Aubrey"We have to go, don't we. If you two secure the prisoners in the cupboard, I'll see if I can get the access code for his ship. Okay? Clarke - please inform me where is the access code for station access to docked ships? I would prefer not to ask the Cain to request this data from you."
Zee could find one for ours, so I'm sure we can get one for his, right? Acquire an access code. If not forthcoming from the computer, acquire it from Clarke. Then try to jam shut the doors around the reception area, except the one we need to take to Varkonius's ship. Obviously though time is of the essence, so don't do it if it'll take too long.
"Wait. Clarke? Did you see the man with the panther? Did you see him actually board the shuttle to the surface?"
The horrible thought that Varkonius was still on his ship, waiting for them, began to surface. It would be the obvious thing to do, in fact.
Getting authorization codes for the ships docked was simple. Zee had done a number on security, and she'd had Clarke's login credentials to boot. What should have required a security override and the permission of a senior member of the station took a single keystroke. Eight docking override codes popped up, alongside the ships' public information.
SHIP NAME: Astor
OWNER: Captain Wilcox
OVERRIDE: H4912-KKL01
STATUS: Docked in Cradle 10
SHIP NAME: Nevermore
OWNER: Captain Wilcox
OVERRIDE: 05MP3-RDX331
STATUS: Departing Cradle 9
SHIP NAME: Caracal
OWNER: Varkonius Markuli Davar
OVERRIDE: D9ZF1-1MR2IS
STATUS: Docked in Cradle 8
SHIP NAME: Reaion's Horizon
OWNER: Shudar Szhan
OVERRIDE: M8J55-AS06G4
STATUS: Docked in Cradle 1
SHIP NAME: Nosoi
OWNER: -Name Withheld-
OVERRIDE: 99DS2-K6R1G9
STATUS: Cradle 4 reserved, ETA 112 seconds
SHIP NAME: Sled
OWNER: Boris Mundus
OVERRIDE: 7PKL0-2276HZ
STATUS: Docked in Cradle 5
SHIP NAME: Summer Wind
OWNER: Zee Aliatris
OVERRIDE: W0EB6-YIP901
STATUS: Docked in Cradle 6
SHIP NAME: Ip'Kip'Ix
OWNER: -Name Withheld-
OVERRIDE: II80G-3JM71F
STATUS: Docked in Cradle 2
SHIP NAME: Busty Bertha
OWNER: Fuk-Yu
OVERRIDE: V56OL-E0U7MX
STATUS: Docked in Cradle 3
Getting to Varkonius' ship just meant traversing the outer edge of the station- a short jog and probably a single door between to prevent one catastrophe from taking out all docking cradles. Aubrey pulled the map up and quickly shut down every local door that she didn't need, a feat that was accomplished in seconds with the aid of the console.
KhateKhate didn't see the point in securing the prisoners, but she didn't have much else to do anyway.
"Into the box!"
Drag the KO'd mercies into the closet they locked the un-KO'd mercies in.
Khate dragged the unconscious/paralyzed/too-broken-to-continue mercenaries into a conveniently open storage room down the hall. It was dark, quiet, out of the way, and looked like it was recently used. The groaning Cane out front was pretty decent proof of that. Khate smashed her powered armored jaw into the hound's head before he recovered further and flung him into the little storage room turned penalty-box to join the others. It would have been a perfect throw, except for the fact that Aubrey apparently took that moment to shut down all the doors.
Most of the Cane made it through before the door slammed shut. Heck, 99% made it through. There was just this little... puff... of tail hair sticking out of the door. Khate winced inside her mech and tried to poke the hair through- to no avail. Yeah, he was definitely going to have a bald spot, along with all the burned and broken spots.
KesariFocus scans on the area of the 'buyer' (indirect scanning and sensor sweeps), and on the general area or trajectory of shuttles from the Ciccio farm. Pinpoint Varkonius' best probable location!
"How's it going here, Captain?" Kesari said over the ship intercom. "Is everything ship-shape?"
The fact that there was no reply to Kari's message worried her. Granted, it wasn't like Scarlet, Aubrey, or Khate were weak or unable to take care of themselves, but it was occasionally nerve-wracking being so far out of reach. Even with the Reunion's sensors, there was only so much she could see, and even less that she could actually influence. Instead, she focused on scanning more deeply into the anomalous reading surrounding the ship that was likely the buyer's, trying to get a trajectory for any shuttles emerging from the Ciccio farm, and sending a short query to the Authority vessel.
The Authority vessel's response was a quick, somewhat rude, variation on the standard pattern of 'please keep this channel free except for official communications or emergency broadcasts'. From what the Reunion could detect, the emergence of the buyer's ship, and its rather obvious jamming field, was accompanied by a considerable uptick in communications activity to and from the Authority vessel. There was a chance, not an insignificant one, that the Authority vessel would detain the buyer before he ever made it to port, which, honestly, probably wasn't the worst thing that could happen. The Authority vessel was also dropping orbit, very likely in response to the nuclear signs on the planet. That kind of thing was typically worth quite a bit of ire, even if it was due to the (unlikely) innocent malfunction of a reactor, especially on an agri-world.
