NationStates Jolt Archive

ASD Aquitaine, Outer System Patrol, SR-2091, Associated Systems of Klonor

Date: July 23, Old Earth Calendar

The crew members of the ASD Aquitaine were bored. Well, that's not quite accurate. With all the constant effort required to competently run a Starship there were never many moments of actual innactivity. But, they were feeling a bit empty. The had joined for action and adventure, to defend Klonor from the endless amounts of pirates, rebels, and invasions that the news never stopped reporting. Of course, the news always seemed to forget to say that for every ship which sees intense combat there were several hundred that never even glimpsed it at a distance. Damn reporters.

"Admiral on the deck!"

The sudden shout made every bridge member sit a bit straighter and stand a bit taller. Feeling a bit empty or not, when the Admiral shows up you make every move count. This includes the ships Captain, who was the Admiral's first target.

"Status report?"

"All systems normal, sir. The ship's running fine and we haven't had an anomolous sensor reading yet."

"Excellent. What about the blockade of the TLMDG?"

"Perfect, sir. Ever since we got the message from Deneb it's been on lockdown. Not one unregistered ship has, will, or can get through it."

"Excellent. Take us in."

"Sir..........?"

"You heard me. Set course for the TLMDG."

"Uh......okay, sir. Destination?"

"Tau Ceti."

"Tau Ceti, sir? But......why?"

The Admiral turned on the Captain, pale blue eyes seeming to pierce the lower officer.

"Is there some reason you're asking?"

"Uh.....well.......I mean, no, sir. It's just that there's nothing in Tau Ceti. Why would the General want us there?"

"He doesn't."

"Then why are we going?"

"Because he doesn't want us there, and because there isn't going to be another Klonor ship within a Parsec of Tau Ceti's Gate."

"But.........."

The Capain didn't even finish his sentence; in a flash he was gone. Not lying on the floor, not a pile of ash, simply gone (The Admiral silently praised the newly developed hand-held Phase Initiator).

"The next man who speaks out of turn will end up in the Brig right next to Captain Dolers. Do I make myself clear?"

The silence clearly answers in the affirmative.

"Excellent. Now, as I told the new prisoner, set a course for Tau Ceti via the TLMDG. Transmit all the necessary codes. Get us under way as soon as our patrol is over."

With a flurry of activity the crew quickly steped into motion as the Admiral retreated to his private quarters where he proceeded to fume like a small child who wasn't the first pick in gym class.

It serves that damn Duke right. Why the hell wasn't I sent? Huh? I'm the best damn commander in the Corps and I'm left on freaking patrol. Who led us to victory over Bobaria? Who kept our borders secure during the Second Shivan Incursion? Who stayed loyal to him after he died? After every damn time he died. ME, that's who. But instead he sends that freaking "Supreme General". So the guy's the head of the KSC, big deal! It should have been me! Well, I'm done taking it from the likes of them. All done.

As he sat, deep in thought, the Aquitaine finished its patrol and moved towards the TLMDG. A few transmissions and they were granted safe passage. Another and the Gate opened. A few seconds later, they were 1.5 million light-years away.

Direct Beam Transmission: Grand Duke Solomon Klonor, Vicegral Palace, Deneb, Associated Systems of Klonor
Transmission Origin: Admiral Petrarch, Commander of the Seventh System Fleet, ASD Aquitaine, Location Unknown

Screw you.

Transmission closed

Seven minutes later the Admiral and the Aquitaine are branded Enemies of the State. To be Terminated on Sight.

Date: August 3, Old Earth Calendar

Ensign Qos walked down the hallway towards the Aquitaines seldom used brig. Row upon row of cells were emtpy, a single person occupied the entire deck. Superficially a good thing, crime and insubordination were in short supply aboard the Aquitaine, the fact that it was the Captain of the ship put a slight tilt on the view.

Tha guards outside of the Captains cell, while not exactly a pair of Dealers, were alert and well armed; Qos couldn't just stomp up to the cell and open the door. Fortunately, he did have a legitimate reason for being there. Well, he said that he had a legitimate reason.

"Admiral Perarch would like me to inspect the prisoner. He wants to make sure that he isn't equipped with the standard Phase equipment (which would thus allow him to easily exit the cell whenever he wished)."

"Captain Dolers has already been searched. Twice. He has nothing on him but his clothing and a bit of hair that we accidentally pulled out during the second search."

"The Admiral has ordered me. Would you like to go tell him to stuff it?"

The two guards didn't have anything to say to that. They knew what happened when you crossed the Admiral. A stay in the brig was something far beter than you could expect from even the most trivial of offences.

"Okay, go on in. But be quick about it."

"Yes, sir."

Ensigne Qos pulled open the door, walked in, and immedietly began to outline his plan to the Captain.

Date: August 5, Old Earth Calendar

Two men approached each other in one of the many endless corridors aboard the Aquitaine. Giving the other a quick once-over, the two nodded their heads in brief greeting and continued onward without a word. However, both seemed to be struck by a sudden cold chill as each mans right hand started shaking minutely at the same time. Neither gave any indication that they had noticed the others almost imperceptible motion and they were soon gone from each others sight.

One of the men, a certain Ensign Qos, continued on to what was once a festive and relaxed lounge eternally open to the ships crew. With the Admirals sudden command, though, it was now rather forlornly abandoned.

"Hey John, fancy meeting you here."

"Back at you, Kin. I thought you didn't get off duty for another hour."

"Yeah...that was before our little...uh....extended vacation. Admiral switched me to the third shift."

"Oh...good to know."

While the two men continued to idly chat, standing outside the closed bar and obviously making no attempt to conceal or hide their conversation, a plethora of signals was rapidly being exchanged between the two men via minute and natural body motions.

Contact. Lieutenant Tors. Agreed to plan.

Clear on his part?

Absolutely.

Will he snap?

Possible, but unlikely. He's unstable but fixated.

Good.

Go in two weeks.

The two held up the pretense of innocent conversation for several more minutes, long after their subliminal conversation had ceased, and then slowly began to drift apart, heading towards their own cabins for what little rest and relaxation they could get.

Date: August 19, Old Earth Calendar

Flight Lieutenant Ell Tors looked at a picture of his wife and kids, a tear in his eye. He would never see them again, and he knew it. In fact, odds were he would never again see anything except the blackness of Space. He would be dead inside of five minutes.

But he didn't dwell on that depressing future, his mind had more pressing issues to contemplate. He might love life, he might love his family, it might even be said that he loved the ship he served, but none of that compared to his love for Klonor. For Klonor he had risked his life again and again, and for Klonor he would finally give his life. At least it would be painless. The Phase Fighter wouldn't even re-integrate before it blew.

He gazed out of the window, a glimpse of hatred in his eye. He eyed the Aquitaine, floating in space, and no longer thought of his family. That bastard had imprisoned his Captain, made his ship an outlaw, and had turned against Klonor. What was done now had to be done.

He flipped a switch, broadcasting over the ships standard communications frequency.

"For the Duke! For the Association! For Klonor! You have strayed from the path, and I gladly drag you down to Hell!"

He flipped another switch, disappeared, and re-appeared inside the ship.

The detonation shook the ship from bow to stern, causing the lights to flicker and the gravity to fluctuate. Then both failed altogether as the MiniStar II, undamaged in itself, shifted a bare milimeter and burned away the power chords in one bright flash. Power died throughout the ship and crewmembers gasped and flailed their arms in shock. More important than that, it caused the locks throughout the ship to disengage.

With one mighty shove the Captain slammed into the door of his cell, swinging it open and crushing one guard beneath it as it slammed into the wall. The other guard, already training his gun on the Captain, was suddenly penetrated by a variety of small metal objects moving at extreme velocities. Out of the other cells stepped the Loyalists, Phasing into them hours ago and waiting for the perfect moment.

The Captain surveyed the unconcious & dead guards, nodding his head.

"Police their weapons and armor, hide the bodies, and make it quick. I want us on the bridge in 10 minutes."

"Yes, sir!"

"I want my ship back."

OOC: You know what they say, third time's the charm.

This is going to be my first Post-hard-drive-death RP and an attempt to revive an RP of mine that I've failed to start on two occasions in the past.

Here's the story: Admiral Petrarch has taken a Klonor Space Corps ship and gone rogue, taking the 10,000+ crew with him and heading out into space. He's controlling the crew mainly through intimidation, though a few are intrigued by the promise of money and power. The Captain is currently in the brig but, with the help of still loyal officers, shall be breaking out soon. Once he is free the ship will be plunged into what is essentially a Civil War: Admiral vs Captain. Loyalists vs Dissenters. You get the idea. This RP is planned to be a sort of Civil War aboard the ship, the Captain versus the Admiral in an attempt to gain total control. It will mainly be all infantry combat, but there will be a little space combat as well (single man fighters and such).

The restrictions on what you can and can not do are really small, but I do have three requests.

1) Don’t kill the entire ship, it would just ruin it for the rest of us
2) The fighting isn’t going to start right away; people aren’t going to go “The Admiral imprisoned the Captain? War!” For a long time the Admiral is going to have control of the ship and the Captain is going to stay in his tiny little jail cell. The RP’ing will start with fighting right away, but IC’ly it will have been weeks, maybe even months, since it all started. Also, even when the fighting starts not everybody is going to be in on it. This is going to need to take time to spread, for different sections of the ship to learn what's going on and to join in.
3) Other than that, have fun. I’ve been told that I can be a bit bitchy and unpleasant when it comes to RP’ing, so I’m trying to stay away from the narrow and unwavering plot that will get me screaming at you the instant you do anything I don’t like

If you want in, and have actually taken to time to read all this, simply TG me with a request to be in the RP. You can be a Loyalist (With the Captain), a Johnny (With the Admiral), or even some random third faction if you want. Before you ask, no, you can't be either the Admiral or the Captain, I'll be playing both and, being the spoiled child that I am, I refuse to share. Ha! Okay, actually it's because I have plans for both of them, but it still means those two are off-limits. Sorry.

The only requirement for participation is that you can spell. Let me say this right now: If you can't spell then you will not be in this RP. Throw in a TG participation request (Which is a must!) and we're all set.

Current Surviving Personnell: 9,868

Information on Klonor for those playing Klonor citizens:


Klonor is, officially, a monarchy but, in actuality, a representative democracy.
The reigning monarch is the Grand Duke Solomon Klonor, regarded almost universally as a deific and godlike figure (Coming back from the dead on numerous occasions tends to cause that).
Predominant religion is a revival of that of Ancient Rome (Jove, Juno, Mars, etc.) and the fictional Way of the Spirit (Picture a blend of Christianity and Hinduism, if such a thing could exist)
There are a total of three (count 'em, three) illegal substances in the entirety of Klonor, the populace is rocking God-knows-what every night
However, the government does not encourage such use and, while free time is yours to do with as you please, punishment for even the mildest of intoxication on duty is years in jail, revocation of citizenship, etc. Since we're all rogue right now and there aren't any jails or citizenship anymore, the Admiral will probably just execute you.
If you're playing a species/individual with any telepathic, telekinetic, empathic, etc. abilities at all, keep it secret if you don't want a ship-wide jihad on your hands.
Any indication of any type of mental powers will unite every single Klonor citizen on the ship against you, regardless of personal politics, ambition, relation to your character, and views on violence.
Best-friend, lover, superior, subordinate; it doesn't matter. Mental powers are one of the few things Klonor citizens can't treat rationally, we're talking beyond Nazi-level hatred on every single level.
Despite the legality of all kinds of drugs, the most prolific mind-alterer is plain old alcohol, which is consumed sun-up to sun-up (No breaks even while napping) and is taken in enough quantity to kill most normal men.
The majority of Klonors population is human, though there are several billion Elves in Epsilon Pegasi and, though in much lesser amounts, other aliens distributed throughout the nation
Anything I forget?

OOC: Information on various Klonor ships, technology, and services can be found in the following threads.

http://67.18.37.17/595/43/upload/p400867.jpg (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=346008)
http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/kwsig.jpg (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=288603)
http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/ksig8.jpg (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=292319)
http://hometown.aol.com/jbk405/images/ksig4.jpeg (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=353996)

((OOC: Gnufasur here. :D Here goes.

Oh, and brief info.
Name: Kataline White
Nickname/Callsign: "Kitty"
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Race: Neko (Catgirl)
Nationality: Klonorian
Rank: Corporal
Job: System Analayst
Appearance: HERE (http://premium1.uploadit.org/BetaVerisonX//1133237165807.jpg)
Bio: Kataline is a loyal supporter of the captain, and a loyal Klonorian citizen. A member of the Navy's computer techincian's detachment, Kataline's job is to double check the ship's computer systems to make sure all is running as it should. She's also responsable to find, track, and discover any attempted breech of security. She was one of the first people 'drafted' into the Captain's rescue, because her area of skill would be very helpful in resecuring the ship under the Captain's control.


How's that?))



Well aware of the impending attack against the ship, Kataline 'Kitty' White had made sure to make back-up copies of all the important system files in the computer. As she waited for power to be restored, she made sure the extra copies were safe, and ready to be reinstalled.

She double checked her sidearm, tucked into one of her Coverall's pockets. Technically, she wasn't supposed to have a weapon, but once the fighting broke out, she was sure that she wouldn't be spared if they found out she was loyal to the captain. The weapon gave her some comfort, but she wasn't sure if she could use it to kill someone...

"Kitty! Heads up... Power's being restored!" One of her aides informed her. He was loyal to the Admiral. Most of the Tech crew was. How many will I have to kill to get to the Captain and the others? Hopefully, I can get away unnoticed.

The lights flicked back on, the ship's computer system's rebooting. "Man, good thing you made those back-ups, eh Kitty?" Her aide said again.

"Yeah. Phew! I knew I had a gut feeling for something." She said, loading up the disks and beginning the restore process. "Inform the Admiral that systems will be back online and up-to-date in a few minutes."

OOC: Not bad....not bad at all.

IC:

Admiral Petrarch stood on the bridge and stared at the various computer screens. Each showed a different map of various enemies of Klonor, each map a potential shelter. Unfortunately, not many of the mapped nations still irked Klonor. An enemy of Klonor didn't remain an enemy for long. They didn't remain in existence for long, either.

Suddenly, the the deck noticeably shivered and the power flickered and died. The bridge was cast into darkness and the crew began to rise off the deck, gravity failing along with the lights and casting the officers in chaos.

"What the fucking hell was that?"

Silence answered him.

"Damnit, answer me!"

"Uh...we don't know, sir."

"Well, find out! Get the power back on! NOW! And get somebody down to the brig, make sure the Captain doesn't get out."

"Yes, sir. You two, head down and secure the brig. Bring a squad with you and make sure nothing so much as a flea gets out."

The two Marine guards stationed by the entrance to the bridge, visibly tense since the gravity had failed, rotated themselves around and flung themselves toward the stairwell that led to one of the infantry barracks. Propelling down flight after flight, they signalled for one of the four-man security teams to follow them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Captain Dolers stood inside what was once his prison cell. Though small and depressing, the single solitary entrance and extremely thick walls made it easily defended and it provided him with a quiet place to plan his rebellion. His order to be on the bridge in ten minutes had been worthless, and he & the men knew it. Of the entire crew they'd only been able to gather a bare few dozen to their cause, thousands more were still loyal to the Admiral. Well, loyal wasn't the right word. Scared shitless and terrified of being vented into space, that was the proper description of the rest of the crew. But loyal out of fear or love, it didn't matter. The Johnny's (As they were already being called by the Loyalists) outnumbered and outgunned the Loyalists by a margin of several thousand to one. Brute force wouldn't to anything, the Captain had to find some way to out smart the Admiral.

Great, I'm screwed

A knock on the door snapped the Captain out of his internal monologue as he quickly grabed the KSMAR-983 propped against the wall. Raising the weapon belonging to one of his former prison guards, he slowly called to the man outside.

"Enter."

In walked Ensign Qos, the man who had organized the breakout and given hope to the Captain. He was scheduled for quite a promotion once they got back to the Association.

"You have news?"

"Yes, sir. So far our advance teams have captured four Johnny's on this level. None were armed, they were just freaking out after the gravity went out. We've managed to patrol the entire level, it's been cleared by Lieutenant Relo. We have guards at both entrances, but with only one KSMAR and seventeen sidearms we can't really throw much lead at an attacker. We're either going to need a lot more firepower, or we'll need to abandon the brig."

"Unfortunate, but forseen. Any word on what the Admiral is up to?"

"No, sir. The four captured men had been off duty for hours, his current actions are still unknown."

"Damnit. He knows exactly where I am and he knows you will have tried to break me out. He's going to be sending soldiers down here soon, we need to know when."

"Sir, we can't know when."

"Then we need to leave now. Lock the captured crew into cells, give them food and water for a day, seal it mechanically (since the powered locks are still all not working). Tell everybody to pack up, we're leaving the brig."

"Yes, sir."

