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Author Topic: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.  (Read 52983 times)

Draignean

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #375 on: May 11, 2017, 10:16:00 am »

Aubrey

Aubrey would like to identify what the pretty blue lights are! Can she mindhack or similar to interfere and identify their purpose? And if so, stop them from doing anything!

The blue lights were difficult to get a read on, much more difficult than Aubrey had expected. In additional to visible light, they seemed to be putting out waves of electrostatic radiation that interfered with her mindhack implants. Individually, the effect was negligible, but the cloud together effectively negated her ability to 'see' or manipulate any field around them.

As far as their constant growth went, there were two options. Either the Fin had a pack of the devices integrated into his cybernetics, and they just happened to be well suited to the current situation, or the Fin was an Ironweaver and was creating what he needed to strike back.



Kesari

Quickscan hangars.
Review Al-Loy ship attack.


The hangars were in good order, all things considered. The bay doors were complying reasonably well, Varkonius' ship was locked in solidly, and there was room to spare for the incoming shuttles. Mickaw's other shuttle was still firmly secured, and there seemed to be a very injured drinking game going on at its base.

Somehow, very likely with the help of Enesch, Mickaw had managed to grab the mercenaries that Boris had disabled and drag them back down to the hangar. The group sat at the base of the shuttle lock, the more injured ones leaning up against it for support, and passed around a bottle of clear (and doubtless alcoholic) fluid.

Sadish's vibrantly pink drone hovered over them all curiously.



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Tiruin

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #376 on: May 11, 2017, 10:29:42 am »

"Beep boop, works like I thought it would. Now the rusty part. Fine manipulation."

Kesari had her tech harness busy with many other things, but part of those things was making sure she could handle Sadish's works.
She wondered what kind of technology Boris didn't tell her that hid Sadish, for that matter. It was time to find out.

Woosh that drone to Boris' last crime scene locator where Sadish was rumored to have disappeared. Calibrate those scanners to...what Sadish programmed into this suite to best try and find someone like her--even mechanical sensors that were aligned with whatever she wore (even textual spamming)
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lawastooshort

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #377 on: May 17, 2017, 04:36:52 pm »

"The fin. We have to kill or disable him now."

Aubrey communicated over team comms, and without there being space for doubt in her instructions. King Boris knew her well enough. She wouldn't leap into gratuitous violence without a strong reason.

"He is a weaver," she added, as she readied to attack. The fin's floatingness was a problem and she couldn't come up with a better solution in a split second. Aubrey concentrated her mindhack to see if she could interfere with the nanobots or anything to do with the fin, and leapt at him.

Ungainlily leap/fly at the fin and grab hold to attempt to drag him near enough for Boris to smash. But do so whilst also aiming a good slice at his neck to distract him from what I'm doing, and hopefully render Boris unnecessary.

« Last Edit: May 17, 2017, 04:46:33 pm by lawastooshort »
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Digital Hellhound

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #378 on: May 17, 2017, 04:41:14 pm »

'Right,' Boris muttered, already moving. The benefit of always expecting trouble was the ability to move fast when the situation inevitably went south. He got a running start and hoped the aged servoes in his foot plates wouldn't fail him now.

Charge and jump! Try to catch him, drag him down, smash him to a pulp. If unable, throw things at him - if all else fails, use his buddy as ammunition.
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Draignean

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #379 on: May 24, 2017, 12:32:48 pm »

Scarlet

After ensuring that it won't disrupt the saline treatment in any catastrophic manner, Scarlet attempts to stand up and direct the party toward Sadish's lab. Failing the standing bit, get Khate or Vark for leaning and/or carrrying.

Standing was an unsteady affair, but Cass actually helped a great deal. Her gelatinous arm remained docked into Scarlet's chest, still providing surges of tingling energy, but the maid-nurse-thing also took a gentle hold of Scarlet's shoulder and kept her from falling.

It was stupid, tacky, and far too gung-ho about euthanasia, but the combination sex doll and nurse had its uses.

Varkonius popped the airlock, but let Khate lead the way into the Reunion's hangar. It was an odd procession, with Khate's heavily armored and advert covered mech leading a man carrying an injured panther and a deathly ill seemingly sixteen year-old who was being supported by a nurse that just happened to have a hand down the sixteen year old's shirt.

Perhaps not the oddest way Scarlet had entered the hangar, but it made the top five.

There was a shuttle in the hangar Scarlet didn't recognize, presumably the guests Kari had mentioned. Said guests were seated in a merry little circle at the base of the shuttle, looking much the worse for wear. All but one look like they'd recently gotten the shit kicked out of them, and the three that were conscious were passing around a bottle of unmarked booze.

The leader of the group, slumped up against the back of the shuttle in an utterly defeated posture, looked up at the approaching group with a dumbfounded expression. "You... you actually...  Crazy metal bastard was righ-" The man stopped when he got a good look at Vark, at which point he went deathly pale and shotgunned the bottle of booze.

Scarlet ignored him. She was dying and didn't give a fuck. She headed out of the hangar and, after Khate broke off to go track down Sadish, lead Varkonius to the medical/lab area.

A part of Scarlet had hoped Sadish would already be there, waiting to offer Scarlet a pineapple (because, clearly, a pineapple would be just the thing to cheer Scarlet up right now), but it was sadly not so. The lab was full of Sadish's paraphernalia, but rather empty of Sadish.

"You... actually do medical work in here?" Vark asked, looking around with a very dubious expression.

