Sadish "All that makes good sense. The box does seem to have an interest in my continued welfare...maybe it wants me to do something. Probably nothing to do with cake. I wonder if I'll ever really understand what...if the goal is truly incompatible with my limited mind, it might be like trying to sing a sea bass to fetch your tail-warmer. I suppose I can ask for some clarification..."
She made another whalemoji, one showing a cake, the other showing herself greatly confused.
Action: Sadish signs the images for cake and confusion to the holograms.
The majority of the holograms were still fighting a merry war using various expressions from Sadish's library of whale-mojis, including a few they appeared to have invented on the fly. The conflict of the moment seemed centered around a group of Sadish faces with brainfreeze trying to flee from a determined wolfpack of operatic Sadishes in sparkly red dresses. It was a scene that cast rather serious doubts on Aimasc's assertion that the creatures were operated by some higher intelligence.
Sadish's rig, however, was a bit less silly. Words appeared on her viewscreen, their positions seemingly random. First a few, then dozens, then hundreds. They overlapped and crossed over, becoming an unreadable mess within the space of seconds. Thankfully, the words eventually began to recede, culling down to just a dozen arrayed across her screen without particular order.
Choose
Duty
Specialization
Task
Major
Destiny
Future
Education
Decide
Training
Aptitude
Determine
ScarletWrack my brain about what to do given the other sample. I know it's important for several reasons.
This was the kind of situation that Scarlet typically handed over to Sadish ASAP. She'd love it, and it would mean that Scarlet would be free to think about how best to shoot the people responsible for this, rather than how to cure a life-threatening illness.
Still, there was nothing like the sudden imminence of death to jostle the brain into activity. Clearly, Ka had been after the panther to get at whatever was in its blood. That meant the panther had what, an upgrade, a new model, an antidote? The latter was almost certainly wishful thinking. Regardless, Ka's interest in the panther's blood did explain why his first move had NOT been to simply give everyone with hyper infectious death-plague. He probably hadn't wanted to risking hitting the panther in the process and somehow damaging whatever was inside it.
Charged saline from Cass paired with moment of realization hit Scarlet with a sudden jolt. Ka didn't know where the panther was anymore. Ka needed the panther alive. Thus, Ka couldn't blow anything up until he could verify that there wasn't a panther inside.
The panther, as long as it was alive, was safety for whoever was around it. The panther, as long as it was hidden, was safety for everyone.
KhateKhate perked up a bit at hearing she had an admirer. "Glad to hear you're a fan! You'll probably enjoy seeing footage of yourself blowing up the fin. It was very impressive!
That's Kesari. She's rather odd, so she fits in well! Also good at getting our ship to do things. She's responsible for the disruptive noises."
She let out a groan on hearing Cass, however.
"That's what I was afraid of. He delivered a bit of a villainous monologue to Scarlet about new beginnings and so on. He probably wants the panther to help remake Claws or something equally dramatic and insane. If or why he needed this panther in particular I have no idea, Sadish could probably tell us. She's our real biologist and doctor.
She uh, seems to have vanished, so I might need to take a quick trip to find her..."
A Canid wanting to remake Felids. It made Khate rather ashamed to share a gene pool with the rainbow bugger. Unfortunately, if this were a show, he didn't seem like the kind of bugger that would be permanently removed until the end of the season. That was the problem with good and bad- heroes died mid-season to up the ante, but villains only went out during finales. It was cruel irony, but that was just how the world worked.
At least, that's how the world of deepshows worked, and that was close enough to the real world to count, right?
"Well, I'm opening the bore. If Radish can help my girl, I'd advise finding her quickly." Varkonius looked Khate in the eye as the ship's bore drive began humming steadily.
"Not that I'm not a fan, and it won't be personal, but I will take all means necessary to get back at Rainbows if she dies. That includes ramming your home into him."As Vark's ship lurched through the Bore and reality flickered for a moment, Khate pondered the course of actions that was leading to bringing the serial saboteur they'd been assigned to steal from/kill back on board the Reunion. It had been a boring morning, a fun afternoon, and it was shaping up to be an exciting evening.
Kesari(...)
She wondered if they still had cup holders there, as a humorous aside, before turning back to defending the Reunion and testing the shield mitigation of the attacking ships--especially with an eye on Ka-T's presumed cloaking ship.
She had at least a quarter hour to figure this out.
==+==
Kesari felt a jolt as her tail touched the metallic floor. She was forgetting something!
Activate all Sadish scanners/personal locators, or work with her drone to broadcast her signal on all possibilities it was capable of.
