Futuristic Unlit IC

[Viper Actual]

Stratton was in the middle of giving the body a second eye-over when Kestrel rushed off. "Shit." He recorded some more feed for the camera, grabbed the weapon and got up. "I'll go with Kestrel. Anyone want to secure this body or are we leaving him here?" As Stratton got up he remembered the severed hand. He walked up to it, rolled out a synthoplast bag and scooped it up carefully alongside the device it was still clutching onto. "Hey Doc I have a gift for you when we get back."

Seeing no more reasons to stay around Stratton rolled up the bag and placed it in a pouch followed by cracking and dropping a glowstick on the ground for orientation. You never know in a place like this.

Stratton double-checked his ammo counter, shouldered his rifle and sprinted after Kestrel into the unknown.

 

[Vudukudu]

Kepler's brow arches at Kestrel's talk of someone else from her ship. He, too, would be curious to find someone from home. It might also make him sloppy.

Straining his vocal chords, Kepler manages to produce something like concern in his voice. "Please be cautious, Master Cavanaugh." He remarks, looking over his shotgun to make sure its still readied. Though he'd long since turned off the drone feed, he had heard the shots and was on alert for the time being. Taking another look around the room, Kepler focuses on finding where the doors are, making sure he can respond to any of them opening.

 

[Spazzycat101]

Lydia
​

Lydia watched the drone feeds. She saw the weird creature darting around, and then saw it riddled with bullet holes. Her head fell into her hands.

‘You’re shitting meeeeeeee.’ She took a deep sigh.

‘Maybe I don’t need to give you more credit, maybe I need to give everyone else less,’ Lydia groaned. ‘Whatever the hell that thing was, it’s beyond my skill at this point to save it.’

She listened quietly to Kestrel’s explanation of her chipset ping. Lydia couldn’t exactly understand why it was so significant to her crewmate, but she tried. She supposed the chip ping thing would be like… suddenly finding her cat again. On an alien army cloning asteroid of nightmares. It was the closest analogy she could think of.

On a drone feed, Lydia saw the weapon-like whatever-it-was in the now-dead humanoid’s hand.

‘Damn. Looks like I can’t even give that guy credit. Yeah, uh, on a bell curve I guess, you have more credit, cap.’

Lydia watched one of the drone feeds tensely as Stratton bagged the bodiless arm. She immediately brightened up when nothing exploded.

‘Thanks! Gonna stick that in a cooler soon as we get back to the ship. Are you also able to see what that little trigger thing was in the hand? Cap worries that it might make stuff go boom…Prolly won’t be able to figure out what it does until it does it, anyway.’

As their teammates continued, Lydia rocked back and forth in her feet

 

[Solar Daddy]

Adira had seen the footage and listened to the conversations. The rooms ahead no longer had any threatening life in it, and Kestrel and Stratton were progressing. The only thing that caught her attention was the door that that thing had tried to get through. What if she progressed forward with Lydia and Kestrel, only for that door to open and let in a flood of aliens? But if that was going to happen, they could do that at any point, and besides... Kestrel was distracted now. If anyone was going to be the distracted one, Adira hadn't expected it to be Kestrel. Adira glanced back at Lydia, Jane, and Kepler, and signalled for them to follow behind her as she moved forward into the room that Kestrel and Stratton had just been in.

Adira's group went along the crimson trail that Kestrel and Stratton had originally followed, and met the barely open door that was stuck in place. However it wouldn't have taken much for someone to pry the doors open as it was already ajar. Once open, the interior of the room was similar to that of the one they had first entered - lit with ominous floor lighting along the trim of the walls, spacious and domed. There was what appeared to be heavy machinery inside the room but it was unclear what any of it did. Most of it was completely foreign looking, despite a few odd instruments found in science labs. The most interesting and eye drawing item in the room, however, was at the far end - a screen of sorts that appeared to show some kind of star chart on its surface. It was difficult to tell more from the other side of the room, though.

Silas wasn't sure what to make of current events. Silas completely understood that Kestrel needed to figure out what that ping was - hell, he was curious enough himself. He definitely wasn't going to tell her to stop. "everyone, keep your guards up, we can't afford to let a bit of chaos get the better of us. Anything could be around any corner. Let me know if you guys find anything, be it the scientists, aliens or Kestrel's ping." Silas had ensured Otto would remain on the guns, ready to fire at any given moment and riddle the station with energy ballistics. He wouldn't order Otto to fire at anything unless they were sure the crew was out of harm's way, but it never hurt to be prepared.