Scarlet, without the strength to spare to give him the finger, gave him a look.

Varkonius didn't care or didn't notice. "And you're not all dead?"



Khate

Khate trotted out of Varkonius' ship, noted the circle of drinking strangers, and filed their existence under the list of things she should probably ask someone about later. It wasn't a long list, largely because Khate typically forgot about anything more than the last three items.

With a touch of direction from Kesari, it was quite easy to find Sadish's last location. The bloodstains were a pretty good indicator, though there were no bodies to be seen- which didn't seem like it quite jived with the story Khate had gotten. Still, incredibly suspicious bloodstains that ended suddenly were something that Khate had more than adequate experience with, largely because every crime drama used them at some point.

This left Khate with a number of options to consider: Sadish had been vaporized. Sadish had been abducted into a specially sealed bag. Sadish had been abducted into the walls, ceiling, or floor. Sadish had been abducted through a bore. Sadish had slipped through a space-time parallax and was currently locked in mortal combat with her mustachioed evil identical twin.

After Khate finished imagining what Sadish with a mustache would look like, she began whittling the options down. They all seemed equally likely, but there were only a few that she had the ability to test at the moment. Since she didn't have a quantum resonance flux monitor to detect rifts in the space time continuum, Khate indulged in what most Canes considered an embarrassingly bad habit of youths- much akin to the adolescent human habit of chewing on shirt collars. She began to dig.

On the list of truly horrible sounds, mech claws digging into metal and polymer flooring ranked somewhere above a box of irate glass Frogs being smashed vigorously into a chalkboard possessed by the soul of a demon cat, but below Boris' shower serenades.

It was not fruitless labor. One of the floor panels was hinged, and the magnetic locks that should have kept it sealed had been smashed from below. Interestingly, that also made it nearly possible to open from above unless you had already gouged out a chunk of floor next to it. Problematically, the hole was fairly small.

Without the ship's grav plating to rely on, the inside should be micro-gravity. On the plus side, that meant Khate didn't have to try and fuck about with ladders or any other devices meant for humans, but the small size of the hole meant she couldn't take her mech in. She'd have to eject and go in with just her harness.



Kesari

Woosh that drone to Boris' last crime scene locator where Sadish was rumored to have disappeared. Calibrate those scanners to...what Sadish programmed into this suite to best try and find someone like her--even mechanical sensors that were aligned with whatever she wore (even textual spamming)

Kesari tried, quite hard, to pilot the probe back to where Sadish had been last seen. It was awkward going, with the attitude controls being notably difficult for her to grasp hold of in addition to standard piloting. There were several occasions where Kari was forced to use her mouth as an extra appendage, which resulted in drool getting everywhere on the control module and subsequently making the already unusual controls very slippery.

Khate had already clawed the floor open by the time Kesari managed to float the drone over to the scene of the whale-napping. Excitingly, Sadish's probe immediately got a little loading icon when it was near the opening, like it was trying to get download a file, or a message!

Sadly, the message failed to load, but it kept trying- which meant there must be an active broadcast source somewhere close by. Kesari immediately set the drone down into the hole Khate had opened, using the signal strength as a gauge to find Sadish. Surely, even if the active source was a relay and not Sadish herself, she could at least get the message and see if there was a way to track the original source!

Of course, enthusiasm goeth before a fall. Rushing through the underbelly of the ship, Kesari located the signal source, just on the other side of a small gate that cut off maintenance area. Cross referencing with the ship blueprints revealed that there should be a signal relay on the other side. Boris' notes also indicated severe hull damage in the same region, which meant that the relay was likely just too badly damaged to transmit fully. The drone could operate in space, and so if Kesari could just open this one little door she could-

A second after the drone jabbed the door override with a tentacle, it occurred to Kesari that the atmosphere around the drone might be a significant problem.

With the horrible roar of a supersonic hurricane, the vibrantly pink drone was shot out into space- whipping out of the Reunion's damaged hull and straight towards the Flounder.

During that horrified moment when Kesari realized what she'd just done, the probe succeeded in relaying a single message.

Quote from: From Sadish!
Sadish here! By reading this message, it is reasonable to assume I am still alive. I am currently safe and in good hands. The situation is complicated, but rest assured I am not currently in need of rescue. My wounds are currently mending-I'm sure I'll be up and about in no time. Meanwhile, don't worry about me. I also hope YOU are all alive, given the situation I left you all in.

If the validity of the sender of this message is questioned, I'm including an exact chemical breakdown of the meal I shared with Kesari, just before I left the comms room-in particular the Hauloan Roast I've yet to eat.. Run some of the leftovers through the analyzer in my lab and you'll know it was me. Also, put the roast the freezer, would you? Unless Kesari has eaten my roast, then I suppose you will all just have to trust me.

~A bellyful of love, Sadish

Relayed at the end was an absurdly complex series of chemical formula,  including an annotation that it probably needed more red-wine vinegar next time.

The hull breach Kesari had opened sealed quickly, the ship detecting the atmospheric leak and clamping security doors down before the breach could do too much damage.


Sadish

Sadish swept through the applications on her harness, tracking down which one had just issued her a green and blinking light.

Her drone had sent her an ack, and more importantly, it was on the move. It had, very briefly, sent her a status update notifying her that it was currently headed towards the Agri-word the Flounder orbited at about 350 m/s.

Sadish very much hoped that was a puzzling mistake created by a mixture of bad connection and a slightly damaged rig. She didn't know why the probe would be heading off into space at the approximate speed of a de-pressurizing bulkhead, and she didn't particularly like the blatantly obvious explanation. She liked that probe.