Throw in a TG participation request (Which is a must!) and we're all set.

OOC: Dude, a pre-post TG is a requirement.

((OOC: Again, hope you don't mind this. >_>))


Deep within the bowels of the ship, Kitty was up to her shoulders in wires, computer circuit boards, and memory sticks. She had to replace much of the delicate inner workings after the power outage.

A handheld datapad showed her what needed to go where, and what parts needed replacing. "Hmm... Damn. So much burned out. Hey, Alex? Go and get me another Type 17 circuit board."

"But... You got a bunch right there?" Her aide said back to her.

"I know. But, by my calculations, what I have now isn't enough. Just, get it, yeah?" Her aide finally nodded and left. Kitty was all alone now. She had already made enough repairs to get the system back online, connecting one final circuit board. All through the ship, the lights and gravity came back on.

Quickly, knowing that Alex would be back any moment now, she accesses the security camera feeds, shifting through the various feeds until she comes to the camera mounted in one of the stair wells. She saw the two marines and the security team rushing by, on their feet once gravity was restored. Frowning, she switches off viewing the feed, switching over to a comm system. She encrypts the data, hiding the trace of her using the comm to alert the captain.

A private commnique is sent to Ensign Qos. Once it had reached him, the data would unencrpyt itself, revealing the message she had for them. "Hey. Systems back up. Two marines and a security team are en route to you now. Maybe a matter of minutes before ther're all over you. I'll try and kept you inform-Damnit!"

She wasn't able to finish recording her whole message, sending it as a partial as she cursed and quickly ended the recording, transmitting it as is. Alex just came back into the maintance crawl space. "Hey Kitty, you didn't need that board after... Umh... What are you doing?" He saw her actions, the way she had quickly shut down her comm connection.

His face went pale as she pulled the gun out of her coverall's pocket, aiming it at him. "Whoa whoa whoa! What's going on!" Kitty started to backout, and Alex followed suit. They were on a catwalk, just above the MiniStar II's holding area. As the two crawled out of the crawl space, Kitty backed Alex against the railing, the pistol held to his face.

Kitty spoke slowly. "Alex, who are we loyal to? Who's side are we on?"

Her aide gulped, and stammered out, "The A-A-Admiral?" Kitty shook her head slowly. Alex started to cry, tears streaming down his face. "No, please... You don't have to do this..."

Tears stung at Kitty, and she found it hard to breathe, her chest feeling tight and constricted. "You came back too soon. I'm sorry it had to be this way."

"I have kids! Pleas-" He tried to plead, but Kitty's finger twitched, the pistol roaring, the gun shot drowned out by the sounds of the ship's machinery. Alex's body fell over the railing, plummeting below in the dark depths. Kitty knew for a fact they would never find his body.

The pistol fell from her hands, clattering against the catwalk, and Kitty dropped to her knees, sobbing into her hands. "I'm sorry Alex. I'm sorry. Please forgive me!" Her shoulders heaved, as she sat there, crying all alone...

The twenty Loyalists evacuating the Brig, the former Captain and the men who had risked so much to free him, began to rapidly file down the corridor in an obvious rush to nowhere.

"Ensign, do you have any ideas for a safe refuge?"

"No, sir. The Admiral might not encourage frequent late night walks and after-hours visitations, but with so many crew there's no place on board that's ever really empty."

"Damn. Oh, well, we'll have to make one."

He might have spent the past several weeks in a small cell, but nobody knew this ship better than its commanding officer.

"Pull right at the next junction and go down two hallways. We should be near one of the fighter briefing rooms, and I sincerely doubt that the Admiral has kept up the regular mission planning procedures. Bonus, it's near one of the minor weapons storages. We should at least be able to pick up a few more Assault Rifles. We can hole up there for a day or two before the Admiral will be able to get a thorough search into the area, by then we'll have determined our next step."

"Yes, sir. Everybody move! If we pass anybody, stay out of sight. Hide the Captain, we don't want to kill anybody we don't hav--"

In the middle of his sentence the entire formation fell to the ground and, after a moments confusion, quickly rolled to their feet.

"Gravity restored. Tha--"

"Hey. Systems back up. Two marines and a security team are en route to you now. Maybe a matter of minutes before ther're all over you. I'll try and kept you inform-Damnit!"

The group froze for a second, then immediately began to fade into the various doors and hallways branching off from the main corridor. Mere seconds later the heavy sound of combat boots began to echo into their conciousness.

In a whisper, the Captain briefed his men.

"Wait for them to pass, make no move to interfere. We're not prepared to take on a Marine team and hopefully we won't have to."

The Captans luck, however, just didn't want to back him up as the Marines rounded the corner and came into view; immediately halting and challening the Loyalist group.

"Attention, there's been a threat to ships security in the area! Step out into the light and produce your work orders for this section!"

Oh, bloody hell.

Slowly stepping out into the corridor proper, doing their best to obscure the Captain at the rear of the group, the men started producing the new identification papers that the Admiral had issued.

"You! In the back! Front and center!"

There was a single groan from many throats and, as they seperated to make way for the Captain, the rebels raised their weapons, gave the Marines a "Sorry it has to be this way" look, and immediately began to look for a place to stash the bodies.

Kitty remained so for a long while, crying until she had no more tears to cry. She felt sick, but she held back. She had a job to do. Focus on the job, focus on the job. She grabbed the gun, using a piece of cloth to clean up what little blood there was, before tossing that too over the edge.

Tucking it back into her pockets, she crawled into the crawl space, finishing her repairs. For now, they would settle for not knowing what happened to Alex She decided she'd play it dumb. Alex just disappeared after she told him to get the circuit board...

Andrew Brackwell landed, heels first, hands behind his back, as the ship’s gravity was restored. Across the Engineering deck, men, women and unsecured articles dropped back to the bulkheads as they lost their previous weightlessness. Curses and exclamations filled the air, but he hummed the Prelude of Bach’s first Unaccompanied Cello Suite in G Major to himself and thought.

Lieutenant Commander Brackwell was what his psyche evaluators would have called 'an opportunistic sociopath' had they not been bribed into a reserved and reluctant silence back during his officer candidacy examinations. He was tall at 6' 3", had dark black hair that was clipped regularly and judiciously and pale, pale eyes that had disturbed many a man deeply and profoundly. His one strength when it came to people was an unexplainable aura of command about him. There was a feeling of destiny, of authority that sheathed him in a glow of resolution. And, for some strange reason, when he talked, people listened.

And he had talked. And talked and talked and talked. What he said and who he said it to were carefully calculated. To some, it was that life in Klonor’s navy was foredoomed to violent, painful death at the hands of pirates or scoundrels or alien menace or civil action. To others, it was that the military existence was boring, that not enough action had been seen. The conclusion, however was always the same.

They needed to leave. Leave Klonor, leave civilized space, go out and get away. Conquer some aboriginal world and build a new planet from the ground up. To some, it was salvation, to others, adventure. To Blackwell, it was destiny. He would have the ship, he would found his world, he would be a king.

But first, he needed the ship. He had planned and talked and coerced for so long now. And this was exactly the sort of situation to begin it all! It had fallen into his lap! As Chief Engineer of the vessel, he knew her workings inside and out, he knew how to run her, how to control her. He also had the entire Engineering staff (and the local ship’s marines) on his side, which was a plus.

Brackwell paused in his melodious reverie and surveyed the tiny kingdom that he ruled. The Engineering deck was a wide open area, dotted liberally with control stations and computer readouts. Most strikingly, however, was the huge power core which dominated the massive room. It was a marvel of science of some kind or another, and powered the ship. ALL of the ship, so impossible to turn to his advantage, unfortunately. There was no way to keep his territory running and yanking the plug on everyone else.

It was quiet, eerily quiet, as his men and women picked themselves up and began to asses the cause of the sudden power failure. All of the ratings and engineers worked silently at their stations. The regular marines assigned to his deck stood at attention. Led by Lieutenant Hermann, a career marine possessed of a proud visage harkening back to Prussian ancestry, they has signed up with him long ago. All followed him with their eyes as he stopped at his command station and surveyed the beginnings of his Imperium.

"Sir?" There was a hesitant clearing of a throat somewhere behind him. Blackwell turned, and fixed his singular gaze on Ensign Mallory, who ran his communications switchboard. "Uh, sir -" He hesitated.

The man suddenly changed his manner completely, going from frightening to companionable. "Well, no need to hurry, James. Nothing important is going on, anyway." There was laughter, and the tension evaporated.

Mallory grinned. “Apparently, some lunatic loyalist jumped his fighter into the ship, cutting power conduits forward of Botanics. We’re shunting power through other junctions, and gravity’s been restored… obviously.”

The reply was immediate. "Excellent. I think now is a perfect opportunity to sever us from the rest of the ship. Kindly inform the bridge that, in light of the security situation, and unconfirmed reports of the Captain’s escape – ah, they might not have heard about that yet.” Engineering was near enough to the brig that word of some fighting had spread to him. “Anyway. Tell them we’re cutting ourselves off from the rest of the ship, and that I’ve had the marines assume duty stations. Oh, and make sure not to tell him that we’re going to steal his ship." More laughter from the Deck crew and marines.

"Sir, yes sir!"

"We have a destiny to meet, everyone! Let's get to it!" Blackwell whooped, and was cheered hysterically. He walked over to Hermann.

"Lieutenant."

"Lieutenant Commander."

"Well, you know what's what, right? We're going to seal ourselves in with the emergency blast doors until we're ready to move. We want 'em to think we're on both their sides until the end, but we'll be playing defense for a while."

"Sir, yes sir!" With that, the officer and his marines stalked out.

"Let's do it boys and girls! This is our destiny!" Blackwell grinned as they cheered him. They didn't realize. It was his destiny, not theirs.

"Sir, I'm getting an odd report from the Engineering crew. It's from Commander Brackwell, he claims he's sealing off the Engineering section because of the security situation."

The Admiral, who had barely moved since power had been restored, slowly turned towards the bridge comunications officer.

"Security situation? What security situation? Jonwei!"

"Sir?"

His security chief approached, curiosity and fear jockeying for control on his face.

"Lieutenant, have you issued a security alert?"

"No, sir, I wouldn't do such a thing without your say-so. The ship's been calm since Tors made the Last Jump. Brackwell's trying to take us for a ride; that man's always been to ambitious for his own good."

The Admiral paused for a moment, taking the time to think a bit more deeply.

"Ambitious, yes, but he's not a moron, something else must be happening if he thinks he can go his own way. Rubin, are the ship-wide comms back on-line?"

"Yes, sir, that's how Brackwell got in touch with us."

"Good. Contact the Brig. Have the guards report on the Captains condition."

"Yes, sir.........sir, I'm not getting any response from either the guards or the Marines we just dispatched. It might just be a local distortion, I wouldn't be surprised if certain ship sections are still listing."

"No contact? No....no, there's more going on here than we thought. Place the ship on full alert, notify the crew that the Captain has escaped and that he is to be recaptured at all costs, dead or alive.......no, wait! Emergency override, lock down the Phase-Gates before you do anything else, I want the Captain contained before he knows we're on to him. Once they're off-line, transmit the alert about the Captain to all decks except Engineering. His companions are to be executed at once. This is my ship, and I'm not losing control."

"Yes, sir. What about Brackwell?"

"I already gave you your orders concerning the Captains companions."

"Yes, sir."

Turning away from the Admiral, Lieutenant Jonwei began issuing orders over the ships loudspeakers and personal communicators. Twenty decks below the bridge, a much more heavily armed squad of Marines began to equip themselves in one of the forward barracks. Five minutes later, thirty heavily armed men began to march their way towards the Engineering levels as an equal number began to proceed towards the Brig.

[OOC: Klonor, you have a telegram. :) I'll edit & replace this tiny OOC post with something IC if/when that's possible because you've said it's okay or not. *g*]

OOC: Responded with an affirmative, Ma-tek. You're more than welcome.

[OOC: Making a new post since it's a new page, and people might miss it otherwise. -

Some very basic character info. If you want more, then look for it ICly and I'll elaborate. ;)

Name: Ilishara Devarro
Origins: Spaceborn, records state her as a fourth-generation immigrant, but a natural-born... person from Klonor
Area of expertise: Shipboard Security
Rank: A noncom, not sure on Klonor's rank system yet, come to think of it, so I'll steer clear of rank mention for this post/edit if I find something obvious on NSWiki or whatnot

She is known on board ship as a quiet, thoughtful type. Commonly known as 'Lish'. She's also known for being rather proficient in the martial arts, but considering her line of work, this is not entirely unexpected. A disciplined career noncom, there have been various rumours throughout her career surrounding her non-officer status - clearly she is officer material, but equally she has never made any effort in that direction.

Her career has been undistinguished for the most part, with brief bursts of above-normal excellence.]




IC:

Ilishara grunted with irritation. It wouldn't have been so bad... if her eyes didn't sting. Then again... Today was different. Today...

Today the rest of her unit had, it would appear, deserted. Or mutinied. Or one of those other sugar-coated words for cowardice and dishonour. Certainly none of them had raised protest at the mutiny apparent by Blackwell and his cronies.

The irony was astounding. She, herself, had managed to slip away from the group in engineering, before the traitor had called the lockdown. It had been staggeringly easy. For me, she allowed.

She held back the bile of contempt. Cowards, she thought at the 'soldiers'. Of course, they were nowhere near, but she was less than impressed. Her sense of honour dictated her next steps: she, by herself, if required, would kill them or apprehend them.

Duty demanded nothing less. And she knew that others knew of the treachery, now - the announcement on the loudspeaker had taken care of that.

Rationality and logic, however, suggested a different course of action to her heart's demand. Slowly, carefully, she made her way to a internal comms-capable terminal some distance from engineering, ignoring anyone she past on her way.

Helpfully, they ignored her, too. Even the heavily-armed Marines en route to Engineering passed her by, so intent on whatever they were headed to do. She had a good idea, of course, and she didn't intend to stop them. She doubted they'd have much luck, somehow. It was a vague feeling.

She passed several viable terminals, but ignored those too. There was one in particular she wanted - one in particular which would do just what she needed, without anyone possibly overhearing. She had engineered it thus.

Slipping into the tight, enclosed space - she had always been nimble - she tinkered carefully.

Away came a panel. Beneath, stowed very carefully indeed, were an assortment of electronic toys.

She smiled.

"Hello, children," she whispered, very softly. "Mummy's come to play with you again."

She suppressed a giggle. She had always had a playful side - it took effort of will to suppress it. But a woman in her position had to do such things. It might be misinterpreted.

Stowing the objects carefully in the belt which had been stored amongst them, and replacing her old belt with the new one, she replaced the panel, and called the bridge - and Jonwei.

But the whole truth just wouldn't do. First... first she needed to know what the hell was really going on. And for that, she needed to be thoroughly trusted.

With grim determination, she pushed herself into the right frame of mind.

And so, voice breaking, she called up to the bridge, first making sure whoever was answering knew who she was: "...those bloody traitorous scum! They tried to shoot me! I'm sorry, sir, but I got the hell out of there so I could make sure warning was brought to you. I got a glimpse of some Marines, but I didn't know who to trust, so I made sure to find a secure terminal before..."

Her voice had quickened, and she halted, drawing in a deep breath...

I certainly sound anxious enough, she mused, deep inside, utterly calmly.

((OOC: I'm changing Kitty's rank to 'Petty Officer First Class.' I figure, for her job, Corporal is too low a rank, and it's an Army/Marine rank, and she's supposed to be Navy. It's the Army eqivulent of Staff Sergeant, so she went up two ranks (Still non-commissioned) and switched to Naval rankings. Hope this is cool, Klonor?))


Kitty looked up as she heard the PA system kick in. The bridge, and thus the Admiral, was onto the Captain's escape. For now, she was safe in the inner workings of the Ship's Computer. This close to the mainframe, no one would dare shoot at her, least they miss and destroy the mainframe.

Of course, it wasn't a fact that anyone knew she was on the Captain's side. The only one who did was long gone now. For now, she was simply content evesdropping on communications, monitoring everything said on the bridge, picking up useful bits and pieces here and there.

Hearing a quick noise, Kitty froze, her ears straining to try and identify it. Her hand dropped to her pocket. The gun gave her some comfort, but after what she had done to Alex, she wished she had snagged one of those Phase Initiator things instead. She was no soldier, better suited for running and hiding then fighting. She barely made it out of boot-camp.

She was good at what she did. Computers, and anything electronical, but when it came to fighting, she felt safer leaving that to the pros: The Marines and security personnel.

After a few seconds, she became satisifed that the sound she had heard was of the ship's computer, possibly something pinging as it heated up.

Shaking her head, she went back to evesdropping. Frowning as she overheard the Admiral give the order to send Marines to the captain's location, she once again opened a private channel, writing a small program packet which would not only delete itself, but also any record of the message she was sending to the Ensign. "I've intercepted an order from the Admiral. After checking the secruity cam feeds, I'm confirming that a Platoon of Marines are en route to Engineering, with another platoon en route to your location. I'll keep you informed. Deepthroat, Out." She sent the message, watching lines of code scroll across her before it just simply vanishes. There was no record of her message now.

