The hologram activated, and Ordis suddenly came to life before me.
"Operator, I have isolated the threat in a non-operationally important part of the ship, the mission objective holotable. I will try to contain him as much as possible, but I can't promise anything,"
he said while I looked over to the table, seeing its light had turned dark green and the display ominously flickering.
"Ordis, I managed to finally get out of that hellhole for the first time, and you don't even seem to recognize it,"
I asked, confused, looking down at my current form and then at my Warframe, who stood at attention, his head showing in my direction.
The most surprising thing was, though, that my body seemed to be completely invisible to Ordis, as I too could look through myself and only see a slight sliver of blue energy around my invisible Body.
"I am truly sorry, Operator, but the Warframe moved. I just assumed you were back in your frame after failing, but congratulations on your return, even though not visible to my sensors,"
Ordis said while his hologram seemingly searched around the Liset for my presence.
As I moved over to the non-infected table to interact with the ship's systems, I realized another unusual ability I seemed to now possess.
I passed through the interface.
As I started testing, I began to realize that I also was not really walking around inside the ship but more levitating around to the point I would normally walk to, seemingly somehow anchored to my Warframe's relative position in space, so the ship didn't just speed away without me, as I fazed through the walls, just trapped in space.
"But you can still hear my voice, Ordis?"
I asked, still confused about the whole situation.
"Yes, Operator, it still connects to the comms, somehow,"
he answered, seemingly struggling with something.
"Oh yes, right, the Technopath,"
I thought as I aimed my hand at the console and tried to shoot the angry void energy like always, but again, my old abilities didn't seem to work.
"Operator, I must insist on your assistance in our current predicament. I can't hold him down much longer, "
Ordis said, seemingly desperate.
"I am trying,"
I said angrily, while again, just as I had the feeling, which was totally against the Tenno ways of the emotionless teachings, I could pinpoint the Void and pull the energy toward my target, while my hands seemingly started to materialize again, and the white energy I knew, pulsed through the air as it crashed into the console.
"Go away!"
I yelled, and an incredibly disgusting screech was the answer, as the Technopath seemingly tried to fight against the foreign energy. But with my anger further increasing, the blast became stronger, and my arms started to materialize up to the elbows as the last tiny bit of his disgusting green glow went away.
But suddenly, in its stead, a crack in reality seemed to appear, beginning to suck in the air of its vicinity.
Void energy seemed to be everywhere around it, but the interesting thing was, the energy seemed tame.
Ordis came alive once more, looking around confusedly. "Operator? Where are you?"
A huge wave of exhaustion hit me, as I slowly slumped to the ground, breathing heavily, my vision darkening.
"Operator? Are you okay?"
My gaze was fixed on the crack, specifically on the energy coming out of it.
"Impossible,"
I said out loud, looking at that thing in front of me that defied logic.
"Tame void energy,"
I said. Ordis, now also seemingly able to catch up to me, started to analyze it.
"Operator, this is an incredible finding. Tame void energy was always just a theory, it's a miracle that you were able to find such a thing,"
Ordis said as he started to study his findings and what implications this had.
"Operator, that is maybe the reason why your abilities seem to work so differently here than in our home, the Void functions differently around here,"
he said, as I just nodded, baffled at the crack that seemed to close itself again, feeding on the void energy it released.
Then it was gone, along with the table.
The last thing I saw before finally losing consciousness was Rhino also falling to the ground as everything went dark around me.
I woke up, sitting in my operator chair again, as I felt an impending headache already approaching. My head seemed to be split with an axe, and it didn't seem to stop anytime soon.
"Please stop,"
I thought between the incredible pain, and as soon as I did, my body began to glow, and the pain did in fact stop.
I looked down and saw myself sitting in the chair, seemingly frozen in time, as my astral self, or whatever this was, seemed to be floating in the same place.
"Well, this is new,"
I thought happily, as I went through the walls of the little capsule that kept my body alive.
I finally was able to look around the transference room without any fear of suffocating.
I slowly hovered to the big breach of the ship's hull and looked out into space, but even from this angle, I couldn't see any stars, the only glow being the red emergency lights and now my blue glowing body.
I went over to the door and passed through it. The hallway to my quarters and the Helminth, as well as the transporter to the Railjack, were all still there and inactive.
First, I went into my quarters and looked around, finding nothing out of the ordinary, seemingly everything able to contain a living being once the reactor was working again. After that, I went over to the Helminth, where I encountered an interesting surprise.
The table I seemingly shot into the void portal somehow landed here and right into the Helminth's mouth, who seemed to have consumed the Technopath's spirit, or whatever was left of it.
It seemed to be digesting it now, as I had never seen it this still before, while something green was pulsing in its mouth. The rest of the infested room, though seemingly intact, had the spiky parts of the Helminth chair seemingly reaching for my form, which I didn't want to contact in the first place, so I went into the hallway again.
As I reached the arsenal, my newly formed hope shattered into a thousand pieces.