Before anything else, Kesari activated the locators attached to Sadish. Unsurprisingly, they gave null information. Hopefully one would pick up a ping soon...
The wishful though was interrupted by a response from the more controlled shuttle.
"Thank you for the information, control, but this shuttle is not equipped with its own bore drive. Helm is locked in on acceptable course, assuming no interference." After detailing his flight situation, Tagget continued on to the second, odder, request without skipping a beat.
"As for my consumer tendencies, I have an affection for MetaGel Tailsocks, a guilty love of kibble, and am currently enjoying a deepshow about the construction of the Demiurge Super Dreadnought. At a spa, I would enjoy having my skin exfoliated, watching some form of live arena combat, and a massage to one of my old plasma scars that's been giving me trouble. I will forward the question to my passengers and rotate them through the comms. Stand by." As promised, very confused displaced station workers began hesitantly recounting their experiences with capitalism, expensive things they liked, and what they wanted out of a spa. Kari piped it directly to the computer, which seemed considerably soothed by the familiar data.
The second shuttle, however, promised to undo all of that soothing, both for Kari and the computer.
"SAS... SAS... Ess Ay Esss..." Muffled crying could be heard in the background, and Kesari could practically see the 'pilot' hunting for the button on the console while playing with the word.
"Oh, Got it! But there's this sticky note attached with all these funny lines and circles on it... It looks like one of the little tactical diagrams they put up in deathball games, is it important?"Oh. Right. No one flew with the SAS on in the sled because none of the Reunion crew needed it, and while Boris had insisted he'd 'repaired' the system ages ago, that could mean a lot of things. It could mean that the button worked just fine. It could also mean that the button would deploy fire control form into every orifice at high pressure if pressed without doing a special jig and tapping on the exact right spot on the console three times. Boris' repairs were funny like that.
Shelfing that thought momentarily, Kesari turned her attention to the incoming combat vessel. The Nosoi had combat shields active, more than enough to stop bombs when combined with forward PD, which actually put up an interesting question. The Nosoi had a demonstrably powerful energy weapon, good interdiction, good point defense, a first rate signal jammer as evidenced earlier, and very good engines. If those shields were as serious as everything else, then the Nosoi's reactor was either unbelievably good, or operating at a finely tuned redline.
More lights went red on Kesari's console, in addition to the steadily pulsing ones that told her the Nosoi had a target lock. The Nosoi was attempting open a bore to a point in space very close to the Reunion, and coincidentally directly between the Reunion and the inbound shuttles. The Reunion had interdiction, but it was basically a large version of Aubrey's personal design. It wasn't milspec, and while it was slowing the Nosoi's bore, it wasn't stopping it.
Judging by the aperture bloom the sensors were picking up, fifteen minutes was a naively optimistic estimation of the time Kesari had before the Nosoi was within knife fighting range.
A second bore aperture opening suddenly, very close to the Reunion, made Kesari jump slightly. Thankfully, it was just Varkonius taking her up on the solution she'd precalculated for him. Probably meant he'd want to be docking imminently, which meant she would have to arrange that in addition to worrying about the hole the Nosoi was boring through space and the Sled being piloted by an amateur who, on her present trajectory, would likely end up 'landing' several meters into an irradiated staff lounge.
Not for the first time, Kesari considered her need for a personal assistant, or an extra three arms for her suit.
Aubrey(...)
Aubrey deftly touched into the local field network, and found it rather polarized. The ship they were currently in was, as expected, minimalistic. Its power flows made perfect sense and were divided cleanly into various subgroups according to their purpose. Above her, however, she could feel the massive power signature of the parasitic vessel, and it was anything but well ordered. Most combat vessels engaged in some form of energy crypsis in order to disguise their actions and reduce their susceptibility to the ship-scale versions of Aubrey's implants that were the teeth of EW systems. Reading the freighter's fields was like reading a restaurant menu, the tiny bit of the Nosoi's that Aubrey could sense felt like she was trying to ask a flaming tornado what it's favorite color was, using semaphore, from inside the tornado.
Thankfully, Aubrey only needed to talk to the freighter at the moment, and that was easy. The cargo room had a pair of cameras with good coverage, but they'd both already been tampered with. Both were active, but they weren't transferring data to memory any more. They saw, but didn't remember, which was fine by Aubrey.