She smirked at her use of the old callsign. She did feel kinda like the Watergate informant of long ago Earth, although she had only read about that on some website while surfing the interweb a few years ago. Shaking her head clear of these fancy thoughts, she opened a channel to her superior, informing him of her success, adding in. "I'm getting some werid signals down here. I'm going to stick around and try and figure out the signal and if possible neutralize it. Anyways, inform the Admiral that the ship's systems are secured and there has been no attempted breech of ship security, as of yet. Petty Officer White, out."

Closing the channel, she viewed the lines of code on her laptop, nodding as she resumed evesdropping...


((OOC2: A platoon is about 40 soldiers. According to This (http://www.ecsu.ctstateu.edu/personal/faculty/pocock/ranks.htm) website, at least. Kitty didn't count all of the soldiers, but she sees a lot of them, and figures that it should be about a platoons worth.))

OOC: Ahoy, sorry for the long absence, but my connection has been twitchy of late and I only today got it back to normal. Hopefully I'll be able to keep the posts coming regularly.

Regarding the confusion over officer rankings, I usually try to stick with standard US Naval rankings for my crew (Seeing as how most Sci-Fi does the same). However, since my knowledge of rank is almost completely derived from that same Sci-Fi and I've put some pretty glaring errors into my past RP's, don't feel obligated to completely conform to real-life titles. If none of the standard rankings fit the job you've assigned your character, feel free to create your own (Or adapt one from some other military service), just try to keep it within reason. I don't want to see any Grand Poobah's in charge of reproduction walking around this ship.

IC:

Oh, blood hell.

Lieutenant Hor Jonwei, head of ships security aboard the Aquitaine, silently moaned within his mind as the deep hole sucking him into the ground expanded even further around him. The day had already been one he would have gladly skipped, and the near-hysterical woman he was talking to didn't improve things.

"Calm down, (Placeholder until we get a rank for Devarro), I need you to focus. We've already begun to take steps to re-secure the ship, but any information you have may be of vital help. Please try and concentrate. Who, exactly, was it that tried to kill you? What other actions have they taken? Can you give us a list of their defences?"

As he spoke, trying to prod the answers he needed from the whimpering screen before him, he gestured behind his back at the other security personnell stationed on the bridge. They immediately began a thorough background check on this (Placeholder) Devarro, looking for any hints of Pro-Captain tendencies. Mercenary history was also investigated, as was psychological disorders and mind-altering substance overviews. Whatever the bridge learned, they wanted to be sure they weren't be lead by the nose right over a cliff.

"You've done well in reporting this, but me need more thorough information. Once again, from the top, and try to keep calm."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The situation taking place in one of the many anonymous hallways in the bowels of the Aquitaine would be described in any movie as a Mexican Standoff. At least, it would if any writer had the chutzpa to put such an overdone and worn out plot device in a movie so early into it at an extremely unimportant juncture. Thank God nobody here would do anything like that.

But, worn plot device or not, the situation between the Captain and the Marines sent to apprehend him looked like nothing more than the warm up to a quick and bloody slaughter. The Loyalists had the numbers, but the Marines had the training and the equipment. Neither side was exactly looking forward to what was coming next. Maybe that was why everybody was simply standing there pointing weapons at one another, nobody taking that first shot that really should have come a long while ago.

Abruptly, Ensing Qos's radio emmitted a burst of static followed by the voice of the anonymous informant who had prepared them for this specific crisis.

"I've intercepted an order from the Admiral. After checking the secruity cam feeds, I'm confirming that a Platoon of Marines are en route to Engineering, with another platoon en route to your location. I'll keep you informed. Deepthroat, Out."

The Captain froze from a fraction of a second, both confused and befuddled by the bizarre name, before the import of what he'd heard hit him. Six soldiers were a match for the force he had with him, add on another couple dozen and this was simply an impossible fight. He and his men needed to vacate the area as soon as possible. The other Loyalists got the message as soon as he did and, almost as if it had been planned, opened fire at once.

If only they'd been only ones.

Unlike what the Vids always showed; gun battles in open corridors, with no cover anywhere, no more than ten feet between any of the participants, and full-auto weapons, never lasted long. In a matter of seconds it was over, with close to two dozen men littering the floor either screaming in pain or silent because they had moved beyond ever feeling pain again.

It was only by a miracle that the Captain wasn't one of them.

Looking at himself, a bit shocked that all his fingers and toes were still connected as they should be, then looking at who was left of his supporters, glad that some of them had made it through, his face hardened and he looked at the people who wouldn't be standing any time soon.

"We have to move."

Without another word, he and the three Loyalists still whole turned and dashed up the corridor, seeking to put as much distance between themselves and the Marines that were advancing towards their position. They would need a new place to hide.

Master Sergeant Ilishara Devarro tried very hard not to grin. Somehow this was all vastly amusing, though she couldn't quite put her finger on it yet. Something that reminded her...

Of something.

That was even funnier.

Fortunately, despite her alterations, her species remained the same. Facial reaction was not instinctive (or, more correctly, not instantly instinctive) in a Nenya. There was a certain lag, an envelope that made it far easier to control facial reaction.

Body language was another thing entirely, but fortunately, only her face was actually visible on-screen, so that didn't matter for now.

So she drew in a deep 'calming' breath, and nodded. "Sir-yes-sir!"

Still, it was strained. Had to be. She calmed slowly as she repeated: "The marines assigned to Engineering. Bloody bastards. Tried to get me to defect or somesuch, damned if I know what they're exactly up to - but when I refused, they shot at me!" Her voice raises a little towards the end, becoming distinctly high-pitched. It adds that certain air of vulnerability - which is at odds with what anyone who knows Lish would expect; the woman is far from emotional. "People I know, not foreigners." The anger shines through, now. And being real, it erodes that former vulnerability with swift clarity. "I got off a few shots and managed to duck out of sight. I think they were going to seal off engineering, but I don't know for sure."

Lish paused, looked downwards, almost guiltily. "Sorry, sir. I should've contacted you sooner."

[OOC: Her file reveals almost no imperfections, which in itself is probably quite rare. She's believed to be 'non-political' - meaning she's apathetic towards politics in general, and has never stated any particular political point of view beyond patriotism. No record of substance abuse, no criminal record, entered the military at minimum entrance age. The only 'blot' on her record is a medical notation indicating a potential incidence of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) after a combat mission some years back, but it appears that she transferred to a new station shortly thereafter, and somehow, it was never quite followed up. Her medical file indicates that otherwise she is in 'perfect health'. She's not even noted as having contracted a cold or reporting to a ships' doctor with a headache. Ever.]

Bloody fucking hell.

The hole just kept growing larger and larger.

"You did what you could, Seargant, nobody can blame you for not doing more."

That wasn't exactly true, the Admiral could blame whoever the hell he wanted, but Jonwei had a feeling if she knew that she'd just start crying, and he could not deal with that right now.

"Your information will be of great assistance, know that. Right now I want you to report to Security Station 03B, you'll get further orders there. Bridge out."

With a flick of his wrist he shut down the communications terminal and turned to the officers behind him

"What do we know? If I'm going to alert my Marines to a definite mutiny I want to be sure it's accurate."

"She's no Loyalist, our records don't give her any political leanings or agendas."

"That's good, at least, but if she's got no leanings then why the hell does she care who the Marines support?"

"It could be she simply doesn't tolerate mutiny."

"She'd have pitched a bigger fit when we left the Association if that were the case."

"Yes, sir. We've run a thorough personality check, odds are she's not striking out on her own or trying to play us off to a third party. She's clean, too, no narcotics history in her file."

That made the security chief look up.

"Repeat that, please?"

"I said she's sober, sir. She doesn't have a history of drug abuse."

"And you say she's a Klonor native?"

"Yes, sir. Born and raised."

"Call the Marines heading to Engineering. Tell them to hold up and wait for reinforcements. I want a full strike team outfitted in five minutes, when they get to Engineering expect resistance and heavy casualties. Our informant is trying to lead them into a trap. Move!"

Without even a 'Yes, sir' the officer was running to his console, relaying the orders as quickly as he could.

Lieutenant Jonwei stood frozen for a few moments, thinking things over and preparing himself for the worst before making his way to the Admiral. The man surely would not be happy to learn he had some sort of spy riding on his ship. The day a Klonorian native wasn't hooked on God-knows-what was the day they made Salm the new Duke. No way in hell.

OOC: Oh, new nifty thing, since there's such a limited supply of potential casualties on this little ship I'm going to start keeping track. The first OOC post on the first page (After the story-style introduction) now has a counter informing everybody of just how many people are left on the ship. Right now we're down to 9,975. Casualties are poor little Lieutenant Tors, one of the initial guards on the Captain, Alex, and the 22 casualties of the Captains gunfight.

Mallory inhaled through clenched teeth as the bridge communications officer cut the feed. He signaled to Brackwell, who left Lieutenant Hermann and walked briskly to Mallory's station. "How fares our beloved Admiral, James?"

The Ensign gave a vaguely pessimistic look and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think they bought it, sir. The tech who answered my call reported it off screen and then thanked me for the report. We didn't get any orders, he didn't ask about the 'security situation' I mentioned - he just ended the transmission."

Without responding, Brackwell whirled about and barked at the Maintenance substation. "Petty officer! Bring up the transport diagnostic schematics for the forward half of the ship!" Reaching the bewildered crewman's panel, Brackwell tapped him on the shoulder, and assumed his seat. Jabbing at one control and then another, Brackwell centered on a particular confluence of elevator shafts and corridors, and waited. After several minutes, as a confused and worried air spread to the ratings nearby, he stood, satisfied.

Lieutenant Hermann had watched the entire process, and was now standing at his superior's side. "Sir?"

"The Admiral's sent some of his Marines our way, Lieutenant."

If severe, hatchet-faced Marine officers spluttered, Hermann would have. "But, sir - how could you possibly have known that?"

Brackwell pointed at the schematic. "After Ensign Mallory phoned the bridge, he got the cold shoulder. Three minutes after that, elevator 12A moved from the forward armory substation down to corridor 12J, where this access to this central corridor" he pointed first to one, and then the other "remained open for about half a minute. Just about enough time for a fast-moving platoon of Marines to go through it, wouldn't you say?" With a grin, he waited for his nominal second-in-command to say something.

"Then... we had best prepare, sir. I have already discussed forward defensive arrangements with my sergeants. I await only your order to initiate the plan we formulated."

"Perfect. Were we able to scrounge the materials you required?"

Hermann nodded an affirmative. "Yes, sir. We had to improvise some of the devices, as they are not standard shipboard issue for Marines, but some of the engineers cobbled them together in sufficient numbers to make up for the shortage."

"Then issue your orders, Lieutenant."

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Several issued orders later, Hermann sat in the makeshift command center he and Ensign Mallory had wired together, studiously ignoring the bustle of Marines and technicians. His subordinates were stacking crates and containers to form barricades around the large blast doors connecting Engineering to the major access corridors, and the Lieutenant Commander's subordinates were busy tearing out the hardwired overrides connecting the bridge computers to Engineering's. All the activity made it hard to concentrate on his task.

"Say again, Sergeant Mendoza."

A faint whisper issued from his communication pannel. Mendoza needn't really have been keeping his voice down, since there was a half-inch of deck plating between him and anyone who might have been listening, but 'better safe than sorry' had been a military maxim for time immemorial. "Repeat: we are in position, sir. As soon as the Admiral's marines pass overhead, I will ask you to cut the lighting in this corridor."

"Excellent, Sergeant. At your discretion." Hermann smiled. His career-long rival, Lieutenant Jonwei, had the numbers for now, but the little guttersnipe had never really demonstrated the certain tactical flourish that Hermann prided himself on. His academy foe would have a ship-wide conflict on his hands soon enough.

Smugly self-assured, he turned to his tactical communications staff. "I - wait, where's Devarro?" The Marines looked about them as if she might have been under a coaster. Like most speakers of a second language, Hermann returned to childhood speech patterns when under stress. "Scheiße!" He calmed himself. "Change all the access codes! The self-righteous little bitch slipped out!" As his staffers scrambled to inform Brackwell and change security procedures, he cursed quietly to himself. If Devarro hadn't been in a position that brought her into contact with him, as one of his aides, her absence might never have been noticed in his complement of five hundred and eight - no, five hundred and seven now - Marines. He had known that she, almost alone of his troopers, was not likely to acquiesce to the new order of things, but he hadn't thought she'd actually manage to slip out. Softly, he cursed again. "Scheiße."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a drastic contrast to the noise and bustle of the Engineering deck, Sergeant Mendoza lay quietly with twenty of his men, straining to detect the sound of marching combat boots. Like his instructors had said, sooner or later, everything fell back on your basic abilities, despite the high-tech modern battlefield. In this case, it was his his standard issue, Mark I ear.

Needless to say, it would be fairly obvious when thirty or (hopefully not) forty pairs of trumping feet were overhead, but he wanted to have advance warning. Suddenly, he got it. Faintly but closing rapidly, he detected the tremor of the oncoming Admiral's marines. "Goggles!" he whispered.

His twenty men donned the various night-vision goggles that Hermann had scrounged up or had had constructed. The corridor was quite wide, but only wide enough for twenty men to lie shoulder to shoulder. That left Mendoza short handed by anywhere from ten to twenty men, but this would hopefully (and probably, as he and Hermann had agreed) be offset by the tactical surprise achieved by attacking from below and from the rear, as well as by the tactical advantage of being able to... well, to see.

So, Mendoza's instructors had been partially right. Eventually, everything did lead back to the basics - a marine and his rifle. But until then, it was pretty darn awesome to have the technological advantage.

The thudding boots came closer and closer... and then suddenly stopped, and began to recede. Shitshishit. Hermann would not be happy if Jonwei's men escaped his trap. And if the enemy marines were holding back for reinforcements, he, Sergeant Mendoza, would be quite dead, tactical advantages or no. A snap decision was required. Since his targets had yet to pass overhead, Mendoza's squad was still behind them, and they still had the element of surprise. In effect, nothing had changed.

"Now!" The command was both to his men and to Hermann (who would probably chew him out for the imperative nature of the word, if he survived). As Mendoza's men heaved the heavy access panels up over their heads, they were greeted by protecting darkness. Ten of the Marines were assigned to lift the panels, while ten began firing into the backs of their enemies immediately. After a second or two, the other ten joined in, doubling the volume of fire.

Lish pondered carefully. Her move had been unusual - outside of her training. She had not thought things through properly.

She needed a cover.

Swearing very softly, she yanked off the covering of the comm terminal - ignoring the fact it was live - and proceeded to attatch a small, semi-spherical device onto it.

The device - a clever little tool for wirelessly breaking into closed networks (when properly configured for the system in question) - is prodded very carefully. "Unable to comply," it whispers, in perfect Klonor tongue. Obviously, if a passerby saw and heard her use it, it would never have done to have anything but.

She hated the damned thing for it, however. The accent was so harsh to her ears, and these people spoke so loudly.

She sighed, softly. "Merde." The fact that she swore in French was a delicious irony, a counterpoint to her thoughts.

Her teacher had been very much enamoured with counterpoint. Which reminded her...

More prodding. It was easier, swifter to use the technology she had grown up with; she was far more adept with her own equipment. Smile.

The screen - left untouched by itself, of course - lit up once more. However, it did not display a face. This was an audio only signal:

"Brackwell, Lieutenant Commander. You'll soon hear that I'm a traitor to your cause. Perhaps, in future, you'll think more carefully about who and where you spout your nonsense to. The idiots under your command have about fifteen minutes to live.

"You see, I'm a cold-hearted bitch, as you've no doubt realised by now, but I'm a smart cold-hearted bitch. And I decided the day that this ship went AWOL, I wasn't going to stand for it.

"I'm a loyal citizen. And you know what? Traitors die. By staying here, I should die, too.

"What was it they taught you officers? That fanatics are the toughest to put down, because they don't give a damn for themselves? Well, here's where you find out how valild that lesson is.

"You see, I'm quite the engineer. Your men have been very kind to me, very kind indeed. Showed me some interesting things. Amazing what a tight uniform will do to a man...

"You have about fifteen minutes to find it. I know you know what I mean. If you don't, we all die. So if I were you?"

She tried very hard not to laugh.

"I'd hurry."

She cut the connection. In fact, it was lagged by about three minutes, which meant she would be gone by the time it actually arrived. Naturally it would appear to be real-time - but since nothing in a computer system really is ever real-time, since packets have to be deconstructed and reconstructed at either end of a network, this really meant not a single thing.

It was easy.

And, of course, the fact that there wasn't a bomb (or any sabotage of any kind), it would make it decidedly difficult to find out what the hell she'd been talking about.

