NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: This is more of a horror type RP with dark ghost riddled hallways, so there won't be HUGE fleet engagements or large battles but this might get genuinely creepy at some points. For the most part I'll end up RPing the Spooky happenings on the part of the ship but feel free to ad lib to keep the story going and see if we can make this very very creepy. All are welcome to take part, but lets try not to get TOO crowded, we don't want hundreds of different ships here with boarding partys ranging in the thousands.

IC

Unknown Planet, Sector 7 x 4 x 92
The Unremarkable blue planet orbited an unremarkable star; the atmosphere was gaseous and royal blue with clouds of lighter blue turbulently swirling around and although the atmosphere burned the lungs it was breathable if somewhat painful. The planet had been earth like once upon a time about five decades ago but that changed during the war; now its Eco system was messed up beyond words and all life on the planet had been eradicated

The sprawling Mercy class hospital ship orbited the icy blue planet derelict in space she had been there for half a century lost; abandoned maybe; there were multiple hull breaches in several sections that had vented the air to space. She had quite obviously been attacked but this wasn't a recent attack, no this attack happened over half a century ago during the Guylos wars, they never did care to much for civilians as the ship had been savagely attacked evident by its wounds.

The Mercy Class herself was 1700 meters long, with most of her insides dedicated to laboratories and medical bays she was crewed by 120 operational staff while doctors and nurses aboard numbers in the thousands, as usually did the patients. The Mercy class was completely unarmed allowing her to operate as a neutral craft in war zones she also carried a small complement of 'Medevac" Transports which acted like ambulances no doubt some of these still remained functional.

The wreck had been in a stable orbit around the planet lifeless for over 50 years and if left undisturbed would probably stay another 50 or more. She was a relic from her time painted white and barring red crosses to designate her as a hospital ship the ships Registry number and name "Rachel Ellis" some landing bay doors were blown open and exposed to space others were closed and intact. To the Animarnia officials the Rachel Ellis and her entire crew was presumed lost in combat…

The lone Scavenger-Class salvaging vessel drifted through the vast void that was space, passing stars and planets in the blur of its movement. Shaped much like a large spider, the craft actually seemed to crawl; the four legs on either side of the squished oblong moved along with the vessel, giving the impression of it literally "Crawling," or in this case swimming, through the vast reaches of the Universe. That it was white was also to be noted; Pure, unblemished white, white so clear and perfect that it actually reflected the stars and other stellar objects as much as it stood out from them. To be frank, it was like looking into a mirror...A really, really, bright mirror. A mirror so bright that it actually seemed to shine even more iridescently than the stars that gleamed off its surface.

In total, the ship measured approximately a hundred meters in length, one of the smaller scavenger vessels of the corporation, though it still retained the outlandishly large logo (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/Ycom/BigGadgetCorpLogo.jpg) of the company: a purple smiley face caught in a gear, which sat on the top of the ship. Disturbing, but friendly all the same...Though it was still just the slightest bit creepy, in a good kind of way.

Operating the Scavenger were the usual crew of misfits who made up the Pilot Corps: Two G109 Helper Droids serving as nagivators and engineers, three Scariliun technicians and flight assistance, and a single Frank Clone who served as the main pilot. Having hat last crew member onboard made the ship just as likely to burst into flames as it was to reach its destination intact.

As it happened, this ship was heading towards a certain unremarkable blue planet orbiting an unremarkable star, around which orbited a surprisingly remarkable wreck of a ship...

"There she is, boys. The Rachel Ellis" Anthony Santos' voice crackled through the comm system into the machine shop. There was a hustle and bustle aboard the "Polo", a small freight ship, about 75 meters from stem to stern, with a boarding shuttle docked on the port side of the bridge. The most of it's equipment was at the front top of the vessel and the rest of it was space reserved for freight. The cargo hold had nothing but empty space for the time being as it's crew had just finished a food delivery to a mining colony a few sectors away. It was approaching the derelict hospital ship on a salvage run. Those old ships still had reusable parts; hundreds of miles of wire and cable, power cells, surgical equipment, not to mention the millions of tons of scrap metal alloys and plastic polymers.

"Alright, Pete, find us a door we can knock on" Anthony spoke to his chief engineer who was sitting at a console behind him which looked made more of aluminum than circuits.

"Most of the landing bays have been shot to hell. We're gonna have to get to one of the good ones and hotwire it to open up." Peter Russ was a scrawny, nerdy type. He was good at his job and didn't back down from anybody. The last guy who tried got a knife in the jugular and bled to death in a bar fight that lasted 2 seconds.

"Great, great..." Anthony sighed "Rita, get on the horn"

In the machine shop Rita Couto wiped her hands with an already greasy rag and pressed a large button on the wall near her to speak. "What's going on?"

"I need you to suit up. We're gonna have to hotwire a bay door to get in."

Rita pressed the button again "Shit. Again?"

"That's why I pay you the big bucks" Anthony said half-jokingly. "We're almost there so make it quick."

Large bureaucracies were slow when it came to less than pressing matters. This system had been briefly scanned nearly two years ago and marked for salvage. Finally action was being taken. The first step in the salvage of an unknown vessel was boarding for technological gain, before the wreck was torn apart and taken home. Perfect for such a task, one of Kazecistan’s many identical salvage destroyers had another destination added to its list 3 months ago. Here she was.

One side was covered in hundreds of turreted tractor, cutter, and transporter arrays. The other three sides were smooth and barren, defined by gentle curves- the huge bay door had a nearly seamless fit. Energy signatures spiked as the derelict was scanned in great detail, every material being cataloged and charted. There were a few other ships in the system, none of which received much attention- they were not salvageable and any claim to the vessels would be able to be resolved at a later date, should they push for it.

Opening just a crack, the door allowed a Bullet Transport burst out at full speed. "Did you have to gun it when the bay door was still too closed? We're going so fast that if you screwed up, we'd all be dead! You pilots and your close corners. Just because you've got one of the fastest small craft in the galaxy you think you need to show off-"
"Tom, the computer guided us through the opening, there was never any danger. Besides, it's fun to get up a little speed."
Tom went back to the cabin, grumbling under his breath.
"Oh, relax Tom, that's just the way he is." one of the team members said to the team leader. "Besides, who cares if the 14 of us die?" he continued with a smirk. Tom shrugged it off and sat back down looking out the window at the rapidly approaching derelict.

a Kirisuban warp shuttle had picked up the planet and derelict a few months earlier and now a Sakura class warp shuttle from the the INKS Chiang Lung was investigating.

given the dangers of derelict craft a mimimal away team was sent. Two women, Lt Nomi Taka and Ensign Misa Uehara.

they both carried plasma pistols and had orders to take a brief look round the ship.

When other vessels were seen in the area Lt Taka assumed they were salvagers and they packed more powercells for their weapons.

they docked and entered the dark, silent craft wearing red power armour, magnetic boots and taking powerfull torches and extra oxygen packs.

where they were didn't have gravity so they used their boots to cautiously explore the dark corridor near the starboard airlock...

The sleek craft came to a graceful halt by turning over and using its main engines as brakes. A second turn and it crept toward a bay whose doors were open but had very little internal damage. After gliding to a stop, all 14 of the away team exited and began to search the halls in two groups. They brought lights and non-lethal weapons, but un-holstered neither. The cool dark was comfortable and provided them with an advantage over any other teams. Their helmets enhanced the extremely dim light emissions into sharp images, as if the full moon was out overhead. Each moved nearly silently, not for any reason other than it was 'fun' to pretend to be spies (the military rarely gives one their desired position).

Alpha group spotted lights and could hear another group-defiantly not Kazecis. Time for a dirty trick. Their onboard pool shark, Randy, took a palm sized black orb and rolled it down the hall, causing it to bounce off of the walls several times and turn a corner before finally rolling to the feet of one of the other nation's teams. Swiftly and quietly, they moved back and stole into a room around another corner. They smirked as they waited to take advantage of the other explorers.

Lt Taka and Ensign Uehara back off at a safe distance until the scanners inside their suits can make sense of the object.

Ensign Uehara uses the HUD projected onto the inside of her helmet to keep an eye on the map of the ship. Lt Taka keeps an eye out while her suit makes sense of things.

since this section has gravity they switch of their boots and are able to walk normally.

ooc: whats the story with the black ball? is it likely to blow in my face?

ooc: No, it's a tracking device with audio/visual/scanning capability. Basically, we're using it to A) spy on your actions and B) explore the ship faster. No harm done, honest.

Ic: "I see you." whispered one of the team members just before receiving an elbow to the side that quite clearly said 'Shut up!'

Beta team was having more immediate success in a medical lab. They bagged dozens of small devices and examined a few larger ones. Their techy was working on getting a computer terminal to function.

Lt Taka's suit scanner eventually came to the conclusion that the black ball was a scanner so aiming with her HUD she shot it with her plasma pistol deactivating it.

the map was still building as they walked and a long tunnel with several tunnel with several rooms of each side of it was projected.

the two asian women advanced cautiously their plasma pistols drawn but set on stun knowing they had company ahead. the HUD's were showing 7 lifesigns ahead of them but they didn't know exactly where..

###

On board the shuttles highly experimental AI had been activated with a remote command.

a new figure could be made out in the dimly lit vessel. A young girl with long blue black hair, olive skin, and dark eyes. She was about 14 years old wearing a pale blue kimono.

the holographic AI which answered to the name Kaede touched a few buttons and the shields activated. Anyone who tried to break in here would get a nasty shock..

"Damn." Tom whispered. "Alright, fan out, one to a room and stay close. I want the advantage if they're hostile. Draw your weapons." And as smoothly as the words came out did the team execute them. Tom walked out into the center of the hall and flicked on his head lamp so as to be easily seen. His weapon remained at his side.

"OK, I think I got it" Rita's voice came through the comm pannel in the boarding shuttle. The large bay door slid open without a noise in the dead of space. "Open sesamy, baby"

Pete was at the controls and had already put on his hazard suit, a bulky thing with plastinium exterior complete with life support a a shoulder-mounted flashlight. "Sweet. Making my approach." Assistant tech-engineer Mendes sat next to him wth barely enough elbow room for either of them. "There seems to be gravity n this section. At least we won't have to float around all week" he chimed.

"Thank God for small blessings" Rita added despite not being a religious woman. "See you inside."

"We're going in, Anthony" Pete declared without taking his eyes off the bay opening.
"Gotcha. Don't forget to write." the captain of the Polo responded "Don't get into any trouble now"

The shuttle set down inside the ship's bay. It was in pristine condition as if it were likely for someone to walk in at any moment. Rita floated in and closed the bay door with a hand-held computer. As soon as it sealed she felt the pull of gravity and she landed on her feet rather hard considering all the equipment she had on her. "Alright, guys. Come out and play."

Mendes and Pete ambled out of their craft along with Kurt, a large ex-marine the captain hired for muscle. Peter Russ looked up and around. "Let's take a look around then."

ooc: Sorry I had to edit my post because I got one of my char's name wrong.

Misa took point as she gentle pushed open the door. not that it took much of a push to open a door that was shut for 50 years when your strength was assisted by the powered armour you wore.

the suits scanner was working already picking out life signs all over the corridor and updating the map to show them.

she's followed by Nomi and they take cover behind a table while Misa calls out to the rooms occupant, her pistol by her side but ready for use if they were fired upon.

"my names Ensign Misa Uehara from the the Kirisuban space service. We're explorers and we mean you no harm"

"Nor do we wish you harm. We are of Kazecistan and come on a peaceful mission of salvage. Let us not hide from one another." His display lit up with a new message from the command ship: Another nation has landed, it's getting crowded in there. Hurry up.

The Spinner ship moved like a spaceship moves through space, because it was a spaceship and it was in space. It was, in fact, quite good at what it did.
The ship was maybe 100 meters in length, one of the few ships constructed as yet by the Seven Spin Clans out of Pax, nowhere near as large as the huge colony ships that had brought the original five million or so settlers from Abbith, but it did its job, which was, at present, to run around the galaxy making notes.
Right now it was lost, and its crew was increasingly worried.
"Look, I told you, due galactic NORTH from S5432, SOUTH at S5423."
"Why dont you rust up, eh? We got our orders and I followed them."
"-.-__.._---...__.--!"
"No."
"---..---..."
"We are NOT going to FTL off in a random direction until we run into something."
".._."
"Therers no need to be rude."
This conversation carried on for some time, as it has before and will again, while the ship slowly carried itself around the planet.
The Spinner ship itself was fairly simple to look at, basically it was a sort of pill shape. It had no protrusions on its hull, which was a sort of metallic blue colour that was highly polished, enough so that the stars were visible if one looked hard enough at the hull. The two features of the ship were fairly simple, the engines at the rear and a squarish protrusion that appeared to be a docking bay of some kind.
It rounded the planet and something on board noted the ship hovering dead center of the monitor.
"Sulipund! Look't that. Its a meatbag ship, pretty old by the look of it. Not in good condition by the look of it, see the holes? Rusty to."
"How exactly DO ships rust in space?"
"Dunno. Its just one of those things, I imagine."
"Theres a few other ships floating around out there. They seem to be interested in the ship. Should we call them up?"
"No need, I think. Just dont make any aggressive moves and we can most likely ignore each other. I want to send a team to the abandoned ship though, maybe we can find something interesting, hm? The Seven have been looking for more information on the meatbags."
The Spinner ship moved in, taking its time to set up a good approach, once it was within a few miles of the larger ship the squarish protrusion opened up and produced two small shuttles.
These made their way to the larger ship and attached themselves to the ship, keeping a few decks apart. Not bothering with the delicate approach of opening doors, they simply knocked the hull in.

"I'm showing myself now" Misa says and shows herself as she leaves the cover of the table.

She's very small even in her power armour and the lit faceplace of her helmet shows a young asian woman.

Lt Nomi Taka was the same size but slightly older. both women have holstered their pistols knowing their armour can take a lot of punishment if they are attacked.

their powerful torches highlight the room and Misa says "you can see that we are friendly. we're here to explore the ship and the planet thats all."

“Everybody remember to bring their shock rifles? Good, Captain Santos says we got ‘official’ company” He loaded a power pack into his weapon as he advanced down a dark corridor lit up by nothing but his team’s lights. “Kurt, take point.”

The imposing military-trained man advanced to the front on their approach to the medical lab. “Finders, keepers my daddy always said.”

When they reached the med-lab door, Rita pried the console open and wired it to open.

Mendes’ grip tightened on his rifle “What the hell is this about?!”

"As are we, but destroying our devices? A little rude, no?" Tom stood with no apparent armor. He was a big man, strong just about everywhere, the kind you'd expect to find working salvage. "Either way, just so long as you don't go around taking anything. Kazecistan's marked this vessel for salvage and we've got the means-" A startled scream cut him short.

One of his team came running into the corridor, terrified. "They're not dead! They're not dead!" This brought the rest of the team out as well. Weapons drawn, they leapt into the closet which the now terrified man came from. Their lights revealed a pile of bodies. Each was perfectly dead, but it was creepy all the same. "They're not going to hurt you, they're dead. It's okay, they're dead. Calm down."
"I saw one move! It wanted me!"

"we're not interested in salvage" Nomi replies but is cut short when she hears the scream.