There were three people in Cargo, a Fin, A Claw, and a Pinkie. The Claw was sitting in the center of the room, wearing a ascetic jumpsuit and a surprising number ear bangles. His tail lashed back and forth, and he seemed fixated on a point in the middle of nowhere. Probably a screen on his eye. The human was short and clad in the steeply angled armor common to the soldiers encountered before, but without a helmet. She was in the middle of posing a body as though it had been shot from behind cover. The Fin was clearly cybernetic, and had some form of anti-gravity gear integrated into its body. He floated up at about 75% of room height, carefully placing a box shaped explosive charge on the bulkhead.
Aubrey felt the rising churn of the ship's bore drive coming online just before she cloaked. The Nosoi was opening an aperture, and taking its sweet time doing it. That meant it was probably trying to bore through interdiction, and the Reunion was the only ship Aubrey could think of that would be trying to push the Nosoi away. She and Boris needed to work fast.
Silent and invisible Aubrey slipped through the door Boris had cracked open, skirting the edge of the upper walkway and dropping down directly behind the human. Aubrey's injured wing spasmed slightly on the glide down, and she made just enough noise to alert the human. The 'initiate' turned, curious at the flutter of damaged feathers. It looked for a moment as though she'd simply go back to rearranging the bodies, then she looked down at the floor directly beneath Aubrey. A few bright drops of blood from Aubrey's damaged wing had fallen there, followed immediately by another damning droplet.
For a human, the soldier was fast. Aubrey was faster. The soldier had her mouth open and her hand to her sidearm when Aubrey's good wing brushed across the helmet-less human's throat, severing the arteries in both sides of the neck and delivering a stunning shock from the charged mono-filament with the same blow. Aubrey tried to catch the human's body, but couldn't quite absorb enough of the weight in order to prevent it from making a wet smack on the floor. Humans were too damn big and top heavy.
The claw in the center of the cargo hold made an expression of disgust and unfocused from its private screen.
"Initiate, if you drop that body again I wi-" The claw cut off sharply when she saw the bloody initiate twitching on the ground, no obvious source to her injuries.
Aubrey cut the lights and sliced across anything resembling a comms frequency, signalling Boris to bring come down and join the show.
Boris'Three,' Boris grunted. Three people who did not want what they were doing to be shown to the world. AL-Loy might pay nicely for that footage, even if that was the extent of what they uncovered. He smiled darkly and looked back at Aubrey. 'Hehheh. I hope you're recording this.'
He moved the door open another inch. 'We'll take them out and disarm,' he said. 'I can't move very quietly. Can you go in and take a better look? See how many of them are there, how dangerous they look. A surprise attack will work best. I'll be right behind you when we strike.'
Stealthy approach is go. If Aubrey is spotted or chooses to attack, jump down and get smashing! Try to incapacitate rather than kill whoever seems to be Medenov. Try not to die horribly.
The cargo hold went dark, which signified it was time for Boris to go in smashing.
Aubrey had entered like a ghost. Boris was less subtle. He slammed the doors to the cargo hold open and changed to the same light filters he'd used to fight Mickaw's men, charging forwards like a gorilla made of scrap metal and grit. He targeted the first thing he saw: a flying neo-dolphin with a demo-charge. With a primal roar and a scream of tortured servos, the King of Strenger jumped off the catwalk.
He missed grabbing a hold of the fin, slamming instead into a large shipping crate. Boris was fine. The crate was not. Plastic figures of Canes dressed in floral harnesses with large, wobbling heads exploded into the cargo hold.
"Sarraki, what is going on?!" The claw on the ground, just a few meters away from Boris, was staring wildly in the direction of the sudden crash. His voice was shrill and panicked, but undeniably a match to the one Boris had heard identified as Medenov.
Good night vision or not, the sudden light change probably made Boris little more than a shadowy blur to the Felid. Boris stood slowly and approached Medenov, expecting some form of hidden weapon or surprise attack. None came. Medenov backed up rapidly as Boris approach, managing to scramble up a shipping crate before Boris grabbed him by a back leg and slammed him into the floor, pinning him to the ground by his furred throat. The Felid mewled pathetically, back legs scrabbling against Boris' carapace.
Blue light made Boris look back over shoulder. Dozens of tiny hovering lights were surrounding the hovering Fin, like fireflies the color of starlight. They provided fair illumination, and appeared to be growing in number by the moment.
"Oookay. Okay. Uh. Would you be willing to talk, maybe? You're not AL-Loy security, which probably makes you one of the mercenaries the testament is so very intent on killing. I, however, bear you absolutely no ill will, and I would really like to continue breathing. A lot." The Fin, nestled somewhere inside the glowing cocoon of lights, sounded tense, but considerably more in control than Medenov had.
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Topic: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat. (Read 52989 times)