SPaMG: Mechanical Mastermind

    While their ship did bare a dining room-esque area, the crew usually ate in the hubroom, enjoying the television and couch with each other on a day-to-day basis. Davy always sat in the center of the couch, she was the captain after all. Her bowl of soup sat on the table, along with a few others, steam rising from its colored surface into the air before blending into the clear color of oxygen. To her right sat Jessie, his bowl in hand as the couch’s back comforted to comfort his own, his face expressing a small smirk of family-made pleasure. Over the couch to Davy’s left stood Melissa, leaning forward and peeking her head into the conversation; she never got directly into the group, nor did she ever communicate, but her odd inclusion was welcomed by everyone. Even though Elo was the newest recruit to the Homebound’s crew, he was given a spot to the captain’s left, he did make their breakfast after all, not to mention he was pretty handy to have nearby. The other two couch-sitters were Malksiv and Saarah, both managing to capture and control their seats by arriving before anyone else, well, Sarrah stole her spot when Jevvin went up to use the bathroom, but finders keepers. Around the coffee table on the old rug sat the rest of the crew: Jevvin, Sevv, and the remaining members of the crew, those being Edmond, Lexx and Sierra. The Sallav region had many odd qualities when it came to names, such as how birth-given tags in the region were often inspired by those from history books and how emphasized letters were usually doubled instead of accented; but not all abided by these rules, or at least all at once. Everything for the crew seemed to be going fine and dandy--but not everything in the galaxy is splendid.
    “Have you been able to extract the necessary coordinates?” Nemesis stood in the bridge of her years-in-the-making ship, hand held behind her back with no other place to be. The woman’s missing limb had been replaced with mechanical tendrils, the muscle-shaped tubes of flexible alloy wiggling free from their previously-arranged shape in order to make up for the lost appendage. The members all swayed and squeezed around the available arm, acting on par to a trio of prehensile tails. The doctor stood in the center, glass windows across the round wall that deemed their room as the ship’s bridge. To the left and right were semi-symmetrical platforms, both lower than the center and bearing various pieces of machinery, all of which were necessary for the Timebound’s operation.
    “Yes, Mother. The hammerdrive is in order as well. Shall we make the jump?” One of the various automatons that rested in a seat, coordinating everything that the ship does, turned to face its creator. The various droids were of the intelligent type, all of which being plugged-into and attached to their corresponding computers. From the center of the rounded portion stood the necromancer, her gaze peering through the green-tinted windows, their smudges and scratches not blocking view as Nemesis thought through the void, her reflection staring back at her through the faded casing.
    “Then have the values transferred over to the ship’s modular region; this Shard must be acquired before our cloaking device wears off.” The stare never moved away from the window; Nemesis merely looked into the shadow of her blue-eyed worker. A blink briefly covered the droid’s artificial eye, curiosity getting the best of it.
    “Mother, may I ask, just how did you acquire a device capable of cloaking your Lunar Polarity, and in-turn, us?” A short pause broke into existence after the piloting droid’s question, but it was soon met with an unamused response.
    “Sweetie, you know how much Mother doesn’t like questions; at least you have a good one, so I’ll give a brief explanation.” Nemesis shared a sarcastically irritated tone as she turned back, hands still behind her, eye masked behind the upper-half of her intimidating eye. “The facility in which you were born in bared a device like ours, in fact, the current one in use is simply a refurbished branding.” She then turned back towards the glass.
    “...” The machine paused itself for a few seconds, thinking before closing the eye and giving its creator a heavy nod. “I understand. Thank you for the explanation, Mother.” The doctor turned around and slowly strolled back down her elevated walkway, heading straight for the door in her formal pose.
    “We have a severe lack in obtainable income, chronologically leading to empty funding; we must make due with whatever we have in hopes of achieving our goals.” The centered door split open from the middle, the two overlapping panels both sinking into their appropriate walls with swift speed. “I will prepare my pets for the latest harvest; make sure we arrive in close time.” Nemesis steps past the door frame, it snapping shut behind her like a pair of rubber-held pistons. The doctor traverses through her homemade craft, the walls of dusty steel-black and faded reds, along with green lights dotted across the hallway’s rim providing an ancient sight to be held by the woman. She passes many droids, some along and on-task, others walking in pairs and exchanging words as if they shared normal lives; every bot, however, still bowed for their creator, even if only for a second.
    Everything jerked forward, yet Nemesis remained unphased by the sudden warp in reality. While relative weight had not changed, nor did gravity, everything seemed to feel lighter, at least physically. However, the doctor was still left careless towards the mind-bending anomalies. Not even the sudden breaks in outlines and sharp ridges of color were enough to bother her; she had something else care-taking the broken mind that was carried in her head. One of the hangar entrances opened, it being on the left side of the ship from where Nemesis walked. The room was pitch black, only to be filled with an array of a thousand white eyes. Each form, no matter how cracked or how damaged, all simultaneously turned to face their necromancer.
    “My pets,” Nemesis began, her posture becoming even more firm than prior, “it would seem as though I am already in need of your assistance.” Just as the spikes of color returned to form and weight had been regained, a sudden lurch of force yanked on the ship as if a child had been tugging on its tail end. Again, the doctor was left unaffected by the abrupt change in space, even the mindless followers seemed to have no care towards it. A few of the beings crawled up to their creator, their heads tilted in a dog-like way; it could be considered cute, at least if they weren’t amalgams of robotic corpses. A smirk found its way along Nemesis’ face as she reached down to one of the round-headed pets, softly patting its head while lightly slouching her back.
    The hangar door opened and bathed its contents with a powerful light, revealing a vast, rectangular platform that stretched for a good distance. Two minutes down was an oversized jungle, littered with shades of green and orange. The downed space station that Nemesis’ ship hovered aside was crafted from metal tubes and conduits the size of skyscrapers that stretched and connected for kilometers. “Hm...” The doctor pondered to herself while inspecting the colossal craft that rose in the air for thousands of meters, looking up and down to see that they were definitely closer to the top than the bottom. “Manual Four,” her voice echoed through the same built-in auditory device that she had used to communicate with Davy and co. while in the vacuum, said voice reaching the Timebound’s bridge, “I’m going to take the buzzards and find the package. You and the rest of the Manuals will fly over and rejoin us with the ship once the artifact is found. Understood?
    “Yes, Mother. Shall we await for you in the skies or find a landing site? The shard can only keep the ship powered for another twenty minutes before an offline period is required; time is an irreplaceable resource that we wouldn’t want to waste.” The one remaining hand that Nemesis could say wasn’t made from inhumane appendages found itself along her chin, stroking the end of her jaw as she thought and pondered.
    “Hm. I suppose you’re right, which in turn proves my previous statement correct…” Her one-eyed vision sways from one side of the hangar to the other, the hive of curious pets all looking to each other and their mother with innocently-curious eyes. “...But our search should only take a few minutes, not to mention your return would waste more time than if you just waited. Stay here and wait for further orders.” The Manual stuttered a bit, but trusted it's mother and coped with the decision.
    “Yes, Mother.”