The Thantir Three slowly came to a halt, as it landed on a small, conveniently flat asteroid. Asteroid belts were insanely common, dragged across the permanent void via ancient solar winds and twisting strings of errant gravity, the remains of long-gone universes. Such asteroid fields though also great places for bits of Corruption to hide in.
Most of the time, that Corruption would remain idle, hibernating until it sensed something to eat. However, within this asteroid field, there was a wrecked ship with a common Corruption strain lurking inside it. The shipwreck was utterly ancient, with nothing on it or in it, but apparently Voidborns would leave scanning devices to monitor parts of their territories.
Tanos, Ret, Nyssi and Kayel though weren’t here to scan things, they were here to destroy the Corruption that was slowly breaking down the rear end of the ship, and stop it spreading. If a Corruption got too big, it could easily start splitting and reproducing, creating even more Corruption that could easily spread elsewhere.
“Ugh. I hate the whispering…” Nyssi frowned as Tanos shut down the engines and anchored the ship to the asteroid. “It’s so distracting.”
“Is that just the telepathy or is it something else?” Kayel wondered.
“No idea.”
The team headed to the rear of the ship and grabbed their weapons. Nyssi and Tanos both had flamethrowers, Kayel and Ret brought weapons, Kayel’s rifle and Ret’s gunstaff, but they were holstered so they could use their powers.
“Ready?” Nyssi asked.
“Yep!”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Nyssi perked up a little, then headed outside. It was already insanely cold, but Kayel was gently heating the tiny amount of air around them to warm them up a bit. But the cold wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Tanos had been forced to park the ship rather far away from the asteroid field’s centre.
“Question: can we jump across these rocks easily?” Kayel had quite a few questions. “Or maybe we have to fly? What do we do?”
Ret shrugged. “We can just jump. I am already making gravity for us anyway so we can stand on this rock.”
Nyssi immediately turned to Ret. “YOU ARE?”
“Of course. I do not want you three to float off.”
“Would we float off?” Tanos worried.
“Sort of. It is very hard to stop moving unless you have something to grab on to, but there is also a chance that you might get stuck floating in place, because there is no momentum or anything that allows you to move. That being said though, because there are no real rules in this stupid dark place, gravity sometimes does whatever it wants.”
Nyssi eyed Ret suspiciously. “How do you know all that?”
“I… I literally can control gravity, Nyssi. I need to know these things. Physics was my worst subject in Junior Stratos, ironically.”
Nyssi stopped eyeing Ret, then turned her attention back to the mission. “So, how do we get over there?”
Immediately, Kayel had an answer. “You and Ret could move the rocks and make a path to the big rock the ship is wrecked on, I can increase the space around the edge with an ice platform, one of us keeps guard and the rest of us go in and burn things! And maybe, when we’re done, Ret can use his powers to crush the ship so the Corruption can’t come back.”
Tanos and Ret both shrugged.
“Sounds like a pretty good plan. It’s nice and easy, right?”
“Of course! You in, Nyssi?”
“Yeah, sure. Let’s get started.”
As Kayel had suggested, Ret and Nyssi moved smaller asteroids together, to create a path, and Kayel used his ice powers to secure the rocks to each other. It didn’t take very long at all, and the team could now much more easily access the ship wreck. As they approached though, Tanos suddenly paused, his ears twitching. Kayel turned around to see why Tanos had stopped.
“You alright, dude?”
Tanos shook his head. I can hear the Corruption inside, as well as a lot of creaking. The outside is fine, But the wreck is stupidly weird and awkward and it’s kinda sealed up, with the Corruption trapped inside. If we open the doors or break the seal, all that Corruption will explode out!”
“Hm, that’s a pretty bad problem…” Nyssi thought to herself. In just a few seconds though, Nyssi had formed a new plan. “It’s a solvable problem at least.”
“It is?” Tanos exclaimed.
“Yep. It’s going to be a little tricky, but Retty and I could just crush the whole ship into nothing. Kayel can help at the start by burning everything, and you, Tanos, you can summon some of the very thin air here, to feed the fire and stop too much heat from escaping. And you can stun anything that sneaks out.”
The others all glanced at each other.
“That’s a pretty good plan…” Tanos and Kayel both admitted.
“Sounds fine to me. Shall I get started, Nyssi?”
Nyssi hesitated. “Uh, let me put a shield around the whole thing first.”
“Sure thing.”
As she’d just said, Nyssi created the shield. Once that was done, she nodded to Kayel and Ret. Ret focused on the entirety of the ship. Nothing happened at first, but the creaking noises were starting to get louder. The Corruption inside knew something was happening, but it couldn’t do anything as Kayel started melt the ship.
Layers of metal and plastic would have fallen to the ground, but Ret’s gravity powers didn’t allow that. Instead, everything was shrinking down, into a very deep gravity well. It wasn’t a black hole or anything, Ret didn’t know how to do that, but the ship was clearly getting crushed. While Ret worked, Tanos helped Kayel with the burning, by using his control over air to funnel escaping heat back into the inferno.
After about ten minutes, the entire ship had been crushed down into a beach ball-sized lump. Anything that wasn’t metal had been completely destroyed.
“Well, that was easy!” Nyssi beamed.
“If you say so…” Ret huffed, feeling rather tired. “Can we go home now?”
Nyssi scanned the area, then shrugged. “Yeah, we can. Good job team. We did great…”