AubreyTrying not to actually visibly or audibly speak, Aubrey mutters to Scarlet next to her:
"Should be able to get us through them... the scanners... that is... Perhaps you should relinquish a firearm to make it convincing..."
Action: Go through the scanners, Aubrey first. First use of mindhack, go! Ideally scramble them just enough that it shows up as nothing incriminating at all, then same again for Scarlet - can even her protection be hidden?
If success, then we should ask directions to a food exchange, and then find the target room. If failure, then we need to reassess rather urgently.
"Jean Aubrey, sirs. Pilot of the cruise ship Reunion, at your service if I can be. We... we didn't expect anything like this on an agriworld. I can't say the... the company parked outside makes me comfortable."
Aubrey was visibly not at ease as she talked, trying to use this to her advantage to cover the small movements she needed to deceive the scanners' sensors and computer.
The human of the pair of guards grunted in what might have been commiseration when Aubrey spoke, but made no further commentary. Security guards weren't exactly known for being terribly talkative, but it still made Aubrey slightly nervous- though thankfully she didn't need to hide shifting her feet. Activating the mindhack implants came with a sudden awareness of the electric fields surrounding her, and her toes twitched in short, sharp motions as she snagged through various currents and flows to find the signature she was looking for.
Aubrey was familiar with contraband scanners, and, by and large, they were solidly designed systems that excelled at catching complete morons who hadn't though through their plan beyond the payday. The scanners worked based off of chemical detection, limited depth imaging, and pattern recognition but, problematically, the problem of separating mundane objects with high-energy components (or even detecting what was a high-energy component or not) from weapons was rather difficult. Scrambling it a little bit, enough to confuse the scanner, was easy- problematically a place like this had the ability to just ask Aubrey and Scarlet to hand over anything that looked suspicious, which meant Aubrey would need to employ some finesse to make sure nothing seemed suspicious enough to check.
Unfortunately, Aubrey wasn't detecting anything that felt like a weapon scan.
She could feel the station humming around her, electrically alive. She could sense the faint, heavily masked, pulse of the constant tether between herself, Scarlet, and the reunion. She could feel a similar connection running between the guards, the receptionist, and parts of the station as yet unknown. She could sense the artificial gravity, the lighting, the receptionists terminal, even parts of the air-processors, but she couldn't detect the scanner.
Aubrey was beginning to panic when the guard stopped in front of a unmarked door, opening it with a keycard swipe. The interior was pitch black.
The Cane sat outside the door, a holographic display flashing up in front of his eye.
"Please face that wall when you enter, spread your legs, arms or wings as necessary," he said, clearly reading directly from the prompt.
"After five seconds there will be a flash, after that turn ninety degrees. This process will repeat until you have made a complete circle, at which point you will be free to continue if the scans are clear. If you experience any pain or discomfort, particularly in the regions of any implants, please notify us immediately so that we can stop the scan and adjust as needed."Pulse scans, Aubrey though, older pulse scans judging by the cool down times, but typically used for deep imaging. Also somewhat more difficult to fool owing to the burst transmission, but not beyond Aubrey's abilities. She entered, tuning her implants to the fullest sensitivity, waiting for the moment when the machine powered up in order to twist it to her will. Legs spread, wings wide, Aubrey waited like that for a good half minute, until her ability to sense the electrical fields immediately outside the room, already dimmed by metal walls, cut out completely.
Ah.
No scan.
ScarletScarlet frowned a bit more than usual before doing her best "concerned and frightened citizen" impression. "Y-yeah, it's not a problem." Taking cues from Aubrey, she scanned the room for anything else unusual, disguising the action as the nervous glances of a young woman in a stressful situation. The entire trip was a bit off; even bored controllers in a backwater would usually be a bit more curious than this, especially with a ship like the Reunion showing up out of nowhere. It didn't exactly help that they'd been expecting some sort of trap to add a layer of lethality to an already ridiculously dangerous dangerous mission, possibly set by people controlling something that their resident doctor had characterized as a veritable deity of biology. . . Suffice to say, she wasn't going to part from her gun unless she absolutely had to.