They move out into the corridor and see the corpses.

she turns back to Tom and adds "all we want is some computer records and the rest of the ships is yours. is that a deal?"

"It is." Tom said, turning his back upon the now calming crew member. "When we're finished, however, it'll be your responsability to get off of this wreck, before we begin to take it apart."

"I remember where we parked" Nomi replied and introduced herself.

"Lt Nomi Taka, Kirisuban space service. From what we could tell from our scans in the way in we figured that what happened here took place about 50 years ago. I'd say this hospital ship was attacked and presumed lost otherwise its owners would have returned for her"

“Get your hands up, you claim jumpers!” Kurt’s voice boomed at the people in the medical facility, already loading up on supplies. "We got claim on this thing and we’re the ones who’re gonna salvage it!"

The four members of the Polo held their shock rifles up at the unknown intruders and considered themselves lucky to have caught them off their guard.

“Pete? What’s going on in there?” There was a strong sense of worry in the captain’s voice. He didn’t like confrontation with foreign governments, especially ones with warships in the area.

“We’ve found some salvagers from another ship in here, Captain. We got things under control.” He turned to the other group. “So. How about you tell me what in the hell are you guys doing here?”

Tom spoke up, a sound of authority in his voice that seemed more genuine than that drill sergeant wanna-be / napoleon complex idiot who had just 'apprehended' them. "I am Tom Vanderbilt Brigham, leader of the 654th Salvage Division of the Galactic Dominion of Kazecistan. We have claim to this vessel and its material contents. We ask that you leave in peace." The other six members of his team moved behind him, in sort of an inverted V shape, giving more power to his large stature.

SPACE: The Destroyer moved toward Steelwall's ship with one pulse of its massive engines. A warning.

"gentlemen" Nomi spoke up with an officers authority "I'm Lt Nomi Taka from the Kirisuban space service and we're here to recover computer data so what happened here and on the planet 50 years ago can be determined.

as Mr Brigham has already stated his claim it makes sense for you guys to introduce yourselves and tell your side of the story. Then i'm sure you and the Kazecistans could come to an agreement wthout any shots needed to be fired"

"Kazecis," He emphisised the pronunciation, though not in a rude way. "have no intrest in a battle. Nearly two years ago this vessel was marked for salvage, today we have come to collect. You are welcome to do as these fine ladies have and explore for knowladge, but material items belong to us."

“Pete. Whatever you did over there, you better undo it right now” He looked out at the large ship which had moved closer to his ship. “I don’t think these guys are in the mood for bullshitting around.”

The two women seemed to have made a good point. Peter Russ looked Tom in the eye. He seemed reasonable enough and there wasn’t a reason to get into a fire fight, much less get his boss blown out of space. He lowered his weapon slightly “Mr. Brigham, this old ship is more than big enough for the both of us. Besides, our freighter won’t take up much material. All we want is some scrap cable and alloys.” He glanced at Kurt “Lower your gun”

“What?!” the over-zealous grunt couldn’t believe his ears.

“I said put it down, ground pounder. What do you say Mr. Brigham? We’re just a free-lance freight and salvage crew. We take up what we can on one side of the ship and fill our hold and you gentlemen can have the whole rest of the ship. Mind you this thing is several kilometers long. You’ll hardly notice us at all.”

It was, at this point, that yet another party appeared around the bend.
Two Spinners, roughly humanoid machines and a swarm of tiny sphereoids that were practically bouncing off the walls.
"...__--._..._---!" The trinary squeakings of the sphereoids breifly drowned all other conversation as the little machines swarmed around the area, pausing to inspect anything interesting. They settled on what appeared to have been a doorway at some point, materialising various appendages with which they proceded to take the machinery surrounding the door apart.
"Yes, we can see them. Figures they would be meatbags. Why cant they ever be insectoids, eh? I like insectoids."
"Too bad, you get meatbags every time. Were in the wrong galaxy for insectoids."
The party stopped some way away, studying the little scene with apparent amusement. Being composed mostly of metals, it was theoretically not possible for them to show emotion via body language, but the Spinners were managing to appear very smug all the same.
"Greetings, meatbags. We are a scouting party of the Seven Spin Clans." The first machine bowed very slightly, "We are mostly interested in the medical records of this ship and would be happy to let you get on with stripping it of whatever you want. Dont mind the Ixi...in fact, they can help you if you like, Im sure they would enjoy tearing things apart to help you get at them."
There was a loud crash as a ceiling plate fell into the hallway.
"They do so enjoy their job."

The Rachel Ellis was silent inside; the hall ways were dark almost totally except for a few lights that sporadically turned on an off still powered from the ships reactors which still put out a small amount of power. Although life support was online the Co2 Scrubbers were only barely functioning making the air stale and rank but breathable at least for now. An experienced engineer could repair some of the more critical systems…

The Landing bays were occupied by a few small "Medi-vac" transports that likely still worked even after all this time, they could hold 2 crew and 3 or 4 passengers; the landing bays.

As Tom Vanderbilt spoke, suddenly the vessel came to life; and the crew was back as they were 50 years ago with doctors and nurses going about there business seeing to patients somewhat unaware of the ships state; the ship was positively alive but it was only an illusion. The doctors and nurses were partly transparent like ghosts; a little girl around 6 years old stood before them her little white dress giving her the perfect look of femininity. She looked at the group with pleading eyes "Help me…" she said

Else where A Lone Woman, dressed in a blue Nurses outfit wheeled a large Intravenous drip trolley down a corridor humming a tune before she too faded away

then suddenly they all faded away again and the ship was dead…

Lt Taka looks over at the Spinners and says "since we both want knowledge we can work together.."

she pauses as she sees the past return briefly and the ghostly figures passing through the huddle of people and Spinners as they breifly relive an event 50 years past.

It was the little girl that attracted her attention and before she can ask her a question she is gone.

The Spinners too noticed the 'ghosts', although they saw them as bursts of radiation on various levels, and a sudden surge of magnetic energy.
There was a pause as they leaned closer together, apparently communicating.
What was that?
No idea, Ive never seen anything like it. The meatbags seemed to have noticed as well...
Interesting...maybe we can find something more out from this ship. The Ixi didnt seem to notice it though.
Thats because theyre busy digging into the door motivator.
Indeed...
"If you wish, we may work together, but do not expect us to wait for you should you prove to be slow. Atmosphereic conditions on this ship are not stable and, as such, meatbags may suffer problems from decompression and so forth."

Peter's eyes widened at the spectacle. His crewmates lowered their weapons as they looked around at all the movement around them.

"Gooolly" Mendes exclaimed. He had definiteley never seen anything like this although he had seen plenty of robots before. But Steelwall was still a fledgling world. Encounters with outside powers were few an far in between. He had never been in a room with so many foreigners let alone aliens. And now this... apparition.

Tom swallowed hard and ignored the ghosts. No one else had seen them because they didn't exist. He wasn't going to look crazy. "We can accept that, your vessel will not cut into our salvage too much. Take what you can hold." The unarmed salvage destroyer moved off.

Turning toward the machines, he spoke again. "We care not if you take information and records from the ship, we only ask that you leave it intact while we are aboard and leave us alone. Okay?"

Beta team was having some luck with the computer access, finding out what systems were offline and obtaining schematics which would allow for better accuracy when dismantling the ship. A few of its members thought they could get the lights and life support back up and began to work on it.

"lets get to work then" Lt Taka says "I want of this ship as quickly as possible".

she joined by Ensign Uehara and she says to the spinners "with our powered armour and magnetic boots we'll be able to go where you go. together we'll be able to locate the bridge and the computer cores"

"We will not purposefull damage the data storage of this ship, although it is possible that it contains fail safe devices and so forth."

“Perfect” Peter replied. “We’ll be out of your hair in no time” Turning to the two Asian women and the robots, “Have a nice evening.”

Once the team was out, Rita turned to her commanding officer “Tell me I wasn’t the only person who saw that.”

“I saw it, too” Mendes interceded “Some orb thingies made the ceiling cave”

“Not that, idiot. The girl”

Peter had seen it, too. But everything had a logical explanation to it. “It must have been some kind of holo-projection. The Kazecis must’ve of caused a glitch in the system or something. Let’s get a move on. We have plenty of work to do.

"lets start with the bridge then" Lt Taka says to the spinnners and checks the map her suit was building of the ship.

"if our scanners have this right its the top deck of the ship, up at the tip of the prow and it looks like we'll have to walk up a lift shaft to get there unless your ixi can reactivate a lift"

A small purple craft made it's way through space, it was small, only about fifteen metres long, and vaguely tear drop shaped. It was currently scouting out this star system, evaluating it for terraformation and colinization, when it's sensors noted a small build up of different craft.

"Several ships, salvage and recon, it would seem," Said the pilot.

The pilot in question seemed to be a muscular, humanoid panda. A co-pilot sat next to him, identical. In fact, the four special ops troops that this craft carried seemed to be exact replicas of each other as well. The troops donned specially modidfied Covenant SpecOp armour, complete with shielding and cloaking modules.

"Agreed. The derelict that they're all so interested in seems to be a hospital ship, shot to peices..." The co-pilot agreed.

The strange panda-men each bowed thier heads, it would appear they had the sacred duty of a memorial bestowed upon them, any old bodies would be collected and honoured.

"Let us enter the ship. Pay respect to the fallen. Recover and supplies or equipment. The dead shall have no use for them," the team leader, Bark, ordered.

The four SpecOps panda-men placed special space and low-grav suits on. They would be able to breathe if any onboard atmosphere collapsed, and magnatize themselves to the floor should gravity be weak.

The ship cloaked itself, and docked aboard the derelict, the dock was unstable and old. The ship would not be able to keep itself docked, the four panda-men were alone, for the while.

The team diembarked. The carried various weaponary, doubtful they'd need it, and two large cases of equipment, as they were making a beeline for the bridge. Occasionally they would stop and present a small Pandamicean prayer for the fallen.

Main Engineering
Engineering was a vast spacious area, composed of one main level, one upper level and one sub level; the gantry way ran around the around main section of the room and around the reactor. The main reactor itself was one of the first generation Cold Fusion reactors; a testament to its age, it still put out a minimum amount of power even if most of the systems it would normally power were damaged. The reactor itself ran from the top of the upper level right through to the sublevel. Computer panels and consoles in main engineering were mostly dead and those that weren't sporadically flickered with power giving the room a dark eerie feel as the schematic type layout drawing right at the back of the room provided a minimum amount of light

A Man or more a ghost that looked as old as the ship was walking from panel to panel tapping away on the lifeless consoles as if they still worked like he didn't know the ship was dead in space. Life support and Co2 Scrubber controls were on the lower sub level; the darkest part of the room, where several crew members body's lay perfectly preserved by the vacuum of space, Lights could be fixed from the main upper level if the computer consoles still worked…

Corridor C19, deck 14
As if on Que. power was restored to a lift in front of them at the end of the corridor and a pair of doors opened with a small hydraulic hiss, the light inside the lift brighter and lighting up some of the corridor

Main Bridge
The Main bridge was a submarine style layout with the Captain being the centre of the room in a comfortable looking chair; her body still sat there strapped into the chair along with her XO. Wires hung down from the ceiling, bulkheads had crushed a console on the right side and there was a gaping big hole where the main viewer used to be obviously the hull breach had caused there deaths.

A Mercy class ship had two computer cores, the primary core was located deep in the bowls of the ship while the back up core was located on the main bridge, which by pure chance happened to be under the mass of bulkheads that had collapsed

Air shields were wonderful things. One could go through vaccume without the hassle of a heavy suit. Beta team entered engineering on the sublevel and several people began to attempt repairs to the CO2 scrubbers. The rest looked aroundfor anything that they might bag. The bodies made them uneasy.

"Thorn, Creeper, make your way to main engineering, try to get any prupulsion systems online," Bark ordered two of his men. "Me and Orchard will continue to the bridge."

Thorn and Creeper selected an equipment crate, and headed to main engineering, eager to bring the ship to life. Bark and the other panda-man, Orchard, continued to the bridge.

"It should be this way, sir," Orchard said, pointing out a sign saying 'Corridor C19, deck 14'. "There should be an ascendence portal to the bridge."

The two panda-men turned the corner to the lift, only to see two people in red power armour, and some strange metallic beings. The lighting and the lift sprang to life, as if the lift was waiting for them. Orchard and Bark wasted no time, engaging thier active camoflauge and sneaking aboard the lift. They doubted they'd be felt in this lift, as it had presumably been designed to move around large hospital beds.

----------

Thorn and Creeper groaned as thay carried the heavy equipment crate, mercy came as Creeper's HUD informed them they were almost at main engineering's door.

"Someone's comming! Take positions, be ready." They all drew their weapons and hid behind some fixed object in the dim light. The room was once again quiet. "What are you doing here?" came a voice from behind the panda-men when they had entered the room. All that could be made out in the shadows was that he held his weapon firmly aimed at their heads. The others slowly came out as well, each holding these strange creatures at gunpoint. Hopefully they wouldn't need to use their non-lethal weapons, but they were ready.

Thorn surveyed the situation. If these guns were lethal, it would take about three men firing at him to break his energy shield, more if they were non-lethal. Even so, Thorn and Creeper could not overpower these men by themselves, as the two panda-men were armed only with plasma pistols and energy swords.

"What are you doing here?!" A voice demanded of them.

"Nothing fatal," Replied Thorn, picking up his equipment and moving to the nearest console. He stopped when the armed foes pointed thier weapons more convincingly.

"We are attempting to restore power to engines, excuse me a moment."

Thorn pulled out a small drawing of a Pandamicean religious symbol, and placed it in the center of the group of dead bodies.

"Perhaps you could be of aid?" He then asked, attempting diplomacy.

Creeper shuddered, for a moment, he saw an elderly man working at the consoles, as though nothing was wrong...

Moving down the badly lit corridors, Pete reported back to the ship: “This place is getting full, Captain. Folks from everywhere are just descending on this old hulk.”

“Don’t you worry about it. Just be careful and stick to the plan. Now, have you found a decent place for me to dock the Polo” Captain Anthony Santos was still at the controls of his freight ship and looked patiently at the Rachel Ellis, a sleeping giant that would never wake up.

“Yeah, try just about 40 meters ahead of where we docked. Meet you there.”

Gracefully, the freighter started to move along the old ship’s hull. Like a bird choosing it’s perch, it hovered at the spot where Peter had specified. With surgical precision its front section advanced slightly as if anticipating impact. Several small rockets flared just before the smaller vessel touched the other and the captain turned on the magnetic grappler, securing the Polo to the Rachel Ellis. From space, it looked like a small fish kissing a whale.

The captain made his way to the machine shop where the rest of his crew was waiting, a rag-tag group of menial labourers and ship hands. Some most likely have criminal records but Anthony was always big on second chances and none of them have slipped up yet. He clapped his hands twice “Alright, boys! Cut me a hole!”

Immediately, the forward bay door opened and revealed the Rachel Ellis’ belly. Two men with large laser pointers guided two long mechanical arms with plasma cutters on the extremities to the derelict’s hull causing two blinding flashes like a pair of suns suddenly materialised in the cargo bay. In a few short minutes nine large sections had been cut out of the ship allowing for the salvage op to move along quicker and they would be put back before they left.

