KhateGently fish the death stickers from Scarlet's pocket, and either gently apply them to the panther's wounds or let Varkonius snatch them out of my hands to do it himself.
To Khate's mild surprise, Vark stepped out of the way and let her take care of applying the stickers.
The brightly colored strips adhered well to the panther's wounds, stopping the external bleeding in a few seconds. The panther twitched slightly, but relaxed rapidly as the chemical payloads began spreading throughout her body. From Khate's (rather considerable) experience with being shot, they'd probably prevented death by shock/blood loss. Slower death by internal bleeding was still on the table, as were a number of other longer term conditions. The projectile passed clean through, which was a blessing, but there was no telling what it had messed up on the way through. The panther still needed actual medical treatment.
Vark unsealed his helmet and threw it onto the couch in front of the tv. He looked a little older than his deep site had suggested, and sweat had plastered his short blond hair to his forehead. Judging by the way he was breathing, he was making a concerted effort to calm himself.
"Cass, do whatever these two tell you to do, and make sure ALL security measures are deactivated for them."The nurse nodded, turning to regard Khate and Scarlet in turn. Physically, she was an excellent replica of a person, with micro-expression and a wealth of life behind her eyes. Still, abundant evidence showed there was less between the ears than most people, which probably explained why someone like Vark used her. Intelligent enough to trust basic tasks to, far too dumb to ever turn against him.
"Cass is very precise, but does not adapt well to clear discrepancies. It's a price typically worth paying for the added security. A machine does no good if your enemies can convince it that an apple is an orange, or that they are you." Vark explained, limping over to the section of room that seemed to shade more into ship's bridge than living room.
"I'm going to take us over to the Merciful Reunion. You should tell whoever else is there that we come in peace so long as my cat is taken care of."The casual remark put Khate's ears on point inside her armor. He knew her ship's name. Man knew a surprising number of things.
ScarletThe sex-maid-nurse-Cass-thing smiled at Scarlet and Khate, a curiously bland expression that wouldn't have been out of place on a hospital promo poster.
"You may now step on to the carpet at your leisure, it will not attempt to eviscerate you. There is an anti-personnel mine under the cushions of the blue armchair. It has been deactivated, but may make the seat less comfortable than you suspect," Cass said, its tone sympathetic.
Scarlet glanced over at the blue armchair. It was directly across a small table from a much deeper leather chair. Cute. Invite someone to negotiate, sit in leather chair, watch as they sit down on a landmine. Certainly more direct than trying to offer them a poisoned drink.
"You appear to be infected," Cass added, her gaze moving to fix solely on Scarlet with an intense look.
"I do not recognize the pathogen, but it appears to be killing you. I can attempt treatment, or you can activate the ultima noctis protocol."Varkonius, still standing over the navigation console, snorted.
"Cass, stop trying to provide euthanasia. Just put a bar on that for now." Vark paused and looked back over his shoulder at Scarlet.
"Though I suppose it's an option if you want a pleasant way to die."
Aubrey"Right. Ty, Taggett - I need you to volunteer to fly this shuttle and our beloved Sled back home to the Reunion - is that okay? I have to check he's alright. Perhaps the one who gets the honour of flying the Sled could give us a couple of minutes in case we can't get in this other ship..."
Aubrey quickly distributes Ty and Taggett amongst the Sled and the new shuttle, before racing after Boris...
Ty's eyes went very wide indeed when Aubrey explained her plan to divide her and Taggett between the two shuttles. By the time Aubrey had finished, the young neo-cat was frizzy with excitement and very nearly vibrating.
"Omigod. OmigodOmigod. IGetToFlyARealShuttleAndSavePeopleAndIt'sGoingToBeJustLikeVoidHeroes! IGetAGoatAndAShuttleAndAnAdventureInTheSameDay! BESTDAYEVER!" After that nearly incomprehensible statement, Ty bolted for the Sled with a truly remarkable sound. Aubrey had never heard a neo-cat squee with excitement before, and the sound seemed to induce a state of white-eyed mortal terror in the other refugees. Clarke in particularly looked like he was going to throw up, scream, or potentially both at the same time.
Tagget inclined the bulk of his suit to Aubrey in an awkward sort of Fish bow.