A soft, repetitive knock at the door to the infirmary garnered a look from both Aimasc and Sadish.

"Ear wishes to come in. Ear wishes to speak. Does not wish Lightbringer to see Ear. Please, no lights... No lights...

Aimasc sighed. "Ear is one of the smarter ones of the Descendants. He can operate a radio, can speak pretty well, and he's the closest thing to a... priest, I suppose would be the word. He's the one they've assigned to make contact with Boris, with my prodding."



Aubrey

Ungainly leap/fly at the fin and grab hold to attempt to drag him near enough for Boris to smash. But do so whilst also aiming a good slice at his neck to distract him from what I'm doing, and hopefully render Boris unnecessary.

Aubrey surged forward when she realized that the Fin was purposefully interfering with her implants. Ironweavers were not the kind of people you wanted to fight if they had time to prepare, and she'd given this Fin too much time already.

Ignoring her injured wing, Aubrey took to the wing with speed and agility, which was the only reason she had time to dodge as a number of the blue sparks the Fin had been creating zipped towards her. It was an inelegant flapping roll rather than a smooth bank, but it got her out of the path of a dozen lights, forcing them to smash into the cargo crates and floor. They detonated with a sharp crack of sound and a flash of light, like tiny little missiles.

"I knew it! Bloody insane mercenaries! I KNEW you'd try and kill me!" The Fin, somewhat surprisingly, sounded as much jubilant about being proved correct as he did afraid of being killed horribly. He began floating rather quickly toward the ceiling of the cargo hold, launching another stream of little blue mini-missiles at Aubrey as he did so.



Boris

Charge and jump! Try to catch him, drag him down, smash him to a pulp. If unable, throw things at him - if all else fails, use his buddy as ammunition.

Boris once more tried to jump for the Fin, but again failed. Something was locking up in the leg servos, more than usual anyway. Likely it was lingering thermal damage from Boris' fight with Mickaw, a knowledge which only pissed Boris off more.

Aubrey did her best to get close, but narrowly avoided getting hit with a screen of blue-lights-turned-projectiles. Now the Fin was heading up to the top of the cargo hold, sending more of his lights to nail Aubrey into the floor.

It made Boris feel rather ignored. It was rather insulting, for the Fin to focus all his aggression on little Aubrey instead of the King.  Boris grabbed the captive neo-cat by the scruff of the neck and swung it in two complete revolutions in order to hammer throw it at the Fin with an adequately kingly amount of force.

The claw intercepted nearly all of the missiles meant for Aubrey and... broke apart. It was rather fantastically horrible. Bits of comrade pelted the Fin, knocking him off course as he struggled to get higher.

The Fin made several incoherent sounds of disgust and horror, using his harness arms to wipe off the larger chunks that were sticking to him. "Oh.. blyecch! Control! Mercenaries have infiltrated, send a cleaner, I repeat, SEND A CLEA-"

Boris cut him off with a hundred pound cargo crate, smashing the fin upwards into the ceiling. There was  a spark from his exposed cybernetic, then he hit the ground with an only slightly dampened splat.

"... Ow... Would you... be so kind as... to give me a minute so... so I can reboot... a couple things?"

The little blue lights, however, did not fall with the fin. They continued to fly up, touching the top of the cargo hold. There was a single bright spark as they connected, then they fell to the ground with a metallic tinkle.

"Request Acknowledged, Sarraki. Sending a Cleaner."

The new voice, full of static, was audibly piped through from Sarraki's rig. At the same time, a panel in the ceiling clicked open. I looked like a normal interior plate that someone had cleverly cut in half and then reassembled. On the other side was what looked rather like an airlock.
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A: "No, not particularly."

IronyOwl

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #380 on: May 24, 2017, 05:01:47 pm »

Khate whimpered slightly. She liked her mech, and wasn't as keen being outside it. Still, if that was what it took...

The message that Sadish was alive and not in need of rescue was a little relieving, but still left Scarlet and also possibly everyone including Scarlet and Sadish in need of Sadish to live. That meant in need of rescue or not, someone was going to have to go down there and fetch their loopy Fin.

Extracting herself from her mech and donning an especially garish ribbon for bravery, she began wriggling her way through the hole. That the last entity to make that trip had been fired into space only improved her odds- everyone knew a nameless mook dying was a common prelude to the heroine's valiant success. At least, she thought the drone was nameless. Had Sadish named it? Sadish had probably named it. Oh well.
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Dwarmin

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #381 on: May 27, 2017, 01:52:06 pm »

"I would hear him speak. Suppose we should dim the lights?" Sadish said.
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Chevaleresse

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #382 on: May 27, 2017, 02:26:28 pm »

Scarlet merely rolled her eyes and set about her task. Of course the goddamned cetacean wasn't here. Hopefully she hadn't done anything incredibly stupid and gotten herself shot or turned into goo or who the hell even knows what. Not to mention, you know, that if there was anyone who could puzzle out a good way to unfuck this particular situation, it'd be her, with some sort of anecdote about how the symptoms presented mirrored the ones present during an outbreak of the rare blood-boil fever on Cystia V and did you know the Cystians had an intriguing language when it came to diseases, which seemed to have developed only a few centuries ago in ANOTHER outbreak caused in part by the failure of negotiations between them and. . .