"Good news, you haven't found any more open pods. I'm thinking those small aliens are masters to the bigger ones. Like attack dogs. Or maybe it's the other way around. I can't be certain though. Just be careful everyone."

 

[Epiphany]

"Copy," Kestrel said in response to Kepler's caution.

She was peripherally aware of the rest of her team advancing, moving up to secure the point she'd just left. Silas' words over the comms were also registered peripherally, though she managed a "Will do, boss". If not for an interface that literally fed drone data into her visual cortex, Kestrel would have had eyes for nothing but following the signal.

It'd originally blipped a bit, stuttered as various parts of the facility superstructure got in the way but for the last minute it'd firmed up nicely. Kestrel thought she had an idea where it was coming from, just based on plotting her position against the external map they'd made of the sprawling base. More alien corridors greeted her as she rounded corners. Other than disused crates and intermittent lighting, there wasn't much to distract her from the signal, though. This place felt...suspended. A bit like the Mutter's Spiral geophysical deployment shuttles, which sometimes went years between uses. What the hell was this place? What were the aliens doing in it? And why was-

There. Kestrel came to a stop as her proximity transceiver confirmed another chipset behind that door. It was just another door in a corridor with no shortage of doors, though admittedly this one was at the end of this particular hallway. The blonde soldier glanced back towards Stratton, confirming he still moved up while watching her back and then tilted her head towards the door before trying the lock. And sure enough, the lock wouldn't give easily. Or at all. Assuming this was a lock she was trying to interface with.

Getting nowhere, Kestrel pried off the panel with a combat knife and promptly stared. She wasn't a tech but she knew how to wire basic power and telemetry lines...and someone or something had done a number on this door, if the tiny dots that passed for indicators meant anything. Which they very well might not. Either way, it didn't look like the lock was operational anymore. At least, not from this side.

So, with a shrug, Kestrel took her environment suit-clad fist and promptly knocked three times on the door.

 

[Viper Actual]

Stratton jogged for quite the distance. There was no point in hailing Kestrel for she likely knew he was coming up behind her either way. Chatter from the others told him that not only were they advancing but the they had also found something important. Would've been good footage, no doubt.
He shrugged and pressed on. Far down the hallway he spotted Kestrel and slowed down, raising his rifle and scanning the sides for targets. When Kestrel nodded towards the door Stratton returned the gesture and positioned himself on one side of it, letting Kestrel inspect the lock while he himself kneeled down and trained his rifle down the hall into the darkness that pursued them.

When Kestrel knocked on the door three times Stratton glanced over. He loosened a flash grenade from his belt- just in case.

 

[Vudukudu]

Having caught up to the others, Kepler cocks a brow while Kestrel knocks on the door. "I could attempt to cut through it. Or perhaps interface with the system." He said, or would have had the door not surged open in response to the knock. Still a short distance away, Kepler's shotgun stock practically leaps to his shoulder and the barrel snaps to the stranger's chest, painting it with an angry red laser sight.

Human? Yes. Kepler's optics, this time intentionally, flip through various spectra, the floor and walls coated in an indecipherable code-stream of unfamiliar symbols, something Kepler is certain has no relationship with reality. On infrared, his laser sight flickers, though its now aimed at a holographic target on the woman's chest that he is similarly sure does not belong.

His trigger finger twitches, again and again, a hair's width from the trigger, and for one of the first times in his life Kepler's forehead gathers a few beads of sweat. A twinge of anxiety makes itself known in his voice. "Master Cavanaugh, this unit requires a directive." He blurts out.

 

[Dragongal]

Before Kestrel disappeared, Adira saw that one of her drones had indicated no enemies in the room ahead, past those ajar doors. This gave Adira an idea. From what she could see, that room was circular, spacious, and had some debris that would be great for coverage. Whatever that ping meant, it was distracting Kestrel and Stratton, which was fine and understandable, except for half of the team not being with them. At the same time that Kestrel was beginning to make her way back down the hall, Adira had begun to lead Lydia and Jane forward, just saying, "I got an idea."

They passed the blood puddle, now sans hand, and got to the corpse of the tiny creature. Adira poked it a few times with the toe of her boot, then said, "No race I recognize, no insignia I recognize, and it is very, very dead. Good to know." She then looked up at the ajar doors and paused. That door would need some prying, that was for certain. Ah, well. She discreetly put one of her pistols on safety and then said, "Don't drop this, or you might die," as she shoved it into Lydia's hands. There wasn't time for an argument, and if there was, Adira wasn't even in the mood for it. The type of pistol Adira wielded were notorious for their ability to be intentionally (or not) overheated and turned into the equivalent of small bombs. Lydia didn't need to know that the gun was on safety, and not at all overheating - she could figure that out if something happened. In that worst case, it meant that Lydia would have at least one of Adira's pistols in addition to her own gun. If Adira couldn't protect her herself, she would at least provide what she could.

