“Give it your allsix. Give it your allsix.” The chipper voice sang out in the spacious green and yellow interior cockpit of the Veskarium Vanquisher mech. The sound of responding digital displays and humming power fields harmonized with the cheerful voice.
“Time to face the morning and make some nufriends!” A second, equally energetic voice joined in to complete the ditty and punctuated the song’s end with a series of additional digital keystrokes on floating vidscreens.
Sarotska watched with interest as the data appeared in front of her. The holographic light shined off her bright red scales, giving her a momentary violet complexion as she took in the display. Swiping the holographic data away with her claw, the vesk commander of the mech briefly closed her eyes.
“Quiet on deck. Bunkle, ready the plasma rifles. Jiji, I want to make sure the weapons core is ready to swap our output over at a moment’s notice.” Sarotska spoke the commands as her eyes re-opened and fixed on the alien landscape now visible through the small view slit that was only accessible from her position in the mech’s chest cavity cockpit.
The stone forests of Elytrio’s southern hemisphere were some of the most unnerving terrains that Sarotska had seen in her long time with Obsidian Spiders mercenary company. She’d battled the Azlanti Star Empire, the Swarm, and at least a half-dozen different types of outsiders who’d breached the Material Plane for one reason or another. She’d taken part in the second Scoured Stars invasion and inserted onto jungles where colossi walked like modern gods. Still, Elytrio had a feel completely unlike that of any world she’d walked on. It was a planet that appeared dead, yet wasn’t entirely done with the world of the living.
“Sorry about the singing, boss. It’s just, this place doesn’t seem right, ‘gree?” The statement and question came from Bunkle, one of two other operators onboard the mech with Sarotska. The electric blue skittermander turned around and looked up to Sarotska’s elevated position in the cockpit, his six arms continuing to manipulate controls around him as he scrunched his face.
“Yeah boss. I thought this place was supposed to be an irradiated wasteland, but there’s no sign of radiation. It’s just a bunch of weird, petrified trees.” The follow-up came from the other skittermander crewmember, the cherry-red Jiji, who kept her eyes forward, looking out from sensors and moving the mech’s twin plasma rifles at the smallest disturbance in the terrain.
Sarotska waved a dismissive claw while peering out the viewscreen. “Look. We’re here to find some missing Starfinders. Or, at the very least, their bodies. The Society paid for us because their team that went missing was pretty capable and it’s likely whatever took them down ambushed them in this area. So yes, I think something isn’t right here, but I think the only way we’re going to figure it out is if you keep you eyes on your screens, Bunkle.”
The blue skittermander crunched his face in a sour expression and stuck out his tongue before swiveling around to stare back at the mountain of data feeds that accumulated in front of him. Jiji chuckled from her position, though her wide eyes never left the constant flow of data.
“Got something, boss! Looks like a signal up ahead behind those rocks.” Jiji chirped from her station. The data quickly moved up to Sarotska’s station with a visual swish as it loaded onto her console.
“Hmmm...” Sarotska mused as she took in the data. “It looks like a blip of radiation from behind the rocks. Could be some leftover irradiated debris. Probably something the Starfinders would have investigated on their mission here.
“Bunkle, I’m going to move us closer. Keep the plasma rifles ready, just in case.” The commands emerged from Sarotska’s mouth, but she’d already put the mech in motion. One plodding step after another, the Vanquisher continued moving on its path. The roughly humanoid bulk of it crushed the cracked gray terrain around it, as the bulky chassis of the Vanquisher navigated through trees and debris.
The Vanquisher mech was something of an oddity of Veskarium-crafted mechs. It lacked the armor upgrades common on mechs like the Ripclaw or Warmander, and instead had been designed by Veskarium engineers for maximum destructive ranged combat. A Vanquisher boasted a pair of heavy plasma rifles, capable of devastating the land around it for a hundred feet. To mount such brazen weapons on its hull, the Vanquisher not only sacrificed heavy Veskarium armor, but it also lacked any sort of dedicated melee weapon beyond its ponderous legs.
“I’m getting something, boss... more radiation. It looks like... OH NO!” Jiji updated just in time for the crew to spot two things in their sensor displays.
The first was a gruesome cluster of bodies. Six skeletal figures, each with radically different equipment, were scattered at the base of the rock. The emblem of the Starfinder Society caught in a slight updraft off the tattered backpack of one of the unfortunate souls, letting the crew of the Vanquisher know that they’d found their targets.
The second sight was a sudden movement in the rocks. In an instant, the top rock seemed to ripple in the breeze, and then a moment later, it spouted thousands of cracks. As the crew tried to comprehend what they were seeing, the cracked rock burst into thousands of tiny forms that formed a swarming cloud.
“Jiji! What are we looking at here?” Sarotska demanded as she backed the Vanquisher off from the agitated lifeforms.
“High radiation, boss. Looks like it’s a colony of insects that fed off the radiation. Their wings are some kind of shielding material, so that’s why we couldn’t scan them earlier.” Jiji blathered as she scanned streams of incoming data and manipulated the information with her arms, sending necessary data to both Sarotska and Bunkle.