Scarlet looked for a couple things; firstly, something that might keep her patched over for the next few minutes. A way to boost up her nanites a bit more safely, or some plain old antibiotics; chances were that this thing, being an incredibly complex and dangerous programmable bioweapon of some sort, was probably resistant to, but it couldn't hurt. Second step was to find Sadish's notes on this thing and how to counteract it if at all possible.
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lawastooshort

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #383 on: June 05, 2017, 07:44:05 am »

"King Boris. Did you notice a means of escape on your way here? Perhaps we could use the charge up there to destroy this 'Cleaner'."
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lawastooshort

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #384 on: June 05, 2017, 12:21:08 pm »

Quote from: Aubrey to Kesari
Kesari - any data on number or type of crew of Nosoi? Thank you.



Aubrey looked at the clicking ceiling. She looked at the explosive charge above and quickly scanned for any more in the vicinity. She couldn't think of what the best course of action was. If she were alone, she could flee to somewhere she could call the Bird, hacking the path shut behind her and getting away before anyone knew...she reckoned. But she wasn't.

"King Boris. We have half a second to decide. We should grab the above charge. Then we have two options. Either we seal this space and flee to the bridge to locate a means of escape, after destroying this 'Cleaner' and the airlock. There is a risk that the Nosoi will simply destroy the freighter and us, and that there is no means of escape."

She looked at King Boris, cocking her head in a way that suggested she had already formed an opinion.

"Or we could eliminate the 'Cleaner' and take the explosives onto the Nosoi, and take it by force. There is a risk that the 'Cleaner' eliminate us first, and that the forces of the Nosoi overwhelm us. We would only have surprise and ultraviolence on our side, and you are less good at one and I less good at the other. It is to be conjectured that the forces on board the Nosoi are also adequately capable of ultraviolence. However, our fate would be in our hands. If we could reach the bridge..."

Listening for any further clicking she concluded:

"Of course, we could also flee immediately and let the 'Cleaner' work unhindered. There. I have analysed the options I consider reasonable. Now I would like Your Majesty's ruling. Quickly, if possible, please."

She didn't want to say that she thought the best option for both of them was to storm the Nosoi in a ridiculous suicide mission that would probably see the end of them and the Reunion. She wasn't meant to be a stormtrooper. But the freighter was planned for demolition. Staying in it meant their life was over as soon as their enemy decided its use was over. And there was no guarantee there were any escape pods or shuttles left on the freighter. Aubrey liked to think this was a logical conclusion, but she was tired.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2017, 03:24:09 pm by lawastooshort »
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Digital Hellhound

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #385 on: June 08, 2017, 11:17:54 am »

Boris ran the possibilities through his mind and found no ideal option. He made his decision.

'We've come too far to back down now. We attack.'

Fling the Fin, possibly strapped with explosives (ideally in a way that won't blow us all to space, though), at whatever horror comes through that door. Throw other stuff or punch as needed. If we don't die horribly, advance into the Nosoi with the explosives! Victory or death!
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lawastooshort

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #386 on: June 08, 2017, 12:28:36 pm »

”Righty ho,” thought Aubrey to herself. The stupid stupid stupid idea terrified her, but it was what she wanted too… She thought she could probably escape by herself, but she wasn’t by herself… So there was no escape this time.

Message Kesari!!
Quote from: Aubrey to Kesari URGENT
Kesari. Please prepare to assault Nosoi with all possible systems. We are boarding shortly. I underline: ALL. Do so in 30 seconds if you don’t hear otherwise.

Get up to the one visible explosive charge and if it seems probable that I can detach it “safely” then detach it and get it to King Boris. If time is available, search the 2 dead mercies for a gun that is more powerful than what I might have on me… Then/otherwise prepare for the assault by getting into cover and hiding. Assault tactics will consist of 1/ cloaking 2/ trying to mindhack the Cleaner’s weaponry to attack itself or just blow up and then 3/ trying to mindhack the Cleaner’s defences down to immobilise and vulnerabilise it. If King Boris looks in danger, than fly madly about in a highly distracting (to the Cleaner) way. Use hit and run tactics as much as possible whilst keeping up my electronic assault. Don’t panic! It would be nice to also cut the Cleaner’s communications back to the Nosoi, but this isn’t a priority.

Then, at the moment we board, or if the fight is prolonged, signal to Kesari to attack, and then we fight our way on board! Possibly to the bridge.

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Tiruin

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #387 on: June 09, 2017, 02:00:32 pm »

Sadish's Drone actions:
> Try to shoot a very quick signal to the relay, on our location--a modernized version of Dijkstra's algorithms to (what I presume is) Sadish's location, highlighting areas of possible breaches or pressure variations/in room areas along the path;
> Attempt braking, and convert the drone into a relay between me and Aubrey. If possible, get full intel on what's going on and begin interfacing with what I can--boosting Boris/Aubrey's tech capabilities, or sending through any aid I can. Preferring manipulation/disruption of their power grid (or at least controlling their systems and transferring it to Aubrey)

On Ship actions [Prioritize drone/contact/help with boarding team though]:
> Contact Mickaw or his team through their team channel with my voice (as Captain). Inquire why they haven't launched yet [if this was not covered in context before] or if they can help Khate.
> If I still can in this turn, prepare ship defenses only; later on will warming up weapons, plus angling that shield towards the bore area happen (how far or long until shuttle/sled arrives?)