Holstering her other pistol, Adira went up to the door and started pulling on one side of it to try to get it to slide open. This door was not having any of that nonsense, so Adira began plan B and climbed into the gap between the sliding doors, bracing her feet on the right side and her back on the left. Using the strength of her whole body made opening the doors a piece of cake. Adira held one side of the doors and lowered herself to the ground cautiously as the doors opened, then nodded to Jane and Lydia. She explained, "If Kestrel's drone's sensors are right, I just found us a refuge for if we come under attack. It's probably a good idea considering Kestrel, Kep, and Stratton are running toward who knows what, and I don't like all of us being out in the open for long." Adira looked at Lydia and held her hand out. "Pistol, please."

 

[Epiphany]

Kestrel's whole world turned up side down in a matter of seconds.

She'd knocked on the alien door, a bit flippantly given there was no chance someone from the Mutter's Spiral could be alive here. Except the door had opened, to reveal her sister. Alysson, who should be an old woman now, who barely looked older than she did when Kestrel last saw her a century ago. The glowing blue eye was a bit startling but in every other respect, it was her sister.

...Was this real? Did the aliens have some kind of weapon that altered brain chemistry, induced hallucinations? There's no way it could be a hologram because it was astronomically unlikely the mysterious aliens of this complex could have any data on a generation ship a century since departed, much less tie said data to one of the intruders just to produce an image to throw her off. How could Alysson be alive?

That's when Kestrel realized this was an alien facility, that Alysson could have been kidnapped by them just as she'd been, and that her sister was running out of air while she stood there staring like an idiot.

Vudukudu Viper Actual
She hadn't noticed the cyborg with them but she didn't mind the interruption, seeing as it triggered her into motion. "Everyone in," she said and in she went.

Solar Daddy
Once inside, she waited for Alysson to presumably seal the door. And while she waited, Kestrel spoke up on squad radio. "Boss, we've got a survivor. No spacesuit. I don't have one with me. I hate to ask you to make the walk but she won't survive the trip back without one. And given she's...my sister, I'd hate to see that happen."

To anyone else listening to their squad comms, Kestrel just sighed and said "I guarantee that for every question you might have about how and why my sister is here, I've got three. But we still need to find out what happened to those scientists and get the hell out of here before any more surprises pop up."

Kharmin
By this point, presumably Alysson managed to re-pressurize the room. Kestrel had made no effort to engage with her sister, in part to update her crew but mostly to avoid distracting the other woman from rejuryrigging whatever she'd done to that console. Once it was safe to do so, Kestrel sent an unsealing protocol to her environmental suit's processor via her interface, set her rifle against the wall and took off her helmet.

Then she brushed a lock of blonde hair that'd escaped the suit-hoodie she wore to keep it out of her face, and smiled.

"I'm sure a Thomasson or maybe a Pitior would know if the First Contact Articles have any wording governing a situation like this," she said to her wayward kin. "But the hell if I can think of what they are."

She just stared for a moment longer, drinking in the image of her oft-rebellious little sister. And then she promptly swept the other woman up into a tight embrace.

 

[Vudukudu]

Kepler's finger twitches and then leaves the vicinity of the trigger, his weapon slowly lowering towards the floor and one finger drifting to disable the side-mounted laser. In that moment, he can do little more than lurch forward. If his eyes were still organic, they'd be wide and strained, the capillaries shining red. Instead, the cybernetics remain blank and expressionless as he shuffles forward. He'd ask questions, but his mind is far too busy racing through a thousand other problems.

With his gun hanging loosely in front of him on a strap, Kepler's gaze shifts to his hands hanging limply in front of him before he grabs the strap of his shotgun and lifts it off his shoulders, leaning it up against a wall before standing vacantly in front of a console. It would give Master Cavanaugh a moment's privacy, and it would do a little to hide his attitude - his facial reconstruction and space suit were doing a lot of work on that front, admittedly.

 

[Viper Actual]

Stratton nodded towards Kepler as the mechanical man arrived. When the door suddenly opened he quickly clicked the flash grenade back to his belt and raised his rifle while charging in. There seemed to be a person inside. A woman by the look of things. As Kepler asked for directives Stratton maintained his rifle trained at the unidentified person up the point when the door shut close behind them and Kestrel identified her as family. Her sister? Here?