Follow Aubrey through the scanner. Hope that it's not so sensitive that it can pick up nanites; those will be harder to explain.
Scarlet kept her head on a swivel and followed Aubrey. If the guards thought it odd that the pilot was leading, they didn't show it. The walked like trained gunners, with a rolling stride that would keep their shoulders level during a firefight. Scarlet supposed it was possible that they were cast-offs from real AL-Loy military, stationed here with second rate supplies, but that seemed to be more a hopeful conclusion than a practical one.
Devoid of any other major option, Scarlet hoped Aubrey had the situation well in hand. The crow should be able to fool whatever scanning these guys wanted to do, she had a talent for that, but something still seemed off. It niggled at her, and it continued to niggle at her until the guards led her into a dark side chamber to be scanned. It stopped niggling at her rather abruptly after she spent a good half-minute standing spread eagle, staring at a wall she couldn't see. There was no scan coming, there never had been.
They'd been set up and sequestered.
"Umm... H-hello?" The voice, timid and human, came from one of the dark corners of the room.
"I-if I ask who you are, will you h-hurt me?"
SadishAction: Sadish tries to recall potential Toriad biological developments that could have clues to this mystery
Though Sadish tried, and indeed, she had done extensive research on the culture that had created both major components of the reunion, she couldn't really conjure up any particularly novel bio-tech that they had utilized similar to this black mold. The Toriad had been fairly decent in their time, but their biotech had been nothing special. Crop engineering, limited personal engineering, a few luxury items, and one or two local oddities she could think of (including a rather interesting method of body fluid reclamation they had employed on one of their desert worlds, but she hadn't read anything special about a mold in their history. Although...
Sadish pulled up her tablet again, looking for an old series of messages from the reunion. It certainly hadn't made Toriad history, but there had been something in the Starset resort's promotional material, spammed to her long before Aubrey had managed to get the ship's computer to stop advertising to the crew. It had been for those bathing in the light of Lys, a cosmetic rub designed to help transfer the 'healing energies' of the sun to the clients. Sadish stopped scrolling suddenly, coming across the message, the Starset logo emblazoned brilliantly across the surface. Down at the bottom, along with a picture of a floating Fin getting an ash colored putty massaged into her skin under Lys' angry light, was the advert Sadish had been looking for.
Powerful herbal massage techniques have a long history of use in the oldest roots of the most civilized and ancient parts of the galaxy- with written records of such practices emerging in some empires centuries before the Toriad system was ever colonized! The Razeshi soldiers, noted for their impossible stamina and the ability to return to life when not dismembered completely on the battlefield, were often treated with such massages to ease their mental states and help to relax their bodies after reanimating. We've brought the medicinal blends and techniques they once used to you, carefully extracted based from their oral traditions and highly specialized recipes. Sample the secrets of an ancient empire, and reanimate the warrior inside of you!
Knowledgeable herbalists and healers prepare our massage blends based on your individual needs, but each is grounded in our all-purpose recipes based on the unique healing rays of the Lys, the Welcoming Eye of God! Utilizing a unique species of Stachybotrys, our herbal rub screens out any harmful radiation from the sun and transforms it into soothing waves that permeate your body to induce total relaxation and promote physiological and psychological well-being. Don't wait, take the first steps to gaining outer beauty and inner bliss with just one hour of relaxing sunbathing and massage!
Stachybotrys would indeed be a black mold, but Sadish and Scarlet had done a rather thorough inventory of the Reunion's herb stocks from their various 'health improving' sections, finding most of it better for making tea than treating injuries. As far as Sadish remembered, they hadn't found any of this stuff when going through inventory.
Author
Topic: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat. (Read 52197 times)