphere recyclers. Fighting his current course was futile. The auxiliary power and redundancy systems had been able to stabilize his ship’s uncontrolled spin, but not strong enough to maintain navigation. He resigned himself to his fate at the mercy of the fuel jettisoning out of holes in his tank.
He calculated his odds, and found only two options left to him. Put all the resources he had onboard into being as loud and noticeable as possible. Or conserve everything he had, and survive long enough for rescue.
If he bulk loaded all of his energy reserves into his generator he could emit a high flare burn. The burst of energy would show up as a 5 second emergency flare. The interstellar standard called for a minimum 45 second burn. But with how far out he was from civilization and his steadily draining fuel he couldn’t manage that.
So at best he’d be a blip to anyone scanning space in his direction. Perhaps he’d even put out enough energy to register on the monitoring scopes in the main colonies of Gotham. But the probability of the off standard flare drumming up enough interest for the council to invest in a rescue expedition was low. And far more likely, was the probability of the Black Mask’s orbital cartel spotting the flare. And then tracking him down as if his beacon was the smell of blood in the water.
To wait it out would mean relying on Alfred. He trusts Alfred would start to search for him the moment he realized something had gone wrong. But with the state of their fragmented communication it would take time.
It would be two months before he missed three consecutive check-ins. It was common for him to miss the occasional check in, but this length of radio silence would be a great enough margin that Alfred would be sure something had happened. Then it would take a few weeks for him to reach this section of space from the Luna Base. That was assuming Alfred headed directly to the Narrows. Knowing Alfred, he would check other areas first. So he’d add an additional 2 months to the estimated timeframe. When Alfred eventually made it to this sector, and was able to detect his fuel trail, then a basic extrapolatory calculation would have him arrive at his location within the week.
The odds were abysmal. His successful rescue probably hovered somewhere between three and seven percent. The numbers were merciless but what inevitably weighed it in his favor was Bruce’s unshakable certainty, Alfred would never stop looking. So it was Bruce’s job to stay alive long enough for Alfred to find him.
The first month was spent meticulously calculating the exact equation that would ensure his survival. Every calorie portioned, every watt audited. Bruce moved through the ship pruning every excess drain on resources. Lights on control panels no longer flickered, every view port shuttered against the encroaching cold. He existed as a ghost in the twilight lit corridors, silent and stoic so as not to raise his base metabolic rate by even a fraction.
At three months he decided he needed to extend his time table. He’d been too generous, too optimistic.There was no way this purgatory was almost over. He didn’t believe dark thoughts were encroaching into his psyche, he was simply being more realistic about the parameters of his situation. Despair would be a waste of energy and he simply had none to spare.
Five months into his time in the abyss, Bruce sealed off three-quarters of the ship. He powered down systems where he could and severed cables when needed to keep only the engine room habitable. At bare minimum parameters. Every night cycle he would stare at the faint red glow of the emergency strips on the sealed doors. Imagining he could see the slow spider webbing of frost grow across the surface, as the cold of space seeped through the blockades.
At six months the food stores dwindled to only nutritional paste, he began to supplement with IV nutrients. The frigid liquid burning his veins with no reprieve. It made his impending fate to become one with the cold expanse of space feel all the more imminent.
It had been eight months and Bruce was at his end. He sat gaunt in bed. His skin stretched taunt across his bones and his muscles had atrophied to thin cords underneath his near translucent skin. His joints ached and fingers trembled as he made the final adjustments to his last contingency. As the drip started he fully laid back, and with hollow eyes stared up at his last two months of work. A reservoir of liquid nutrients and sedatives. Enough to last him another 10 months or longer in stasis. But that hadn’t been enough, so he had gone further. His own synthesis of Venom swirled within the mixture. Bruce almost thought he could see a faint tinge of green in the murky liquid but at its dilution he knew it wasn’t possible.
Hallucinations had become commonplace due to hunger, isolation and despair. But despite it all, he was confident in his calculations, his venom analogue could extend him for years.
His goal was to be retrieved within sixteen months, as extended exposure would have devastating neurological consequences. It very well could prove to be irreversible, over a long enough duration of exposure.
He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The feed was working fast. And he soon felt himself slipping away as everything faded into oblivion.
Yonp leaned back in his recliner as he watched the slow melodic swing of his radar sweep across the expanse of space before him. His mate thought the hobby was an utter waste of time but he found it relaxing. It was his retirement and they definitely didn’t complain when a bit of drifting lost cargo he found brought in a few extra credits.
The steady static drone of the radar was interrupted by a faint tinny ping.
Yonp’s tentacles perked up. He sat forward and zeroed his scanners in on the anomaly. The reading came back as a metal alloy but not one he was familiar with.
As he got closer he was able to send out a scan and identify the vaguely recognizable shape of a small sleek cruiser, though the origin was completely unknown to him and no registration information came up. Space craft were not his area of expertise but he knew a few traders that specialized in odd craft. He ran through standard Federation salvage protocols, hailing the ship on a variety of frequencies before running an internal scan. The internal readout was not conducive to life, the only heat was a byproduct of the idling reactor and the internal gas readings showing an astonishing 80% nitrogen. The poor souls must have experienced a gas leak that claimed them all.
Yonp twisted his tentacles together in the sign of respect and canceled out any further scans, he was far too squeamish to see the bodies. Ghost ship traders were far more used to such things so he was sure they’d handle it. Yonp carefully secured the craft in the traction field behind his vessel and changed his course to head back towards the port.
Yonp stood in the loading bay next to a disinterested zorvec filling out intake forms on its data pad.