"Thank you, for trusting my daughter. There aren't many better opportunities for a young woman to grow up. I'll try and teach her to fly as we go." With that, Tagget stumped off to his respective shuttle, trailing a far larger group of refugees than Ty. It occurred to Aubrey that she probably should have made sure that Ty actually knew how to fly before she gave her the go-ahead to pilot a ship full of scared former-prisoners. Oh well. The Sled was easy to clean, and if Ty needed to slow down, she could just hit something.
Aubrey flapped off as well as her injured wing would allow, scooting after Boris.The mad king stopped outside the door to the ship Ka had hijacked, his expression bellicose. Aubrey watched as Boris' brow furrowed as he regarded the locked door, an expression that made her sigh internally. Her options at this point boiled down to, A: Let Boris make his own way through the door, taking up valuable time and potentially making things explode in the process, or B: Open the door with the override codes she'd grabbed and hope that karma was feeling merciful.
Aubrey opened the door. Whatever else it might do, it would definitely attract less attention from all involved than letting Boris unlock the door his way.
BorisTry to get inside Ka's ship like an absolute madman! If unable, see if there's any fast way of sabotaging the thing and then take whatever shuttle or ship is available and get the hell out of here.
Boris' small kingdom had been invaded, his friends and loyal subjects injured, and his own honor and abilities impugned by a coward. Boris had a window for reprisal, and he had no intention of wasting it. His foes would know the wrath of a King.
Boris sprinted the short distance over to the cradle of the ship that caused so much trouble, leaving Aubrey to sort out the situation with the former hostages. The lock joining the station to the cradle umbilical was standard civilian grade, tough and reliable, but not impossible to break through. Given time he could break through physically, but it might be more efficient if he could get inside one of the control panels and rewire the door circuitry. Still, both those options took time, and-
Aubrey, having joined him some time in the interim when he'd been focusing. with the door, punched a short command sequence into the lock. The lock indicator immediately flashed green. The sight made the corner's of Boris' mouth quirk upwards, transforming his usual austere grimace into a more wicked expression. It was times like this when he remembered why he shared his domain with other people. Loyal subjects could be incredibly useful at times.
Boris threw the door open and strode into the light freighter like he already owned it. Things would have been so much simpler if this ship had been the only one they'd had to deal with. None of this nonsense with other mercenaries or bio-weapon wielding forces of nefarious intent.
The freighter's design was one that Boris had encountered before in many, many variations across the years. The personnel airlock they'd entered from was in the ship 'neck'. Immediately left should lead to to the bridge and the nose of the ship. Immediately right would lead to the mess, then passenger/passenger storage if this ship was fitted for it, then crew, then main cargo/shuttlebay, and finally engineering. Considering that the ship Boris actually wanted was riding piggy back to this one, the most reasonable location for a connection would probably be somewhere in the main cargo area.
Besides the initial locked door, there was disappointingly little resistance. The door to the bridge was closed, but the hallway left that ran along the spine of the ship was silent and empty. This gave Boris an interesting decision. He could look for the passage between this vessel and Ka's actual ship, or he could just steal this one while Ka's was still attached.
The unmistakable snap and hiss of an airlock clicking free of its umbilical made Boris spin. He'd barely felt the change velocity, but there was a very clear red ring around the airlock door now. The freighter had just disembarked, which meant Ka's ship had just begun moving. Which meant that Boris and Aubrey had just been separated from the Flounder and the other, much more easily steal-able ships.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
KesariErr, future action--set bore solution for pretty much a hypothetical scenario of:
> Mickaw's shuttle team
> Varkonius' ship (or at least its presumed size)
> Us. The Reunion
> Probably another shuttle incoming that is most likely Boris.
> Probably any other tiny objects the size and shape of the Star. 
To follow that up--turn all my attention to scanning and navigation:
++ What are the areas we can bore to!
+ Is there anyway I can attempt to detect the star by inputing to our eccentric CPU, its details and a local search?
+ If there's enough time (and work on my stress/tech harness), try to check the Cloaked ship or any hostiles I've missed; it's been a while since I turned my attention to...actually anything other than comms splicing and inter-station "hacking".
With the simple matter of preventing a rogue mercy group from detonating an improvised nuclear weapon inside the Reunion's hull well in hand, and Boris presumably already on board the Flounder, Kesari now only had one real problem: where the hell they were going to escape to. Which, given bore drives and space, meant that she had one problem and an uncountably infinite number of potential solutions.