((I'll put my actions at the start of the post, so Draig can just do CTRL+A and snip off everything under it :P Also since Draig said (at least IC, I can assume that Kes knows) that the Nosoi [name of wasp ship on freighter ship] is going to bore through in 2-3 turns depending on what happens, I'll be planning as such))
As Kesari stared in shock at Sadish's probe en route to its trajectory point--her mind quickly coped by her own means: thoughts of what could be done. The probe could being grabbed in gravitational orbit by the planet, or be used by anyone that could snatch it (or tap into its receiving frequencies). Otherwise, all the numbers and other values acted as a cue for her: It was back to University teaching in her past, observing the stars and atmospheric pressures when exposed to a vacuum--a thorough discipline for one born on a communications station, and acting as a militia for its defense. It was an equation she was very familiar with, and even pondered as a dissertation once. A few seconds of a memory was enough to ensure being certain that she could do what she could do.

As her thoughts were occupied by the problem of a missing Sadish, her tech harness responded to her circlet's signals, and began what her body was too stunned and tense to do (or have the fine motor skills to do). She predicted at least a few minutes left until the bore interdiction would...collapse, so to speak, and Aubrey's messages were coming in faintly, and had to take time to be parsed by the ship computer. This was one-way, as any message from her to Aubrey would be better taken.

She had to ensure a few things: One was to sabotage the Nosoi, second was to prime all weapons to the arrival vector; there was supposedly a defense for that that she had no idea about--and initial scans showed only the ship outline for BOTH ships. Third was talking to Mickaw for enlisting his aid (and given her last talk with him and his crew in small and insignificant details, she felt confident about this). . .and fourth was hoping Varky wasn't going to kill them all once he arrived at the medbay.

She looked at the internal ship sensors, and took a deep breath as she saw that Varky was in the medbay. From the multiple marks on the sensors, Khate wasn't there. To make matters worse, she had to be precise with her words to asking help from a probably drunked Mickaw and co, and after nearly an hour (or what felt like two) of being frantic with her tech harness and her paws, she was already feeling the stress.

Kesari - any data on number or type of crew of Nosoi? Thank you.
Quote from: Kes :D | :(
No data thus far; lost Sadish's probe in finding her on board. Will recycle into a better transmitter for our communication. Received feedback on your situation from your comm-scanner as of the past three minutes. Please take care of your arm.

Planning to fire primary weapons at bore point. Will establish better contact with you in the meantime.

We have a few-...several minutes before interdiction fails. There is still time.

Attempting to reconnect. . .
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Draignean

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #388 on: June 20, 2017, 04:42:12 pm »


Sadish

"I would hear him speak. Suppose we should dim the lights?" Sadish said.

Aimasc nodded and made practiced shooing motions at the swarm of glowing Sadishlings that were still engaged in their merry game of tag. The Sadishlings spun as one to regard her, universally adopting whale-moji faces with their eyes crossed (as crossed as Fin eyes could go, which wasn't very) and their tongues stuck out.

Aimasc made a show of pulling her lips back from her gums. A dangerous light literally glinted in her eyes as a low growl rumbled in her illusory throat.

The sadishlings instantly adopted expressions of stark terror (again, as much stark terror as could be expressed by a woji) and fled inside Sadish's harness, plunging the infirmary into near darkness. The only light was the silvery glow coming off of Aimasc herself, and that was comparable to a particularly intense jar of fireflies in terms of illumination.

"Enter, Ear. The light has been made low, you will not be judged for how you appear."

The door to the infirmary cracked open slowly, and the radiation sensor in Sadish's rig immediately began to pulse a sickly greenish color. Four or five times normal background. Not harmful in the short term, and relatively easily treated, but still rather concerning. If that came through when the door was open part of the way...

Well, logic dictated that Sadish had already been through that at least once- and she seemed fine now.

Watching Ear slip through the mostly shadowed doorway was... perplexing. Sadish was able to determine, rather definitively, that Ear was not a Fin or a corvid, but beyond that was difficult. He was spindly and ghostly pale, and he used all four limbs to move naturally- but he didn't move in the way she expected a Cane or a Claw to move. Given Aimasc's information, living in microgravity had likely given them a rather unusual physiology and means of travel.

"Ah, ah... I am unworthy of the Lightbringer's true face, and I beg forgiveness for intruding, but the Daughter of the Rifle is coming."

Another light, slightly less foreboding than the radiation indicator, blinked on Sadish's dimmed display. A short range message, its sender obvious from the title.

A.I.M.A.S.C: Daughter of the Rifle == Ms. Rhigg. Gunpuppy was a difficult appellation to translate.

"Has she seen any of you? Is she coming this way?"

The long-limbed shadow that was Ear swayed, shaking what Sadish presumed was its head. "No, we are not seen. We hide, silent. She comes slowly, guided from above. She can feel the Lightbringer."

Aimasc bowed her head to Ear, whispering something that was inaudible to Sadish. "Do not hinder her. If she seems to falter in her path, you should give her a sign of direction. Would the People be prepared to guide Lightbringer to the Daughter of the Rifle, if it were necessary?"

There was a sudden whining groan from the shadows that were all Sadish could see of Ear, and the elongated creature seemed to have collapsed and was burying its head between its forelimbs and shaking violently left and right.

A.I.M.A.S.C: Good news, you're being rescued. Bad news is that it might take a minute for Ear to stop being overcome with Holy Dread.

There was a moment of pause, during which Aimasc was clearly leaning down and speaking softly to Ear. After a fruitless minute, the holographic Cane popped her head up again and gave Sadish an exasperated look.