“I thought you’d never make it” Peter joked, already on the other side of the hole.

Anthony turned to his crew “Get started in here. Start with cutting the walls and pulling out the cable. Get the lights, too; the hydraulics in the doors. You know what to do” Walking out the large entrance he looked at his search team “Let’s take a look around, shall we?”

OOC: Is it too late/full to join? Sounds interesting.

ooc: I don't think so, but we better wait for the other's opinions.

Ic: "Now why would you be restoring power to these engines?" They were allowed to pass and move about, but the Kazeci weapons were trained upon them at all times. "And why would we help you restore power to them?"

Yes, I did ask a stupid question. Should've just shot them and had done with it. Thorn thought to himself.

"Because we intend to bring this ship back to our planet, looking back on it now, I guess you don't really have any motivation to aid us..." He replied.

Creeper opened up the box of equipment. Between the tools and components there nestled a plasma grenade.

Why, oh, why did I pack that? Creeper asked himself. He quickly snapped the crate shut. The other men were getting nosy.

----------

"Incoming ship," the co-pilot of the Pandamicean ship stated.

"It's one of ours," the pilot replied.

The incoming ship was of the same model as the first one. The pilots had sent a message back to the fleet, as they couldn't salvage and repair this ship on thier own. The ship docked, the additional four panda-men boarded the once active hospital ship, intent on retreiving equipment and supplies.

((CURSE JOLT FORUMS!! I had this long reply typed up...This is a bit lackluster compared to it))

The mechanoid silently stood up as his systems went back online; despite being synthetic, even he couldn't get used to impromptu teleportation and the automatic systems reboot that came with it. As his sensors returned to normal, leaving the hazy cloud of static behind, he looked to his four companions, noticing that they too seemed to be just "waking up," one would call it.

The small outfit, consisting of four Ga-Sing (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/Ycom/Mechanoids/Ga-SingDroid.bmp) combat droids and the leader, a Ga-Alter model, which was relatively new and only differed from the Ga-Sings in its black-and-white paintjob, stood in an empty hallway of the derelict medical ship. They had been atomically disjoined and teleported from the Scavenger-class vessel before being rejoined, sent to investigate the abandoned craft. They would have used a more conventional approach, such as a transfer vessel or a recon craft, but for the fact that there had been sightings of numerous other ships in the area of disputable origin.

Each of the Ga-Sings was equipped with a different weapon; one held a plasma autorifle, and the next was equipped with a claw-like weapon that sparked and crackled with electricity: a Tesla Cannon. The other two both held Diskblade Guns, which would be exceptionally useful in the closed quarters of this vessel. The Ga-Alter, on the other hand, held a rather strange weapon. He held a large, cannon-like gun in his hands, heavy enough so that it had to be carried like a minigun. From it ran a hose, which connected to a large, metal cylinder securely fastened to his back.

As his speech processors came back online, he looked towards his fellow soldiers, speaking in a highly-synthesized voice that oddly held a fair amount of individualistic personality. "Alright, remember the plan. We make our way towards the bridge. If the systems are operational, or at least salvageable, at all, we should be able to locate a map from the terminals. Be on your guard though; ships of unknown origin have been sensed nearby. We don't know if they're hostile. Let's move."

"You can't have the ship. Perhaps you didn't realise that we beat you to it? Or that we have the most powerful ship in the area?" He took a further step forward and spoke. "We're scrapping this ship and if you're on it when we do, you'll go down with it."

"What's that?" Another man asked, indicating the grenade with his weapon.

OOC: Is it too late/full to join? Sounds interesting.

OOC: Sure, feel free, you'll probably be the last though as it'll get a bit crowded.

"A confectionary," Creeper replied, taking out the grenade out of the crate. It was obviously time to use it.

"You seem to think we'll just let you take this vessel. Another Pandamicean craft has just docked here. Four more warriors are here to aid us. Plus-- Throw it now!" Thorn screamed.

Creeper hurled the grenade at the nearest enemy. The two panda-men tore out of main engineering.

"Additional warriors, rendevouz with us at enclosed co-ordinates. Vermin congregate in main engineering, we need help killing them!" Thorn screamed into his com.

----------

The two Pandamicean craft circling the ship cloaked and flew a safe distance away. They had recieved the signal, and assumed the Vermin craft would lash out at them.

The lift door opens and Nomi says "it looks like something still works here. shall we go?"

the Kirisubans enter first and Nomi looks for the top deck while she waits for the Spinners to follow them

Outside Main Engineering
As the Grenade exploded, everything in engineering went dead (not that there was much working). All the consoles, computer panels even the flickering black lit schematic drawing went completely dark, living only the dim light from the reactor to light the room in a gently blue hue a few feet from the reaction chamber. Other than this the room was now completely pitch black.

Almost as if in retaliation, as the two Pandamicean's Creeper and Thorn Ran from main engineering the Emergency blast proof Doors ahead of them came down from the ceiling shutting with a loud thud; this was repeated behind them. Trapping the two Pandamicean's between a rock and a hard place. An apparition appeared before them, a woman dressed in white rag's with long black hair covering her eyes, she looked down almost in shame as she slowly approached the two Pandamicean's dragging two chains behind her while made a grating sound.

The entire compartment creaked as she said in a low voice, almost a whisper; "I Owe you…" she said in her low voice; "I owe you…" she repeated before looking up at the two Pandamicean warriors; "PAIN!" she screamed at them.

The Walls of the compartment began to ooze human blood it dripped down the walls turning them red and started to fill the bottom of the sealed compartment; slowly rising. And venting the Oxygen as well. The ship itself was indeed trying to kill them

The doors to the bridge slid open and the outfit of synthenoids stepped through the portal and into the decaying ruins of the control room. Their feet, previously suspended above a concentration of residual air particles that allowed them to tread silently upon the ground, dropped to meet the metal plating as they entered the vacuum.

The Sing-model droid holding the Tesla Claw immediately headed towards the jumbling of bulkheads that had toppled over onto the backup computer core, probing the scrap heap for anything of use. Disabling and slinging the menacing, crackling weapon onto his back, he moved aside one of the fallen partitions to reveal a section of the treasure trove of data hidden underneath. Now working with a fervor, he began moving aside all the broken bulkheads one by one, tossing them into a pile nearby as he dug towards the console.

As one of the green droids armed with a Diskblade Cannon and the one holding a plasma autorifle both headed to investigate the large hole in the hull that had once held the main viewscreen, the final one began checking all the undamaged consoles, checking to see if they could be revitalized, and if so, then if he could access the ship's data stored on it.

The final membre of the group, the Alter-model holding the large, flamethrower-like weapon, appropriately headed towards the center of the bridge and the captain's chair on it. Reaching a hand out, he turned the chair so that the corpse was facing him. She was nearly perfectly preserved; the vacuum of space was kind to the dead. She had died of suffocation of course; the gaping hole in the wall was testament to that.

Outside the ship, where the ships of the other races stood still, their away teams gone, a single lone assault shuttle hypered in the system, taking no note of the other vessels. Some burst of energy had been emitted from the system, and the ship was here to investigate. On board was a small crew, four commandos and two droids. The team had been out en route to a scrubbed mission, and now with nothing to do had come here to investigate. Like the other craft, it slipped in and quickly docked with the derelict vessel, finding an additional boarding hatch on one of the far sides. An atmosphere channel was established, and as the door to the shuttle opened, four white-armored men walked out, all carrying elongated rifles, followed by two taller grey droid units. The lead commando, Ulic Wrait, stopped at the door, followed by his squadmates Cay Tellum, Marka Cartho, and Tuval Sym.

"Test the atmosphere." remarked Ulic seriously. Now was no time to be slacking off.
"Oxygen-Nitrogen." replied Cartho, "should be fine for us."
"Right, you can turn off your helmet filters, then. Stay on the alert, those other ships we saw coming in could have teams already aboard."

The commando team walked slowly down the halls, not far off from the rest of the groups, the two droids hanging slightly back.

One of the nerdy type took the grenade hard in the gut, it having been thrown full force toward a target less than three feet away. Before the breath had completely left his body, however, his life was ended. His death was followed shortly by that of 5 others.
_____________________

"I've lost beta's comm signals!"
"I'm still getting Jim."
"...explosion...most dead...strange panda-men...hostile...more coming..."
"Jim! Jim! Get back to us now! We're not far from the original bay." Tom was in charge of the entire team and he let 5 of them die. I shouldn't have let Jim take that command, he wasn't ready.
_____________________

As Jim and the rest of beta team could see fine by the dim light, thanks to their nearly nocturnal eyes and the enhancement of their helmets. They left the dead, unable to carry them and unable to accept their loss. They left through an open door on the upper level, it was the only one they could get through, and proceed as fast as possible toward their transport.

They slowed when they came close to the newest group aboard, moving in stealth once again. "Is there another way around?"
"No, not a quick one."
"Pull your weapon and follow me." Jim turned the corner and rushed down the hall, hiding behind a fallen beam. He raised his weapon over it and fired at the unknown group, being sure not to actually hit anyone, just buzz over a few heads. The fist-sized transparent fire zipped by and dissipated down the hall, becoming nothing more than a rush of air. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" he demanded.

As soon as Jim asked his question, all four men were down on one knee, rifles up, aiming down the hall, the droids electrifying their arm sabres. Seeing no further return fire, Ulic motioned for the team to relax.

"We're just a commando team checking out the area." he responded. "This ship looks deserted. What are you doing here?"

"We're here to salvage this wreck. Since we arrived others have joined us, each claiming it for themselves. Less than 5 minutes ago I just had 5 members of my team killed. You wouldn't happen to be their murderers, would you?" Jim was having a hard time holding back his anger, but these were most likely just another group of innocents. As far as he knew, there was only one hostile group aboard. "Look, why don't we all go and meet the others. There's safety in numbers with hostiles aboard. We don't want to fight you."

"We're not in the fighting mood either. Lead us to the others, will you." replied Ulic. He motioned for the droids to hold back and cover the rear. Now with the mention of murderers, one couldn't be too cautious.

Jim gave his friend a look which said he was sorry if anything happened because of his next move. Then they got up and walked down the hall. "They should be just a ways up this corridor and to the left."

When they arrived, they were met with guns; alpha team wasn't going to trust anyone after the last radio report. Tom spoke and lowered his weapon. "Jim! Thank god you've made it! Who are these people with you?"
"They just came aboard, here to investigate. I figured with the current situation we needed to make as many friends as possible."
"There's only two of you? Only two made it?" Rich, another member of alpha team, asked weakly.

"What's the situation?" Ulic asked warily. Though the second group seemed to be friends of the first, Ulic wasn't going to let his team be caught with their pants down.

Tom spoke, "We are a Kazeci salvage crew, here to scrap this heap and bring it home. Our transport brought 14 of us over, we broke into two groups- the seven you see here and another, the only two survivors of which stand beside you." He turned to Jim. "What happened, your comm wasn't working very well?"

"We were in engineering when these two panda-men things walked in. We held them at gun point and they demanded the ship to take home with them. They also claimed to have more warriors boarding the craft. Then one of them pulled out a plasma grenade."

Tom turned back. "There seen to be only three other groups aboard. One is a team of two women, here only for the information the ship might hold. The second is a freelance hauler team with a small cargo ship. And the last are mechanoids. I don't particularly trust their intent, but they went off to help the two women as their goals were similar."

Thorn swallowed hard as the walls literally started bleeding. Creeper bowed his head in shame and apology.

"What was I thinking? Unsolicited combat in an unhallowed tomb..." He lamented.

The lack of oxygen and even drowning in blood would not affect the two panda-men, as they were in full space gear, but the two panda-men knew what this magnitude of crime deserved. Creeper activated his com.

"Panda-men aboard. Combat aboard this resting place is a futile endevour, seek to pacify the souls that cannot rest. We will be dead momenterily. Do not make the same mistakes we did."

As one panda-man, Thorn and Creeper removed thier helmets, and awaited the punishment they deserved.

----------

The four additional panda-men who had just recently boarded had seemed to have found a children's ward. They investigated old medical records and inferior medical equipment, they were briefly distracted as a shape resembling an infant shuffled out of the corner of thier eyes.

"What was that?" Said the youngest, Seedling.

"Twas' your imagination," Said the leader, Citrus, who had jumped highest upon seeing the shape. "Seeing as you a too jumpy to investigate the dead, you and Sap shall secure some of the smaller medical vehicles in the hangers. Me and Vine shall stay here and gather equipment."

Sap and Seedling skulked out of the room in an attempt to find some form of map or directory to the hangers. Little did thay know they were dangerously close to the same men that thier brethren had assaulted in mian engineering...

Sealed Corridor
The Corridor continued to fill with blood, red flooding the sealed section quickly the blood was already waist high, the woman stood there and cocked her head to one side as she watched the two Panda men. Something about his words caught her attention she was fully prepared to kill them for their attack so much death had already occurred on this ship. The oxygen stopped venting from the compartment and slowly started to return the woman in white rags obviously a patient looked the two panda-men up and down. They were willing to accept their fate, rather than fight it; that made them interesting to her

"What is your purpose?" She spoke again in her low almost whispered voice that seemed to carry clearly across the room; "Speak quickly" she added, noting that the blood was still rising

OOC: Edit while we wait for the others to get to the bridge..

((Uh..I believe I'm the only one on the Bridge at the moment...Kirusibo's still waiting in the lift for the Spinners. Correct me if I'm wrong...I may have missed a post.))

Thorn gasped, taking in air.

"W-we origionally intended to take the ship and cremate the dead," He replied. "But evidently, it is not ours to take. Tell us, how can the panda-men aboard allow you to rest?"

((Uh..I believe I'm the only one on the Bridge at the moment...Kirusibo's still waiting in the lift for the Spinners. Correct me if I'm wrong...I may have missed a post.))
Whoops...then that means I'm not on the bridge either, I'm still hiding in the lift...

EDIT: Fixed.

Sealed Corridor

"The wishes of mortals have no power here", she said in her low voice looking Thorn in the eyes; to gage the truthfulness of his answers; "You would help us know peace?" she asked curious as to why these beings would help them. She seemed to hover there and tossed her chains as she thought over the words Thorn had spoken to her; once again eyeing him and his companion curiously.

"Tis' a sacred duty," Thorn replied. "To help the weak and the merciful who were once preyed upon reach the divine beyond."

"Can't believe they taught us that in basic training... " Creeper muttered.

Medical Lab
Another infant, this one around 5 appeared in the medical lab she had coppery brown hair, cut at her shoulders, it curled slightly giving it a weave appearance. She smiled at the two occupants grinning like a Cheshire cat; she skipped over in front of the two; "What can flow but isn't water, what is all around but rarely seen" she said cutely looking up at the two after giving them the riddle.

Sealed Corridor

"Sacred Duty?" she asked, "are you priests then?" she said with a hint of humour in her voice, that two priests would make it all the way out here and try to make this unholy place…holy. It was a delicious irony to her.

"No..no. We have not yet earned such an honour. We are mere soldiers, bred for combat, we'll die in combat. But as there is a distinct absence of priests here, we shall spread Greenday's divine light in thier stead," Thorn replied. "If you could see your way to it, we'd appreciate it if we don't drown in the blood of the fallen."

He grinned nervously as he tried to keep himself afloat in the neck-high blood.