Scattered like the Arsenal itself, or so it seemed, as the glass roof, from where I could see the tube going up to the presumed position of the railjack, was shattered and its pieces were implanted into the broken and destroyed parts of the armory itself.
"What happened here?"
I thought and hovered over to my other equipment.
After inspecting everything, I concluded that the only thing seemingly in an operable state was the foundry, leaving out the lack of energy, which was, to be honest, the best thing that could be left functioning.
I then looked at the closed door, where normally the Liset was, and sighed inwardly.
The last thing on my list was upwards, so I went through the splintered glass and upwards toward the tunnel that led away from the Orbiter, with my own blue glow leading the way as I went upwards.
After some time of floating around and seeing the Orbiter growing smaller and smaller beneath me, I came to a sudden halt, but not the one I was expecting.
The tunnel ended abruptly, seemingly having been cleanly cut off near the end, the railjack not being there.
"Well, fuck," I thought as I started my way down again, contemplating the consequences of this revelation.
Either it was left home, cut off by the Void storm, or, like the Liset, it was somewhere in the new universe, hopefully around my own landing spot.
If not, I could only hope that some systems were still active and could be connected.
Or its autopilot activated and it went straight up to this universe's solar system.
Anyway, I had to find it fast, if it was around in the universe, I could maybe somehow use its systems to find out where I currently was.
As I approached the Orbiter again, I began analyzing the whole damage for the first time.
Two points were seemingly the main damage areas. The engine was obviously hit, also being the area where the wall was sucked out and my operator room depressurized, and the whole operator segments, which I had just now analyzed.
But before I could think of anything else, or do something, maybe even repair the engine somehow, I felt really sleepy and my vision went blank.
I woke up in the Liset, stuck again in Rhino, as I looked around, checking my surroundings.
"Operator, you are back, Ordis was worried there for a second,"
he said as I slowly stood up, feeling much better than earlier.
The Liset's energy levels seemed to have increased slightly, seemingly having absorbed some of the tame void energy that was released earlier.
"Ordis, how long was I out and what did the others say?" I asked him.
"You were unconscious for approximately two hours. And I must apologize, Operator; I lost contact with the rest of the crew."
He paused, his voice crackling with static. "I seem to be having technical difficulties."
My head snapped up at Ordis's words. "What kind of difficulties?" I asked.
"I am no longer able to access the ship's sensors and comm systems, just a temporary bug, I'm certain, probably an aftermath of my fight with the Technopath."
"Shit," I muttered under my breath.
I couldn't believe our bad luck. First, we crash-land in some unknown universe, then get chased by aliens, meet up with people from another universe, and now they can't reach us anymore because we got hacked by a Technopath?
There was no way we'd survive this mess without the Liset being able to use jump points. We needed that plating, and fast!
I went to the Liset's communicator and chose Kraglin.
"This is Rhino. Do you copy?" I asked, hoping he would answer.
For several seconds, there was nothing but silence. Then a crackle of static filled the cockpit.
Kraglin's voice broke through the noise. "Hey there, Tenno. Good to hear from you, we were worried sick over here."
I sighed with relief. At least they hadn't left yet.
"Sorry for not answering sooner. The comm system was damaged during the fight."
"No worries, man. Glad you're safe. Wait, fight? What fight?" he asked, confused.
"You didn't tell them anything?" I asked, Ordis surprised.
"Tell us what?" Quill chimed in. "We were worried when your signal disappeared on our intercom."
"Well, guys, the Kree ship that was following us wasn't after the Guardians. It was transporting a prisoner and needed help," I said, waiting for their reactions.
There was a brief pause before Drax spoke up again.
"A prisoner? What kind?" His voice sounded wary.
"The dangerous kind," I replied dryly. "One that escaped containment and nearly took over my ship," I added angrily.
"Wait, hold on... Did you say escaped containment?" Rocket cut in sharply.
"Yes. The containment seemed to be a biological body, he was a Technopath, and a strong one," I said, still angry about the situation.
"A Technopath? How could someone like that ever be captured?"
Gamora sounded intrigued by the idea, even if she tried to hide it under her usual stoic tone.
Quill answered with a humorous undertone. "Who knows, maybe the Kree did something right for once."
I heard Rocket snort at that statement.
"So how did you manage to defeat him?" Gamora asked curiously.
"I made him go away," I simply said, leading to more questions in their heads, but they seemed to understand quickly that I didn't intend to share everything just yet.
"Well, whatever you did, it worked," Quill replied cheerfully.
"But now we've got to get back to business," he said, all humor gone from his voice as he continued. "You mentioned earlier that you wanted to speak privately with Rocket. Is this related to our deal?"
"I already did. Rocket, did you manage to finish what we spoke about?" I asked hopefully, but he only responded with a sigh.
"Not yet. It 's gonna take longer than expected." He paused slightly before continuing. "And there's been another development."
"Another development?" I echoed.
He sounded hesitant when he answered, almost nervous. "Yeah... Something weird happened while you were gone. It's hard to explain..." His voice trailed off.