The practical upshot of this dilemma was that there should be an infinitely large subset of good solutions to the problem. The downside was that it implied an even larger infinite subspace of bad solutions. Kari couldn't chart a bore directly back to Deliria. That would take hours that nobody had. What she could do instead was plot a course to some point in deep space, near something that would generate enough interference to throw off easy pursuit, and far enough away that pinhole scanning would have a very small chance of revealing their position.
From the, albeit limited, data Kesari could muster, there were three decent locations that the Reunion could establish a bore to within 5 minutes. The first was a nearby undeveloped system that basically consisted of a bunch of rocks orbiting a fiercely radioactive star. It was the kind of place where the Reunion was uniquely qualified to immerse herself in and would foul most scanners. The second was an AL-Loy relay outpost at the edge of her jump range, which would be a bit of a refuge in audacity but would potentially allow the direct purchase of coordinates leading much farther away, perhaps even semi-directly to Deliria. The last was just a jump to the farthest bit of black Kari could find, nothing special, but there were a zillion locations to choose from and it meant that any pursuers would have to get lucky on a pinhole scan to find the Reunion.
Further decision making on Kesari's part was cut short by a ripple of red lights spreading across the Reunion's control panel. Ka-Taeun's ship had just fished for, and successfully gained, a weapon's lock on the Reunion. That was one of the problems with using a space station as a ship; 'evade' just wasn't in the old girl's vocabulary. Ka's ship, and the freighter it was holding on to, had just disembarked from the station, and they appeared to be headed directly for the Reunion. Judging by the fact that no beams, missiles, or other projectiles were currently heading straight for the Reunion, it seemed safe to assume that Kari was currently out of their weapon's range.
That did not, however, mean that Ka's ship was out of her reach. The Reunion had no less than seven racks of medium range missiles (eight missiles to a rack) that could reach the target, and three racks of long range missiles (four to a rack) that could probably circle the system and still have enough fuel left to hit Ka's ship.
Amidst the sea of red blinking lights, two small pricks of green lit up. Two shuttles, the Sled and the one Boris had borrowed from Mickaw, were requesting docking clearance. They were still a ways out, and their flight patterns were... erratic.
SadishAction: Sadish sends the following sequence of images in whale-moji
[Puzzled Sadish, hand scratching chin]
[Pointing Arrow]
[A holographic Sadish with a robotic face and an antenna, tinted blue]
[Pointing Arrow]
[A symbol for a file opening] (Even after all this time, it still resembled a paper folder)
[One of Sadish's hands picking something up] (see previous item)
[Robo-Holo-Sadish now wears a devil's grin, and has a mask on, like a spy] (go previous)
[Question mark]
"Eating? I suppose recharging would be the closest endeavor. Your little clones, however, don't need any special way to recharge besides a strong EM field." Aimasc seemed to shiver, as though recalling something unpleasant.
"They can even use my energy to replenish themselves, which is always unpleasant. I am, except in a state of emergency, not allowed to fabricate new nano-bot units. I make do with repairing myself when a unit becomes damaged, which, I suppose, does mean that I will eventually grow old. An interesting thought..." While Aimasc pondered that, Sadish began attempting to communicate with her little cohort. A stern pointing made them all immediately swarm over to her, clustering around her screen excitedly. As Sadish went through the series of images, they mimicked them all gleefully. This degenerated quickly when a small group shaped like pointing arrows began chasing the ones shaped like Sadish, cornering them against the hospital bed and tickling them unmercifully with their points.
The spectacle almost made Sadish miss the one that separated off from the others and entered her rig.
The sequence of images that Sadish had input altered slightly. The question mark transformed into a ellipsis. Then a picture of Sadish as a baby, with a comically large human bottle. Then a picture of Sadish mostly grown, swimming among stars. Then came a rather familiar, if somewhat cartoony, image. Sadish, holding the puzzle box, dusting one of the corners off with a curious expression. That image hung for a moment, then was finally succeeded by an image of the same cake as before, with copies of Sadish pulling on it from every angle.
CHOOSE
Sadish blinked. One moment her screen had been full of little whale pictures, now it was occupied by massive blockprint text of a highly imperative nature.
Author
Topic: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat. (Read 53377 times)