----------

"A road!" Vine announced triumphantly to the breif spirit.

Citrus smacked Vine's head.

"Fool! The answer is air!"

The two turned expectantly to the small child, forgetting and business about salvaging equipment.

Sealed Corridor

"Bred For combat?" she asked, that didn't sound very pleasant to her
"Very well Nobel creatures; it has been decided you shall live this day" she said getting close to Thorn so close he would be able to feel her breath against his fur as she spoke her next words.

"Find the truth, if you wish to free us" she whispered before turning on her heal and walking away fading right through the sealed door, a second later the doors hissed open and the blood flooded out into the corridor and apperated away.

Medical lab

The small child giggled and covered her mouth before bouncing up and down "no silly" she said; "its blood, Blood flows like water, its rarely seen but its all around" she said as if her logic couldn't be faulted in only the way a 5 year old girl could.

"I'm Kisa, what's your name?"

Citrus entered military mode. He snapped a salute to the little girl.

"Ma'am! Panda-man combatant designation Two million and Sixty one!"

He suddenly realized who he was talking to, he blushed as much as a furred creature could. Vine sighed and spoke to the little girl.

"I'm Vine, this is Citrus. I also have a riddle, ahem. What contains the most precious treasure, but has no bolt or lock to tether?"

He grinned, and waited for the small girl to figure this one out.

----------

The two panda-men fell onto the floor in a flood of phantom blood. They quickly re-donned thier helmets and left, eager to find more panda-men to help find the 'truth'.

Medical lab
Kisa giggled some more at the 'furry man' as she thought of him and watched him salute "you are silly" she said between giggles; "I like you"

She stopped giggled and for a moment looked deep in thought at the Panda-mans riddle "a ship in the night, left to his plight" she said curiously waiting for an answer with baited breath. She didn't mind being wrong, she was having fun with the two furry men

"Nope. An egg!" Vine replied, pulling his lucky rubber egg from behind the little girl's ear.

He gasped as his armoured hand travelled through the side of the girl's head, as though moving through a mist. His egg fell to the floor.

"You-you're one of the restless?" He stammered.

The two panda-men were not afraid, they were filled with sorrow that this girl they had grown fond of had died some fifty years previous.

----------

Sap and Seedling made thier way through the dark corridors, fear ebbed it's way into them. A door opened up ahead, a dark liquid ran to the ground, and two phantom beings picked themselves up from the floor, they groaned. Sap lost his head completely and drew his plasma rifle.

"Stay your weapon, brother!" One of the phantoms said.

Seedling turned on his torch, in front of them stood Thorn and Creeper, covered in blood.

"I'm assuming you fought your way out of trouble?" Sap said to them, casting his eyes over the blood-stained armour.

"No...ghost...begged for absolution...entered the panda-men into a covenant, find the truth and lay the restless spirits to sleep..." Creeper answered, huffing and puffing as he spoke.

"Come on, I'll explain as we regroup," Thorn added, noting the confused look on the other warrior's faces.

The four panda-men set off, looking for the rest of thier group.

Medical Lab
The little girl giggled as the answer was given to her and then from pulled from her ear; then frowned as the egg hit the floor; she look at the two 'fury men' who appeared shocked.

"Restless?" she asked pondering; "oh you mean dead...yeah…" she said sadly her disposition changing to one of somber reflection for a moment.

"Bad things happened on this ship," she said getting a far off look in her eyes; "very bad things"

"Things, perhaps, that we could prevent?" Citrus asked, kneeling down to the girl's hieght.

Vine's audio scanner's perked up, a radio was transmitting.

"They were at this lab, last time we left, it's just through here, brothers," A close voice said.

Seedling, Sap, Thorn, and Creeper entered the lab. They stopped and stared at Kisa, thier black eyes blinking dumbly. Citrus rose to his full height and addressed them.

"Brothers, this is Kisa. Kisa was unjustly murdered many years past. Kisa, these are my brothers, they will be justly murdered if they sneak up on me again," He said jokingly.

Thorn brushed the empty threat off, and turned to Kisa.

"You wouldn't know an older woman who seems to favour chains, would you?"

Medical Lab

Kisa still had the far off look in her eyes' "Prevent? No… happened long ago, long before you were here in this place" she said almost teary, then she noticed the other furry men and ran behind vine hugging his leg

She heard her being introduced followed by the joke and she was back to her old giggly self' "He's silly", She said off hand to the group of panda men pointing to vine from behind his leg.

"Chains…" she said thoughtfully; "Immy!" she said loudly and joyfully happy to have got the answer.

The panda-man snorted in thier helmets, amused to see thier brother who had once claimed he could defeat the entire Terran dominion with nothing but a twig and a pillow being referred to as 'silly' by a harmless ghost child.

"Then, we are friends of 'Immy', broadly speaking. She has assigned us a holy duty, we are going to find the 'truth', and lay your weary head to rest," Thorn said, his blood-stained chest swelling with pride.

"So good of you to keep your commanding officer in the loop about these things," snapped Citrus, a bit miffed.

"Just tell us what to do, where to go," Creeper pleaded.

Medical Lab

Kisa stepped out from behind Vine's leg, friends of auntie Immy were friends of all of us; "the truth?" Kisa asked "I like puzzles, can I help?" she said looking at the proud Thorn and smiling broadly she knew if Immy asked something it was usually important. She closed her eyes briefly and conjured a glowing yellow orb around the size of a tennis ball if flew from her hands toward Vine and hovered over his shoulder lighting up the entire room easily and far better than any flashlight.

"She's an angel...or some other divine messenger..." Thorn whispered as the orb shed light all over the room.

"Yes, but it is apparent she does not know how to free herself, or any other lost soul aboard," Seedling commented, also watching the orb with awe.

"Well," Vine said. "Let us not spend any more time dawdling here. Kisa, would you like to come with us, to find out how to allow you into the divine beyond?"

(OOC: Good RP, I'm really enjoying myself here. But should we stop for today, to let the others catch up?)

(OOC: Sure, I think thatsa good idea. we need to let the others get to the bridge too)

Medical lab
Kisa giggled as the other seemed to look at the orb in awe orbs were easy to do, she looked up at Vine who had spoken to her "Yeah!" she said excitedly skipping around happy to be able to help. She trusted auntie Immy's judgement with these panda men but also Kisa had the ability to read peoples soul; she could tell if someone was good or evil.

"Have you seen mommy or my sister?" Kisa asked out of the blue wondering for a moment; after all if they had met auntie Immy they might have seen her mother or sister

OOC:Hoping to join in.If my presence is unwelcome,then I will leave.

IC:

The being known as Rugal exited the wormhole it had generated, before it closed up behind him, dissipating in a burst of radiation that would be lost in the cosmic background microwave radiation.

Had 'it' been assigned a gender,it would be labeled as male.It did possess masculine qualities,but to think of it as such was erroneous.It had been human,at a point several millenia ago.With the help of technology,and through spiritual training,the being known only as Rugal had accelerated his mental,physical and spiritual evolution through the ages.

In his contemplation,alone in the dark interstellar void,he had suddenly felt the pain,the horror that radiated from this human world.War.Yet,somehow,one speck of that pain had stood out.Somehow,death for these souls was delayed.Their souls,trapped in this plane of existence,calling out for a release.

Suffering that should not be.He had contemplated a course of action.50 years,as humans measured the temporal flow of reality,had passed him by,while the ship drifted in the vacuum of interplanetary space.

His wisdom and power easily eclipsed any of these younger beings,yet he still had a path to travel.On that path,he had seen the flows of space and time bringing him here.He could have passed it by,yet ones from beyond the Universe had told him to come here.Self-interest was no motivation,simply curiosity.If these young ones suffered,he would help if it suited him,and if they understood him,though he doubted that.

-----
A form of plasma intelligence within a network of silicon picobots assuming a humanoid shape entered through the vast gap in the hull.All these other younger beings had entered it,carbon-based life forms most of them,some of them silicon and electron-based computing intelligences.

All were armed with weapons that were truly,a nuisance.They would delay him if they took his intentions as hostile.Hoping for a logical and reasoned discussion with others to gain more information,even as senses scanned the electromagnetic spectrum for more information,noting the anomalies throughout the ship,and detecting an emotion one would describe as malice,suppressed within.

Noting the two most likely parties to respond with logic,he designated the ones to approach and began to let his picobots disassemble a path through the superstructure of the vessel,the metal before him separating an an atomic level.

The carbon and silicon beings that aimed for the computing cores of this ship,at the bridge,and the carbon-based life form similar to Terran Panda's that seemed to be at the locality of a spiritual and electromagnetic anomaly.The Zero-Point Energy Field began to strangely gain fluidity,as Rugal observed and analysed it.

There was a deeper presence here,an obscured malice,and death was prevented from fulfilling its natural role here.Something that Rugal might intervene in,if it so required,but more likely,he would simply observe.

(OOC: Welcome, you sound rather interesting.)

Tom spoke, "We are a Kazeci salvage crew, here to scrap this heap and bring it home. Our transport brought 14 of us over, we broke into two groups- the seven you see here and another, the only two survivors of which stand beside you." He turned to Jim. "What happened, your comm wasn't working very well?"

"We were in engineering when these two panda-men things walked in. We held them at gun point and they demanded the ship to take home with them. They also claimed to have more warriors boarding the craft. Then one of them pulled out a plasma grenade."

Tom turned back. "There seen to be only three other groups aboard. One is a team of two women, here only for the information the ship might hold. The second is a freelance hauler team with a small cargo ship. And the last are mechanoids. I don't particularly trust their intent, but they went off to help the two women as their goals were similar."
"I suggest we pursue two actions, in any order," remarked Ulic, "first, we should hunt down those two who took the lives of your comrades. If they are true in that they have warriors boarding, we should probaly eliminate them to rid ourselves of a potential threat. Secondly, we should probaly find a computer core of sorts to access either a history or a way to work this ship. There's probaly a console in either engineering or the bridge, but I'd recommend the bridge. It'll have other things of interest."

Jim was reluctant to admit his team's weakness. "We have no way of killing or even incapacitating anyone. These weapons," he held his up for show, "they fire 'shove' waves. This one will knock you flat on your back, but that's about it. When we shot at you, you remember that you didn't hear an impact? The waves dissipate over distance- it never made it to the far end of the hall.

Oh, and engineering isn't likely to be of much use. Plasma grenades have a way of destroying 50-year-old barely-functioning consoles."

Tom spoke. "The bridge is going to be a crowed place- several teams have left for it already. It would likely be safe from our attackers and might allow us to pool our resources. I'd say it's our best bet."

"Don't worry about killing them. We have ways of doing that." Ulic said, motioning to his gun and to the two droids. "But we don't have to kill them...maybe just leave them here to die after we wound them a bit. But I say we start on off to the bridge, then...the sooner we find out more about this place, the better."

The group of five advanced through the dark corridors, illuminated only by the shoulder lights on their plastinium armour. They carried packs with demolitions equipment: plasma torches, magneto-hammers, ever faithful and timeless crowbars and the like. Having been notified by their workmen of the sighting of even more unknown ships they brought extra weaponry to supplement their shock rifles. Kurt now manned a gauss cannon notable for magnetically firing the extremely dense Castigator rounds at supersonic velocities and at extremely high cyclic rates.
“The air’s pretty breathable in this section, guys” Rita monitored the atmospheric analyser she held in her hand carefully for hazardous chemicals in the air. Casually, the search team raised their helmets’ face masks which had been hiding their noses and mouths.

“Our wrecking crew’s taking the section we landed the Polo in apart. Soon there won’t be anything left of it but support beams and gravity cells. And we’ll take those before sealing up the wall to leave. For now, let’s see if we can find in the residential sections” Captain Santos actually wanted to get to the bridge before any other teams did but he and his team couldn’t risk bumping in to the Kazecis as it might arouse tempers like it had when his second in command met Tom Brigham. Computer systems in command sections were always the best and fetched the best prices. Claiming that equipment was paramount but unfortunately the two Asian women and the alien droids were probably still en route there. He would have to wait till they were done cataloguing the ship’s info, although the reason why anyone would want 50 year-old schematics escaped him. He’d go on to the residential sections on for jewellery, furniture and other collectible items first.

It was doubtful that any of the other ships’ crews would go into these areas since they were government-employed. An advantage of owning a private enterprise was the absence of regulations and protocol. If he were still in the Steelwall Fleet he’d be demoted for ransacking and selling off trophies; as the captain of his own ship, it was his job.

They moved from quarters to quarters scoring everything from 14 karat gold necklaces right off the necks of dead women to antique mini-discs.

While in the former residence of one of the derelicts more well-off doctors or officers Mendes was intrigued by an interesting piece of old technology: “What’s this thing for?” It was a silver and black object with buttons digital displays on it.

Kurt walked to it and laid his gloved hand on it. “My grandfather used to have one of these. He bought it the time he was on Old Terra. It’s called a radio”

“What’s it for?” Mendes inquired, genuinely interested

Kurt: “It’s for listening to music and the news”

Mendes: “You mean there’s no screen?”

Kurt: “No screen.”

Mendes looked disparagingly at his discovery: “What’s the fun in that?”

Kurt rolled his eyes and walked out without saying a word.

<OOC: I’m trying to give Seven Spin Clans enough time to get to the elevator since I was thinking of using it to get to the bridge, too. Otherwise, I suppose I’ll just “find” another way there.>

((OOC: This caught my eye, I would like to join, if I'm unwelcome, just let it be known, and you'll never hear from me again....least not in this RP.))

A smallish ship wandered through the space sectors, it was not the most armored ship that had been made out in the sands of time, nor did it look entirely like a space ship. Instead it looked more like a giant soda bottle. On the bridge of the ship people bustled about, and one person shouted across the five others, " Multiple ships detected in a nearby sector."

The person that seemed in charge brewed over this for a second before shouting for all to hear, "Get everyone to their raiding stations, put the ship in full stealth and head straight for them."

Across the pirate ship a green light flashed, meaning to get ready for a raid.

*******
The bottle like ship closed in on the wreck, and the ships surrounding it. The main person on the bridge noticed the mass of ships surrounding this one ship, and thought it over for a minute.

"I don't like the look of this, send a single ship out to investigate."

Silence was the response, the whole ship had heard the order, and noone on the bridge could respond, anyone else was too far away to respond.

In the belly of the ship a single smaller ship ejected out of the side, and headed straight for the medical ship. This ship looked like a smaller bottle, with a flat specially designed front. Four people took residence inside this vessel, and they all wore the same battlesuit. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v650/deathwitharifle/Battlesuit.jpg)

The smaller ship attached to a section along the side of the Rachel Ellis, and began it's dirty work. From the inside of where the ship had attached, an outline of a circle appeared. A hole was suddenly drilled in the center of the circle. A small explosive charge blew up, and a circular hole was made in the side of the ship. The hallway was filled with flames, and shortly behind it were the four Nofian Fortuknights.

The Fortuknights was a project developed shortly after the Mercenary State of Nation of Fortune expanded into space. It was a project that emphasised a tactic where the soldiers, who were hired by whoever, would mass their smaller, very maneuverable ships around a bigger one. The smaller ships would then attach to the side, make an opening by creating a circle of intense heat and setting an explosion off in the center, making a circle to enter the ship. The newly formed entrance would now be automatically cleared with a flamethrower. All over the ship this would happen and troops would successfully raid the target. When not in use for a job, the Fortuknights would act as pirates in an attempt to bring more money into the home nation.