A.I.M.A.S.C: It... might help if you spoke to him, but it's also possible he'd have to spend then next twenty minutes rocking back and forth reciting your scriptures if you talked to him directly. Which, entertaining as it may be to watch him decry cilantro flavored squijium as an abomination unto the Universe, would not be productive.



Khate

Khate whimpered slightly. She liked her mech, and wasn't as keen being outside it. Still, if that was what it took...

The message that Sadish was alive and not in need of rescue was a little relieving, but still left Scarlet and also possibly everyone including Scarlet and Sadish in need of Sadish to live. That meant in need of rescue or not, someone was going to have to go down there and fetch their loopy Fin.

Khate felt rather nekked without her mech. Not in a lewd way, but more in a 'tragically underdressed for the murder-death-party that was surely around the next corner' kind of way. Khate loved murder-death-parties, and she'd taken every care possible to make sure that her mech made the proper statement when she walked into one. Still, considering that Sadish seemed fine (and Sadish was not a big fan of Murder Death parties, despite owning a fuckhuge mining laser) it didn't seem that likely that Khate would immediately need to simultaneously paste a roomful of hostiles AND convince the same hostiles that DNR was the bestest show ever. 

Reluctantly, Khate slipped down the opening, adjusting to the micro-gravity conditions smoothly. A fluid sense of 'down' was essential to any mercy who did a lot of work in space, otherwise, you ended up cleaning a lot of barf out of the insides of mechs, fighters, powered armor, and hair in general. It was an essential part of vehicle training that was nearly always clipped out of action shows, unless they kept it in for the comedy factor.

Khate pushed herself along in a spiraling bounce, making twisting jumps that propelled her forwards, flipped her body 180 degrees, and pushed her into the opposite side of the passage so she could make another flipping jump. It was a quick method of travel that left the arms of the suit free to shoot things if shootable things should arise around her.

Which, if Khate was quite honest, seemed more and more likely. The maintenance area she was in was nearly totally dark, with the majority of the light being provided by the flashlight built into her suit rather than the dully flickering wall panels designed to be used by the Resort's former labor crews. More than once Khate could have sworn she saw movement at the edges of her flashlight's cone, always amid tangles of ancient pipe and wiring. Phantom sounds, the metallic clatter of debris bouncing around for no good reason and occasional rasps that sounded uncannily like something clawed pushing off from the wall just beyond the reach of the light, plagued Khate. Sure, maybe the drone had cleared out the necessary amount of thematic danger, but that only worked if Khate was starring in some sort of space opera action flick. If this was a horror... Well, then she was the heavily armed competent security girl person who decided to strip off her armor as fan service, only to descend directly into a dark and forbidding tunnel with no backup where she'd be killed by the monster to show the audience how serious things were. Or, if this was neither a horror or an action, then the monster would probably have tentacles...

Those thoughts in mind, Khate nearly obliterated a coolant tank when her tech harness beeped cheerily to inform her that she had mail. Kesari had sent her little program, along with instructions that explained what it was for. Sort of. It was a very Kesari explanation that veered between simplicity and technical jargon with a frequency that left Khate rather confused. Apparently, the program was designed to find Sadish using a star (of which there were plenty, this being space) which was going to go through a tree (of which there were very few, this still being space), in order to find the path that Sadish's message had been routed through.

Khate was happily willing to admit that she had no idea how a non-existent tree with a star on it (That sounded like a cult thing) was going to find Sadish, but she didn't really care as long as it worked. Khate ran the program. The program failed to fabricate a magical homing tree or a guiding star, but it did provide directions.

Directions which Khate was immediately tempted to disregard. There was a fork in the shaft ahead. The program told her to go left, but the edge of Khate's flashlight had framed something that had looked like a pale human arm -grotesquely elongated- retreating down the right passage.

She could follow the directions of the magic invisible tree, or she could try and chase down one of the things likely responsible for kidnapping Sadish.




Kesari

Sadish's Drone actions:
> Try to shoot a very quick signal to the relay, on our location--a modernized version of Dijkstra's algorithms to (what I presume is) Sadish's location, highlighting areas of possible breaches or pressure variations/in room areas along the path;
> Attempt braking, and convert the drone into a relay between me and Aubrey. If possible, get full intel on what's going on and begin interfacing with what I can--boosting Boris/Aubrey's tech capabilities, or sending through any aid I can. Preferring manipulation/disruption of their power grid (or at least controlling their systems and transferring it to Aubrey)


Getting Sadish's drone to work on an immediate search algorithm was a stroke of genius. The internal signal relays on board the Reunion were laid in a theoretically optimal configuration, which, when one took into account the damage on board the section of the ship Sadish was (probably?) in, meant that the search tree of relays that Sadish's signal could have bounced through  was of a very reasonable and highly local depth.

Problematically, there was no way Kesari had to test the relays that were on the tree. All nodes in the search space were isolated from the rest of the Reunion, if they weren't then Sadish's message would have gone through fine and the problem would be as trivial as just calling Sadish or pinging her suit. The nodes that needed to be searched were of a contiguous set that was on the Reunion's blueprints, but no longer connected to the main grid of relays. Searching each one would be trivial if the drone was still there in person...

A faint, flickering signal caught Kari's eye. Khate was in the abandoned area. She was off on her own, but still close enough that she could still send and receive with acceptable levels of corruption. Kesari sent Khate the entire tracking packet, appending instructions and explanations afterward. Khate could work through the dead section, though she'd be just as lost, communications wise, if she went much deeper.

