Despite being a partially mechanical being that always wore a mask, Akah was somehow visibly miserable. He had been miserable for a long time, but ever since that strange being Kinisis had met had gone and disappeared, Akah had been even more miserable than normal. Tahnahos had spent a lot of time trying to cheer Akah up, but even he was beginning to lose hope at ever seeing Akah be happy.
Currently, their boss Kinisis had insisted that Akah stay by Tahnahos’s side. Tahnahos had been fine with that at first, but the constant depressing was beginning to seep into Tahnahos’s mind was well. Luckily, right now, Tahnahos was keeping himself occupied by doing transmission duty. He was idly flipping through various frequencies, keeping an ear out for any chatter that wasn’t standard Life Goddess or Decay Lord communications.
Of course, Akah was sitting with Tahnahos, but he hadn’t really been paying attention. He was more standing guard, keeping an eye on the void beyond the glass windows. So when Akah suddenly jumped up and shouted, Tahnahos very nearly pissed himself in surprise.
“STOP, GO BACK!”
Tahnahos pulled himself together. “What? What are you on about?”
“Go back one channel!”
“Why?”
“I heard something!”
With a shrug, Tahnahos did as he’d been asked. He went back one frequency, to a hardly used Voidborn frequency that was normally silent. Voidborn communications were normally done on very high and low frequencies, in a series of beeps and tones. So picking something up on this band of frequency was rather odd.
“Like what?”
“Sh…”
Akah was clearly listening closely. Tahnahos listened in as well, but couldn’t pick anything up. There was some sort of speech, but Tahnahos couldn’t speak whatever the main Voidborn language was. All he could hear was gibberish. But then again, on closer inspection, whatever it was, they clearly weren’t using the Voidborn language, or anything Voidborn at all. Akah though? It seemed as if he could almost… understand it.
“What are they saying?”
“I… I am trying to… tell..” Akah concentrated harder. The frequency was full of static, which made it very hard to hear. Unfortunately, the speech, whatever it was, began to fade. The signal was disappearing, until it faded away into nothing.
Tahnahos frowned, but suddenly perked up, realising he’d recorded part of the transmission. Akah though seemed immediately distressed.
“They were calling for help.”
“They were?”
“I couldn’t tell what exactly they were saying, but I am certain that I heard them call for help.”
“Ah…”
Before Tahnahos could continue, Teekay and Tahvra appeared, both curious as to what was going on.
“You guys alright?” Tahvra asked.
Akah shook his head. “No. We picked up a distress signal. I want to go and investigate, but I don’t think we got enough data to figure out where they are.”
“A distress signal?” Teekay blinked. “On the Voidborn frequencies?”
“Yes.”
Tahvra glanced at Teekay. The two of them frowned, then Tahvra darted off back the way they’d came. Teekay crossed his arms, tutting.
“Sounds like bait. Tahvra’s gone to get Kinisis. Did you record it?”
Tahnahos nodded. “Of course. Want me to replay it?”
“Yeah. But wait until Kinisis gets here. We need her to go over it first…”