He glanced at Kepler and then at Kestrel while also lowering his rifle. Stratton's visor went from opaque to transparent, showing only his eyes and small portion of his face. His eyes narrowed while looking at the blonde. "Kestrel? You positive on that?"

Just then Kestrel emrbraced the woman with a hug. "Well then," said Stratton, suddenly entering a more relaxed posture. While Kepler stepped away Stratton kept one hand on the grip of his rifle and one hand at his hip. He nodded towards Kestrel's sister. "Don't mean to interrupt but could you tell us what happened to the others that were here, ma'am?"

 

[Vudukudu]

Kepler grinds his teeth throughout the exchange, silently gnawing away at nothing to occupy himself. Looking around the room, he can't help but be reminded of home - cobbled together electronics, uncertain mechanisms fragile against the certain death outside. The Enginseers would have done better, but for a daughter of the flesh she'd done well. Her story seems plausible to him, and he was generally willing to extend trust to anyone Kestrel seemed so excited to see again. That said, he was eager to move on, and somewhat unaware of what is clearly an emotional moment, Kepler glances over his shoulder.

Keying into the open channel, he clicks his tongue. "This unit recommends we acquire a survival suit for Master Cavanaugh's sister." He says simply. "And disembark without further delay." He adds. Being in this place is uncomfortable, and he very much wants to leave. To settle his nerves, he begins reciting the Litany to himself, running through it line by line in his mind. He must have strayed from the Spark's light to deserve this, but how?

From the weakness of the mind, Spark protect us
From the lies of the Antipath, circuit preserve us
From the rage of the Beast-flesh, iron protect us
From the temptations of the body, silica cleanse us
From the ravages of the destroyers, anima shield us
From this rotting cage of bio-matter
Machine God set us free

He chastised himself, assigning an extra hour's worth of self-flagellation. It was not his place to question The Will.

 

[Solar Daddy]

Silas wasn't sure he heard right. Kestrel's sister was on the station? How could that even be possible? Part of him wanted to think this was some kind of projection, something to trick the crew with. But there was no real way to justify that. He could hear the conversation through their comms, and by all means it seemed like a real person. For now, he'd be cautiously optimistic. "I'll grab an EVA suit and come down to you. Sit tight." Silas took off his headset and went to the Hub, grabbing his helmet off the counter and clicking it on. After ensuring his suit was sealed, he warned Otto of his departure and told him to keep the ship prepared for takeoff.

Silas readied his rifle from the previous mission and went down the stairs to the sub deck below. It took him a lengthy amount if time to gather the EVA suit into a portable case, but once that was completed, he stepped onto the ramp and pushed the button. The ramp began it's slow decent to the ground below as Silas stood in the center of the pad. Once it made contact with the gray soil, Silas grabbed the crate with one hand with his rifle in the other, and slowly limped off the ramp. "I have your location, should take me 20. Stay alert. And don't worry, I'll be sure to let you know if I get nabbed by an alien."

 

[Epiphany]

Solar Daddy
"Copy that, boss," Kestrel said, replying to Silas' comm, her throat swollen with emotion as her arms continued to hold the only family she had left. "We'll be here.

Kharmin
Finally, reluctantly, she released her sister but kept her hands on the other woman's shoulders for another moment. "I'm glad you're alive. We obviously have a lot to talk about."

Like what team she'd been on a week ago. The Mutter's Spiral conducted salvage but it didn't leave people behind. Not when a transceiver trace remained. Of course, these ducts might be inslulated in some way, like much of this base was. It'd taken work to locate Alysson's ping, after all.

But why would the Mutter's Spiral still be here, in the area? In a thousand years, the ship itself had never altered course except to adjust for cosmological shifts. Supplemental survey craft and exploratory shuttles were used to restock on resources, explore worlds and occasionally settle satellite colonies. But they did so by running ahead of the Crusader-class generation ark using newer engines. And no matter how good those engines were, it couldn't make up for a century of travel.

"It sounds like we've got 20 minutes before a space suit arrives and we can evacuate you," Kestrel said, instead of voicing the rest of her thoughts.

"In the meantime, let's see what we can do with this..." she absently waved a hand at the room surroundings before realizing how little light there was in here. At least without her helmet's optic enhancements.

Kestrel stepped away from Alysson and activated an arm-mounted flashlight in her environmental suit. She swept the beam over the jumble of disassembled circuitry, panels and control consoles before shaking her head.

Vudukudu Kharmin
"Alysson, you've spent a week working on alien technology. We've got our own ship so we don't need comms at this point. Instead, do you think you could work with Kepler?"