The Scans of the buyer's vessel continued to yield nothing but conflicting information. The ship had zero mass, it had the mass of a moon, it was communications dark, it the comms traffic of a data-mining satellite, it was both impossible hot and impossibly cold. The only measurements that Kari could trust were direct visual metrics, and even those kept registering oddly. The jammer was powerful, and it was little wonder that the Reunion kept trying to acquire two ships instead of one when she tried to lock onto the buyer's vessel.
Scanning planetside revealed two shuttle burn signatures trying to break atmosphere, both coming out recklessly sharp and hot. Something had destroyed the communications signature of both shuttles, making it impossible to tell if either, both, or none were part of the group of four that Kari had identified landing on the planet earlier.
"Merciful Reunion Docking Authority, this is Mickaw Tansk, under the command of Captain Wilcox. We are requesting permission to land a pair of short range shuttles in your dock. Do you acknowledge?"Kesari's brow furrowed in confusion, surely he couldn't mean... Kari traced the signal back, matching it to a vessel, one of the gunships, that had once been docked at the Flounder. The ship was in the process of untethering, and appeared to be reorienting to focus on the Reunion. They almost certainly did not mean that the two shuttles coming out of atmo should dock with the Reunion, which meant that they, complete strangers as far as Kari was aware, wanted to come aboard the Reunion. Possibly bad. Probably bad, actually.
BorisCall out to the voice and try to get a response. If nothing, try continuing work on the Flask in an attempt to trigger another communication, but don't go too far.
If nothing works, start checking all systems for irregularites: strange power drains, unusual sensor readings, machinery doing things without orders, other parts of the ship that are being worn down faster than they should be.
There was no response to Boris' calls, just the hollow echo of his own voice on the metal walls. None of his tools were out of place, nothing in the room had changed, there was nothing but the quiet hum of the ship around him. With that stillness around him, Boris slowly resumed work on the flask, his motions slow and deliberate. If it truly objected to the flask, then perhaps a focus on getting it installed would cause it re-emerge. Hopefully it wouldn't be too terribly forceful in its efforts to stop Boris' work.
No vengeful ghost emerged, however. There was no presence, no voice, not even a shiver of an out of place sound as Boris worked. Frustrated, Boris stopped after installing another buffer panel, a clear action that, if this thing had any objections, should have provoked a reaction. Boris settled into his suit, locking the leg joints and pulling up the long term diagnostic displays on his frame. He knew them by heart, but it didn't hurt to look again. Going back to the very day he'd linked the diagnostic blister onto the Reunion's core, Boris started speed reviewing the readings.
On the side for something else living on the ship, there were the omnipresent ghost readings. Since he'd restored the Reunion, there had been readings on motion sensors in areas of the ship that were too radioactive or too otherwise hazardous to be habitable. These sections of the ship had been sealed off before Boris' time, likely in an effort to reduce the spread of the damage. It also meant that power to those areas had been cut so that the ship's computer could feel that it was doing a good job efficiently managing utilities. That mean no gravity, which meant lots of floating shit, which was what Boris and the others had always used to explain the signal ghosts. Investigating the signals in reclaimed sections of the ship had never managed to turn anything up, just debris and more debris.
As far as unusual power draws, the only ones cam from medical, and that was because the computer was hardcoded to always divert power to medical- probably to keep it from shutting the power down because it wasn't cost-effective to keep someone on life support. The power drain there was constant, uninterrupted, and had never deviated in Boris' memory. Reading thee diagnostics only confirmed that point.
As far as maintenance issues went... There was a peculiar pattern here, but not one of excess usage. Rather, every system in a dead zone that Boris had thought he'd needed to suit up and go bang on had either seemed to fix itself when other problems were corrected, or had outlived his wildest expectations for longevity. The Reunion was a tough girl, but, on review, the ruggedness of some of these systems was approaching the territory of miraculous. If there was a ghost, it was pretty good with a wrench.
SadishAction: Since time limbo isn't a thing, Sadish decides to investigate the mystery of the spontaneously budding fungus mantis organ, mentioned more than a week ago by the GM, probably as throwaway fluff. Maybe we can work out the kinks in the animation process...
Sadish had expected this budded organelle to be uselessly cancerous. Organs, after all, were not typically well renowned for their ability to reproduce. On review, however, she determined that she definitely needed a life fungal mantis for study. It was not an organelle, well, not really. It was a piece of hyphae, which was remarkable in and of itself. The implication was that, for at least part of the fungal mantis' life cycle, it was even more fungal than Sadish had expected. It also provided a rather vital detail into why the original organ wasn't operating at full capacity- she'd oversimplified how they grew up.
In short, if they did produce hyphae, then that meant they spent some amount of time as a communal fungus, and only later became the nine-foot tall ravenous death monsters that the Crew had encountered. It also meant that attempting to clone the organ directly into adulthood had missed a stage of life development, very likely stunting it in some manner. This hyphae must be the fungal mantis' biology attempting to get back on track. In theory, if properly nurtured, it would go through the life cycle all over from the beginning. Sort of like if Sadish had been able to harvest an egg!
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Topic: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat. (Read 53000 times)