Collecting her 'toys', Lish moved off - taking the 'scenic route' towards the exact place Jonwei had told her to go. They'd be taking a close look at her files by now, and she had a feeling - possibly due to certain other factors - that it wouldn't go well for her. There was a discrepancy that had never been hidden, that had been so obvious it had gone unnoticed for years on end; something which you didn't expect.

And fortunately for her, she still had the cover story for it.

If only they didn't shoot her before she told them, that was.

[[Well, it's been a while since I got permission to post, but things have been rather hectic over here....

So, here's the character:

Name: Hass Jangen
Rank: Chief Medical Officer
Nicknames: "Hassle", "Doc", "The Doctor", "Miracle-Man" (All terms have been used, "Hassle" and "Doc" are the most common, Miracle-Man is only used rarely, and then only by those who have needed major bodily repairs).
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Nationality: Klonorian
Job: Well, the rank says it all really. He runs Medical.

Allegiance: Neutral, leaning Loyalist.

Bio:
"Hassle" Jangen has been the ship's doctor for several years, and has been both a demon and an angel to many of the ship's crew - an angel as he fends off officers from doing anything that might send a patient back into his med-bay early, and a demon from his almost religious insistence upon the health check-ups of his patients, many of whom are eager to go back to work after a period in Hass's domain.

To Hass Jangen the command of the ship is not of huge significance, as long as he gets his pay and keeps his authority over the medical bays he is generally thought to be content. However, during the mutiny a number of the weapons termed as being missing in the general confusion have found their way into numerous hiding spots around the "Hassling Deck" as the Doc's concern for the health of those in his custody continues despite hardships. Hass and his company of doctors, surgeons and nurses have made it clear amongst the crew that the medical bays are not to be scenes of conflict, and that wounded from whichever side will be admitted. This has not stopped the careful re-labelling of injured soldiers and sailors to prevent a large force of the marines from simply walking in and taking over.

CMO Jangen is proud man who does not appear to have any particular leanings toward either Loyalist or Defector, although it could be noticed that he generally dislikes turncoats, and that he is familiar with the captain. Neither of these considerations comes close to his concern for the wounded and the health of the crew as a whole.

Doc Jangen is also well known for his pride in his medical bays, staff and the ship itself - having lived aboard for several years the ship is truly his home, and has, in his mind, become associated with honour and dedication to duty even when dull and seemingly pointless.]]



"Hassle" Jangen closed his eyes for a moment, savouring the momentary quiet.

What is it with these people? Oh! I appear to have been given a bad assignment! I'll take over the ship, and screw the medical bays by stuffing them full of wounded for no good reason!

Delicate fingers trained by decades of medical work gently rubbed his temples.

Of course, it's a military ship. I know that better than most, but this is pointless! Not even as if it serves any pretense of a purpose.

His left hand picked up a tumbler of the medicinal brandy. There wasn't technically anything wrong with old Doc Hass except for stress and nerves - but stress and nerves on the person tinkering with your vital organs is not something you want. He often used this justification when things got rough.

Mind you, haven't had too many badly wounded in yet...that bunch of broken bones from idiots who thought grav turning off was the perfect opportunity to go flying as high as they could, and a couple of walking wounded from firefights. Everyone else just dead. Still, could've been worse.

He glanced up as a particularly ugly doctor - Jacob Drunner - stepped into his office. Drunner, though he looked truly hideous thanks to several unfortunate accidents, was a spectacular quick-fit doctor. His abilities were the same reason he got dragged into combat scenarios, and thus why he appeared so unpleasant.

Fortunately, "Quick-fit" Drunner was also good at running around through information systems, evidence of a mispent youth gladly seized upon by Jangen.

"Chief? All kinds of chaos."

Drunner carefully laid a sheet of information on the CMO's desk, then shuffled out in his quiet manner. Doc Jangen picked up the sheet and scanned through it, sighing at the movements of marines.

"Drenner, wait."

The pockmarked man turned back to Jangen.

"Chief?"

"Prep the bays, there might be a spot of trouble coming and my medical bays are going to make the ship proud...even if everyone else is disgracing her name."

"Righto Chief. Will get right on it."

The Chief Medical Officer nodded to Drenner and leaned back in his chair, determined to make the most of however few minutes were left before he would have to get back to work.

They might have left the Association behind, turning their backs on the military organisation that had done so much to train and prepare them for combat, but they were a long way from having forgotten exactly what it was that they'd been taught. When the lights died they immediately tensed for an assault, some turning to check the area behind them while the others seperated so they wouldn't present such a beautiful target. It seemed that the Bridge had been right in issuing a warning.

It became certain that the Bridge was right in issuing a warning when bullets began impacting various body parts of the assault team.

In an instant they were themselves returning fire, their vision enhancement gear easily allowing them to see their targets even in the darkness. Twenty hostiles were instantly identified, seemingly rising from the floor on multiple sides. "Ambush" didn't even need to be said.

"Fall back! Bait and evade!"

The call came from almost a dozen throats at the same time. As one the Admirals soldiers began to distance themselves from the area, fading into side corridors and hallways so as draw their attackers out of their cover where their numbers would count for more. They were dropping rapidly, twelve were wounded already, but in seconds the assault force was out of the immediate line of sight of the mutineers and already preparing themselves for further gunplay. It was only then that one of them took the time to report the combat to the Bridge, receiving only a single response.

"Situation understood. Hold position. Reinforcements are en-route."

Almost as if they'd been waiting for a cue, the seventy-five man Marine strike team that had been dispatched by Jonwei burst into the area, lobbing a pair of grenades into the ambush hallway before commencing standard small-arms fire.

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"The Captain escaped? What? Aren't there supposed to be guards or something? Shouldn't we have taken precautions against this kind of thing?"

"Bon, if the Captain was to dumb to break out of a security cell he'd never have made it as far as he did. I'm surprised it held him this long. That guys to smart to be caged up."

"Yeah, but the Admirals the one who locked him up. Why wouldn't he have put in special protection?"

"Bon, the Admirals done a lot of stuff recently I never thought he'd do. Screwing up would just be the latest on the list."

"Joe, you're starting to sound off just a little much"

"Yeah, and you're starting to treat that back-stabbing piece of dung like he still deserved our loyalty."

As any mildly intelligent observer could determine, the crew of Security Station 03B wasn't terribly focused on their duty. Their banter also showed that neither completely agreed with the others views on the ships recent activities, but their small smiles showed that their was no serious sting in their words and they weren't actively planning to turn each other over to their respective sides. Thankfully, they weren't completely out of it, and they noticed when the woman approached their small station.

"Halt! Identify yourself and produce your orders! This is a restricted area!"

OOC: 'I'm a duuuuumbaassss' is the chorus to the song I'm singing. I knew I was forgetting something, and looky thar - it was asking whether or not light amplification equipment was standard issue.

Sergeant Mendoza knew that this particular jig was up when Private Ramsey took a burst to the throat almost instantly. The rearguard could see just flippin' fine without the lights on - these guys had the new headset, with the standard issue light amplification. [OOC: I know that it's probably been standard issue forever, I'm just trying to find some plausible reason why my Marines wouldn't know what the hell it was they were wearing on their bloody faces.] The cleaving of Privates Jurgenson and Clark by one of the reinforcements' hand grenades was concurring evidence for the conclusion Mendoza had already reached before the seventy-five new troopers had arrived. Without his original presupposed advantages, with surprise gone, the area perfectly visible and his enemies outnumbering his men even more badly than before, it was time to leave. Of course, his conscious thought process was somewhat more streamlined. Along the lines of 'Crap! Time to bug out!', actually.

"Back below! Back below!" He made a hand gesture, and he and a corporal flung their own grenades back down the corridor in the hopes of catching some of the new arrivals in the open and discouraging immediate pursuit. Again, roughly half of the marines pulled the access panels back down, while the other half slashed at them with portable blowtorches, welding them sloppily shut, if only for a few moments.

The Marines, the damage they could hope to do already done, crawled quickly into ancillary passages to avoid penetration fire through the floor, and quick-shuffled back to Engineering.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermann snarled in rage and frustration as Mendoza breathlessly related the action to his commander while still crawling back home on his elbows. Forcing calm to flow through him like a cooling stream, he took stock of the situation. He'd still achieved a victory of some sort, apparently, and he'd gained valuable information that the approaching force was at least twice as great as Brackwell had originally deduced, with the addition of the reinforcements.

And Engineering was secure for the foreseeable future. He turned and his scowl faded slightly at the sight of the fortifications that his men had already erected. There was a free-fire zone set up in front of the blast doors that Brackwell had locked, and the doors themselves were built to withstand explosive decompression and starship-weapon splash damage - Jonwei's men would need more than hand grenades to bring them down, and they'd been completely rewired by Brackwell's techs - security overrides wouldn't be working for the mutineers. Or, well, the first bunch of mutineers. All told, Hermann had set about two hundred of his Marines to defend the door leading to the access corridor where the gun battle had taken place, including sharpshooters on the walkways and catwalks above the deck, as well as the main force behind crates and workstations and metal sheeting.

Each of the Marines under his command knew that their defeat and capture would mean certain death at the hands of the Admiral. An enterprising few might consider bagging the ringleaders of the double mutiny as a sign of repentance, but they all took one look at the scowling, Teutonic giant clutching his KSMAR-1000 and decided it would be a better idea just to fight.

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Despite the semi-setback of his forward defensive ploy, Brackwell was in a reasonably good mood. His total Marine strength was still just more than five hundred (five hundred and four, to be precise), and he'd just recieved the most hilarious message from someone, probably Devarro.

He played it again, tapping the screen inset into Ensign Mallory's communications station. Devarro's bomb threat repeated. He turned, hearing Mallory coming back with coffee. As the message got to the explanation of the woman's amature engineering skills, Mallory sniggered. "Yeah... boy was she quite the skank." He flushed a deep crimson as he realized whose company he was in and Brackwell gave him a sardonic stare.

After a second the traitorous leader grinned. "You know what they say, James. Don't date a girl if the whole band knows her name." They burst out laughing, the impending siege forgotten. Quickly, the Ensign sobered. "But, sir, you're not going to send someone to search for the bomb?" He looked at his wrist chrono. "We've only got seven minutes!"

Lieutenant Commander Brackwell stretched. "Don't worry about it. I've got people on it, even though it's obviously bullshit."

"Sir? How could we be sure?"

"It's simple, James. First, it would be pretty fucking hard to hide a bomb on a naval vessel, if I do say so myself. Sure, there are plenty of places to stick one, but where'd she have it before she installed it? Under her bed? Also, what with all her blathering about traitors, she has no reason to plant a bomb. She could've fingered us to the Admiral all as soon as she heard about our plans, and then romped off to rescue the Captain, or join his merry band, depending on how much she knows about what's going on. Anyway, if she's interested enough in her own safety to escape and deliver a melodramatic little monologue instead of strapping the bomb to her chest, then she's probably not going to blow up the ship." He gestured toward the reactor, and Mallory nodded. "Still, I've got some people looking. I wouldn't be worried." He patted Mallory on the shoulder and went to speak with Hermann.

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"Again, sir, I would be happier if you allowed me to issue sidearms to some of the ratings, in order to use them as an emergency reserve."

Brackwell's eyes hardened and he grabbed Hermann by the shoulder. In a hissing whisper, he said "We have no idea how many of these people are just going along for the ride. Who knows how many of them would just up and quit if the Admiral can scare them? If we give the weapons, we'd be lucky if all they did was quit." Hermann, initially shocked by his superior's desperation, sobered.

"Yes, sir." He paused. "Sir... about the access tunnels under the decking... if we can use them, the Admiral's men might not be far behind."

"Fine, fine. Look, tell Sally over there to vent some of the reserve coolant for the reactor into the maintenance passages."

"Sir?" Hermann stared blankly.

Sometimes Brackwell forgot that not everyone in the world was an engineer. "The coolant's only a liquid under incredibly high pressure. If we release it into the maintenance tunnels, they'll be filled with extremely toxic gas. EV suits are too bulky to fit down there, and the stuff's corrosive to organic matter, so people without EV suits won't be able to navigate them. Good enough?"

"Sir! Yes, sir!" The lieutenant wheeled about to issue the order.

Left alone for a moment, Brackwell chewed his lip in thought. For the foreseeable future, he was on the defensive, and while his position was extremely secure, it wasn't impregnable. What he needed was a third party to take the heat off of him for a while.

OOC: Nah, don't worry about it. My fault. I keep forgetting that the participants are playing as my people, not their own, and that it means they don't automatically know every single thing that I've conceived yet never posted. Such minute details really haven't pervaded the pool of general knowledge here on NS.

Oh, and how many men did you lose in our fight? Just the three (Ramsey, Jurgenson, and Clark) or were there more? I need to update the number.

IC:

The ninety-three Marines, the remnants of the original force and the recently arrived reinforcements, slowly began to approach the Engineering sections in the rear of the ship. Their progress was nearly unnoticeable and their enemies had all the time they needed to set up whatever defences they were working on, but after one ambush already the troops weren't taking any chances. The information that their supposed inside informant wasn't who she claimed to be, that she wasn't even a Klonor citizen (Not that any of them were anymore), had made them even more suspicious.

When they finally did reach Engineering, or at least the last uninterrupted hallway before the entrances, they froze completely. It was inevitable that the mutineers had manufactured at least some rudimentary defences and, depending on how many of the staff they'd managed to recruit to their cause, it might very well be a formidable obstacle. More formidable than the ill-conceived ambush, anyway. With an almost noiseless conference among the various officers, the logical decision to send out a small scouting party was reached. A few seconds later, four of the men began to creep towards the large blast doors sealing off the Engineering sections.

They were essentially walking targets, nobody expected them to do any more than give a hint at the location of whoever shot them, but they put everything they had into making themselves into the smallest targets possible. With their weapons up they were hoping that they might even get a few shots off and manage to escape into some alcove or behind some desk if things started happening.

Behind them, the rest of the assault force readied themselves to charge in shooting, if the advance men managed to get the doors open, or to cover their point-men's hasty retreat.

((OOC: Klonor, Conquest, check your TGs, yeah? I'll edit this post/make a new post once I get a reply from Klonor.))


Kitty wiped a hand across her brow. It was getting hot and cramped in the system access crawl space. She was already mostly topless, and was about two and a fourth (2 1/4) degrees away from completely removing her coveralls.

Despite the heat, she was steadily busy, her hands a blur of motion as she typed commands into her laptop, which was directly connected to the system's computer mainframe. She was busy accessing the ship's schematics, searching floor plans and remote access points for each floor of the ship. She compltely ignored the Engineering level, instead focusing on the levels near the Captain's current location, trying to find him a nice hiding place he could use...

"Master Sergeant Ilishara Devarro, here on the orders of Lieutenant Jonwei."

Very quiet, withdrawn, softly spoken.

Lish tilted her head to one side, coming to a slow halt. It's not just her head that tilts. Somehow her entire upper body leans with it, just a smidgeon, enough to push a spectalularly shaped hip out that little bit more.

Which in turn displayed the whopping big gun on it. The Master Seargeant peers down the length of her (tall, and rather lithely curved) body, as if pondering very carefully. Eyes wander back up again, and between the two crew. Eyebrows arch upwards. "Not that I look like a civilian or anything. You never seen a Marine before?"

Lish listened. Not just in the audio sense - in the other sense. Tasting. Carefully. Unobtrusively. Surface emotions only, she mused. Not, in fact, that she was capable of much more than that. Empathic reception wasn't her Prime Talent.

OOC: Yeah, it was just the three. No reason for them to stick around very long once things got really hairy, and people're being cautious, what with the extreme numerical disadvantage and all.

IC:

Lieutenant Commander Brackwell sat, deep in thought. The two principal questions on his mind were these: How could he open up another front in the mutiny, and where the hell was the Captain?

He naturally assumed that the approaching security force would be dead or dying soon (as he possessed the same self-confidence of most of history's great egomaniacs), but he was well aware of his strategic inferiorities. Or, not his per se, but his situation's. With a total crew complement of around ten thousand, he was outnumbered roughly nine to one. Once Admiral Petrarch realized it would take an actual battle to dislodge him, the old bastard would either deal, connive or send in enough Marines to fight an actual battle. Probably the third. And... just where the hell was the Captain?

An epiphany hit him, closely followed by another. The first was the most pressing, however. "Ensign!" he waved at Sally Cartwright, the senior engineer in charge of the ship's reactor. And it's associated resources and systems. "Have you toxified the deck's maintenance access ways?"

Cartwright, rubbing vainly at a grease spot on her hand, frowned at the suggestion that she had not immediately complied with the order. "Of course, sir."

"I want you to double the amount of gas in the areas beneath corridor 12J."

Cartwright stopped rubbing. "Uh... sir...? You're aware that that will increase the pressure to the point where the access panels will burst, filling the whole thing with coolant gas?"

"Yes. I do."