The soldiers cleared the hall. One of the soldiers stepped back into their ship and pressed a few buttons, now their ship would be used as a relay point for monitoring their vital signals, and any information they needed to pass on. The one in the lead pressed a few buttons on her forearm display, and she was linked up to the captain.

"Captain Puller, this is boarding party number one, headed by Pixous. Under my command are Nickel Seven, Templer, and PDU 696. We detect no lifeforms in our current position, we will head towards the bridge in an attempt to determine the logs on the ship. OVER"

No response was given, this was standard response for when the ship was under stealth. If the ship sent a transmission, it's location would be given away.

Pixous pressed down on her collarbone infront of her throat and spoke to the others.

"OK everyone, keep on your guard. Don't engage anyone unless neccesary. If an engagement is unavoidable, then don't shoot kill, we want as much information as possible, and corpses can't talk. We are headed towards the bridge to find the logs on this ship, and whoever else to see what the other ships are doing here. Remain on your top stealth abilities. Remember your training, keep an eye on the radar, and dissapear into the shadows if someone is coming."

Her hand fell from the position it was in. Pressing down on that spot allowed for communication. No reply, other than nodding, came from her squad, as they started down the hall, weapons held at the shoulder.

The synthenoid tapped one of the keys on the apparently undamaged console, emitting an electronic-sounding, sigh-like noise as he noticed that no response from the machine was forthcoming. Kneeling down, he slid his fingers into a conveniently placed dent between the maintenace hatch and the main plating of the terminal, ripping off the metal square to reveal the internal circuitry of the unit. There he found the problem; as if by some freak electrical accident, all the wiring and tubing that had once hung in the compartment were now fused together into a giant, black mass, with specks of red and green poking out among the dull and colorless glob.

With a sigh, he moved on to the next console. It was the last one on this block; the others had all either been like the previous one or smashed by the fallen bulkheads. The Sing-model didn't expect much better. The probability of this one being any different was forty-two point one one to one, including random chance input and generalization integers factored into the process. If he had breath, he would have held it as he pressed the power-up button on the console.

The screen flickered, and activated.

The mechanoid looked up with fascination, waiting for it to fully boot up (it was an antiquated system after all).

On the other side of the bridge, the Sing-model with the Tesla Claw had finally uncovered the backup Computer Core, the slapdash pile of bulkheads lieing in a large mountain behind him. He began scanning every inch of the console, looking for any and all functioning circuitry or operational systems, that he might access the information held within.

Vine shook his head.

"Apologies. We have not made thier acquantence yet. But we seem to have a knack for attracting the dead, so I'm assuming its only a matter of time until we do."

Citrus poked his head quickly out of the medical lab, he exited, and motioned for the others to follow him. The panda-men filed out of the room, Vine keeping close to Kisa, even though she had been murdered years before Vine had been born he still felt protective of her.

"Kisa, any information on what happened to this ship would be most welcome. Men, we'll try to find a log or black box, if only we knew where to look," Citrus said.

"Bark and Orchard are en route to the bridge. The last we saw of them, they had cloaked and snuck aboard a lift that would take them there," Thorn replied.

"Excellent. Be wary, the men we assaulted in main engineering may be coming for our blood, keep your eye out for anything strange," Creeper warned.

Odd? Thought Vine, casting an eye of the spirit of a five year old girl, and the mystical orb of light she'd created.

Citrus darted his eyes from side-to-side. He assumed the other groups, including the vengeful ones, were close by. If any other group chose to attack them, they would be caught completely by suprise in this corridor...

The Nofians had heard the Pandamen coming long before they could actually see them. They took positions where they wouldn't be found, and could surround them easily.

Not far above all of this were the Kazecis and their new companions. It was difficult to see in the dim light, but the floor/ceiling between these two hallways had large holes in many places. The Kazecis, of course, kept silent and hoped to pass unnoticed.

The seventh member of Alpha Team slipped and fell, taking a few lose hunks of debris noisily with him to the floor below. He still held on to the upper deck with one hand, but couldn't pull himself up. At least 9 hearts were racing at that moment.

A pair of legs and a lower body emerged through the ceiling that one of the Nofians was hanging on to. He didn't make a move, even though the the back of the Kazecis head was inches from his. Holding onto the pipe with his legs, one of his arms snaked around the mans neck, and pulled him down. The man was now dangling by his neck from an almost unseen deitiy. The battlesuits blended in quite nicely with rotting walls, ceilings, and floors. It also helped that they had a setting that allowed for near invisibility. Hanging upside down he pulled the man up, pressing his head against the button that allows the soldier to talk.

"Well, well, well, looks like someone was trying to be sneaky and failed. Didn't think that anyone could hear your footsteps. Mess with the best and die like the rest. Tell me everything you know about the ship or your dead, don't try anything funny either, or your just as dead," came the gruff, but very hushed voice of PDU 696.

Vine heard the commotion well. The sound of a short cry, then a string of threats. He activated his optic zoom, he could make out someone seemingly hanging in the air. The other followed suit.

"Cloaking..." Thorn said. "Let us bring aid to the one in danger, keep your eyes open."

The panda-men moved in. Although they had been born for the kill, they knew what a five year old spirit didn't need to see. Strictly non-lethal for now. Four of them pulled shock-sticks, similar to cattle prods, they'd usually knock someone out with a jab. Thorn and Creeper, who didn't have any non-lethal weapons, picked up bits of debris off the walls that could be used as effective clubs.

The panda-men could spot cloaking better than the rest, as they used it too. They would keep thier eyes open for light distortions, sounds, and strange magnification, standard SpecOps training. The panda-men gave a battle cry, and moved in to find the cloaked men, starting with the one threatening the Kazeci man.

Nickel Seven closed one of her eyes, and the other turned a bright red, it's a pity it couldn't be seen through the eyeholes in her suit, or the cloaking for that matter. The everything within three hundered and sixty degree's became visible to her, except the little girl. She bit her lip as the first pandaman passed. A dribble of blood formed on her lip, and ran down her face, catching on her mask. She licked the blood off of her lip and the cut that had been made was gone.

Pixous waited for the second Pandaman to pass Nickel's position, and sorted through the screen's on her computer that was implanted into her skull. She activated motion tracking, and everymotion that was made in the hall was detected. She saw the club and was glad that the helmets they wore would nulify them. The floor above was crawling with activity, but for now that was unimportant.

Templar was a large man, and was unsure of this races physical strength, but if it was similar to an average human, he could overpower them with ease. Normally he carried a large weapon, but a stealth mission didn't need one, his rifle was ready, and he stepped into action after the fourth had passed.

Templar's feet thumped when he hit the ground and said, "This is none of your business." It was punctuated by the sounds of three weapons cocking, and the ringing of a knife being drawn.

PDU uncloaked and held his knife at the throat of the man. "Anything funny and he dies."

Citrus pulled the four plasma grenades off his belt. He moved his thumb, it hovered over the button that would arm it, and held the grenade close to the other three.

"Let him go, or everyone dies," He said.

The eyes of the other panda-men bulged, but they said nothing.

If the face of the Nofian's could be seen a smirk would be across all of them.

"I'm not that stupid. I've been to every warzone across the galaxy in the past twenty five years. I've seen plenty of warriors, and I know you wouldn't kill seventeen people, over half of which are innocent," Templar said not moving an inch. "Besides, you can only see one of us clearly enough to stick him, and the rest of us could easily funnel out of the area, leaving you to die, along with the nine men above us," he added.

Corridor
Kisa Looked up at Citrus considering his question carefully; she didn't know what happened to the ship; "Bad things, many people died, the ship rocked a lot, there was fire, a lot of fire" she said trailing off and seemingly dazed in concentration trying to remember. "Black box…you mean like a recording? My mommy used to record videos would they help?" she said idly.

Another Ghost appeared before the panda men and the small group; at the end of the corridor this one wasn't a child however, more a grown woman, with coppery red hair and clothing more akin to a soldier or warrior than a doctor or a nurse. She spotted the man hanging from the ceiling and suddenly a chain appeared around the one holding the knife to the Kazeci. In a moment more chains appeared from no where, as if simply appearing into existence wrapping themselves around the individuals entire group and hovering them into the air with the exception of the panda men. The chains began to constrict on the men and women slowly crushing their internal organs and cutting into their bodies, there would be no escape, and no mercy. The coppery haired young woman had a look of thunder about her face.

"Mommy!" Kisa yelled, "Please don't kill them mommy," Kisa asked and the coppery haired young woman turned to her daughter. She spotted Kisa and yelled "Get away from her!" a sword appeared in her hand as she charged towards the group of Panda-men; she closed the gap at a blistering speed. As she was about to strike down Citrus; Immy appeared ahead of her in the nick of time and the other ghost stopped dead;

"Get out of my way Imogen" she said lowly and in a threatening manner.

"These have been spared, they keep the balance", Immy Replied.

"Balance!?" the ghost questioned; "You and your damn balance, what balance! They took her father from me when she was three!" she said pointing at Kisa; "HOW Fair is that!" she yelled now positively angry.

"These were not the ones that took him from you, and neither were they" Immy said in her own hushed whispery tone gesturing to the panda-men and then the other mortals currently held in chains that were still slowly killing them. The two stared each other down looking like at any moment they were going to fight; it then looked like the second woman was about to burst into tears at any moment.

"Your not always right Imogen" she said.

"Neither are you Ethne", Immy replied. And the second ghost now known as Ethne looked over to Kisa "Come on Kisa, we have to find your sister" she said.

"Can I stay with the furry men for a little bit more mommy?" Kisa asked with pleading eyes; who had been hugged behind Vines leg the whole time.

Ethne sighed it was a double team and even she couldn't resist the pleading eyes of her daughter; "fine, but if they so much as…"

"I'll be fine mommy" Kisa interrupted and smiled brightly

"I'm going to find your sister"; Ethne replied and then faded away Immy followed suit, a second later the chains vanished dropping the group to the ground injured but alive; they would now have to sort out there own problems

Citrus had seen many strange things in his time, but this sudden family reunion really took the cake. In brief moments thier lives had been saved, threatened, and spared. Citrus shook it off, picked up the Kazecki man, and with the help of the others, hoisted him back through the hole in the roof. The other group was still either dead, or collecting themselves. The panda-men ushered Kisa along, eager to exit the fray.

"I'm sorry you had to see that, Kisa," Citrus said, trying to avoid any looks of accusation or shame.

"Yes, apologies aswell. But, those videos you mentioned, the recordings of your mother's, could you take us to them? They may yet prove very helpful," Vine added.

"But, more importantly, who attacked you? What nation is responsible for the destruction of this civilian craft?" Sap urgently asked, as if he was interrogating her.

They stopped, waiting for Kisa's instructions.

Nickel Seven was back on her feet very shortly after the 'attack' she was unphased, as usual, her regeneration ability made her injuries heal incredibly fast. Although by the time she was up and about the other group had already left. The other soldiers weren't on their feet as quick, and their injuries showed. All of them knowing a code unknown to anyone but a Nofian soldier, continued on with little or no external sign it had injured them. Years of battle hardened experience had left them with a superior battlefield knowledge, but none of that could help them face something like the ghosts on the ship.

Without a word being spoken the soldiers seemed to dissapear into the clockwork of the ship. Two of them retreated to the floor above, and were going to trail the Kazecis, the other two were going to map out the ship as best they could.

Where the Polo Docked

Another Ghost, this one male appeared there; he was old, much older almost as old as the engineer that had been working the controls; he held out his hands; and electricity seemed to spark around him in large arcs. The wiring in the corridor overloading and showering any work crews with arcs of electricity and sparks.

Crew Quarters
The small group that were raiding crew quarters would soon know Immy's wrath, unlike the others, they had done something to anger her; and an angry Immy was a vengeful one. The doors sealed, sealing the teams in and fire swept through the area, fire more intense than any naturally occurring; fire that would burn and purge mortal flesh…Immy wasn't very happy.

Corridor
"Its alright, My mommy gets angry a lot at people" she said simply, shrugging off what she had seen as if it were nothing compared to things she had seen in her lifetime as a spirit. "Videos would be in her room; crew quarters is this way" she said with a smile. As the light hovering over Vines shoulder followed him; she'd certainly taken a shine to the furry man, Kisa guided them towards crew quarters and deeper into the ship.

"Nation? Don't know…you'd be better off asking Mommy or Immy", she said trailing off as she hid behind Vines leg from the other panda man

"I doubt we are in a position to ask them anything. I believe we should let them collect thier rage before we next cross paths," Sap replied.

Vine chuckled as Kisa kept a steady pace behind his leg, she was just tall enough to rise above his knee.

"Brothers, we're here," Citrus announced, pointing out a sign reading 'Crew Quarters'.

The panda-men began a search. They would look for rooms with pictures of Kisa in them, or possibly work logs reading 'Imogen' or 'Ethne', at least until Kisa remebered which room was her mother's.

ooc: i'm assuming that the spinners will be back in this story so here goes

ic: when the spinners and some Ixi get into the lift, Nomi presses the button for the top deck.

They arrive without incident and they leave the lift Nomi shining her torch down the corridor in front of them. some bodies of the crew can be seen and they're still perfectly preserved.

Nomi cautiously leads the way until they find a door leading to the bridge...

Bark sighed. It seemed to take an eternity to get this lift started. Him and Orchard were still cloaked, hiding from the two women in power armour and the other group.

They exited, cautiously following the two young women, making sure not to make any noise.

Orchard turned on his HUD. It was protocol to make regular updates about missions, so any panda-men seperated from the main group could know the situation at all times. It read:

Current Allies
Kisa (Small girl)
Imogen (Chains)
Ethne (Uniform, blade)

Current enemies (presumed)
Everyone else

Objective
Secure any information about the goings-on of the past fifty years. Lay the restless spirits aboard to rest.

Orchard sliently motioned for Bark to read this, wherever the other panda-men were, they certainly had some explaining to do.

Main Bridge
On Board the Bridge; the little girl appeared again dressed in the same attire as before, the perfect image of femininity; the white dress seemed to radiate a little light despite being transparent

She looked directly at Lieutenant Taka and said almost robotically yet still in her sweet child like voice "People are like stars, there are bright ones, and those that are dim; which kind are you?" she looked at her excepting an answer like it was obvious.

She started to sing a small song, her voice small and in a slight Irish accent but sang with innocence only a child could muster one whom had lots of pain to bare.

The farms and the valleys
Are ringed with the stones
Of the men who built walls
So's to be more alone
All that's left of them now
Are their fears and their bones
But the rocks they pulled up
Were all I've ever known

For too much love of living,
For hope and fear set free,
We thank with great thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be
That no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the loneliest river,
Winds somewhere safe to sea

Music started to play like a opening pulse around the ship; played by a full orchestral string section, with part doing sixteenths, part doing arpegiated harmonies, then timpani coming in for the build up; then on the initial upward sweep the horns come in then the woodwinds take the descant. On the second climb, a choir comes in behind carrying the bass. It was beautifully played and could send shivers down someone's spine. The words started to echo through the entire ship as the child sang…

Hard was the ground
In which this child grew
Unforgiving and cold
Was the home that I knew
But knowing the soil
Holds no harbour for you
Makes pulling up roots
That much easier to do

Now it's been years
Since I've been in that place
And the winds of my life
Have all weathered my face
But it's only with distance
And the coming of grace
That I see in you beauty
I could never replace

Crew Quarters

Kisa motioned to a door marked 7A "this is mommy's room" she said pointing to the room door off the main hall Kisa phased right through the door and into the room

The panda-men filed into the room, Sap lost focus for a minute and tried to walk through a door, needless to say this didn't work out.