“It’s definitely worth a good price, look at that form. Clearly one of a kind foreign craftsmanship,” Yonp explained in exasperated common.
The zorvec gave an unimpressed gesture as it took another image of an area of damage across the hull.
“Well maybe scrap price then,” Yonp continued, “it’s got a unique alloy, did you scan it?”
The zorvec merchant typed boredly on its data pad to initiate a scan to validate Yonp’s claims. The pad hummed as it computed then suddenly blared with warning. The merchant chittered out expletives as it turned its carapace towards Yonp.
“You scanned this!”
“Well yes I-“
“Clearly not,” the merchant jabbed its pincer toward the cascading notifications scrolling across its screen, “There’s active biologics in this craft!”
Yonp blinked his multitude of eyes, tentacles coiling in confusion, “What? The vessel was completely dormant, it’s filled to the brim with nitrogen. No way anyone is—“
“Well this pilot is. Damn it all to the void, I have to call the authorities. They’ll lock my whole hangar down in bio-quarantine for who knows how long!”
The zorvec continued its tirade about federation procedures and profit loss as Yonp stared at the unique craft and wondered what kind of being the galaxy was about to
Lirra stood nervously in the hall of the Station Zeta Xenobiology intake wing, feathers ruffling restlessly as she peered through the viewing bay to her patient. The being inside had been her sole focus over the past three decacycles. The care of the unidentified alien had become her quiet obsession. A constant puzzle on how to tailor care to their unknown biology ever present on her mind.
The suspected pilot of the unidentified craft was a marvel, despite their poor condition. The pilot had lacked a proper stasis field on its vessel, so they had contrived a crude induced sleep state. They had rigged a primitive IV dumping a nutrient solution directly into their veins. Pumping an unholy concoction of synthetic neuro-depressant, essential nutrients and a metabolic enhancer. Lirra had spent countless nights dissecting the formula, marveling at the reckless ingenuity.
Lirra was extremely grateful how astonishingly resilient the being was. Also a bit guilty, as the trial and error required to try and synthesize nutrients to supplement the pilots dwindling supply had often triggered reactions that would have killed other people. Violent cellular rejections, extreme metabolic spikes, muscular contractions and temperature fluctuations. It was an endless process of refinement to deduce what exactly they needed to survive. As her medical team worked to create a sedative reversal drug to help them regain consciousness.
Lirra grimly remembered one of the first iterations had lacked the enhancer and had induced such a violent rebound of tremors and vital fluctuations the doctors had concluded that the dose was an essential supplement to the species. Or perhaps a medication specifically formulated for this individual. That hadn’t been able to properly metabolize during the coma, leading to a surplus buildup.
So in addition to working to reverse the sedation, they regulated the enhancer levels within the body to more closely match the dilution percentage present in the nutrient formula.
After all her hard work stabilizing her patient Lirra had decided it was finally time to administer the last vial of sedation antagonist and bring her patient fully out of stasis. She entered the code to breach the safety biological seal of the room to allow in her nurse.
Nurse Kyt glided in, tentacles moving with the slow, deliberate calm that had soothed countless patients across species. The cephaloid positioned itself beside the med-bed, voice modulator pitched to the lowest, most comforting harmonic register.
“Easy now, little one,” Kyt cooed, the sound rippling soft and warm through the chamber. “The long sleep is ending. You’ve made it. You are safe here. No pain. Just light. Just breathe.”
The injector hissed. The final dose slid into the line.
For several long seconds nothing changed beyond the faint rise and fall of the chest beneath the thin monitoring sheet. Then eyelids fluttered.
The beings' eyes opened slowly. A vivid bright blue that contrasted with the muted tones of their overall coloration.
Lirra had expected a color within the 625 and 740 nanometer wavelengths, to match the person's vivid blood. Instead of a full eye of red, it served as the intricate patterning of the background the blue sat in front of. Lirra found it rather striking.
Their eyes shifted in an aperture like manner to adjust to the environment. Nurse Kyt let out another soft coo and extended a lax tentacle as a non-threatening gesture of greeting.
Their patient's eyes locked in on them.
Lirra felt the deep instinctual fear of being in the presence of a predator, but before she could warn her nurse, it was too late.
The being exploded off the bed with an inarticulate snarl.
Its fine clawed appendages reached out with a speed the atrophied body shouldn’t possess. One clawed hand raked across Kyt’s midsection, slitting the skin with ease. Black ichor sprayed in a wide arc, splattering the white sheets and floor.
Kyt shrieked and scrambled backwards.
The alien pursued.
Lirra raced over to the control panel to the room and slammed her fist down on the emergency panic button. Alarms flared to life in the corridor as the emergency patient restraint system deployed within the chamber.
Padded mechanical tendrils erupted from the bed and wall ports. Whipping through the air securely wrapping themselves around the beast with efficiency.
It knocked the animal off balance and the nurse took the opportunity to scramble out of the room to safety. Fluids seeped profusely out of the array of scratches littered across their body, but they dutifully started the barricading protocol to the doors to prevent the animal from escaping.
Within the room the restraint system was straining to draw the beast back to the medical bed, to complete its lockdown procedures. The beast grappled the restraints with its intricate array of quintisectioned graspers. That Lirra had believed to be delicate, fragile sensory organs. They were now used to grab the arms restraining it with crushing force, making the metal screech as the fine mechanics crumpled. The creature systematically gripped each of the arms attached to it and with a mighty twist of its body, tore each one off of its base. The room filled with sparks and smoke as the creature demolished the machines.
“It isn’t a sapient! Call Xenocontrol immediately!” Lirra yelled at the first responders spilling into the corridor. “We need sedation triage, to tranquillize this beast immediately!”