Files transferred, Kesari continued working on trying to get the drone to just slow down. Unfortunately, the drone operated on very small scale low impulse drives when it wasn't near enough to an object to drag itself along magnetically. The drone was slowing, but it did not do so quickly or easily. Braking in space was hard.

Regardless of that, attempting to contact Aubrey using the drone was a complete failure. The drone was a very, very tiny piece of equipment compared to the Reunion. It was likely less than one percent the size of the Reunion's phased broadcast array, and while it was well made, it couldn't really hope to compete at stellar distances. It sent a signal, and that signal probably reached the Nosoi, but it was extremely doubtful that it made it through the Nosoi's shields in any intelligible form.

It did, however, result in Sadish's drone getting pegged with a weapon's lock from the Nosoi.

Kari began to wonder whether it was a good idea to keep touching the drones controls.



Scarlet

Scarlet looked for a couple things; firstly, something that might keep her patched over for the next few minutes. A way to boost up her nanites a bit more safely, or some plain old antibiotics; chances were that this thing, being an incredibly complex and dangerous programmable bioweapon of some sort, was probably resistant to, but it couldn't hurt. Second step was to find Sadish's notes on this thing and how to counteract it if at all possible.

Getting Cass' hand out of her shirt was not as easy as Scarlet hoped. The nanites coursing through her blood were very much of the kind of advanced technology that Scarlet hadn't much wanted to fuck with, and they'd never had any problems before that required maintenance. They took care of themselves, derived their energy from her own biology, and generally did their thing without Scarlet so much as thinking about them. The energized saline was probably helping them, though it burned like a bitch in every vein, and Scarlet didn't have anything on hand that would fulfill a similar role.

What she did have was a shitload of antibiotics of various flavors. It was a big galaxy out there, with a shitload of diseases that had developed in relative isolation, and only a great fool set foot on a new world without her immune system roided up to the point where it could probably kill a small horse if left to its own devices. Scarlet grabbed one auto-injector, handed another to Cass, and went to work giving her right thigh a brand new set of track marks while Cass followed suit on her left. It would probably only buy her minutes at best, but that was what her life was measured in at this point.

Varkonius laid his Panther down on one of the open tables, settling her gently. The panther would need help, but if Scarlet was any kind of vet at all (she wasn't) she'd guess the animal still had a considerably better chance of making to tomorrow than she did. Varkonius leaned over the panther and cooed to her, leaving Scarlet to unsteadily wobble past the sectioned off infirmary area and over to Sadish's 'lab' section. The Fin had to have made notes, and maybe, just maybe, there was something Scarlet could use to survive until Khate brought Sadish back.

Scarlet pushed past the racks separating the patient beds from the lab, and found it not quite as she remembered. Most of Sadish's tables were covered in fibrous tendrils of green and brown, all emanating outwards from a single large box from which sprouted a four-foot tall mushroom with a long, thin cap. The tendrils had pushed dozens of small objects of the tables, and the thin tips wiggled like feelers as Scarlet watched. A particularly ropy set of tendrils had buried themselves in Sadish's lab fridge, which was partially open and dripping a thick, honey-like substance.

 "So, where is the doc? I didn't bring my baby here to wa-" Varkonius stopped, his mouth open, as he walked up behind Scarlet. "Err, why do you have a giant mushroom? Please tell me that isn't your doctor's assistant or something equally ridiculous."

Varkonius stepped forward, toeing past some unseen line. The tips of the fine tendrils emanating from the central mushroom twitched, pointed directly at Varkonius, and then went deathly still.

Terrible, terrible memories suddenly rose in Scarlet's mind. Memories of an excited Sadish being fascinated to discover numerous animals encysted in amber at the base of giant mushrooms. There wasn't a lot of strength left in Scarlet's body, but she used what she had to try and tackle Varkonius backward.

It wasn't much of a tackle, more of a slightly forceful fall, but it was enough to knock Varkonius back and send both of them prone- just in time to watch the mushroom split open. The mantle of the mushroom was not one piece, it was an illusion created by two bladed mantis arms tucked tightly beneath a downturned triangular head. The mushroom-mantis thrashed horribly, keening and raking its clawed arms through the air where Scarlet and Varkonius had just been standing. It couldn't quite reach them while they were on the ground, but it was too damn close for comfort.

The creature was much smaller than the one that they'd had to kill on Procython Prime, and its body was still rooted to its container by a mushroom stalk, but it was rather unmistakably a half-grown fungal mantis. Why it was there was anyone's guess. Probably because God was an asshole and had decied that was what Scarlet needed to deal with right now.

"What the fuck is that and why do you have it in an infirmary?!" Varkonius shouted, scooting back along the floor and drawing out three small spheres from a hip pouch. "Screw that, why the fuck do you have that thing AT ALL?!"



Aubrey

Get up to the one visible explosive charge and if it seems probable that I can detach it “safely” then detach it and get it to King Boris. If time is available, search the 2 dead mercies for a gun that is more powerful than what I might have on me… Then/otherwise prepare for the assault by getting into cover and hiding. Assault tactics will consist of 1/ cloaking 2/ trying to mindhack the Cleaner’s weaponry to attack itself or just blow up and then 3/ trying to mindhack the Cleaner’s defences down to immobilise and vulnerabilise it. If King Boris looks in danger, than fly madly about in a highly distracting (to the Cleaner) way. Use hit and run tactics as much as possible whilst keeping up my electronic assault. Don’t panic! It would be nice to also cut the Cleaner’s communications back to the Nosoi, but this isn’t a priority.