They searched for the videos, they struck gold. A case of surveillance recordings. Thorn picked one out of the case at random, and placed it in an older entertainment unit. The panda-men sat down, and waited to see whether thier questions would be answered.

----------

Aboard the bridge, things were different. A small girl appeared, and sang a beautiful song, the panda-men were entranced by it. They lost focus for a minute, and accidently uncloaked.

"Uh-oh..." Orchard said, as the small girl and the other two in red armour looked at them.

"Uh...do you know any called Kisa?" Bark asked stupidly.

Ethne's Quarters
The Video cut in; showing the very much alive coppery haired young woman, with her hair coming down to just above her shoulders framing her face and emerald eyes; she would have been considered very attractive to humans, she began to speak to the Camera;

"Today we were assigned the standard task of running security sweeps, these ships aren't exactly armed and the new cold fusion reactor is temperamental as is, Kisa and Kara made a new friend; which is nice, the girls really need people there own age to play with. As much as Imogen loves them she just isn't a kid"

Another video started and Ethne appeared again; this time quite distraught; "god I miss him so much, I don't know if I can do it anymore…how long I can live like this; the girls are all that keeps me alive some days; they need a mother…. Even if they don't have a father anymore", she said bursting into tears as the video changed to a later log

"I don't know what's going on aboard this ship; several decks were sealed today, some kind of accident but no ones saying anything, I'm a soldier, who am I to question what's going on? I just hope my children are safe here" the video changed again.

"They've finally opened Lab 16 again; every things clean, like really clean, some things going on here…I just don't know what, Imogen has doubts too, they've been giving her some new injection", Ethne looked tired like she hadn't slept for a long time.

"It isn't fair…why did you have to leave me, why did they take you from me…I just can't do this anymore, I'm leaving the military going home…just where the hell is that anyway I don't know anymore" she said bursting into tears. On the log again and clutched at a bracelet around her wrist; "I love you so much"

A new image appeared this time fire was raging all around the room and Ethne was distressed; "This may be my last log...we're under attack they used some kind of bio weapon on the planet then just opened fire…how can they fire on…" the screen went black.

Main Bridge
The little girl in the dress looked at the large fury man as he seemingly appeared from no where; "Kisa? My sister" she said; "I'm Kara"; she added; "This ship is cursed, you should leave, those that die here don't die"

Nomi was about to ask what the panda men were doing when she seen and heard the little girl.

she says to Orchard "I don't know who you are but a lot of strange things are going on here"

She turns to the spectral girl and asks "Kara, what happened here 50 years ago? i have a gut feeling that that you know something off that time"

Main Bridge
"50 years…" she said, is if really trying to comprehend it had been that long; "So long now..." she said getting a far off look in her eyes.

"For too much love of living, for hope and fear set free, We thank with great thanksgiving, Whatever gods may be That no man lives forever, That dead men rise up never, That even the loneliest river, Winds somewhere safe to sea" Kara repeated spoken this time not sang.

"Do you know what that is?" Kara asks.

Nomi shakes her head not recognising the words.

She also wonders what the spinners and the Pandamen would make of them.

Main Bridge

Kara smiled at the woman; "it’s part of a song spoken in a story on my world; a woman goes into the great underworld to find someone she loves. But she gets trapped there; she spreads word around the underworld and leads a rebellion against the lord of the underworld. As the clock strikes midnight, every soul in the underworld raises there heads and sings that verse in one ragged voice the sheer weight of belief throws open the gates of the underworld and they all escape", Kara said simply as if it were matter of fact.

"Daddy died long ago, Mommy runs on anger against mortals because they killed him and prevent her from seeing him again. Auntie Immy runs on sadness and loneliness, and my sister died to young to understand, even now she is just like she was 50 years ago" Kara replied.

"This place, is cursed, the dead don't die they just stop living, no heaven or hell for us, no seeing our loved ones again just…eternal existence" Kara said a tear running down her eye; "I miss my daddy"

Nomi goes to hug the girl but realises that she'd just go through her. instead she gently lays a gloved hand on her shoulder.

"Kara, there has to be a way to end the suffering of all the spirits here. I'd like to help you do that but first we need to access the logs so we know why your ship died and what happened on the surface.

On our way in we took scans of the planet and the ship. the planets a mess and it looks like the ship was attacked. I don't think the crew had much of a chance"

She looks over to the Captain's body in the command chair and then thinks she sees others...

Main Bridge

"A Lot of spirits here are angry at mortals; some just go about their business pretending everything is ok…" Kara said trailing off slightly "there are some that will outright attack the living but those are few" she added.

"I don't know where the computer cores are, I didn't visit this part of the ship when I was alive…" she said sniffling.

"Kara, we should be able to access the logs from here if the cores are still working" Nomi says softly.

"Misa, look for a computer access port and jack into it" she orders the other woman with her.

the ensign activates the lights on her helmet and works her way round to what looks like workstations at the back of the bridge.

She hits a button on her suit and a cable with several endings on it pops out.

she then locates one which fits and lets the computer in her suit make the connection.

((I'm on the bridge, by the way. Accessing both an unbroken terminal and the Backup Datacore))

At the sound of the door opening and the large group of lifeforms walking in, the five synthenoids on the main bridge immedately turned to face them, weapons cocked and ready. If the Alter-model could have glared, he would have as he faced the gathering of humans and what looked like bipedal pandas.

Holding his weapon at ready, the black-and-white droid stared directly towards the ones at the front, as well as the ghostly little girl who stood there. He noticed, by pure chance, that one of the humans has managed to find and connect to an operational console. Slightly angered, he slowly walked towards them, his footsteps echoing on the metal floorplates.

"Who are you...And what is your business here?"

Nomi looked up at the synthenoids ahead of her and with her hand on her plasma pistol calmly says fearlessly in return "I could ask you the same thing but if you shoot you'll never get your answer.

I seek knowledge but I still don't know what you are after"

She flicks of the safety catch ready to draw her weapon if she needs it..

Where the Polo docked

The workmen had been hard at work. They believed they were safe after having placed turret drones at all possible entrances. This false sense of security was about to change however.

One of the scruffier looking crewmen was taking a cigarette break when he noticed a lone figure he had never seen before. This intrigues him and he moved closer, walking past his colleagues busy cursing, yelling and demolishing every bit of usable material and hauling it into their ship’s cargo hold. He pointed his finger at the older looking man and cried out, trying not to lose sight of him in all the movement: “Hey! Hey, you! Why haven’t I seen you before?”

The old man seemed to lack colour. Not just his greyish face, but his clothes, as well. The dust in the air, the sparks from the circular saws, even the flashes from the plasma cutters seemed to flow through him. Just then his face changed as if he had been insulted. A small spark came out of a bundle of electrical cable startling one of the younger men; then another on the far side of the deck section. More and more began to pop, crackle and fizz with growing intensity regularity. Suddenly, the irritated figure raised his arms and it was as if an electrical storm had erupted inside the derelict space craft. Men panicked and screamed, running every which way; sleeves and overalls caught fire and the people wearing them hurried frantically to put them out.

Crew Quarters

Rita turned to Peter holding a picture frame: “This might look good on my night stand” and put it in her canvas pack.

Peter flashed a grin and proceeded to put a series of sports trophies into his. Everyone was occupied taking anything and everything that caught their eye to notice a flame start behind a living room couch. Suddenly, the doors slid shut.

Captain Santos ordered: “Rita, open that thing up again, please. Let’s be on our way.”

Rita pressed a button on her overrider. “Weird. I just hacked into that door terminal.” She approached the door and exposed the wiring on one side of it. “It won’t budge. It must’ve shorted out.”

Just then the flame shot out across the floor, separating Mendes from the rest of the group in an unholy Inferno. What came out of his mouth was something unlike anything the others had ever heard, even after so many years in the Steelwall-Hispan War.

“Mendes!” Kurt yelled out, trying to get his friend out of his death but he was stopped short by Peter.

“There’s nothing you can do! He’s dead! We have to get out of here now!”

Rita frantically tried to open the doors but it was useless. It was as if the doors had been welded shut. “It won’t open!”

Collecting himself, Kurt took the Gauss cannon off his shoulder and brought it to bear on the door. A hail of deuterinium-diamantine rounds, an incandescent wall of metal, slammed against the obstacle blowing it to pieces and allowing the people inside to escape certain death.

Templar and PDU 696 made their way down the decrepit old hallways, being mindful of holes in the floor, ceiling, and walls. After a little bit, PDU 696 tapped Templar on the shoulder and stopped. He sat on the floor and held his left leg out, his foot was bent at an odd angle. He grabbed the lower portion of his leg and started pulling. His head twisted a little and he stopped. He checked the oxygen levels and once he determined it was save, he took off his helmet. He produced from one of his pockets a deck of cards, and he bit down on them. He grabbed his lower leg again, and started pulling. He let out a slight grunt that was punctuated by a sickening crack that echoed down the hall. He fell back flat on his back breathing hard, he knew that his suit would compress on the break, keeping it in place for the most part. He stowed the cards, and put his helmet back on.

OOC: Sorry for the slow posting.

IC: The four commandos and the two droids waited on the Kazeci man to be hoisted up from where he had fallen.

"Let's not go through any more falls like that. The faster we can access the computer core, the better. This place is giving me the creeps."

"Us? Why should we tell you anything? We were here first, after all..."

He turned back to his two companions who stood behind him, one holding a plasma autorifle and the other a Diskblade Cannon. Still keeping one eye on the newcomers, as well as the cannon-like weapon in his hands at ready, he muttered slightly. "Why do the meatbags always think they can push us around?"

Scratching his head with the rifle, one of the synthenoids shrugged, replying, "I don't know, maybe because they all-too-often create us?"

"...Yeah, but that still doesn't give them any right to...Besides, we have the upper hand here."

With another electronic sigh, the Alter unit glanced back to face the organics in the doorway, as well as the ghost, then to his right, where stood the Sing unit accessing the functional console. Then to his left, he made note of the other Sing unit, the one with the Tesla Claw, who was delving into the internal data stores of the backup Computer Core. He then turned, for the third time, back to the the squishies.

"Well? What about you, the furry ones? Why are you here?"

Bark snapped back to reality.

"I...don't know anymore. Origionally we were here to salvage this wreck, but I'm getting some strange reports from my men. Apperently our objective is to...set the restless spirits free. Whatever that may mean."

Bark was confused, as leader of the group, it was entirely his responsibilty to be less superstitious than his men.

----------

Citrus had been mentally taking notes. This video put him another step in the right direction.

"Men, Kisa. We will have to split up again, it seems. Thorn, Seedling, go back to main engineering. Find records about the core, if you left any equipment intact from your last expedition," He said, casting a dissaproving eye over Thorn and Creeper. "Me, Vine, and Kisa shall pursue this Lab sixteen. It may shed light on...something. Creeper, Sap, look for any accident reports. There must be some sort of administration room, or deck, or something..."

The panda-men exited the room. They were about to go about thier various duties when they heared the sound of weapon-fire, mixed with desperate cries. There must have been someone else in the crew quarters. They ran to investigate...

OOC: Possibly the only post I'll do tonight, going to a family dinner...

ooc: Oops, Guess I'd better keep up.

Ic: The Kazeci who had fallen looked back at the commando that had spoken. He was too shaken to talk, so he just nodded his head and turned back around. Jim spoke a reply. "It's giving you the creeps? Did you see those, uh, spirits?" Kazecis had no belief in any after life, preferring the path of an agnostic, so admitting something supernatural was quite an extreme thought.

Tom hushed them for a moment, waiting for complete silence, then ushered for them to continue forward. He tapped a man on the back and whispered in his ear while they walked. Then both of them repeated the process with other Kazecis. They walked in silence for a moment more, accompanied only by the sound of their own footsteps. Suddenly and without any que, they all spun quickly on their heals, firing back down the hallway several times each. "Damn pirates!" one shouted.

((OOC: Uh, actually you have no clue that they are pirates. You know nothing more than they are soldiers, and highly trained ones at that. No one got a good enough look at them to identify where they were from.))

The nonlethal rounds knocked Pixious flat on her back, it was purely a luck shot. Nickel was however much more on her toes. Her rifle rattled out two bullets, as she aimed for the nearest one's legs, a bullet towards each. After the shots she made a dive for the opposite side of the hallway.

Pixous rebounded from the shock quickly and did her best to shoot another one in the foot.

Where the Polo docked
The old man continued to let electricity arc down the corridor like lightning bolts they carried enough charge to kill a man outright if they were struck.

Crew Quarters
The escape from the room was but a brief respite as Immy appeared before Kurt they eyes were positively ablaze with anger as fiery chains shot out from the walls and tried to bind him at the ankles. Immy launched a fireball from her palm at Kurt; which exploded 2 foot in front of him and more chains flowing from the small blast and trying to wrap around his upper and lower body to hold him there. The chains would slowly burn into his flesh like hot cheese wire through butter

Immy was very angry as her eyes glowed bright orange she would inflict the pain of this ship on his mind, it would be a quick death for him; she would break his mind by making him experience the pain and deaths of thousands, like it was his own. He would feel everyone who died here and his screams would be like music to her.

She turned to Rita; "The bracelet, the one with the heart charm on it" she said in a low feral growl; "Return it now, or he dies!" Immy roared at her.

Ethne's quarters

Kisa nodded and followed closely behind Vine's leg; hearing the screams of some lost soul…someone must have done something bad…

Main Bridge

Kara interrupted the convocation between the three sets of mortals by asking her question again to all of them "People are like stars, there are bright ones and those that are dim, which kind are you?"

((pirates was an assumption/insult, as they were 'low-lives' who appeared intent on evil running around uninvited with guns.))

Their move had been timed to correspond with their passing between two rooms with open doors, which they quickly ducked into. None-the-less, two Kazecis let out cries of pain. One had had two ankles grazed rather forcefully by projectiles while the other had taken one square in the foot. Quickly the medic worked to repair the damage and ease the pain. The rest continued to take blind shots out of the doorways, knowing that with the force turned up, they could pretty well flatten any one who tried to get close. It would have been near impossible to bypass the hail of transparent shove waves by luck.

(OOC: Post has been edited about )

[B]Main Bridge

Kara interrupted the convocation between the three sets of mortals by asking her question again to all of them "People are like stars, there are bright ones and those that are dim, which kind are you?"

Nomi had no hesitation and answered "a bright star, the type that sets an example to others but can have a shorter lifespan"

she moves her handle away from her gun knowing her armour can take the hit.

Misa had made a computer connection and was absorbing information from the computer core. thinking she asked for the last events that took place that would have been stored in the black box and her computer obeyed.