"We came with a primary obective; to locate some missing scientists who'd gone dark exploring this place. See if you two can pull up an internal schematic so we have a better map. If you can figure out where the scientists might be, through logs or some kind of internal lifeform scanning system, even better. While you're at it, see if you can find any databases we can download to external drives and take with us. That alone could pay for this whole trip."

Viper Actual
"Which leaves us," Kestrel said, turning to Stratton. "I don't know what your technical background is but there's a couple of things we can do. First, keep an eye on the drone feed outside in case something comes our way we don't expect. I can do that. Second, keep tabs on the other half of our team, watch their backs since they're still mobile and we're not."

The blonde soldier nudged a stray length of conduit with one booted toe. "Third, let's see if we can identify anything salvagable in this mess that those two don't need for what they're doing. If we use a section of wall paneling there and some of these loose cables, we could make a sled and drag anything good with us on the way out."

"In the meantime, everyone lights and helmets on. Let's save the power for what it's needed for and save the air for my sister in case Silas runs into trouble on the way."

She reached for her helmet, paused to see if anyone had any questions. If not, she went to work, trying to focus on the mission despite the excitement still singing through every nerve ending in her body.

 

[Viper Actual]

Stratton tilted his head forward slightly as he listened to Kesrel and once she was done talking he nodded. "How about I check the feeds and you start working on the sled?" His grin, now visible through the transparent visor, was hard to miss. "I read the past mission reports and I think it's safe to say you got a bit more muscle than a soldier past his prime."
Having said that Stratton moved over to one of the crates (or at least something that looked like one) inside the room to sit on while waiting for Kestrel's response. Drones or sled- he'd be ready.

 

[Spazzycat101]

Lydia Camden​

With Lydia as anxious and high-strung as she was right then, Adira’s words made her jump like a rabbit. The captain was already on her way forward, through the room. Lydia shortly fell in behind her, with nothing more than a quiet, high-pitched ‘okay.’ As they approached it, Lydia knelt down to get a closer look at the dead little creature. Cap nudged it with her foot.

‘Considering how dead it is, I kinda wanna bring it back to the ship. At the very least, crack open its helmet here. So we can figure out just what in the fuck it is.’ Before she said it, Lydia knew cap would shoot it down immediately, but she voiced it anyway. With a sigh, the medic stood up to take Adira’s gun as it was handed to her. Lydia held it awkwardly with both hands, whispering to herself, ‘ooooooh, that’s fun, death gun! Fun fun.’ She was glad to hand it back to Adira when she requested it. When the little hide-out was prepared, Lydia immediately sat down.

‘So.’ She pointed out past the door. ‘That’s kinda fucked up. The alien tank clone stuff. What the hell do you think these are here for? And were made for? And by who?’

 

[Vudukudu]

Kepler sticks close to Alysson’s side as she explains what all she has in front of her, almost uncomfortably close. Kepler had long since figured out the vagaries of personal space, but such things tended not to apply when he was working. With a quiet hiss, the outer layer of his somewhat bulky gloves retracts into his sleeve, leaving a more dexterous and flexible covering behind.

“Your work is admirable given your limitations.” Kepler remarks, fully meaning it as a compliment despite the mechanical boredom that makes up most of his tone. His eyebrows wiggle, one of the clearest expressions of either humor or kindness his mutilated facial muscles can muster. He spins around the room slowly, observing the various connections before he looks back at the computer.

“Pardon me.” He says, stooping down toward the side cache. His fingers run over its exterior, and he releases a satisfied murmur. With another mechanical hiss, the cable from his interface port feeds itself out from the roof of his mouth, down his suit, and out through his suit into his hand. Slotting it into a small port, he let the nano-machines set to work. It wasn’t guaranteed that sockets from around the galaxy were designed the same or had standard pins - the Spark’s littlest children would solve that problem for him.

With a jolt, Kepler’s body goes rigid inside his suit to prevent him from falling over as he makes the connection. The world around him is replaced by streams of data being filtered into more understandable objects, the interaction between his mind and the code handled by all the hardware built into his skull. Looking around the room had given him an idea of what was available, but this was like standing atop a mountain and observing a valley with the eyes of an eagle. Kepler remains for only a few more moments before breaking the connection, a cold and unpleasant sensation tingling through his spine as the cable feeds itself back up into his suit and into his mouth where it slots into a hole in the roof of his mouth.