Outside the Vanquisher, the swarm continued to grow as more of the nearby “rocks” sluffed away to unleash droning insects that joined their kin in a growing ball. Instinctively reacting to the mounting threat, Sarotska moved the Vanquisher back several paces, with each step causing the swarm to reflexively discorporate or extend in random directions. Then, an instant after the mech came to a plodding stop, the swarm engulfed the mech and alert sirens blared.
“Radiation increasing! The outer shields have burst. The outer hull is melting!” Jiji continued to deliver verbal updates, despite the information displays Sarotska had in front of her to confirm the damage.
“Bunkle, I think it’s time that we give our new friends a show of force.” Sarotska put distinct emphasis on the word “friends,” employing the tonal meanings of the Vesk language to let her crewmember know that these insects were to be immediately recognized as hostiles and targeted immediately.
Illustration by Michele Giorgi from Starfinder Tech Revolution.
A moment later, two beams of bright white and blue plasma streamed out from the twin rifles mounted on the Vanquisher’s upper limbs. The swarm danced around the beams, and while some of the insects fell into electrified husks, others in the swarm seemed to bloat and expand off some of the energy weapons fire that poured into them.
“Looks like they’re eating most of the plasma, boss. It’s just like how they eat radiation here.” Jiji reported as the cockpit shook with another violent impact from the swarm. “Outer hull integrity is down fifty percent. Ammo reserve number one is jammed!”
Sarotska took a moment. She closed her eyes again, and breathed as time slowed around her. She assimilated the verbal updates from Jiji, the scores of tactical data that flooded her vision, and then saw the swarm through the viewport in her station.
With a flash of white teeth, Sarotska opened her eyes and she fell back into the moment.
“Jiji, shift the weapons core energy to siphon high-frequencies into the rifles. Override the fire mixture since they’re feeding on that. Bunkle, get ready to make the next two shots count.” As the commands issued from her, Sarotska took control of the Vanquisher’s movement systems and siphoned from the power core to initiate a stomping trample maneuver—the only reliable melee option available to the mech. The stomping behemoth moved through the swarm, which parted at its sudden burst of speed.
Shifting on its ponderous legs, the Vanquisher made a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn as Sarotska steadied the moving mech with manual controls from her station. Jiji continued adjusting screens as she desperately sent energy streaming from the rear-mounted weapon core into the twin plasma rifles. Finally, Bunkle rested his upper arms behind his head, while his remaining two sets of arms both went to work lining up shots through the Vanquisher’s autotargeting system.
“Guess today’s not the day for nufriends, ‘gree?”
A stream of electrified air blasted out from the rifle arms, momentarily deafening the cockpit’s occupants. Instead of the fiery plasma that previously emerged, waves of sonic resonance accented by arcs of lighting flew out in a straight line toward the swarm of insects. The twin lines pulverized the swarm together, where arcs of electricity shot between the insects, baking their bodies to dust in an instant.
“We did it!” Jiji shouted, leaping atop her piloting chair.
“Was there ever a doubt?” Bunkle followed-up, cracking the fingers of his lower arms while his upper arms continued to support the back of his head.
Sarotska’s smile vanished as stillness overcame the former battlefield. Nothing remained of the targets.
“Bunkle.” the vesk pilot began, her tone immediately conveying a mounting sense of anger and worry.
“You didn’t hit those Starfinders’ remains, did you?”
VESKARIUM VANQUISHER — TIER 5
Gargantuan Legionnaire
Operators 2-6 PP 7 (1/turn, max 16)
Speed 70 ft.
Senses blindsense (vibration) 30 ft., darkvision 120 ft., low-light visionDEFENSE
HP 64; SP 13; Hardness 3
EAC 23; KAC 23
Fort +7; Ref +6
Immunities construct immunitiesOFFENSE
Base Attack Bonus +9
Ranged +11 plasma rifle (upper limb—3d8+5 E&F; critical wound) or +11 plasma rifle (upper limb—3d8+5 E&F; critical wound)
Space 20 ft.; Reach 20 ft.
Strength +6SYSTEMS
Power Core mk 3 eternal (battle core); Lower Limbs heavy biped; Upper Limbs precision arms (+1 melee, +2 ranged); Auxiliary ammo reserve (x2), autotarget, weapon core (cold & sonic)
About the Author
Thurston Hillman is the Digital Adventures Developer at Paizo. He lives in the frigid ice deserts of Canada, where he's written and developed products for Paizo and other game companies. Prior to working at Paizo, Thurston worked in the aviation and technology fields where he travelled the world for several years. You can find Thurston on Twitter at @OnCallGM.
About Tales from the Drift
The Tales from the Drift series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into the setting of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game. Written by members of the Starfinder development team and some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, the Tales from the Drift series promises to explore the worlds, alien cultures, deities, history, and organizations of the Starfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.