"And that... corridor 12J is right beyond that door?" She pointed towards the blast door, and its two attendant companies of Marines, still working to set up positions on the tiered workstations to provide as many as possible a clear shot at intruders.

"It's a pressure door. I know this junk can corrode human flesh, but we won't be the ones trying to breathe it. Just do it." Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel to seek out Ensign Mallory, part of the answer to his other problem.

Brackwell had decided that ascertaining the location of the Captain and finding some way to distract the Admiral might be closely related. The key to the double dilemma could be Engineering's premier socialite, Ensign James Mallory, who happened to be sitting at his workstation.

"James! James, do you know anyone on the ship, through your various card games, your romanticizing, your bridge-building or whatever, who has access to ship communications?"

Mallory raised his eyebrows. "Uh... I do, sir."

"Yes, I'm well aware. But we need someone who hasn't been cut out of the command loop entirely."

Mallory nodded. "I see, sir. Yes... I think I know just the lady." He powered up his console and began dialing in.

"Very good, James. Let me know when I can talk to her. I don't care what you need to say - just get me a link to them. Explain our situation - diplomatically. I need to talk to Ensign Cartwright for a moment. Wave me over when you're ready." He left.

Mallory contacted a workstation in the Tech section, but received no response. He furrowed his eyebrows in thought, adding a boyish look to his handsome face. He tried her personal laptop. He grinned as a green light flashed. "Kitty! I - oh," he blushed and averted his gaze from the video pickup. He certainly hadn't expected her to be half-dressed, for whatever reason.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Though Sergeant Mendoza's men had applied torches to the undersides of some of the access panels, the vast majority were not fastened shut beyond access latches. As a vast pumping sound could be heard coming from beyond the Engineering blast doors, those panels began to warp. For a few seconds they held, but quickly blew upwards like champaign corks, denting the ceiling. Within seconds, the corridor began filling with gaseous industrial coolant. Flesh corroding, too.

Kitty let out a shriek as her laptop beeped, a personal video conference window opening. On it was the face of Mallory. He started to speak, "Kitty! I - oh..." He averted his gaze as he saw her topless form. Kitty blushed, covering herself with her hands quickly, before using one to pull her coveralls up. Thank goodness I didn't remove my coveralls yet!

"Sorry about that." She said, closing out the program she was using to evesdropp on the bridge. "Er... Anyways, what's up?" She said. "Surely you don't want more Jet? Cause I'm kinda up to my ears in things to do..." She gives him a smile.


EDIT ((OOC: I edited Kitty's dialouge a little. Jet is a party drug, popular for making people feel... 'High' and accelerated, it's inhaled via an inhaler. It's basically a watered down form of Accela, another recreational drug made popular on the rave scene, which is taken in pill form. People who have played FallOut 2 will recognize Jet, and Serial Experiments Lain fans will recognize Accela. Kitty is both a distrubutor and user of Jet and Accela, although she usually keeps Accela for herself.))

"Ordered here by Lieutenant Jonwei, ma'am? Hold on one second, please, I'll check in with the bridge."

The two security personnel, visibly more focused now that there was somebody there to keep any eye on them, and an attractive someone at that, turned back to their consoles for a quick conversation with the officers on the bridge. A few terse words later and they again turned back their companion, both standing and drawing their sidearms and suddenly deadly serious.

"Ma'am, raise your hands over your head, palms toward us, and take two steps backwards. You are hereby under arrest and stripped of your rank; to be brought before the Admiral for interrogation and sentencing. Make no attempt to touch any clothing or material on your person and do not move to vacate the area. Any hesitation in following our instruction will result in your immediate termination. Comply at once."

Glancing at his partner to insure that he was paying attention, Joe slowly began to approach the Seargant to bind her arms and relieve her of her weaponry.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The screams echoing throughout the hallways beyond Engineering were horrifying and disturbing, lasting long after a person would have succumbed to a normal injury. One by one, the soldiers preparing to assault the mutineers dropped to the ground and passed into the next life amid pain and suffering; all except the four officers commanding the Marines. Safe within their enclosed environments, they could do nothing but watch in horror as their companions expired.

"Bridge, the assault against the Engineering section has encountered...difficulties. The majority of our force has been neutrilized, we will need reinforcements to press the attack. Outfit with full enviornmental protection gear, toxic gasses were used to incapacitate our first assault. Anti-armor weaponry will be needed as well, the blast doors have been sealed. I believe it is now safe to assume that, if not all, at least enough of the Engineering crew has rebelled to obtain complete control of the area. Request an increase in numbers to quell the insurrection quickly."

"Understood, reinforcements en-route."

EDIT: OOC: I added some general information on Klonor to the front page. Nothing in depth, but it will let you know what major taboos there are.

((OOC: Char Profile

Name: Pixous
Code Name: Julie Hill
Age: 27
Gender: Female
Race: Human (Nofian Spec Ops)
Nationality: Nofian
Rank: Gunnery Sergeant
Job: Marine
Appearance: Pixous (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v650/deathwitharifle/meia4.jpg)
Bio: A spy from The Mercenary State of Nation of Fortune on orders to retrieve as much information on Klonor as possible. Raised in the hellish conditions that all children of NoF are forced to lived, she has been trained to be a killing machine, but has been placed as a spy aboard the ASD Aquitaine at the moment. The last time the ship was docked she covertly killed and took the place of an existing soldier with the help of another Nofian soldier who replaced as many of the records as he could.
From birth she was a candidate for the Nofian special ops program, this means she has been lightly genetically modified in several ways. Her hearing has been augmented to allow her to better hear her surrounding enviroment and to better pick sounds out of a crowd. With this in mind, she has managed to reduce the sounds she makes when she moves, however she also speaks very softly. She also has a small computer installed in her head. Her brain cannot directly process this information however, and she has external augmentations because of this. Around her right eye she has a display that will create a small screen when she presses a button on it. It also allows her a small percentage of magnification, or it can act as a small telescope.))

Pixous sat in her quarters, or rather Julie's quarters, and read Julie's diary. Most people would have a problem with this, the only difference was that Julie was dead, and Pixous was one of about three people that knew. She read this diary, and realized that Julie was strikingly similar to her. For these several months that has been why she hasn't stood out as much as she thought she would. She knew that aboard the ship havoc was being striken, but she had managed to catch a bad case of the flu, and was allowed to stay in her quarters the past couple of days. She looked at the table and realized that it was full of pock marks, from where her knife had slammed into. She really needed to stop jabbing it between her fingers, one of these days she was going to fuck up.

She decided she'd had enough, no more would she wasn't going to stay cooped up in this little room any more. She grabbed her utility uniform and got dressed. After she was trim and propper she grabbed the rest of her gear and loaded up. She set her rifle on the small table in her room and activated the display over her eye. She went through several screens and came to one that acted as her email.

"Mutiny aboard the ship, crew split into two," she thought, even though she wasn't entirely right, she had been quarantined for the past couple of days so she had now clue, "Await further contact, I'll see what I can do in terms of making this work to our advantage."

The words she thought apeared on the screen. She had no clue how it worked, but it did. With another thought, the message was sent. She then activated a camera to record what she saw. She grabbed her weapon and headed to the door. She pressed the button to open the door, and nothing happened.

"Great," she thought, "they locked me in here."

She fumed and cracked the panel with the butt of her rifle. Sparks flew and the door shot open. She grabbed her communicator and rang up her first sergeant.

"First Sergeant Ames, Gunny Hill here, I'm off quarantine. Where do you want me to go?" She asked softly into the device, stifling a cough.

"I thought you were on for another two days, what happened?"

"They decided to take me off, I guess."

"We're holed up in engineering," there was a slight pause, "LtCl is a fucking loon," came a sharp hiss. "Stay the fuck away, and go report to the Admirals string of command, or something. I dunno, but for now you are on your own."

The communication ceased. Pixous stopped to think about what to do, when she heard many footsteps around . She looked for a place to hide.

"An open access panel, it'll have to do for now," she thought.

She ducked in and closed the door, just as the steps went around the corner. Pixous stopped and looked around to see where it could potentially take her. She went down a random one.

After several minutes she passed a sign that said mainframe, and had an arrow pointing in the direction she was heading. She stopped to think for a second. She knew that the mainframe was guarded, and would have to find a reason to enter. Then it hit her, the sick ward. She say she was sent to find out about the sick bay systems. She continued on her path. She turned the corner and into two guards who were securing the entrance.

"State your name, rank, and business."

"Gunny Julie Hill. I've been sent to check about the sick bay systems."

"Why would they send a marine to check on the system?" The guard said, tightening the grip on his weapon.

"If you haven't noticed the Admiral has ordered an assault on engineering. It's sick, marines pitted against marines. Lots of them are getting wounded, and ending up in the sick bay. I just got off of quarantine for the flu, and I went to check in. Them seeing me stumble in, without a second thought I may add, told me check on the systems and that they were too busy to send someone else."

"Understood, I'll have to hold your weapon for you while your in there, though," he loosened his grip and held his hand out, Pixous handed the weapon over, not like it was something she would have chosen anyway.

Pixous walked passed the guards, and started into the depths of the computer. She walked straight until she heard sounds of life. She popped into the panel and stepped behind the person. She crouched there for a minute or two.

"Boo," she said in a calm voice.

Kitty was busy, listening to Ensign Mallory, and double-checking various feeds and communications logs, as well as doing legitmate tasks, such as streamlining the ship's computer's security, and installing various 'anti-hacker' programs, false entrances, barriers, and firewalls, and rewriting the programs to be rid of all the excess junk not needed to operate.

"Boo." Came a voice from behind her, causing Kitty to jump, although in the crampt crawlspace, there wasn't much room to jump, and so she hit her head on the top of the crawl space.

While turning her head to look at the person, her hand moved over the laptop, tapping strings of commands into it, inputting text messages into the chat window. (This is all directed at Conquest's char Mallory.) Can't talk right now. Someone just came in. Don't speak, type out what you want, and I'll do likewise. She was, of course, typing to be polite to her 'guest.' The fact that she could type that out with one hand and without looking showed her skill with a computer keyboard.

She regarded the woman calmly, noting her marine gear. "Marine... This is a restricted area designated accessable only by Senior Systems Technicans. I'm going to have to ask you to leave if you don't have a purpose for being here." She suddenly got a business look in her eyes. "Unless you're here to buy Jet. I can only sell that to you if you're off duty, so I'll need to see your duty roster to confirm it."

Pixous sat down, and listened to the girl. She thought about it for a second.

"Sadly I have no intention of leaving here at the moment, and jet just doesn't quite take my fancy, but here's my duty sheet if your so interested," she handed over a little calender that had the words sick quarantine marked across the whole week. She continued, "I frankly am indifferent to whats going on out there, and I really don't feel like being send to assault engineering. So for the time being, I've decided that this is the best place to avoid attracting attention to myself. Besides, it's not like you could make me leave."

She leaned her head back, and looked at the ever so close ceiling, and letting out a breath.

Kitty looked over the duty roster, handing it back and tilting her head at the last part. "You're right, I can't make you leave." Her mind went to the gun in her pocket, but she made no action on it, for the time being. "But I can summon the guards, who I think would be more then happy to escort you back to your quarters."

She shrugs, turning back to her laptop. "At any rate, I am extremely busy, and everything here is extremely delicate. If you wish to be a coward, please do so in another area, perfeably nowhere near anything vital. There's no reason to risk the safety of the entire ship for your cowardice. I'll not report you to the Admiral, but I do ask you leave me in peace."

"Call it what you will. Although something tells me if you knew the half of it, those words would have never crossed your lips," she paused before repeating, "cowardice."

She reached up and touched the button on her computer display, a nearly transparent screen covered her eye, the words visible only on her side. She started going through files on people on the ship that she had managed to snag when she was altering Julie's ID. While she searched for Kitty's profile she talked.

"I also don't think that the safety of everyone on the ship is jeapordized by me. I'd frankly say it's the psycho's who are holding all out warefare on the ship."

She made no motion to leave at Kitty's request.

One of her cat ears twitched, although Kitty seemed more interested in her work once again. "Hmmm... Well, I'm calling it as I see it... You said so yourself, you're here because you don't want to be assualting engineering. That's cowardice. Or common sense. Look." She moves her body enough so the woman can see her laptop. Currently displayed was live feed from one of the security cameras outside engineering. Toxic gas could be seen throughout the entire area, as well as the corpses of the Marine team. "Seems like it's anything goes there. Smart gal, I'd run from that too. Anyways, I'm Petty Officer Kataline White. But everyone calls me Kitty. Don't know why." As she said that last part, her cat tail flicked, and both her catears twitched. It seemed she did this to draw attenation to them.

She closes out the live feed, and begins back at her work. "Well, if you're going to stay here, make yourself useful. See those circuit boards right next to the hatch? Pass me the one marked 12, and the little baggie of discs labeled 'PrimNow 64.'" She says, holding out one open hand behind her, while doubing checking something on her laptop.

"I'm P..........Gunnery Sergeant Julie Hill. Haven't been given any real nickname, although my mom used to call me Penny for when I choked on one when I was little," she said remembering from the diary she had been reading. It wasn't a complete fabrication, but not entirely true. She had choked on the penny, but Julie's mother had never called her Penny.

She reached over and handed the said items to Kitty, while looking the recently recovered profile of the neko.

Kitty nodded. "That's nice. Mind if I call you Penny then?" She takes out a screwdriver, and unscrews a panel, removing a circuit board. It was burnt out, but she was safe because she had already disabled power to that particular circuit board. She sets it aside, removed the fresh board from its static proof wrapping, and installed it, screwing it in.

She then removes the discs from their static proof bag, and inserts one into her laptop, running the program installed on it which would configre the circuit board properly as well as cause the ship's computer to recognize it. As the computer began to access the board, the interior of the maintence crawlspace began to heat up.

She nods slowly, then looks back at 'Julie,' eyeing her gear. "Ya might want to ditch those. It sets you apart as a Marine right off the bat... Hmmm... If you want, since I'm not going to be moving from here anytime soon, you can wear my coveralls. You'll need to either do that, or find a spare set, cause I think I'm going to need more Type 25 boards, and I can't send you to fetch them as is." She says.

"Drenner!"

Jangen's shout raised numerous heads across the sickbay, medical teams turning to look at the Chief Medical Officer as the mutilated Doctor Drenner hurried over.

"Drenner, get a trio of medical teams down to Engineering! Some bastard just released tox coolant into the systems, the screen's gone a solid damn red colour. Get moving!"

Drenner nodded, grabbing a number of medical personell with him as they struggled into the close-fitting enviro suits used by the medical personell to get into tight situations.

"Faster, Drenner. Teams! Prep to receive casualties, I want tables and beds set up to receive toxic burn victims, acid relief crews and cryosystems ready to hold those we have too many of!
"Kyrsten, Jossen, I want you to ready a dozen drip-feeds of TCC, PHS and K-182. Jonesse and Heran..."

The sound of "Miracle-Man" Jangen faded into the background as Drenner and his team ran down toward Engineering, folding stretchers held in hand, medical insignia clearly displayed upon breast and arm.

[[Apologies for a short post]]

Lish complied.

At least, she took two steps back. And her hands certainly raised over her head.

While she - exceedingly slowly - completed the movements in question, she mulled over various options. She had, of course, known of this possibility. The likelihood of discovery had now leapt considerably higher...

Not that that mattered, really, she decided. These people were traitors to their own people - nobody would listen or care to a traitor babbling about...

Well, her.

By now her hands - properly held palm forwards for as much of the journey as was physically possible - had settled on her hair. Carefully, the deft, lithe fingers sought for a certain...

There. A finger tweaked the contact, just slightly. The movement wasn't exactly suspicious - more like a slight scratch at her scalp. The subcutaneous implant fortunately did not beep, or she would have been in even more serious trouble...

That would've meant the battery was dead.

"Don't forget to check for hidden weapons," she offers, sweetly. "Then again, if I just tell you, then you could save all sorts of trouble. I have a knife in my shoe, by the way. Right one. Wouldn't worry about that, I can't reach it anyway. Plus two more in pockets at my thighs. Sidearms on my right waist, left calf, right hip. - Don't forget the grenades."

How oddly helpful.

Pixous's face became stoic at the question presented by the cat, her pitch dropped a tone.

"I'd much rather I wasn't called......" She paused for a second before adding, "Interesting, your married, to a Maria Murphy none the less. Isn't she the cook?"

Bons finger twitched slightly when he saw their target slightly scratch her head, barely refraining from pulling trigger as he saw the captive slowly touch her hair. Joe, who had nearly reached her, halted and quickly backtracked until he was well out of reach.

"Remove your hands from your head at once. Display your palms to us, slowly, and with your fingers seperated. Do not attempt to touch any part of your person again or your life will be forfeit. Remain silent or you will be bound and gagged. You will not receive another warning."