Rugal felt the conflicts happening through the ship on many levels.Physical and non-physical.These mortals;illogical entities driven by electrochemical processes in their neural systems, a mixture of emotion and logic.

The spirits;riled by their state of existence,their suffering in the past,yet there was more to it.He had felt such a terrible malice that he had felt a slight bit of fear for these young ones,a hidden malice so deep and pure that it reviled him to almost touch it.

Hidden within the ship,it flitted from place to place,feeding of the suffering of these beings.A force or a being,Rugal knew not.Deciding on a more direct route to his destination,he made a path to the bridge,where the carbon-based life forms were,busy accessing the cores.He would wait to see their revelation.

Why expend his energy on information gathering when they could do so for him?
-----

He tunneled a path straight through the hull of the ship,till the bridge,and proceeded to make what could best be described as a shocking entrance to the assembled personnel.

It was not everyday that you had a transcendent being of sorts,composed of plasma energy,making a direct entrance into a room and interfacing with beings of physical substance.

Rugal stared straight at the assembled group and decided upon a non-verbal means of communication.No psionic means for now,as it would unsettle them.he would grant them their privacy,though their scents betrayed a mix of emotions.

On the screens of the bridge,the words appeared:"I am Rugal.Life forms,what is your purpose?

Where the Polo docked

Absolute terror reigned near the freight ship’s bay door. Several men had been electrocuted and laid lifeless on the debris strewn floor. One of the more level-headed workers yelled to his companions: “Get back on the ship! Everyone back to the cargo bay!” At this order those still able scrambled to the freighter’s open hatch, some dragging burn victims along with them and with bolts of electricity trailing behind them. Once inside, they closed the bay door.

The crew was in a state of shock. Occasional moans and groans could be heard among the wounded and the unconscious. One of the still able bodied men risked a look out into the Rachel Ellis. The spectral figure still stood there, arms raised and electric fire raging.

Crew Quarters

Fire swept behind the four survivors as if it were stalking them. Sweat beaded on their foreheads and Rita cried frantically after having witnessed the young Mendes be consumed in the room they left behind.

Just then fiery chains shot out from the corridor walls and whipped around Kurt’s ankles tripping him. He landed hard on the floor and the Gauss cannon that had been his salvation flew out of his hands and fell several feet in front of him, sliding a few more after that. He hurried to get up and once he was on his knees he and his companions saw her. A phantasmal female figure stood in front of them, the same flames that had murdered Mendes seemed to rage in her eyes.

A ball of flame shot out from her hand and exploded in front of Kurt’s chest strong enough for him to feel the blast in his rib cage right through his hazard suit and he was wrapped in more chains, heated by the flames of Hell, like an insect caught in an iron web. A loud sizzle could be heard as the metal alloy/plastic polymer micro-weave that comprised the outer shell of his armour began to blacken. Even through such thick layers of extreme temperature isolating materials he could feel the chains begin to eat through on their way to his body. For a brief moment he thought about a lobster cooking in its shell. Worse, he felt a sadistic presence in his mind far stronger then any he had felt during his months in a POW colony during the war. A low growl crept out of his throat which grew into full blown screams of agony. Anthony Santos grabbed hold of the chains and tried to release his crewman only to let go just as quickly with a painful yell and his insulated gloves smoking.

“Let him go! Let him go now!” Captain Santos aimed his shock rifle at the spectre and fired. The turquoise beam of light flashed through as if nothing was there.

At this, the ghostly woman turned and demanded of Rita: "The bracelet, the one with the heart charm on it" she said in a low feral growl; "Return it now, or he dies!"

Rita was in a panic and hardly understood the words:”What?!”

Peter yelled commandingly, “Just give it to her! She’s killing him!”

Rita dove her hand into her canvas backpack in search of the bracelet throwing item after item to the flames behind her until she found one that matched the description and through it at her friend’s tormentor and saw it pass through her legs. “There! Take it! Now let him go!”

Peter raised his rifle and demanded “What in the Sol System are you?”

Nickel Seven flattened herself against the wall right next to one of the doorways, Pixious did the same for the other. They each pulled out a pistol and a flashbang grenade, and pulled the pin. They waited for three seconds on the five second fuse, before tossing them in their respective room. A blinding light, and a deafing blast filled the room. They would go in and hold the nearest one hostage.

Crew Quarters
Immy enjoyed tormenting this mortal rarely did she allow her anger to consume her to the point she enjoyed torturing someone. The pain, sorrow, loneliness and fears of thousands flowing through Kurt like a conduit the fire was the least of his concerns as Immy watched Rita rummage through her nap sack to find the bracelet Immy had referred to. It had been Ethne's, the last gift her husband had given her before his death, she treasured it and it would stay with her even in death. Filthy grave robbers, they hadn't exactly died with much dignity, as it was, she would make sure they at least kept what they did have. Immy seemed to give off a feral laugh as the shock rifle blast passed through her body, the agnostic screams or Kurt filling the hallways.

She briefly diginifed Santos's demand and said in a low ferel voice "the wishes of mortals have no power here"

The bracelet had been returned to her feet and her anger abated enough for cognitive thought to return; still holding Kurt hostage she heard Peter's question laughing as even now he threatened her with a weapon that had seconds before passed right through her. Immy spoke a two-word answer to his question that would chill them to the bone - "Absolute Terror!"

With a wave of hand the unholy fire succeeded into nothing leaving only charred ash behind of mortal flesh it had consumed not even bones would be left to bring home, the Chains around Kurt released him and the torture on his mind ceased.

"Your very sight irritates me! Disappear!" she commanded and with another wave of hand a black mist enveloped them, so thick it was like looking into the void itself when the mist evaporated away they were back on there ship with an echoing warning.

"Do not return to this place, unless you respect the the souls of those that died here"

Main Bridge
Kara smiled at Nomi "A Bright star indeed; while bright stars burn faster they make more of a difference to the sky that other stars pale in comparison to them" she looked over to the other group on the bridge. Looking in turn from the panda men to the GadgetCorp crew; "You are synthetic?" she asked them having never met an artificial being before.

The Main computer Obeyed and several options appeared in green monotone 'captains log' 'ship's auto log' 'external camera log' 'science log' the words 'please choose an option" blinking on the screen

"Synthetic?" The black-and-white Alter unit shrugged. "You could say that. You'd be right, of course, but you could." He knocked on the casing that covered the circuitry in his chest. "Pure carbonite." He looked back at the ghostly little girl. "And you're...Well, you appear to be either a form of alter-phasing radiation or a pan-dimensional being of energy...In the form of a human child?"

Meanwhile, the two synthenoids accessing the Backup Computer Core and the secondary console had managed to reach the same point in the records as Misa. The one at the Backup Datacore selected "Science Log," while the one at the regular terminal accessed the "Ship's Auto-log."

Nickel Seven flattened herself against the wall right next to one of the doorways, Pixious did the same for the other. They each pulled out a pistol and a flashbang grenade, and pulled the pin. They waited for three seconds on the five second fuse, before tossing them in their respective room. A blinding light, and a deafing blast filled the room. They would go in and hold the nearest one hostage.
OOC: Dang, what do ya'll do all day?

IC: The commando team started up fire now on Nickel and Pixious, even through the flashbang. Helmet sensors, while still overwhelmingly cast in white and vision reduced, negated the blinding effect. The two droids waded in, popping up bubble shields from each as they stood in front of the team with laser arms down and ready to shoot.

A sense of awe grew in the freighter’s cargo hold. These men had never seen such a thing before. Not only did their officer’s staff just materialise right in front of their eyes but Kurt, the stalwart soldier among soldiers laid on the ground almost motionless, his armour smoking heavily and the smell of burnt plastinium impregnating the air. Rita was in a near catatonic state kneeling on the hold deck. Peter fell backward, dizzy from having been teleported without warning, banging his helmet-clad head on a supply crate. Only the captain could still stand. Their sacks were gone and so was Mendes. Not even his body was left., only a few pieces of his hazard suit would probably be found where he was incinerated. The sight of his men burnt, wounded, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated saddened him. Near a support beam one of the more religious ones was reciting a prayer for his dead comrade. “What happened here?” he asked.

A young man, no older than 19, stood up to answer. His voice trembled and his eyes shifted from one side of the hold to the other as if he was expecting something to come at him through the walls: “It all happened so fast, sir. We were doin’ like you told us, scrappin’ the ship and all and out of nothin’ some old man, scarier than anythin’ I ever seen just showed up an’ made the whole section flare with electricity… He’s still out there, sir…”

The captain walked to the bay door and risked a look outside. By this time Peter had gotten up and joined him. He saw more of his men were lying lifeless on the ground. Some still twitched but whether this was the result of an electrical charge still running through their spinal cord or not was not apparent to him. In the distance, near an entrance he saw the man his crewman had described to him. He held his hands in the air and electrical bolts seemed to flow, not through, but from him. Anthony Santos turned back to his crew and as calmly as a captain in a crisis should speak said: “See to Kurt. He’s been burnt badly.”

Two men with thick rubber gloves proceeded to remove their unconscious companion’s suit off and to clean his body. He had suffered several third degree burns on his torso and legs. They would add to the large collection of scars on his war-hardened physique.

Peter still peered out the thick, heat resistant window and merely said: “We still have live men out there. Not to mention, we have to take our friends home.” Peter Russ had had a religious upbringing. In spite of the fact that he rarely ever practiced his religion, the morals on a proper resting place were strongly inculcated in him.

A previously silent man of Arabic ethnicity looked up: “Are you out of your mind? We can’t go back out there. We’ve got to get out of this death trap.”

Rita broke her silence: “He’s right, Omar… There could still be live people out there. We have to check.”

The captain agreed and ordered two men, Ruben and Isaac, to put on hazard suits of their own to protect them from the live electricity outside. The cargo bay door lowered and they rushed outside, the electric bolts glancing off their non-conductive armour. While the four suited men hurried to carry their friends inside Rita appeared at the ship's entrance and seemed to try to plead irrationally with the punishing figure: “Why? Let us respect our dead! What are you hiding? Who are you? What do you want?”

Main Bridge
As the option for Science log was selected; a new screen appeared on the terminal. "Security clearance required, Enter password" flashed up with an input box waiting.

On the other terminal the ships auto log appeared in green text. The scrolling text gave interment readouts, tactical logs, sensor logs, navigation logs, and damage reports.

Kara smiled at the synthetic Altar unit she liked him, wasn't sure why but she did; "Pan-dimensional being, you could say that, you’d be right but you could" she said echoing his own response but not in a way that was meant to be insulting. "You are different from the others"

Where the Polo docked
The Old man looked up at Rita, his eyes burrowing into her skull like two drills something about her words seemed to strike home with him and the electrical storm that was flowing from him ceased with a few final arcs coming off him from the excess charge.

"Respect?" he questioned. "For those that rip apart this place that has become our grave?" he chastised in a his best 'voice of god'

Crew Quarters
Immy picked up the bracelet; her rage now faded and vented at the offenders. To everyone it appeared as if the bracelet was floating in her transparent hands Immy had learned long ago how to effect physical reality on a metaphysical level. She carried the charm bracelet and put it back into Ethne's room placing it on the dressing table before phasing out once again.

((OOC: Me personally, I'm on spring break, and most of my friends are away. The one friend who is here, is incredibly busy. She has lots of stuff that needs to be taken care of, so I get pushed aside. So I'll check periodicly and post. I guess I'll mention it here, but I'm under the assumption we are in two different rooms.))

Nickel Seven took six shots throughout her body, but genetic engineering prevailed, and her accelerated healing allowed her to shrug off the wounds. She grabbed the nearest person of flesh and blood, and screamed "Cease Fire."

Pixous wasn't so lucky. The genetic engineering done on her was more suited to espionage, but it still proved usefull in most situations. She slowed down after a shot hit her in the leg. Having suffered through this feeling many times before, she could still function. She took cover and assumed a defensive position. She fingered a device that looked like a black egg. She grabbed it, and a display came up. She sent out a warrent one distress, sending an encrypted tracking signal out to the nearest Nofian operatives.

Templar and PDU 696 recieved the distress, and started in the direction of it.

ooc: It's a bit of a leap to make it down the hall without even saying so. To just appear right next to the door (which my men are shooting out of), a fair distance off I'd assume, through my RPed defenses without even saying so, let alone explaining how, is a bit much. I'll RP it, but please don't jump again.

Ic: The Kazecis, having been very close to the doors so that they might turn and shoot out of them, were easy targets for hostage taking. Two were taken in a few short seconds. This, however, gave the Kazecis a slight advantage. While the attackers had planed to hold the hostage and thus disarm all of the others, the Kazecis didn't disarm but continued to fire. Their targets were now obvious and thus were nearly instantly pummeled by shove waves (imperfect shots meant that their fellow team member received the same, but both would live). It was the equivalent of taking a hard beating from a mob. Surely this force would incapacitate the hostile target quickly.

Kazeci combat rejects were still military and still had training. "Get down on the ground! Put your weapon down! Surrender yourself!" They had completed the civil disobedience training in both the basic and advanced levels. As they only used nonlethal weapons in their line of work, they were more proficient with them than others were.

“Your grave?” It was obvious to her now. It couldn’t be holograms or aliens. Rita now understood that these people were the tormented souls of those who had died on this ship fifty years before. “We didn’t know. We’re just trying to make ends meet. We’re sorry for disturbing you but why are you still lingering here? Why so much anger? What could have happened on this ship that keeps you from your final rest?”

((OOC:My characters were chasing after yours, never was it specified how far behind they were. Even if they were a fair distance off, five words saying "they ran down the hall" doesn't make that much of a difference. I was also kind of going off as if they were fairly close, and since one of them didn't take a hit they could have technically made it in the room before the defences were seriously established, but I chose not to do that.))

Nickel used the person she had taken hostage to absorb most of the shock from the shove waves, but still took a bit of the shock. The training she had gone through was physically exausting, and worked to give the soldiers incredible stamina, she could take this beating for a while, especially if she had a body taking most of it. With the arm she had wrapped around the body's neck she put him in a blood choke, and incapacitated him herself. Holding his body up with one arm she took aim with her pistol, and aimed at the nearest person's shoulder joint, keeping in mind to compensate for the shock of the shove waves.

Pixous did her best to fortify the position she was in, having knocked over a table, and now resting behind it. She knew that Templar and PDU 696 would show up shortly, so she just had to hold out until then. She activated the computer she had, and turned on target tracking. Things burts to life through her eyes, and imaginary boxes surrounded all things that moved in the room, despite the fact she couldn't physically see them. She was playing for defense now, and if anything showed it's ugly mug, it wasn't going to last very long.

The commandos got down into tactical positions, trying to get behind whatever cover possible as they returned fire on Nickel. The droids, on the other hand, electrified their sabers. One began advancing on Nickel's position, one hand shooting laser fire while the other wielded the electricity-flashing blade, its slight shield layer fluctuating, waves pusling the automaton's exterior. The other droid continued pouring out fire on the enemy.

"Take them out!" yelled Ulic, "clear out those imposters!"

As the ship's Autolog data played across the screen, the Sing unit accessing the terminal recorded every single bit that was shown. The green droid accessing the science logs, on the other hand, activated a small protocol located inside his defragment matrix: a miniature version of the GadgetCorp-brand decoder/mainframe accessing tool, the "Hacker," to decrypt the password, using every single letter and number known of the Earthen language, along with several random otherworldly letters and numbers thrown in for good measure.