“This unit finds the present equipment viable for the task.” He says, nodding thoughtfully. “This computer should be able to access system-wide life support. Typical systems scan primarily for the presence of oxygen but that would be of no use if the surviving crew are in vacuum-suits. Instead, I believe we could utilize the atmospheric scanners to detect minor fluctuations in carbon dioxide. It is a trick I learned among the Vexarii pirates conducting vessel sweeps for hostages. Many common models of vac-suits process and expel small amounts of carbon dioxide to maintain internal pressure. If they are in suits or outside them, the scanners should detect small shifts in carbon dioxide which should be observable from here.”

 

[Epiphany]

Viper Actual
Kestrel shared James' grin and gave him an acknowledging nod. "Fair enough!" At which point, she started looking around the mess of components that Alysson had made of this room.

Kharmin
As Alysson got to work with Kepler, Kestrel began rigging up a sled. Its improvised base involved her getting her fingers around a wall panel and pulling until it came off with an audible screeching sound. She dropped to one knee, braced the plate against her other knee and began folding over the edges with sheer, brute strength, forming a lip to keep anything loose from sliding out.

Once that task was complete, Kestrel went back to picking up anything that looked complicated and not being used by the other two.

On one pass by Alysson, Kestrel briefly reached out and squeezed her sister's shoulder, meant to be a reassuring reminder to both of them that they'd found each other.

Otherwise, the blonde soldier appeared to be completely oblivious to any lingering resentment on her sister's part.

 

[Dragongal]

"Leave the corpse," Adira growled, snarling behind her helmet. At this point, she wasn't confident that Lydia wouldn't just pick the thing up, and it needed to be clear that that was not acceptable. She stepped in and looked around the room, assessing it carefully. There was this strange weaponry, then that weird thing that looked like a star-chart. That warranted investigating. Adira waved for Lydia and Jane to follow her, and she kept her gun up just in case something were to pop up. She gets to the star chart thing and starts looking it over - maybe it could tell her what was going on with this place. She made sure to take a picture with her helmet to record what she saw.

Without looking up, Adira said to Jane, "Your ship is indeed totaled. We're here, in this place where it has been confirmed that nothing else is alive, because this is us doing our best to not get ambushed. Got it?"

 

[Solar Daddy]

On the star chart screen that Adira interacted with, a series of quick and rapid letter characters in the alien language appeared. After a short time, it abruptly expanded to fill the room - a giant star chart that surrounded the group. In the center of the newly opened display, was a single point with what appeared to be a trajectory line. It wasn't a far guess to think this was the asteroid they were currently on. In addition to this one dot, the map zoomed out slowly to reveal plenty of scattered dots all along the chart. Very few of these points were lit up in much the same way as the centered asteroid, though not much else could be deciphered from the star chart.

Silas was more focused on not getting jumped by any aliens while he was wandering through the decrepit and quiet halls that his crew passed through before him. He was still limping, barely noticeable as he carted along the crate. His weapon was held at a half alert stance as he traveled. He checked behind him every few seconds; he'd seen too many movies to know that loners don't survive often. The faster he got to his crew, the sooner he'd be able to worry just a little less. Following the directions of his crew, he made it to the outside of the airlock. Silas then keyed his comms. "This is Engineer Extraordinaire, contacting The Beardettes. I'm outside with the EVA suit whenever you're ready to let me in."

 

[Viper Actual]

Stratton chuckled in response to Kestrel before bringing up the drone feeds. A large portion of his HUD was now obscured by a grid of drone feeds leaving nothing but his eyes visible through the visor. While he wasn't cybernetically or genetically enhanced like some of the others on the crew Stratton knew how to look at a bunch of cameras.
His eyes scrolled through the feeds one at a time, stopping only momentarily every now and then to glance at Kestrel's sister.

Despite their relation she was still a stranger to Stratton and strangers almost always included some sort of risk.

Stratton made a mental note to keep track of her movements back on the ship.
Then his attention shifted as the good captain ordered Lydia to back off from the deceased alien that had tried to quickdraw on Kestrel and himself.

Clearing his throat Stratton spoke up over the comms. "Captain, if I may interject, but it'd be in our interest to recover that body if possible. My superiors would no doubt be interested in taking a look at the subject. I could pull some strings to make sure that you and the others are compensated handsomely."

Not to mention the fact that a body is worth ten times more than some grainy helmet footage and a written report.

When Silas then spoke up Stratton glanced at Kestrel. "Want to let the room service inside?"

