Futuristic .Ever Further. [MAIN THREAD]

[WantYourSoul]

AURA trills eagerly as Kase, now whole, changes his vote,"Ooh! A change of vote, how exciting! That makes it-- Pause for anticipation and Grov to finishing throwing up... And the winner is... Aurora with a vote of 4!"The AI flits from person to person's head before stopping to hover above Aurora, who was red-cheeked and pinching the bridge of her nose. and shines a light blue light onto her head.
"AURA, you're forgetting someone," she informs it with a little shake of her head.
"Incorrect! Only functional units are allowed to cast a vote and Sk'rk mz'n Vir'kt is not a functional unit. I'm sure he would have voted for you in life anyway," it informs the crew sweetly with a supplemental recording of Slick's voice saying his own name, shifting the light to fall on the now prone figure of the insectoid alien. Aurora gasps, she would rush over to check on Slick but she trusted AURA's judgement on alien species better than her own.

"Well, that is... Unfortunate. Grov, you gonna be okay in there?" She asks, deciding that she would rather focus on the living crew for the time being,"I would think an exoskeleton would be beneficial for an unshielded jump," she adds softly under her breath. She pulls her tablet from her waist to input a few commands, waking a few of her little eyebots which she promptly unclipped from her necklace to allow them to roam free. She figured she could use them to survey the area before they landed, which would be particularly useful now that they are missing a fighter.

 

[The Pattern]

"Congratulations, boss." Solomon sounded genuinely pleased with the result, and knowing that the others saw similar qualities in their new leader instilled Solomon with hope, perhaps they'd all survive a few missions together. When Aura brought up the insect's sudden demise, it did undeniably bring a small smile to Solomon's face, it may have been different to the others but the old man didn't really care anymore. Another member of the genocidal maniacs were dead, and that was something Solomon could happily drink to, if he ever bothered with drinking alcohol. No, this corpse wasn't a bad thing at all in the old man's eyes, It was opportunity. Hide a few remote charges along the insides of the bug, rig them up to a detonator and it'd make a nice trap if someone could get the mother Coceopod to eat it.

"Anybody know if that lobster thing likes eatin' bug? And if it can breathe underwater? 'Cause if it likes bug then we could make our friend here into a spicy treat. Or, we could just take it out cleanly with blowin' up the reservoir and drownin' it if it ain't that fond of water. Those are my ideas so far, boss." After Solomon spoke up with his possible plans, he moves over to his trolley and begins checking one of the bags, just to take stock of what he actually managed to grab from the ship. "Grov, y' mind avoidin' my equipment when you're a little peckish? Can't help but notice your... fondness for explosives. Also, anybody need any grenades for anythin' other then eatin' before we arrive?" Grov might prove to be a nuisance in the future if he likes eating grenades and ammunition, at the very least the old man didn't feel as though he could trust the weird bundle of rocks with handling explosives.

 

[Yamarashi]

Kase rises from his seat, his eye unblinkingly focused on the insectoid cadaver. His heavy footsteps advance slowly towards the fallen teammate, so methodical it's almost as if he were timing them. He stares the body up and down, reaching his hand forward gradually to touch it. His finger makes contact with Slick's face, Kase instinctively flinching as if expecting the corpse to spring into an attack. Yet unsurprisingly, his head slumps to the side pathetically as Kase applies pressure, lifeless. The machine throws his arm out to the side with a quick snap, a long, nozzle-shaped tool extending outwards from a panel that lifts on his forearm.

:"Oh, well then... My what a shame it is to loose our dear friend before we even hit the field..." Kase chokes out, his forced response almost entirely devoid of emotion.​

With a clap, he quickly sets off to work, carefully using what is now shown to be a laser cutter to remove a patch of exoskeleton from Slick's body. He peels it off, eyeing the chitinous slab critically before tossing it into the tackle box. Patting the corpse on the back, he hoists it up and slings it over his shoulder, sauntering back over to his seat.