Once again checking that his partner was adequately alert, Joe began to slowly advance while reaching for the visible (and not-so-visible) weaponry hitching a ride. Even when he was right next to her, however, and already reaching for her holstered pistol, he did not take his eyes off of where she had lightly touched her head. He'd seen what tensic hair could do to a man that was careless enough to allow his captives to reach theirs, and he was in no mood to give this woman a chance to use hers if she had any.

OOC: Not connected to this RP in any way, this (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=462058) is a story I wrote on NS and I was hoping for some feedback. Give it a read, if you've got the time, and let me know what you think.

OOC: Sure thing, Klonor. I'd love to read and review.

Mallory snarled a curse as his video feed snapped to black, but relaxed as a text window appeared. He waved energetically above his head in the hopes that Brackwell was watching. Crooking his wrists, he began to type.

Kitty, we're in a bad way down here. The Lieutenant Commander decided that the Admiral's a nut job, and we're behind him one hundred percent. We were hoping just to get some independence, some security, by cutting ourselves off... but it's not looking good. We're doing-he recalled the terrible screams from earlier-pretty well, but the Admiral's gonna send more of his goons any minute. My CO wants to talk to you.

Brackwell, coming up from behind, tapped the Ensign and stuck a thumb back over his shoulder. Mallory stood and typed one more line into the console. Here he is.

Brackwell sat. Look, ma'am-he conferred with Mallory for a second, and then backspaced. Hello, Ms. White. I'll be quick. A lot of people might die without your help. Specifically, us. There's no hope for Engineering, for your friends down here, if you can't help. Not much help for the rest of the ship, either. We'll all be killed by Navy ships, or by one of the Admiral's mad plans - it won't matter, since either way, we'll all be very, very dead. The deal is this: you've got to help me talk to the Captain. The Captain is the one who's really in charge, and if I get in touch with him, we can turn this thing around. If we open up another front, we might be able to save Engineering, and then try to save the ship. Also, it is imperative that the Phase Gates be permanently (what's the word I want?) disabled. If the Admiral's reign of terror will ever be ended, someone will need to disable his most frightening tool. Brackwell sighed, and leaned back in Mallory's seat. "While I'm at this, tell Ensign Cartwright to stop cutting power to Environmental along J Corridor. We're going to want the air clean, there."

Again she complied, although this time with greater precision (but still very slowly).

And Lish felt how close she had been to death.

Fools, she thought, I would have killed me if I had been you.

The 'marine' had not been lying when she had told Brackwell she was an adept engineer. It went with electronic snooping. You needed to understand the systems you were trying to penetrate, obviously.

And Lish's true expertise had always lain with weapons. Specifically with ensuring that the enemy did not take them from her. With wireless systems being such terribly useful things, she had four subcutaneous wireless implants dotted around her body - places where her hands would be if she was captured. In fact, she knew she was very rare in that respect.

She had seen the security viruses at work before, but she had not had the chance to see this particular one work all the way through. The hiss was inaudible to Human ears, but she heard it plainly enough as the weapons were removed from her person.

The viral agent released on contact, immediately after a DNA profiling device determined that the contact on the weapon was not from it's proper owner. It was quite a clever little tool, devised to prevent the Barbarians from stealing technology on the battlefield. It had always been eminently successful, largely because all witnesses perished.

But there were a variety of agents for use in different arenas. On the battlefield, virulent created strains were tailored to look like lethal bacteriological infections in wounds. The viruses were always strictly tailored to prevent mass-infection - they were not weapons of war, but weapons of defense.

For black ops operatives, however, the favoured death for those who would steal their devices was neural aneurysm. The viral agent swelled cranial blood vessels significantly, particularly those feeding oxygen into the brain (as opposed to those carrying deoxygenated blood from the brain). The process was relatively slow (compared to the three varieties of poison she had on her person), but effective, and the virus itself was genetically encoded to suicide at the death of the host.

She did not know if it would kill both. The virus was tailored specifically for the Klonorian arena, but she had no idea if the two men would be genetically similar enough for the variety the profiler had automatically released. There were seventy-two strains contained within the tiny capsules attached to all of the weapns - covering about seventy-seven percent of the Klonorian gene pool. Estimated.

She did a quick calculation; it would be ninety-seven percent likely to kill the Klonorian within the expected timeframe. Infection was guaranteed for him; the agent would not have released if his genome was not in line with the expected norm for the agent that was released. He might not die on time, though.

Then there was the other. Had he been near enough? Maybe. She scaled his odds down significantly, however.

Still, there was always hand-to-hand combat. She had a significant advantage in that arena so long as there was only one remaining to kill; then there would be no other to escape and...

She decided it was unwise to even think down those lines.

And then a thought struck her. Perhaps it was too late to...

But perhaps not. Carefully, she reached out empathically, feeling the ship around her. There was much tension and fear, of course, but she was looking for that cold calm discipline one always found in seasoned soldiers. She soon found it.

There were marines nearby. A small group. Several. Five? Maybe. They were quite loud in emotional content, disciplined though they were.

Now if only fortune would be so kind as for her captors route to take her past them...

[OOC: These viral agents do not spread beyond two, three victims tops. They are incapable of mutation without high exposure to mutagens, especially the radioactive variety; high-level radiation would do the trick, but it would need to be so substantial as to also kill all hosts nearby, so it's not really a concern (and is indeed designed that way).

Klonor, you'll have a TG soon regarding ... equipment issues. >.>]

"What the bloody hell is that sound?"

The words came from two seperate throats at practically the same time, creating an interesting stereo effect that is of absolutely no importance. The sound in question, a small hisss that would have been inaudible to Joe and Bon without the standard genetic and cybernetic enhancements found within the Klonor Space Corps, had only just now become noticeable; something the two found too ominous to be a coincidence.

The two security officers, already paranoid and becoming terrified on top of it, quickly turned to their captive, once again barely restraining themselves from simply clenching the triggers (Primarily motivated by fear at what the Admiral would do to them if they brought back a bullet-ridden corps instead of a prisoner to be interrogated) as they faced the recently disarmed woman.

"What the hell did you do? Answer, damnit! I swear to fucking Jove, I will riddle you with holes if you don't start explaining!"

It might not have been the most intelligently phrased question, but Bon was to quickly approaching full-blown panic to care.

"Hey...hey, Bon? I...I don't feel so shiny man (Shiny = good/cool/neat/etc.), I think I better be heading to the Med bay. Yeah....yeah..."

Turning and, taking a faltering two steps that more closely resembled controlled falling, Joe tumbled to the ground. Immediately afterwards his mind tumbled to a grinding and (Unless rectified) permanent halt. Within his body, however, Klonor taxpayer money was hard at work.

Alien organism detected. Viral classification. Artificial, malicious, lethal. Pattern.....analysed. Counter-virus....innoperative. Contacting SDH. Uploading virus classification/pattern, anti-viral construction instructions. Notifying medical staff...

The nano-bots swarming throughout the body of what was once Joe were quick and well-designed, within seconds they had a detailed scan of the virus down to its molecular structure, designed seventeen seperate possible defences, and uploaded all relevant data to the companion bots swimming in the bloodstream of everybody else onboard the ship. The nano-bots swarming throughout the body of what was still Bon, having received the data sent from what was once Joe, immediately began replicating the theorised defences.

Bon, meanwhile, only had time to comprehend that his partner had mysteriously collapsed before he began to fire straight at what was once a captive and was now a soon-to-be-corpse.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Admiral! I've just gotten a bio-update from a lower-deck security station!"

"A bio-update? Aboard ship? How is that possible?"

"Unknown, sir, we couldn't have contracted any new contagions."

"Damnit. What station?"

"03B, sir."

"Damnit. That spy, or whatever the hell she is. By Jove, this is spinning out of control. Lieutenant!"

"Sir?"

"This has gone on to far. Bring the ship up to Tactical Alert Alpha (Think Star Trek Red Alert), announce full combat stations, and put every single Marine we have on active duty. Brief everybody. This is going to spin out of control unless we deal with this now."

"Yes, sir. How shall I deal with Engineering?"

"No more tip-toing. Send down every spaire soldier and have them gut that entire section. Full environmental gear, full armor, and dispatch a few MBC's. Carve down that door and get me control of my ship back."

"Yes, sir."

Kitty nods slowly, "Yeah, Maria's my wife. She's one of the ship's cooks. Maybe later, I'll tell you about how we meet. It was special." She views over the text message Mallory had wrote her, as well as Brackwell's text message. She thought about it for a second, The enemy of my enemy is my friend. She typed out a message back to him.

"I know how to get into contact with the Captain. I'll pass along your wishes to collaberate with him. I'm sure he'll appriciate the extra help. As for the Phase Gates... Sure, I got just the little killer app to rend that thing offline, forever. Petty Officer White, out."

She then turns back to Pixious, eyeing her. "Okay, I need to to fetch some other things for me too, okay? Let me give you my coveralls, okay?" She slips her coveralls off, pulling them down to her waist. Moving to stand on her hands and knees, her rear to Pixious, she covertly pulls the pistol out of her pocket, placing it behind her laptop, making the motion look like she was unbuckling her belt, and then putting her hand down to support her weight as she pushes her coveralls off completely. Her body had blocked the action, but she knew it couldn't hurt to be overly cautious.

She didn't have a bra on underneath her coveralls, and her panties were relatively simple, just an hourglass shaped piece of white cloth (Cotton, possibly) tied at the ends, a cute little bow on each side of her thighs.

She had a nice shapely body, cute, in that mechanic kind of way. She passes the coveralls to Pixious. "I need you to go to Modoc, he's in charge of distubition, just keep heading away from the checkpoint and follow the yellow arrows, those will take you right to Distrubution. Tell him I sent you, and that should clear up any authorization concerns. Tell him I NEED the Type 55 'Special V' Circuit Board, he'll know which one I'm talking about, as well as all of the 'Kitty's Corner Apps' discs. Get it all back to me as quickly as possible, okay?"

She turns back to her laptop...

((OOC:Fun fact time! In the US Navy and Marine Corp the term black ops is used when one needs to "drop a load" in the head. I am, however, unsure if a similar use is standard in the US Army and Airforce.))

Pixous had already taken off the blouse to her utility uniform, and was working on the trousers. She gently nodded at the instructions given to her by the cat girl. She pulled her trousers off and revealed that she was wearing nothing other than the plain green T-shirt she wore with her utility uniform. She took the coveralls, and squeezed into them. It was a tight fit, but she managed. She then activated a voice recording system.

"What was it I needed one more time, I was trying to squeeze into this thing, and didn't hear all of it."

She listened to Kitty repeat it once more.

"I need a Type 55 'Special V' circuit board, and the 'Kitty's Corner Apps' discs. And it's Modoc, not Angelina or Zallton."

"OK, I'll be off then."

She crouch walked out of the passage and into a more mainish area. She got not three steps away from the enterance when alarms went off, and a loudspeaker chimed in.

"Tactical Alert Alpha. All available marine personell is required to report to your duty station and await further instructions."

Pixous stopped, and thougth about it a moment, the soldier part of her told her to report immediatly, but the spy part of her told her to do the exact opposite. She turned around and headed back into Kitty's niche.

"Does that change the plan any?" She asked from the entrance.

Kitty cursed when the red alert went off. She was just about to contact the Captain. Behind her, the hatch opens, and Pixious pops her head in.

"Does that change the plan any?" She had asked from the entrance. Kitty gives her a quick nod.

"Yeah. I also need now the current access codes to the KL-PG servers. If Modoc gives you any hassle, tell him to contact me directly." She holds up her personal communicator.

There is a little known fact about war in general; a fact which few notice and even fewer take advantage of.

A person holding a gun has a lower survival instinct potential than the one who the gun is pointed at. This, in effect, means a lower adrenal level, plus a lower dopamine level in the brain.

Net effect: person with gun is slower than person without.

It's not a carte blanche rule (as no generalisation really is), but it was enough to provide Lish with the determination required to be... well, somewhere else.

The shot (or at least the first one - she was deafened by the sound regardless, and could not hear any further reports) sears away a lock of glistening hair, tumbling away from her blurrily fast movement. Ducking down, leaping-

And her plan was remarkably simple. Considering the current shape of her local sphere of emotion - predominantly fear - and the fact that her true consciousness was safely boxed up behind a plethora of emotional control blocks edited into place by herself (which, for her species, was only a temporary solution with potentially major repurcussions if there was no outlet - and soon)...

Considering all things, she realised dimly, it was the first time in her life there had been no choice whatsoever.

Just one. The burst of fear her mind let out - a wave strong enough to give pause to most - buys her a few extra milliseconds. And in combat, that's all that's needed.

She came up rapidly, vaulting to her feet and to one side. It jarred her knee painfully, but not as painfully as several bullets would. There's an odd little flick of her wrist as she makes the jump-

Unfortunately, there's also a second Lish, leaping off in the other direction. This Lish also flicked her wrist - about the same time she morphed out of the... other one.

Both of them twist their arms slightly - very fast - and each has a fist clenched around a small metallic object. It might be a weapon. It might not. Regardless, they're definitely pointed at Bon.

"Choose," the woman says, softly. "Or alternately... don't. You have three choices. Pick the wrong one and you die. Because regardless of whether you pick the right me or not, I'll still kill you. Reflex action, you see. My finger will twitch just enough to close this contact... and then you'll be dead, too. Fact of biology. It's a bugger, but it means if I shoot you... I die, too. So really... shooting makes everyone lose. So be a good boy, now. Keep your gun trained on me... but let's talk."

She's smiling, again, now. Both of her. "Don't you want to know who I am?"

But internally, Lish was thinking along different lines.

Why haven't I killed you already?

[OOC: This is an annoying device mentioned previously (way way back, in, I believe, the S-14 (Scolo's spacedy-ants!) arrival thread a couple years ago - or possibly not, but anyway...) which is referred to as a doppler. It is rarely used because it is exceedingly dangerous; it relies on creating not one but two holographic images (referred to as trimensional images, because I like that word better), in order to produce two energy signatures to fool electronic sensors. The downside of this is that the user is exposed to an unhealthy (at optimum) dose of radiation. It won't kill, but radiation sickness is not an impossibility. Although radiation sickness is not lethal for her species under ideal conditions, it would render her utterly helpless (and thus dead). So it's a time-buyer, not a solution - although of course poor Bon doesn't know that.]

"Understood," she said.

She left and headed in the desired direction that would bring her to distribution. Her feet made soft clunking sounds as she walked, most people would have been less than likely to notice, but she was annoyed by how the coridors were set up to make so much noise. At the end of the trek, she found the desired area, and then started asking around for Modoc. She was directed to a bigger man with excess hair.

"I hear your Modoc, is that right?" She asked him.

"That all depen's on who's askin', and whats they want, perty lil' lady," he said, cocking his head a little, and most obviously checking out her figure through the tight fitting outfit.

"I'm looking for a Type 55 'Special V' circuit board,........"

"Nows whats would a fine specimin such as yerself, be wanting with sum ov 'em? Why doesn't ya slip on in the back room, and let gud ole' Modoc shows ya a good time," he cut her off.

She clenched her fists, and ground her teeth. Her facial expression contorted into a message that said was holding back. Most importantly of all, she swallowed her pride which would have, under normal circumstances, rendered Modoc long dead already.

"I'll ask you one last time. Kitty needs a Type 55 'Special V' circuit board, the 'Kitty's Corner Apps' discs, and the current access codes to the KL-PG servers."

Modoc changed a little at the mention of Kitty.

"Ai'l get 'em, jes gimme a sec."

He walked off and retrieved the said items.

"'Ere ya go ma'am," he said handing the quested after items.

Pixous turned around and walked off without saying a word. She made her back to the access area Kitty was holed up in. Once again she snuck up behind Kitty, and once again she said, "Boo."

As soon as Pixious was away, Kitty went to work, contacting the Captain.

"Captain, after doing some searching, I'm showing that Briefing room A-13 two levels below your current location is not being used. I've already over-ridden the lock on it, and have programmed it so that once the door closes, it'll lock again and disable itself. That door is the only way in or out, besides the air ducts, which are a foot tall at their tallest point. It's double wide, so there's plenty of room for quite a handful of people.
"Also, A Lieutenant Commander Brackwell in engineering has shown interest in working together with you. In the briefing room I specified, there is a terminal I uploaded with a comm packet. You can talk directly to Engineering from that terminal, and the packet will mask the two-way as standard internal computer component communication, no one will think to even look at it.
"Finally, I'm going to upload a virus into the Phase Gate servers which will permanently disable the Gates until this ship comes to a port. That will halt the Admiral's ability to teleport troops anywhere. Deepthroat, out."

She encoded the packet, and sent the message on its way...

~~~~~~~~~

On the bridge. A series of code lines scrawled past his computer. The communication technecian had been paying close ateention to it ever since the Red Alert went up. Suddenly, the series of lines that he was just looking at vanished, like it was never there.

Tilting his head, the technecian tries to find the code he had just seen, but the computer shows no record of it, not even in the Black Box. Even though the computer said there was no encoded message that had been sent, he knew he had seen the code and then seen it disappear. He rose his hand. "Got something weird here..." He called out.