 

[Dragongal]

Adira watched the star chart spread out before her, and mumbled, "Oh this doesn't look good." She turned to Lydia and said, "Do you think you can find a way to save this data so we can take it back to the ship?" If her guess was right, this map was showing where more of these alien monstrosities were. The chatter on the other end of the lines didn't concern her much, since she trusted Kestrel and Stratton to keep things under some semblance of control. Well... trusting Stratton was strong to say, but she trusted his self-preservation instinct.

And on that note, of course Stratton's superiors would be interested in the body. They were always interested in corpses: Whether it be examining them or making them. Adira scowled behind her helmet, but didn't say anything about that out loud. "If we're getting paid and it won't slow us down, we can bring the corpse. In the mean time, we need to get back to the ship - or at the very minimum, Silas does, and I want him escorted back to the ship before something goes wrong."

 

[Spazzycat101]

Lydia Camden​

Oh, this was interesting. And, as Adira said, concerning.

‘How to… uuh… save the data.’ Lydia took a long pause. ‘Does anyone here have photographic memory? Or… photographs! Can one of Kestrel’s drones fly around and record video of it to have a three-dimensional reference? If we can’t use that to recreate it, we still at least have something. Not as good as having the actual thing, but… best I can think of.’ She ended with a shrug, Then turned back to the corpse as it was mentioned.

‘Anyway, I, uh, I don’t have any pint-size body bags with me right now, but, I mean… we’re in lower gravity. Shouldn’t be difficult to drag the thing back with us. Also, the, uh, hypothetical buyers wouldn’t mind if I examined it first, right? No dissections, no slicing, just… poking at it. I feel like it wouldn’t be a big deal.’ Lydia sighed. ‘If it is, then, uh, tough shit for them. Speaking of tough shit. What do you think this… is? Or what it means?’

 

[Solar Daddy]

During this time, Adira and her group comprising of Lydia and Jane explored the circular room filled with strange machinery and confusing interfaces. The star chart that Adira had interacted with soon was displaced back to its original format on the screen, probably due to inactivity on it. With the team thoroughly investigating the room, they found that the blood stain came to an end about halfway through the room. From there on, it was simply a few drops of blood leading to a set of doors that were similar to the airlock doors they passed through earlier.


With the team deciding to follow the trail in hopes of discovering one of the scientists, they went through the set of doors and into the airlock. Once the pressure was cycled, they stepped out into the open again. The light from the sun was now completely blocked, making it rather dark in the crater. However, sparse lights made it so that it wasn’t completely impossible to see. It wasn’t a far guess for Adira and her crew to see that the trail probably led to the researcher ship in the distance, about fifty meters ahead. However, upon closer inspection, there was a corpse propped up against the side of the ship. The girl had the glass of her helmet broken, with her lifeless eyes staring back at the station they had just left. Her left arm was severed at the shoulder. Her hand was propped up to the side, seemingly reaching for the hatch release handle a meter away against the hull of the ship. The callsign on her shoulder indicated her as Doctor Morren of the HSS Logistic.



‘I think… we have a source on that arm from earlier. You think she lost it back there, then got out here before she died?’


“That would explain the blood,” Adira said casually. “I’d like to know how she lost her arm, though. I’m assuming it was one of those things from earlier but who knows.”


‘Something else that what took her arm must have broken her helmet. Either a thing, or she died and it broke after that.’



Adira and Jane approached with guns ready, while Lydia stayed cautiously close to the two who attempted to open the ship’s loading bay. Adira, after a moment of silence, decided to search through the doctor’s pockets to try and find anything useful. She soon found a keycard to the side of the corpse, undoubtedly falling from her hand as she attempted to use it to open the door. Adira had also found something in Doctor Morren’s pocket - a cracked recorder with the frame nearly split in two. It appears almost destroyed, but could be salvaged it seemed.


Adira, Lydia and Jane used the key card to attempt to open the bay, which worked. The ramp hissed open and slowly dropped to allow the group entry into the ship. The inside was left almost perfectly intact, with no signs of destruction or struggle. As the crew explored each room, making sure nothing would surprise them, they finally got to the sealed door to the bridge.


With polite knocking, the team seemed to have startled someone in the bridge due to the hasty sound of something being knocked over. Then, after a moment of pause, the door hissed open. On the other side was a suited man with a patch on his side. “Oh thank the Stars, I thought no one would come!” He exclaimed. “Did it follow you? Is it safe?”


Adira looked the man over, with her pistol lowered at her side, but still pointing at him. Once she decided that he wasn’t a threat, she said, “Nothing followed us, But I won’t say that means it’s safe. Who are you?”