:"Perfecto! This'll do nicely. Huh? Oh anyhow. Coceopod Mothers are all good and well underwater, same above. I was thinkin' the same thing, oldtimer. Sometimes the ever loving wives eat the mates that die tryna' protect em, so they're no stranger to invertebrate flesh.Our poor, poor, friend here should work nicely as an alluring snack."

​

 

[fuil]

"Yeah I'm fine, this always happens when I go through a jump like that. Don't know how you fleshys handle it so well." He said as his eyes looked towards the bugs form. 'One less body I got to shield if things go south.' He thought with a shrug and looked back to Aurora. "But I appreciate the worry Chief." He said before turning to his gun and loading in a massive drum of ammo. As the old guy made the comment about his eating habits Grov couldn't help but chuckle. "Don't worry I only eat during and after a job so you tasty treats are safe for now."

 

[RoarkSouth]

Zeep formed a retort to the cyborg's insinuations that he had been in anywhere near the situations Zeep had to deal with while fighting against the enemies of his species, the swarms of V'zikt fighters that outnumbered his own clan's ships 12 to 1, the maneuvers he had to do to fly through a Ja-mung battle carrier, or even the brief spar with the humans, in which he was able to take out one of their larger vessels with the Veenet equivalent of a space taxi. Albeit, he had to abandon said space taxi to do it and ended up fighting planet side, but he took comfort in the tradeoff. He was about to say all this when he noticed the grubber's lack of movement, followed by Aura's announcement that he had died to complications in the jump. A knot of guilt formed in the alien's gut.

It was Zeep's fault that the grubber had died. He was responsible for the death of any crew of a vessel he captained, even if he didn't particularly like said crewmember. If the stupid robot had gave him a fully functioning ship, then this wouldn't of happened, Zeep tried to rationalize to himself, yet it didn't do much. Decades of morals and values instilled into him since birth wouldn't let the idea of 'it wasn't the captain's fault' sit well with him. You could have tried flying out of the ship, dodging the shrapnel and try to fix the shielding, his conscious whispered, or you could have done the check first and then have used what time you had to make a workaround. Dozens of ifs, ands, and buts, came to him, pulling him deeper into shame and guilt.

Then the crew started talking of making the grubber into monster food.

"DO you all have no honor!" Zeep yelled, a sound that made his normally loud voice sound like a whisper. "We will not be feedin the corpse of a crewman to anything, you bunch of descratin barbarians!" His eye's burned as he looked to the one who had suggested the idea, then went to settle on the robot, whose filthy rust covered shoulder the corpse now lay over. "Put him down. We will be given the grubb… Slick a proper send off." Zeep shuffled his wing-hands along the ground looking at the sight, and then continued in a voice more somber, "I might 'ave not liked the V'zikt at all, probably even less than you fella's, but it was my fault he died this way. I was the captain of this here vessel, and it is my responsibility that he get's a fittin ceremony. I can at least give that to em."

 

[Yamarashi]

Kase's head clicks for a moment, rotating slowly to face the Veenet Pilot, who was quite obviously flustered at the circumstances. Kase wasn't used to this much exposure to strong emotion among a new team, or at least that's what he could remember. His eye narrows sharply, shrinking to a pinprick as it trains itself on Veenet that sat in the control chair. Kase begins to stiffen up, gradually transitioning into an aggressive stance. He cocks his head to the side, sizing up the feathered creature as the brutish machine begins to raise his fist up, showing off some manner of powered knuckle plate, who's melee purposes were evident by the heavily weathered paint and faint stains of indiscernible origin. He inches ever closer, intentionally thunderous footsteps pounding. The sound of mechanical joints begin to stir elsewhere as his Kinetic Longrifle raises to action, snapping quickly into position as it finds it's obviously intended target. Yet just as quickly as the display had started, it stops with no fanfare, no result. His eye fades into a barely greenish white as he drops his retaliation posture. The chuckling robot's head droops down, body loosening up, but his fist, more of a relaxed grasp now, keeps on moving. Instead of swinging out for a killer punch as somewhat implied, it finds its true destination resting on Slick's dangling body. He lowers the corpse to the ground, sighing. The mechanized brute laughs a bit, almost nervously, sinking to the floor and slumping up against the wall casually as Kase finds a comfortable position.
:"Did I scare you? Probably not... I'd never hurt any of you goofy squishslosh packets anyways. Well, not on purpose at least. I mean, there was that one time back-erm, y'know what? Nevermind, that's a story for another point in our service. Anywhoot, Zeep is absolutely right, guys. It's uh, yeah, it's company policy to bury our dead unless stated otherwise by the individual or dire and/or life threatening circumstances prevent such action...although we really should use the greasy sleezebug butter vessel as bait. Just sayin'..."