~~~~~~~~~

Kitty began to work on preppering her laptop to upload the virus. She never even heard the hatch open, and when Pixious went 'Boo' again, she jumped, hitting her head again.

"I WISH you wouldn't DO that!" Kitty says, shaking her head. "Ugh, anyways. Got the stuff?"

Pixious nods, handing her all the items she ha requested. Kitty nods, and begins to take her tools, unscrewing a circuit board above her, and replacing it with the Type 55. She inserts one of the 'Kitty's Corner Apps' into her laptop, and runs the program on it, configuring the circuit board properly.

"Okay, with that done..." She disconnects her laptop from the access point she was using, and connects it to the Type 55 board. The laptop and the board sych, and Kitty grins. "Okay... We got connection. Now for the codes and that little app."

She removes the current disc, and replaces it with the disc containing the access codes, scanning it quickly and memorizing the codes contained within, swapping out once again for another Corner App disc.

She looks back to Pixious... "Well, here goes nothing..." She looks back at Pixious. "I need absolute silence, I have to enter thirteen access codes, and each of them are sixty-seven digits long. If I mess up a single digit in any of them... Well... Sercurity will be swarming here faster then you can say, 'You fucked up Kitty.'" She turns to look back at her laptop, then presses a button on her keyboard, beginning to enter the first of the 13, 67 digit access codes...

"I don't give one damn floren who the hell you say you are! You're a fucking alien spy and I'd be within my rights to put a bullet between your eyes right this second!"

The rage within his voice was almost palpable and, had he had a definite target, would have been a prelude to further gunplay. However, faced with two indistinguishable targets, he did nothing more than seethe. At least, nothing visibly. His fingers were, however, minutely tapping the trigger guard on his pistol and beaming a tight-stream signal to the Marines stationed just down the hallway. Nothing complex, merely a request for assistance, it allowed him to keep from taking both hands off his weapon.

"Now you just shut the hell up and drop whatever the bloody hell that thing in your hands is! I guarantee this, you kill me with that thing and I will put three bullets into your chest before I hit the ground. You're fast, but I swear to Mercury that I'll be faster."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hold!"

The Captain voiced the command in barely more than a whisper, but his men heard it. The three surviving Loyalists froze and drew their sidearms, scanning for threats while their commander listened to the voice emerging from his small communicator.

"Captain, after doing some searching, I'm showing that Briefing room A-13 two levels below your current location is not being used. I've already over-ridden the lock on it, and have programmed it so that once the door closes, it'll lock again and disable itself. That door is the only way in or out, besides the air ducts, which are a foot tall at their tallest point. It's double wide, so there's plenty of room for quite a handful of people.
"Also, A Lieutenant Commander Brackwell in engineering has shown interest in working together with you. In the briefing room I specified, there is a terminal I uploaded with a comm packet. You can talk directly to Engineering from that terminal, and the packet will mask the two-way as standard internal computer component communication, no one will think to even look at it.
"Finally, I'm going to upload a virus into the Phase Gate servers which will permanently disable the Gates until this ship comes to a port. That will halt the Admiral's ability to teleport troops anywhere. Deepthroat, out."

"Ensign, your thoughts? Can we trust....uh....Deepthroat?"

"I believe we can, sir. She's led us straight so far, and with no more orders from Keane filtering down the chain there really aren't many command briefings being held now-a-days. Plus, if Brackwell really is willing to give us his support..."

"Brackwell wouldn't give the Duke a glass of scotch if he wasn't promised something in return. The only reason I didn't drop that sociopath out the airlock months ago was that none of the crew was dumb enough to support him. Now, though....the man's got his own agenda."

"Maybe so, sir, but we could still use his help. We'll inform Keane once we get back to the Association and he'll deal with him, but right now we can't afford a fight on two fronts. Engineering has practically a fifth of the ships complement, that would give us the men we need to get us back home."

"It'll be a start anyway. Very well. Stay alert until we get to the briefing room, make no eye contact with any personnel and avoid confrontation. Right now we need to focus on just staying alive."

It was, of course, at precisely that moment that a small squad of Marines jogged right past them on the way to their duty stations. Inevitably, one of them managed to identify the Captain. Afterall, it is extremely easy to identify a single man among a group of four, who has his head turned away, both running at top speed with an Alpha Alert alarm blaring in the background. Simplicity incarnate. The result is, as before, another standoff that nobody was eager to be a part of.

Oddly enough, the Marines seemed to want to be a part of it even less than the other side did. After a brief subliminal conversation between the soldiers, they slowly lowered their weapons and turned to the Captain.

"Captain Dolers.....sir.....I think.....we think, it would be for the best if you resumed command of this ship. We no longer feel that the Admiral is fit for command."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Technician, what have you found?"

Pixous listened to what Kitty had told her, and figured she might as well kill some time while Kitty entered the codes. She started doing what any good marine would do with a down time like this. Pushups, many many of them. Just like in boot camp. No definitive amount, just the words "Many, many of them." However Pixous did more than just pushups, she was using her little computer at the same time.

On her screen words apeared. She was writing out a message.

"Nofian central, this is Pixous Eight. I'm suggesting a boarding party is readied, and sent to the vicinity. Nothing close enough to be picked up on the scanners, but close enough to get here quickly if orders are turned our way. Also I suggest that a spy that is on Klonorian soil act as the median for communications. All I need is the communication data for this person, and having them informed ahead of time. Pixous Eight out."

The message was sent and very shortly was recieved by The MSoNoF. Pixous had already lost count of how many pushups she had done, although she was at one hundered and fourty two, make that three.

********
In the Mercenary State of Nation of Fortune, the message was recieved. They sent a small message back.

"Affirmative. The contact will get into contact with you when he can."

They readied a raiding ship. It was designed to act as carrier for many smaller ships, that would when ready launch, home in on the target ship, and attach like a leech. The contents of the leech ship would then board the vessel through the holes, a small explosive and smoke bomb, followed by ten soldiers. As soon as the ship was ready, it set course for the Tau Ceti area.

The Nofian homeland knew this would be a risky operation, but they had invested too much technology into Pixous to let her structures be studied by a potential threat. Especially the computer they had managed to incorporate into her brain. They had only had a three successfull implantations, and only one of them had survived the standard Nofian training.

*******
In Klonor, all the possible contacts for such a deal had prior engagements, and anything like this just might ruin their cover. There still would be a contact, although he would be different than than what was originally planned. The contact was now a hot headed pilot, his loyalty to The MSoNoF was sketchy, but he always pulled through for them, especially in a tight situation. He had left his homeland and became a smuggler, but he would still rise to the call if needed. The smuggler made made a call to Pixous via her communicator number. Luckily she had turned it off after she contacted her first sergeant.

He was slightly dissapointed when he was prompted to leave a message, but quickly went about his business.

"'Ey luv, I 'ear your in a tight spot. Jus' lettin' ya know I'll be your contact for the deal. My name is Manthren. Jus' give me a bloody ring when ya get the chance," he said at the prompt, and shut the device off.

*******
Pixous still had no clue how many pushups she had done, however, she looked at Kitty's progress, which seemed to be waning. She kept her steady pace with the pushups, and hit number two hundred and sixty six.

OOC: They're not actually in Tau Ceti, you know. Nowhere near it, in fact. It was simply the only system in the Association (And therefore with a Trans-Light Molecular Deconstruction Gate) lacking any measure of civilian or military presence. Right now they're in deep-space light-years from any stellar system. Just FYI, for the ship the Nofians dispatched.

IC:

"Admiral, a moment, please."

Eyeing his communications officer warily, wondering what could be important enough to monopolise his time at a moment like this, the Admiral turned.

"Sir, I've been detecting periodic transmissions being dispatched from within the ship on several non-authorised channels."

"Lieutenant, we have more pressing issues to attend to right now. Somebody who accidentally left their radio on really doesn't warrant action right now."

"I know, sir, but this isn't somebody accidentally leaning on their transmission buttons. These bursts are clearly designed to be unobtrusive and hidden. Somebody is making a deliberate attempt to contact somebody off the ship, and odds are it's not the Association."

"Bloody hell, how many spies are on this blasted ship? What the hell was Keane doing all those years at the Corps head, was he purposefully pulling in enemy agents? In the name of the Spirit, this is an embaressment. Have you managed to track the communication?"

"Only a general location, sir, it was to brief to be specific."

"Well quarantine that deck and send in a combat squad to apprehend anybody found within. And where's that other spy, shouldn't she have been pulled to the bridge by now?"

"Unknown, sir. We're still waiting for the security personnel assigned to escort her here to check in."

((OOC: Ah. OK, what is the closest system to them then, I'll just edit that they got sent from there and work around the unknown location. Don't worry, I'm not going to just post the Nofian ship just finding them, I have a plan to make this work.))

Pixous stopped when she decided Kitty was nearing completion. She didn't say a word, but it suddenly dawned on her that perhaps her little transmissions had been detected. It was a military ship after all, and it would more than likely have tracking systems for that sort of thing.

*****
Manthren sat at the bar on some run down space station on the edge of civilization. He looked around and saw nothing but his type of people, smugglers, thugs, criminals, and all the people who didn't want to be found. His communicator buzzed to life, and he left money on the bar for his drinks as he moved to a secluded area.

"Nickel Seven here."

"'Ey luv, whatcha want this time? Surely you ain't callin' jus' ta talk ta tha likes of me."

"You would be absolutely correct on that. I'm letting you know I'm going to be in charge of the pending boarding operation, and since your the contact man, I will need you to contact me when you get the final word."

"Will do, luv. Say ya...."

She cut off the transmission before he could finish his offer of sexual gratification.

"Oi, 'eres always next time," he said under his breath as he returned to his seat.

((OOC: Mood Music: The Beast (http://www.elorhe.com/JBE/beast.mid). Enjoy! ;)))


The Technician nodded as one of the higher ups went over to him. He points to his screen. "I was monitoring the comm channels, when I noticed that someone was sending an encrypted message. I was about to go and decrypt it when it just... Vanished. I can't find any trace of the message on the computer, or even in the Black Box. But, I know I saw it."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Kitty entered the final access code, letting loose a sigh as the laptop flashed to show she was now accessing the Phase Gate servers.

"I'm in like sin." She said, alt-tabing the current screen into the background and pulling up the contents of the disc. She executed the program, and began to modify a few parts of it, before beginning to upload it directly to the server...

An alert went off on her computer. The virus had been detected, but because she had used the Access Codes, the Anti-Virus software was disabled. However, right about now, everyone on the bridge would be alerted to the fact that a virus was being uploaded...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The technician had barely finished speaking when his terminal suddenly went red, and displayed a message. Virus Upload detected! Anti-Virus Software disabled. Unable to block Virus upload. Input?

"Mercury! Someone's uploading a computer Virus!" He cried in alarm, his hands going to work as he fell into practice. "Intiating the Trace and Dump program!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kitty's laptop flashed a warning. Trace and Dump Program detected. 20 seconds until Trace complete. She growled, but there was nothing she could do.

Virus upload complete in 19 seconds. Her terminal counted off the seconds...

~~~~~~~~~~~

"Eigtheen seconds until the trace is complete! Fifteen seconds!"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Virus upload complete in ten seconds... Nine... Eight... Seven... Six...

~~~~~~~~~~~

"Five seconds....... Trace complete!"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Kitty's laptop flashed. Virus upload complete. Half an instant later, it also displayed. Trace complete. Connection servered.