The man responds, “My name is Doctor Andreas Burman, I’m a scientist here to explore the station. I don’t know what happened to the rest of my crew.” He walks back into the bridge and sits down in the captain’s chair, still holding his side. “We got attacked by that thing and it sliced my side open. Alex was smart enough to blow it up, but I couldn’t find a corpse. I assume it’s still running rampant.”


‘We killed one earlier. Put up a fuckin’ fight. I’m eighty percent sure it’s the same one you’re talking about,’ Lydia informed him.


“Do you have a way off this rock? I was certain that monster would jump on board if I tried starting up the jets. That thing was scary as hell, man. If I make it out of here I’m not going to be able to sleep for months.”


“There sure is quite a lot around here that enjoys damaging ships, it seems,” Jane said with a wry smile toward the captain. “But, don’t worry, we have a way to get off of this rock.” Jane reassured the man with underserved confidence, but shot a glance to the captain to make sure she wasn’t lying.


“I’m not sure if Alex is even still alive, but I don’t think it would be wise to find out. I’m sorry, but we should leave him. He could be anywhere, and is probably dead if he hasn’t made it back to the ship by now.” Said Burman.


‘Whoa, hold on—if you’re alive, then that means this Alex dude could be, too. I already talked through the ‘probably no survivors’ but now we’ve got proof that not everyone kicked the bucket, so ‘probably’ isn’t good enough anymore.’


“We don’t have time to search for him! We’ve been here too long, I know Alex and he would want us to live without him, rather than die looking for him!” Burman gasped, clutching his side. “Do you have a medic? I just need something to keep the pain down till we get to your ship. We can worry about replacing whatever was slashed when we get to the nearest port.”


As Burman attempted to stand, he clearly had less trouble getting up than before thanks to Lydia’s quick emergency care. With a wince, he motioned for the door. “Let’s get off this forsaken rock and get the military to turn it into nothing but space debris.”


Adira looked at him and raised an eyebrow. He seemed pretty certain that they would be willing to take him, considering he hadn’t asked if they even had the space. Besides, he seemed really willing to let his friend die.


When they had all decided to leave, Burman seemed uneasy at the thought of going back for Alex still. With hesitation, he said, “Just send me back to your ship with an escort if you want to go on a suicide mission to find him. Last I heard from him, he was inside the room where the explosion went off, but he got sucked out from the pressure after he blew up that monster.”


“You’re not being left alone in our ship, so you will have to wait until we can find someone to escort you,” Adira said, her voice even and commanding. This guy was spooked, but he also seemed untrustworthy, to say the least. There was no reason to believe that he wouldn’t bolt, with or without her crew onboard. “It shouldn’t take unduly long.”

 

[Vudukudu]

With Alysson's help, Kepler gets the CO2 sensors running and establishes a link with the Mark-9. "I would say it is quite a lot." Kepler replies, eyeing the woman with an arched brow hidden beneath his visor. They'd managed to cobble together a remote surveillance system from a junk heap, all things considered. His spine tingles as he considers using the Interface Port again, then decides against it. He would be able to read the outputs more easily that way, but his latest symptoms had him concerned about over-use.

"System-wide monitoring should be connected to an internal communications net. Hardwired systems are more secure, but more expensive and a hidden research post ought not be concerned with a breach if its inaccessible by ansible and shielded from external signals. If.." Kepler rattles off, mostly to himself, as he begins tapping away at a small tablet-style computer slotted into his suit's left forearm. "it can be pinged, I can construct a map of all connected devices by their proximity to each other. With certain constraints for estimated connection speed, a signal transmitted across the station should identify all connected devices and determine distance relative to other devices. Network-style analysis should produce a rough map of the entire system."

With a final series of taps, Kepler slams the entire system's wireless network with a heap of meaningless code, forcing it to process slowly enough for his pre-written program to trace its spread across the network. His tablet flashes hundreds, if not thousands of local devices and codes atmospheric scanners in red, building a geographic coordinate network on an x-y-z plane and spitting it out onto an image file. Once its finished compiling, he turns his tablet screen towards Alysson, depicting a haphazard mess of black dots indicating wireless devices that serves to generally outline rooms and some of their interior. Red asterisks depict atmospheric scanners, and he gestures to a few of them before indicating the Mark-9.

"All that remains is to match the atmospheric data onto the geography." He says plainly, then eyes the Mark-9s output. It only takes a few moments for him to evaluate the results, and he quickly keys into comms.

"Adira-Captain." He states. "Detection methods have indicated a shallow, but human breathing pattern in the blast crater we gained entry through. It also indicates another life-form producing roughly triple the CO2 of a human located in the warehouse area. Advise."