​

 

[The Pattern]

"Alright, means you two are to blame if anybody dies because of company policy and some second-rate pilot's selective honour. Y' ain't worth respectin' till y' dead, then your useless husk is literally worth more then every innocent person livin' on the colony we're going to save as well as every other passenger aboard. Ain't fond of that company policy either." Solomon was pretty adamant about where he stood, honour, respect for the dead and other such novel ideas were just barricades to the old man's goals. Zeep had costed the team a quick, life-saving approach to dealing with something that was plaguing a colony filled with innocent people out of some respect for what in Solomon's eyes was a glorified tin of meat. Solomon liked getting a job done, didn't matter how he'd do it as long as it didn't recklessly endanger living people... After all, he did have to draw a line between pragmatism and being a soulless automaton. Solomon then continued to take stock of what he had on his trolley, making sure grenades were secure and that detonators weren't connected and the like.

 

[WantYourSoul]

Aurora smiles timidly, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. She was glad that the crew wasn't lingering on her, as the dead soldier was definitely a more pressing matter. She grimaces slightly as she watches Kase roughly toss the cadaver over his shoulder with little care. Her colony didn't respect the dead, but there was a degree of ceremony that came with harvesting the body for parts the city needed. She could tell that Slick's death seemed to weigh heavily on the Veneet pilot and was about to try mustering up something comforting to say. However, Kase's aggressive movements caused the significantly smaller woman to leap to Zeep's side in case... Well, she wasn't sure what all she could do physically against Kase if he decided to get violent, but she assumed could get into his systems if he went haywire.

When the robot doesn't become violent, Aurora releases a breath of air she didn't realize she had been holding. "I can see where you're coming from, wanting to send him off well. But all that is is meat, Zeep. We can say a few words for the guy, back on Orpheus-2 we would say a prayer for them before Harvest if they wished. We're short a good soldier, and wouldn't you think he would rather be used for the greater good instead of fertilizing trees?" Aurora grew up in a junkyard colony, where everything seemed to be made of hand-me-downs and jury-rigged fixes. She had a mentality of "take it if it works, you never know when you'll need it" which was a reason why all of her bots looked pieced together from scrap.
"I never understood why you care for and hide your dead? I understand for hygiene but why do you say words before you hide them? Aurora says morals but I don't understand," AURA had been quietly examining the body and listening to everyone speak before finally chiming in. It seemed obvious that Aurora hadn't bothered to explain a lot of nuance with tradition to the bot, but she hadn't found a reason to. She wanted AURA to learn for itself and put effort into not giving it bias-- which could be very hard sometimes.

 

[Yamarashi]

:"Alright alright, lemme lay out our big options for dealing with our crunchy deadfriend over here." Kase looks up at Aurora, pulling up his arms to rest on his knees. "Check'it bosschick, either we bury the thing, waste the meat, stick with company policy, everything with big bossman is good, nobody gets in trouble. OR we could say a few words, put his slimy husk to some good use, and make this mission a bit easier. Only issue with el second opción, if we do it, we can't be caught on any cameras and NOBODY can snitch, otherwise guess who gets to take the heat of the blame. Ahthat's right, baby." Kase nods his head quickly, making exaggerated alternating pointing gestures to himself and the newly made leader.​