Kitty immediately slammed shut her laptop, disconnecting it from the terminal. She grabbed the pistol, and turned to Pixious, holding it out hand grip towards her. "Can you use a pistol? I need you to escort me to Briefing Room A-13 on deck 15. It's six levels above us. We need to leave NOW."

~~~~~~~~~~~

"The trace didn't complete in time to stop the virus! It's heading for... In the name of the Spirit! It's heading straight for the Phase Gate Servers!" The technician's handes were a blur, speaking as he was hard at work. "Opening a false entrace... The virus ignored it! Opening another false entrance... Failed. Putting up a barrier.... The Barrier's been breached! Activating the firewall... It's rejecting the signal! It's in the Server!"

Suddenly, his terminal flashed red, an image of a white kitty cat walking on screen, scratching itself then giving him the middle finger. The image began to dig, and then his screen flashed. Error 404. System not found.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, at the Phase Gate Generators...

The virus went to work quickly, overloading the computer terminals. Smoke rose from several of them as the harddrives melted and circuit boards fried, fusing together with their motherboards and anything else close enough. Snaps and crackles could be heard through-out the area as the various back up drives were burnt to a crisp.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Aftermath...

The technecian on the bridge shook his head. "The Phase Gate is completely disabled. All of its systems are fried, even the back-up systems are fried. The reports say that there are no spare parts for those systems on the ship. We'd have to pull into a port and get them replaced completely. Admiral, I'm forwarding you the trace's results. The virus was uploaded from Petty Officier Kataline White's personal laptop. She's the Senior Systems Technician. The upload was from the Mainframe Maintanence Access Shaft 13."

The man sent the Admiral a copy of Kataline White's dossier, as well as the results of the trace, which confirmed that it was Kataline White's computer which uploaded the virus...

"Of course I can use a pistol," She said as she took the pistol, "would you grab my uniform. I'd rather the name tapes didn't fall into the wrong hands, plus you could do with a little disguise. Get changed, I'll take care of the guards that are watching the entrance while you do that."

With that she took off, holding her knife and pistol at the same time. She came to the checkpoint, and saw the two guards, their backs to her. She snuck up behind the first one, and stuffed her knife in his heart. Quickly grabbing him around the neck, to make it look like she had a hostage. The other guard came to at the sounds of the his patners gurgles, and pivoted around, only to catch a bullet in the eye. She dropped the first guard, and looked at the recently blood stained coveralls. She quickly stripped the uniform off of the guard that took one in the head, and ditched her coveralls. Her new uniform read lance corporal Robinson. She grabbed their weapons, and headed back to where Kitty was.

"Ok, Kitty, if your gonna pull this off, you're gonna have to carry around one of these."

She dangeled one of the weapons out for kitty to take.

"Have you ever fired one of these?"

Kitty was already dressed in Julie's clothes, her laptop slung over one arm in a special carry-case. She looks at the rifle Pixious was handing her, taking it and turning it over. "Not one of these, per se. But, I did train with the basic rifle in boot camp. It's not that different, I'd imagine."

She slings it over the same shoulder as her laptop. "Let's hurry, the guards will be here any second."

"That will have to do. Lets go, we can talk while we move."

She started off leaving the mainframe area.

"I need to stop by my quarters, but other than that, know of any back ways to get to where we need to go. We really should avoid the main paths."

She turned her head to look at Kitty, and noticed a little spec of skull on the uniform. She flicked it off while they moved.

OOC: Closest system....none, really. They're beyond the edge of the galaxy, floating in open space. Plus, the crew has no clue where they are; Admiral doesn't want anybody getting ideas of calling for an assault on the ship......you know, come to think of it, I probably should have actually said this earlier.

IC:

The Admiral stood motionless for a few moments, just breathing heavily, before finally turning to read the information he was presented with.

"Contact Security teams M3 through N7, have them head to the viruses upload point and arrest this Petty Officer White."

"Sir...they're already there. That's the deck from which the alien signal was detected a few moments agao."

"Then I think we've found our spy. Inform them that she is to apprehended at all costs."

"Yes, sir."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The entire deck had been sealed off, with guards posted at every entrance and exit (including the easy to use maintenance access-tunnels that people never seemed to bother guarding), and began to dispatch two-man teams to dig out their target.

Coming across the bodies of the former guards rather rapidly, and quickly informing their companions of the location, M9 began to inspect the corridors leading into and beyond the juncture. The two women they stumbled upon, attractive though they were, were regarded as threats and treated as such.

"Halt! Raise your hands into the air, plams towards us, and exit the corridor! You are both hereby under arrest!"

Weapons at the ready, the two men kept the discovered women at a healthy distance while they waited for their companion search teams to arrive. The two dead guards hadn't even gotten a shot off, these two weren't going to take any chances.

Pixous dropped her weapon, and followed the orders she was given. Her hands slowly raised in the air, palms out front. She didn't want to do this, but it seemed to be the best she knew it would be obvious once done, but those that were an immediate threat weren't going to notice. She flipped through several screens on her computer.

"It's a damn good thing I don't need my hands to operate this thing," she thought as she found the remote access for a small device.

She activated the device, and a distress signal was sent to the nearest ship with a Nofian identification tag. The signal would continue until someone with an authorized DNA patern input a certain code. If anyone else picked the black egg shaped device, they could be asured a painfull death as they were injected with five times the lethal dose of Black Mamba venom.

"Am I going to get to see the Admiral? I must say thats something I've been looking foreward to for a while now," she said to the guards. She couldn't help the smile coming across her lips.

Kitty froze as she heard the voice. Damnit... I'm dead... It's all over... I tried to help the captain as much as I could... Maria...

Seeing 'Julie' comply, Kitty did likewise, letting the weapon drop and raising her hands. While Julie talked, kitty did not, trying her best not to cry.

"Sir, I'm detecting another illegal transmission. Same pattern as the last one, it's definitely an identical user."

"Location?"

"Different origin, sir, but the configuration is identical, it has to be the same user. I'm comparing with our Marine transponders...they must be the ones already be in Marine custody."

"Well then have them shut off the damn radio! I don't want anything to lead the Colossus out here."

"Yes, sir."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two Marines did't even bother to respond to the obviously rehtorical question, instead simply tightening their grips and wondering where their comrades were.

"Marine squad M9, this is the Bridge. Respond."

"M9 here, sir. Go ahead."

"We are detecting an unauthorised transmission from elsewhere in the ship, the signal matches one previously recorded in your area. Likely emanating from your captives. Terminate at once."

"Yes, sir. You two! End your transmission immediately. Failure to do so within the next five seconds will result in forfeit of your life."

Then, with such amazing timing that one could almost swear it had been arranged that way, the corrdior was filled with an additional dozen Marines who quickly took up positions to insure that neither of the captives could make a single unobserved motion.

Kitty glanced towards 'Julie.' A thought fromed in her head. "It's me... But... I need to use my laptop to turn it off. I'll turn off the signal..." She hoped they would buy it.

Nickel looked at the message she was receiving, a distress signal, from the middle of nowhere. She knew the law, she was the closest ship, and had to comply. She locked on to the signal, and her and her raiding ship were off to find the mysterious distress signal. She also sent a mimicing signal back on to the next Nofian Ship, who would in turn do the same until it made it back to the motherland.

Nickel had several of the decryption officers on the ship set to work on decrypting it, so they could figure out who had sent it. Before too long they had it decoded.

15256-90001
Pixous Eight
Distress type: Unknown
Response status: None

"Set a direct course for that location, and hurry."

*********
She said nothing, and was about to point out that she couldn't, when Kitty jumped in, saying it was her fault.

"Latest reports?"

"Chief, alien virus, definately malicious and internal systems can't counter it."

"Medical teams! Keep working on Drenner's salvage, D-Team, you're with me. Grab a stretcher and nano combines FGG, RTS and K19."

Drenner hurriedly pulled on his enviro-mask, uniform automatically sealing itself as he fastened gloves to his sleeves. His uniform was the clear white of the Medical Corps, and his name proudly shown across the left breast.

Behind him ran D-Team, also in the white of the Medical Corps but without the gold rank markings of the Chief Medical Officer. Two of the four-man team carried the light rifles adopted by the Med Bays - no sane crewman would shoot one of Hassle's team if he wanted any medical help in future, but with the firefights springing up all over the place, Medical wanted at least some form of protection for the teams sent out across the ship.

Numerous small groups of guards stood by doors and opened them automatically when they saw the CMO and a medical team running towards them - Hass Jangen's face, visible through the clear visor, was well known and more than one guard had been yelled at for lengthy periods of time for interfering with Med Bay's business.

A few moments later the team burst into another area in time to hear..

"...before I hit the ground. You're fast, but I swear to Mercury that I'll be faster!"

Jangen and the medical team froze, the two with rifles automatically pulling them up into a firing position, the other team members moving aside and edging toward the body while the Chief Medical Officer walked a pace forward, glanced at their rank markings, and spoke in the commanding tone od those who don't have a clue what is going on, but doesn't care as long as his own purposes are served.

"Master Sergeant, Sec Officer! Drop the objects, back the hell up, let my men get at that body before I have you shot for interfering with a superior officer!"

His expression a picture of rage...."Hassle" Jangen has never been known to have any patience with those who will "amuse" themselves with a Mexican Standoff, or anything else he deemed pointless, when a person has been injured and is lying unconcious on the ground.

OOC: Ventuus, your post (Though well-written, I am in no way insulting their quality) is jumping a bit ahead of the game. Even now, general combat has yet to break out all over the ship. Shooting has, so far, been relegated to Engineering, the Brig (and immediate surroundings), and this one little room with Joe, Bon, and Lish. The Med crew would not yet be on alert and countering/preparing for ship-wide conflict.

IC:

"Bullshit! It came on while you were standing right there with your laptop already nice and bundled, why the hell would you need the computer to turn it off?"

The Marines of search team M9, 'forgetting' the revolutionary and amazing device known as a 'timer', seemed perfectly convinced of the logic of their statements as they stared at Kitty and Pixous down the barrels of their Rifles.

"Now, I will give you one more chance. Turn it off, or we open fire."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Admiral, this is definitely a high-powered transmission. Somebody out there is bound to pick this up, even if we shut it off now."

"Damnit. Okay, bring the G/TD on-line, I want us prepared for emergency FTL. Have a technical team dispatched to the source of that transmission, have them take the damn thing apart if they can't find some way to turn it off. Once they've succeeded I want us in some other part of the Universe."

"Yes, sir."

"And tune the Ergometers to their highest sensitivity, if somebody is going to notice that thing they're going to need FTL to reach us. I want a warning before they show up. Begin Ion-rod insertion on the Beam Cannons, just in case."

"Yes, sir. I'll get right on it, sir."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rushing to the origin of the mysterious signal that had the Admiral in such a huff, the four technicians dispatched to silence it stopped outside the quarters of a certain Nofian operative.

"Is there anybody in there?"

"There better not be, the Admiral'd probably order us to execute 'em if there was."

"Screw that, there's a damn good reason I never joined the Marines."

"For some reason I doubt the Admiral will take that into consideration. Now open the door."

"Yes, sir. I'll get right on it."

A few seconds later, activating the standard security override, the team began ransacking the room trying to find the transmitter.

'Sir...I think this is it."

A small black egg-object, found underneath the small table centered in the room, was quickly scanned for explosives and, upon coming up clean, was quickly handed to the lead technician. The object, which had already emitted a small beep after being picked up, emitted another sound (This one carried a noticeably hostile undertone) and suddenly the technician holding it screamed lightly and dropped the mysterious object.

"Bloody hell, the thing stabbed me! Wait....."

His head cocked to the side and his eyes glazed over slightly, as if listening to a voice within his own mind.

"The damn thing injected me with snake venom! Black Mo....no, Mamba venom. What the hell kind of toy is this?"

Internally thanking the Spirit for the minsicule nano-bots that had managed to neutralise the venom before it rendered him a twitching mass, he activated his transmitter and contacted the Bridge.

"Sir, we have located the transmitter."

"Excellent. Can you deactivate it?"

"Unknown, sir. It has built-in defences, I was recently injected with a toxic substance obviously meant to be lethal. I don't want to risk the lives of my team by further manipulation."

"Deactivate that transmitter this very second. Now."

"Understood, sir. Brian, shoot that damn thing."

"Yes, sir."

Pulling out his standard sidearm, Brian aimed and fired several rounds at the rounded object lying on the floor.

The device skitted across the floor after it was shot. The people designing had thought of protection when it was made. They chose the shape of an egg, one of the strongest structures available. The device was noticably undamaged.

((OOC: Same theory here as not being able to shoot a string, the bullet goes for the path of least resistance, and rather then penetrating it, pushes it to the side.))

******
Pixous looked at them with disbelief.

"Haven't you guys ever heard of a timer? We set it so it would go off when we weren't on this floor. We knew the floor would be searched once it went off, so we set it to a timer so we wouldn't be slowed down by it."

She had no clue what Kitty had planned, but she hoped it would at least be able to get them far enough away from here.

******
The signal was becoming closer for Nickel and her crew. One of the crew men who had decoded the message turned to Nickel Seven.

"Ma'am, we are within thirty minutes of reaching the signals orgin....Wait, the signal is now saying something else. Hold on while I decode it........... It's now saying that it has had an attempted unauthorized access. This isn't good Ma'am."

Nickel's face contorted to a pissed off look as she opened the shipwide communications.

"All crew, get ready to launch your leech ships, they are expecting us, and it's going to be hot. Remember, target the main ship, ignore everything else. Remember, these ships have unmatched speed and maneuverability, but the cost of this is nearly no armor. A shield will activate once you attach to the main ship, protecting you from attacks. Also remember, we will be sending false drones out there to distract the enemy."

Kitty groaned, Geez, these Marnes are stupid... Just... Buy... It... Already! She motions with her head towards Pixious.

"She's right. It was set on a timer. Didn't think it'd go off so fast. Look, I want to live as much as you guys do, so I'm compling. I'll shut off the transmission, and then you guys can hual us off to the brig, or wherever you're going to take us." She took a deep breath, slowly exhaling as she moved her shoulder forward, making it easier to slip the sling off her shoulder. "I'm going to put my laptop on the ground, and open it. Then, I'll turn off the transmission. Don't shoot, okay? I'm compling..."

She moved one hand slowly to her laptop's carry strap, keeping her other up and away from her body. She slid the strap along her arm, then over her hand, slowly lowering it to the ground. She never made any other motion to her body. "Okay, there it is. I'm going to kneel now, so I can access the transmitter... Don't shoot, okay?"




((OOC: From my last IM, Klonor. >_> Ahem. "Or, if you want, have the Marines shoot her. Just, let me do the death post, kay? The part where she actually dies. I've always wanted to do one, and I got a great post in mind for it. Okay, I'm gone for real this tme. Ta ta!" >_> Now, I'm off!))

"You are a traitor and a mutineer," Lish informed him, coldly. "You have no honour and no rights."

Was it just the lighting, or was the room growing darker? And was the room growing merely darker, or was the marine/spy growing larger?

"And what does faster have to do with it? I could have killed you already, but I chose not to. You are slow, Klonorian. That's why your government saw fit-"

She smiled, slowly. "But I doubt you will believe that. So I will appeal to the innate sense of humanity; that sense of belonging to the greater whole. The need for mythology.

"I am the Hand of Death. I am the bridge between vengeance and victory. I am the Finger of the Righteous, the Warrior of the Way. And while I've been talking seven varieties of bullshit, the real me just walked off. Have a pleasant day."

The two images snapped out of existance.

Lish - the real Lish - crouched low, just a metre from her original position. She considered for several hundredths of a second - she would not have time for much more - while she obscured her own visibility very weakly, but with a much tighter focus than usual. A computer operator would see her quite plainly, but considering the speed with which she'd moved, their eyes gaining focus on her again on-screen should allow enough time for her to do what needed to be done.

It was actually faintly tiring - usually at this kind of intensity (often used for hunting wild animals without causing fear in them - it dulled the taste) it was only really noticeable when you stopped. But Bon would have no difficulty seeing her, providing he looked right at her - and there was no effort to block the impulse to look around. It came down to reactions, in the end, with the favour hers because she was already looking at him. The confusion factor of being faced by one, then two, then no adversaries might work in her favour, too.

But she had to decide. Kill him... or not. More importantly, however, was how.

There was only one option, there, though, so...

In the end, it took a tenth of a second to decide. The tendril of consciousness snapped out, grasping at a slender thread of Bon's mind. Gently, the tendril was twisted, deformed. Despite the gentleness of the movement, the part of Lish occupying her paracortex was aware that it would be extremely painful for an instant. The next instant would be darkness.

As Lish moved away, she found herself still wondering why she hadn't killed him...

And whether or not the shaver in her hand had convinced him that she had in fact been holding a weapon. She couldn't have reached her shock wand in time, so the shaver had been the next best thing.

"Okay.....ideas?"

"Grenade?"

"I didn't come armed for war, Kin, and neither did you. It'd take to long."

"Shoot it again?"

"Don't waste your ammo."

"Oh, for Joves sake, just vent the damn thing into space."

The simplicity of the idea nearly smacked the other three technicians onto the ground.

"Move!"

Unfortunately, as they were running to the airlock, the technician holding the ransmitter slipped, propelling the small egg down the hallway and, against all odds, directly into one of the small ducts that run throughout the ship. The rest just stared in horror as they heard the alien device clatter away.

"Shit."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bon falls to the ground and lies there....(What else, really, could I say for him?)

OOC: In my excitement, I overlooked the bit about us jumping to FTL. If cutting the engines out while using them has something like catastrophic consequences, just tell me, and I'll rewrite.

I know how to get into contact with the Captain. I'll pass along your wishes to collaborate with him. I'm sure he'll appreciate the extra help. As for the Phase Gates... Sure, I got just the little killer app to rend that thing offline, forever. Petty Officer White, out.

"No - dammit!" Lieutenant Commander Brackwell struck the screen as the connection severed. "Doesn't she understand the urgency? Pertrarch's men will be beating down our door in minutes!" Any addendum to his tantrum was suddenly cut short as Engineering - the whole deck - began thrumming very faintly. Irritably he shouted towards the Propulsion substation. "Hellings! Is that what I think it is?"

"The G/TD's been brought on-line, sir! The engines are coming up to standby mode!" answered the frantically working tech to whom the question had been directed.

"The hell they are! Spin them back down! Disconnect the bridge feed if you have to - but don't sever it." He scowled. "We'll need the engines again, later, after all."

"Yes, sir!"

Suddenly feeling empowered, he issued another order. “Damage Control!”

“Sir?”

“First, isolate this section from the other Damage Control substations. Then, I want you to bring down every blast door between those” he pointed towards the heavily fortified portal to Engineering “and the ones eight hundred meters on.” That would give the bastards plenty to chew on even if they took a beam cannon off the hull to tear through. Surely enough time for the Captain to contact him. Which he would hopefully do soon, as Ms. White had left no contact information before signing off. He sighed. That would have been too convenient to happen to him.

He got up, giving Ensign Mallory back his seat. A malicious thought occurred to him. “Oh, and Damage Control – try and vent the Admiral. Or at least bring the doors down around the bridge.”

“Um… sir…” the tech looked up and squinted at his CO. “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’ll be able to vent him, sir. I might – might – be able to lock him in, but it will only be for five minutes or so before they pull themselves out of the Damage Control net and reassert control.”

“Carry out your orders.” After a second, everyone grinned. It would certainly be a shot in the arm for morale if the Admiral got trapped on the bridge, even if it was only for a second.

[OOC: Well. Yeah. Ahem.]

IC:

Lish did take a moment before leaving, pausing in front of her victim. "Be glad it wasn't my boss," she says, softly, "or you'd have both been dead before blinking."

A moment was all, however. She heard them. In both ways.

They were not loud, but they did not really need to be. Metal tends to be a great acoustic amplifier (if dischordant), and the smallest footfalls could sound like thunder if close enough. Her hearing was returning, mostly in the deep section. As usual.

Considering for a moment, she heads for the brig - by the most silent route she can find.

Hopefully I can move quicker than fully armoured marines. Hopefully I won't need that Klonorian gun I left behind. Hopefully Bon will think he was hit by some strange weapon and won't figure out too swiftly...

Damn, girl. That's alot of hopefullys. We're screwed. Even worse than Cairn Fallon.

OOC: Oy, I feel like such a heel, but I have to drop out (Yes, I know this is my RP). I just (As in right this moment) got some info about my upcoming semester and my NS time will dry up to almost nothing. I am really sorry, and everybody is more than welcome to continue without me, but I just can't keep it up.

NoF, about yesterday, sorry for the tension/stubborness.

If you guys want to keep going, I'm more than willing to give you all the info you need to play as if in Klonor, just send me a TG.

Again, really sorry. At least this time it lasted longer than the last two times I started this RP, and I have nobody to blame but myself. Please, don't hate me forever.

OOC: As some famous NS philosophe once said, real life's a bitch. Don't worry about it.

Personally, I'd rather hold out hope of finishing this if and when you can return than trying to limp on past the finish line with a stand-in, but if people want to continue, I'm for it.

OOC: Oy, I feel like such a heel, but I have to drop out (Yes, I know this is my RP). I just (As in right this moment) got some info about my upcoming semester and my NS time will dry up to almost nothing. I am really sorry, and everybody is more than welcome to continue without me, but I just can't keep it up.

NoF, about yesterday, sorry for the tension/stubborness.

If you guys want to keep going, I'm more than willing to give you all the info you need to play as if in Klonor, just send me a TG.

Again, really sorry. At least this time it lasted longer than the last two times I started this RP, and I have nobody to blame but myself. Please, don't hate me forever.
((OOC: I apologize as well, I was having a pretty bad day. And if you edit the post so that the tracking device stays on the ship, I can see this ending nicely.))

[[Understood matey, I hope to see you back on NS soon!

As with Conquest, I'd rather hang around and hope you come back instead of shambling around trying to RP something without the nation running it and the main characters!

Drop me a TG when you get back mate!]]

OOC: Per NoF's request, the Nofian transmitter has not been jettisoned from the ship, the post originally saying it had been has since been edited. Just FYI, in case you guys decide to keep going.