Aubrey made jumping flap up to the explosive charge that the Sarraki had placed on the bulkhead, her wounded wing sending another spray of fine red droplets across the floor of the cargo hold. It was an ungainly leap, and Aubrey made it only by clawing onto the demolition charge with the arms of her tech harness and holding herself there. Detaching the charge was a simple matter -it was a bomb designed for work, not sabotage and terrorism-, but the fall back to the ground was made abrupt when Aubrey's injured wing failed to open into a gliding position when prompted.

Aubrey was light, and the fall damaged her pride more than her body, but it was a rather stark reminder that her wing needed medical attention, and she was going to be nearly ground-bound until such time as she could get it looked at.  She tossed the explosive charge to Boris, who applied it to Sarraki (over the Fin's rather shrill objections), a moment before the airlock in the ceiling clicked open and dropped what Aubrey presumed was the Cleaner onto the floor of the cargo hold.

As it fell from the ceiling, it was a silver sphere approximately a meter in radius. For that brief moment when it was still in the air, it seemed to be made of featureless and flawless metal.  Yet it deformed when it hit the ground. It hit like a ball of soft clay, the sphere deforming at the bottom and spreading out flat across the floor. The metal surface segmented at the point of impact, revealing itself to be comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of angular metal pieces that could fit together without seam, and were carried along by an underlying substrate of...

Flesh? The material beneath the metal, revealed as the cleaner spread out across the floor, looked soft, wet, dull grey-blue, and organic. The pile tensed, then reversed its spreading flow, rising into a pillar of metal and sinew. The floor where it had withdrawn from was rather distinctly clean and shiny, as though rasped clean by metal files.

Aubrey reached out to disable the Cleaner's weapons, to disable its sensors, to do something, but she found nothing. She could sense the field of a living creature, that chaotic and disordered haze that was beyond her abilities to manipulate- beyond the abilities of anyone and anything except for the post-apex. The Cleaner, as it were, was running analog. It didn't have a computer in it, or anything running a kind of circuit she could manipulate.

Without warning, without a sound other than the rasp of the bulk of its formless body leaving the floor, the Cleaner reared up and lunged like an enormous snake.



Boris

Boris ran the possibilities through his mind and found no ideal option. He made his decision.

'We've come too far to back down now. We attack.'

Fling the Fin, possibly strapped with explosives (ideally in a way that won't blow us all to space, though), at whatever horror comes through that door. Throw other stuff or punch as needed. If we don't die horribly, advance into the Nosoi with the explosives! Victory or death!

While Aubrey was staring at the rising cleaner like it had just stolen her lunch money in order to buy a knife to murder her dog with, Boris made some minor adjustments to the explosive. Specifically, he toned the charge power down by about half (in order to avoid blowing apart the inside of the Freighter with the force of a 16" kinetic driver round), detached the then unused explosives and tucked them into his exosuit, and then set the bomb on a five-second timer.

By the time the Cleaner had reared up to strike, Boris had already grabbed Sarraki and hurled him at the abomination's bulk.

Sarraki's screaming body hit the Cleaner like a marble striking putty. The Cleaner folded up around him, its angular metal plates reforming and interlocking like the blades of an industrial shredder, with Sarraki at their heart. The sight of the Fin being pulled into the newly formed churning metal maw was short-lived, lasting only for two or three seconds before it vanished in a ball of white light.

The blast wave knocked Boris off his feet, deafening him and propelling him into one of the pillars supporting the catwalk he'd originally leaped from. The pillar bent before Boris' back did, but the impact still crushed the wind from his lungs.

Aubrey appeared more fortunate, flattening to the ground before the blast hit and sliding past Boris like a feathered puck.

As for the Sarraki and the Cleaner... Sarraki seemed to have suffered a total existence failure. There was no trace of the Fin left. As for the Cleaner, much of it seemed either pancaked into the floor plating or reduced to globules scattered in corners. Bits of twisted metal, the remains of its piecemeal armor, were scattered all around and embedded into various surfaces. The destruction was enough to bring a brutal grin to Boris' face.

A grin which slid off quickly when the remaining bits of the Cleaner began to quiver and move. Any globule larger than a pinky nail formed into a ball and began rolling towards the center of the blast, leaving tracks of clean floor behind them. The main bulk of the Cleaner that had been below the explosion, the part that had been hammered into the floor, quivered and rose, reforming and twisting as more bits of itself returned to the fold.

By the time Boris had enough of his breath back to stand, the Cleaner had reformed into an amorphous pillar, slightly larger than half of its original size. It twisted and roiled, pulling in more bent and twisted metal pieces from its surface and reshaping them into their original form. In seconds, it would be fully reformed, if substantially smaller.

A sudden shock went through Boris, lifting the hair on his arms that Mickaw hadn't singed off. A Bore charge, and a messy one. The Nosoi was moving for the Reunion now.
Logged
I have a degree in Computer Seance, that means I'm officially qualified to tell you that the problem with your system is that it's possessed by Satan.
---
Q: "Do you have any idea what you're doing?"
A: "No, not particularly."

lawastooshort

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Re: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat.
« Reply #389 on: June 21, 2017, 03:06:14 am »

Aubrey lifted her eyes from the floor to the Cleaner and swore, dragging herself towards King Boris.

"Boris... I can't do anything against that. I don't know what to do... Every part of me wants to run."

They had to leave, whether to the Nosoi or not, she didn't care. She felt the bore jump and felt sick at the idea of that thing ending up on the Reunion.
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