The Alter unit, looking at the small ghost of a child, would have smiled if he had a mouth. "If you mean my squad here, yeah...Just a bit of programming and interface details, besides the paint of course..." He rubbed the back of his head with the barrel of the flamethrower-like cannon. "If you mean the squishies, then yeah, that too..."

OOC:right,my character is on the bridge;and people are ignoring him.Just would like to say thank you for extending such courtesy to me,all those players.

IC:

Bridge:Rugal entered the bridge,a melting hole glowing with heat behind him.he tried to transmit information to the beings before him,before realising his mistake and giving himself the equivalent of a slap on the head,an idiosyncracy from his former human existence.

He had been transmitting all his information in the high ultraviolet,and the only sign he was there was a glowing hole in the floor of the bridge,tucked away in a small corner.

At that moment,he felt a tug at his consciousness and felt powerful electrical fields discharging from the region of the freighter's cargo hold.One of these spirits was engaged in antagonistic actions with the carbon life forms,applying high levels of electrical energy to their frail bodies.Many were already dead.Looking at the bridge and shrugging,he felt that he might as well commune with the spirit and pacify it.Besides,these other beings still didn't know he was there,so no real harm done,except for a hole in the bridge floor.

Cargo Hold: The ghost continued to release arcs of electricity at the mortals as Rugal watched.Rugal was a reality warper,able to bend spacetime,matter and energy,as well as break and bend the laws of physics,though he was only just starting out,having had only a millenia of practice at it.It was a rather unpredictable power at the time,so he refused to use it,given the nature of manipulating quantum strings that composed the layers of the physical universe,and a part of the non-physical.While acknowledging his immense power,able to affect causality and reality on a stellar scale,he was limited by his training and techniques,and he knew that.Better not to use that and suppress himself for the sake of these mortals.He did not wish to suddenly have them fearing him,fighting him,or universe forbid,worship him.Or to attract the attention of higher powers for that matter.He knew that in the cosmic scale,he was still below even a lesser deity,in terms of experience and wisdom,though definitely not in power.

A female human....Rita..yes,that was her self-named label.She was communicating with the spirit,which was still highly antagonistic towards her.Making a decision to reveal himself,he began to radiate light in the visible wavelength,appearing as a humanoid being composed of blue and black flames before the assembled 'audience'.Even the wrathful spirit was taken aback by his appearance.Hopefully,they would inform him of what was going on,given the increasing levels of conflict that he could sense throughout the ship.For him,it was vexing.

So temperamental,these beings.

(OOC: Ok, time for a catch up...)

Thorn picked up a hanful of black ash from a singed ground. A door to his right was completely broken open.

"Hmm...No doubt someone angered Imogen," He said.

Seedling scanned a weapon near him.

"A large repeat-fire weapon, projectiles...how barbaric."

"Ignore it," Citrus said. "Additional weapons would not aid us in the slightest."

The panda-men reassembled, ready to go about their various duties. Thorn and Seedling headed off to main engineering, which would take them up another deck, Citrus, Vine, and Kisa searched for lab sixteen, hoping that either Ethne or Imogen would guide them, and Sap and Creeper looked for any form of administration room, accident reports or any information about why the decks had been shut off would be most helpful.

----------

Bark and Orchard went by on the bridge mostly unnoticed, everyone else seemed content to talk amongst themselves, even so, the Kara girl, or ghost as Orchard had dubbed her, had asked them a question some time ago, Bark had just thought of an answer.

"People are more complex than stars. We would call ourselves the stars that could be brighter up close, or from a different point of view, depending on the day. Mostly we are just burning balls of gas, but..."

He trailed off, talking to himself.

Orchard moved closer to the synthenoids, one of which was bragging about his superiority over the other machines to the ghost girl.

"You, machine. I would like to use that terminal, acceptable?"

ooc: Animarnia, i need to know what Misa would have managed to upload from the the black box recorder

ic: Misa works away and feels the connection sever as she hits a complex password barrier.

She wonders if it is part of the ships systems but contents herself with what she's managed to find.

Nomi turns to Kara and says "Misa was able to access the black box flight recorder, that should tell us what happened to the ship"

OOC: sorry about, that...knew I was forgeting something, I was way way tired last night..Orion Ascendant my appologies also no offense intended, I just didn't notice you appear.

Main Bridge
Rather than have Misa explain to everyone what had happened from the computer logs Kara found a far more efficient way. She put her 'hand' on Misa's interlacing her ghostly fingers with the young woman's and held out her other hand seemingly in mid air; a large apparition appeared in the centre of the bridge like a holographic video recording, projecting the memories of both of them.

-Projection-
The ships bridge crew was going about their business the usual routine, nothing out of the ordinary suddenly the ship rocked and sparks flew from wires; "What the hell happened?" the captain asked.

"Ma'am, we're under attack", Replied a young man; "we've broadcast our neutrality but received no response" he added.

The Projection changed to the outside of the ship showing 4 alien fighter vessels and a large carrier ship three times the size of the Ellis. The hull shimmered a sky blue and was semi-transparent like a jellyfish the ship itself was shaped like a cylinder but narrower at the front and back with six 'wing' like petals spread out around it at the rear. The fighters looked similar in design but on a much smaller scale though they shared the same blue jellyfish transparency the fighters fired another volley the bright blue pulses striking right through the civilian grade shields and hitting the hull directly causing explosions. The large carrier vessel came around this time targeting the planet as if the Rachel Ellis itself wasn't deserving of its attention. Small holes appeared along the ship hull but these weren't caused by damage a second later thousands of blue glowing projectiles flew out of the holes and swarmed upon the planet exploding brilliantly in the planets atmosphere sending out energy shock waves like ripples around the planet.

With its task complete the carrier vessel turned back to the Rachel Ellis a glowing blue ball at its bow grew brighter than a small sun as a focused lightning bolt suddenly shot out to wards the Ellis. It was raking along her hull; causing explosion after explosion venting compartments out into space, she was crippled. A blue flame erupted from inside the ship this one was not the attackers doing however as it was clearly seen coming from the inside it consumed the crew and sent out a rippled shock wave from the ship leaving her dead in space. The projection cut off showing the unknown ships leaving and shifting into FTL in a green flash


Kara removed her hand from Misa, having now done what she needed to she sighed and looked like she was going to cry at any moment. the password began to slowly decode, it would take a little while to decode the 16 string key as well as bypass the secondary security systems such as the voice print analiser

Where the Polo docked
The old man looked almost disgusted at Rita; but before he could 'dignify' her with any response he was interrupted by the appearance of a humanoid shaped being, composed of black and blue flame like living fires. The old man had only ever seen one other person able to control black fire before and that was Immy, this was definitely not Immy. Yet he could hold no anger towards this being; for some reason he knew this 'being' wasn't mortal and he had no grudge against it for only mortals angered him, however that didn't mean he was going to be pleasant.

Moments passed and the fiery being didn't say a word it was like he expected those around to lash upon him the tales of there lives; "What do you want Lava lamp boy?" The old man asked. Insulting a being of this power usually wasn't a good idea but what was it going to do, Kill him? He could only hope.

((Sorry as well...I think I missed your post back there...No offense, anyway...It wasn't realized I was on the bridge for a bit either.))

While most of the other units watched in fascination, the Sing-model accessing the ship's Autolog silently checked the data on its damages in comparison with what he was actually viewing through the projection. Things seemed to match up; and with what had happened, he was surprised that this terminal was still intact, much less operational. With the last bits of data recorded into his electronic "Brain," he looked at the Panda-creature who had just adressed him. "This one? Oh, sure, go ahead. Not like I need anything else from it." The thin cable connecting him to the console detached with a slight hiss, retracting into the palm of his hand as he walked to join the remaining squad members.

As for the Sing-unit working through the Backup Datahub, he was busy decrypting the 16-key password from the science logs; using random variables, advanced probability physics, and a highly-sophisticated randomization code which would (hopefully) jump him ahead to recieve the first ten digits within moment, he had already discovered what the first through sixth symbols were.

OOC:sorry about the sarcasm.just got a bit vexed

IC:

Docking Bay,Polo:

Rugal gazed at the spirit in front of him.Since he had entered,he supposed he would initiate first contact.He wondered how to address him before deciding upon psionic means.He addressed everyone,intent on making his purpose clear.

Quite frankly,he did not wish to enter their minds.He viewed it as an intrusion of privacy,but he would try to limit it to their most immeidiate consciousness and not deeper.

My name is Rugal,mortals and spirit.My purpose here is simply to aid,in whatever way I can.I sensed the distress of the crew and came here to resolve this conflict.Throughout this ship,conflict and death occur,spirit and mortal caught in between.Why is this?

To the ghostly spirit,he whispered,a clear and simple message;

Young One,I was ancient in your reckoning before you were even born.I can sense your suffering on this plane of existence.Why do you hate these mortals?they have done nothing to offend you,as far as I know.Why do you remain in this undeath,lingering in this space hulk?I sense a hidden malice,a parasitical entity;whether force or being I cannot say,but it may be at the root of your distress.Help me,so that I may help you.There are many more of your kind in this ship.Let me liberate you from this,as these other mortals may yet try,only if you ask.....

No anger was directed towards the spirit,simply a profound patience.Rugal could wait,though his interaction with these mortal humans were bringing forward flickers of his old human impatience.Obviously,he realised that his evolution was not totally complete.Other beings of his level,on the threshold of becoming a cosmic lesser deity,often had these problems.Of course,most of his peers had long ago taken to the gulf of intergalactic space or the galactic rim,or even to the other planes of existence.

Nomi says softly to nobody in particular "now we know what happened. there was an unprovoked hit and run attack.

Now how do we set things right so the spirits here can find peace?"

She turns to Kara looking for an answer.

Docking bay, polo
The Old man cocked his head to one side as the voice spoke in his mind "well walking lava lamp, These mortals rob our bodies of our possessions, they take apart our unhallowed tomb for scrap to sell. Lastly, they get finality in death, the great beyond or the underworld it doesn’t matter, at least for them there is finality. While we are doomed to forever exist in this rotting hulk held together by super glue and duct tape what more reason do I need to be angry with them?" he asked.

"Trapped between worlds yet part of nether, that is our fate"; he added, folding his arms across his chest defensively.

Main Bridge
The Computer console being accessed by the Sing-unit altered, the green lettering for the password chars disappearing a new screen appearing "Classified Code Black" the encryption systems were over 50 years old and no match for the advance hacking of the present sing units. Several new options appeared under the large heading - "Project Heaven" 'project outline' 'project log' a small box waiting for further input

Kara turned to Misa; unsure what answer to give her; the attack happened over 50 years ago, it was unlikely there would be any trace to follow if the intention of the mortals was to hunt them down if it was justice the souls aboard this ship seeked. Kara shook her head "I don't know" she said simply. The souls on this ship wanted peace, they cried out in one voice for finality heaven or hell didn't matter as long as it was peace.

"The blue flame" Kara said as if a thought occurred to her, she had 'lived' for over 50 years and was probably the most level headed spirit on the ship having not let her sorrow consume her.

Corridor
Kisa walked through the corridors with the Panda men still keeping a steady pace behind Vine's leg, the glowing orb of light still following him over his shoulder like a second shadow. A panel on the side-wall suddenly came to life, showing a schematic drawing of the Ellis from multiple views The screen changed again showing a cutaway drawing with a small glowing red circle marking there current position, an a glowing green circle marked "Lab 16"

Nomi kneels down by Kara asking "whats the blue flame and how can it help you?"

Misa disconnects the cable from the terminal and extracts it back into her power armour her job complete for now but she notices the other terminal showing signs of life.

"Lt Taka, could Project Heaven have any any relavance here" she asks her commander

OOC: Just to clarify, the Polo didn’t cut into a docking bay. It cut into the hull in an area which hadn’t been breeched and therefore still had an atmosphere but don’t worry about that.

A voice that was not their own spoke softly into their minds that seemed to radiate from the newly arrived entity. Even the grievously injured felt consoled by its benevolent tone. Some among them believed it was Yan Luo, their religion’s god of death and made themselves ready to depart.

Anthony didn’t believe it. He had heard the stories about “space angels”. Men who had been out in the void for too long started to see things much like sailors saw mermaids. But it was there, that could not be denied. The beings words were undeniably sincere. Even a hardened man like him couldn’t doubt this. There was something else about it. A trace of… human compassion? Or was it that compassion was not just a human concept?

In any case he seemed to be communing with the murderous phantom that would be the end of him and his crew. It was best to leave these two to each other. If either turned on his people it would certainly be the end of them. He turned to Peter: “You take the rest of our wounded and dead back on the ship and get ready to pull out. I’ll stay here and watch how this goes.”

Peter knew full well what that meant. Pulling out without sealing the Rachel Ellis’ hull would vent his captain into space. But it was the only way of getting to safety. It was the captain’s sacrifice. Peter nodded and did as he was told.

Anthony watched on and waited for a clue of what would come next, ready to give the order for his ship to retreat.

Project Heaven
[Project Outline]
[Project Log]

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

The Sing unit looked over the small selection, thinking for a moment. After several seconds, and a discussion with a secondary AI unit, he decided that he should probably find out what the project was about, and so he should choose "Outline."

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

Project Heaven
[Project Outline]
[Project Log]

Rugal stared at the spirit before him.To him,such an answer indicated an immaturity and pettiness,a strong physical attachment to life.He suppressed flickers of anger and impatience.It was testign,having to deal with these lower beings,but thankfully,he had the patience to,unlike most of his other peers,who had chosen their own company.He had known of other similar beings who would have granted this spirit its wish and totally liberated it from this existence,given the sort of answer it had given him,in addition to a lot of pain.

Rugal had sworn to himself to aid these mortals as much as he possibly could,and he would see it through,to satisfy his own honour.

Young one,the answer you give is petty.Indicative of a physical attachment to your body and belongings.They are transient,as are most things in the physical universe.Even a star 'dies'.Similarly,for these other mortals,it is a way of life,for them,a form of existence.They intended no disrespect.What gives you the right to extinguish their lives,to harm them?Any being has that capability.Does that make it moral for you to harm them?I am more than capable of ripping apart this entire vessel and the occupants within it at the sub-atomic level,to destroy your form and send you to final death.Do I do so?

You have lost your way youngling.You seek release from your sorrow,yet you impose it on others.....

I know there are others of your kind,and I know that they have extinguished lives as well.More from your sorrow,a lack of understanding on both sides,and ultimately,what I view as immaturity.Would you bring me to them and let these mortals go.They have intended no harm....

And,I can sense in your form,subcurrents of anger.Do not bother to strike me,I am immune to your electrical assaults,this corporeal form being composed of plasma.As for these mortals,strike them no longer,and grant my request to see your leader,if you have any.They are of no concern,and I will strike you down if you continue to harm them.....

Rugal did not view it as a boast.He saw it as stating facts,and he had the intelligence and wisdom gained from a very long existence to know that there were deeper roots to this.Even these spirits,former mortals,would impose their mortal concepts in a new existence which was not suited to it in the first place,and try o live by them,instead of adapting.One of these was a heirarchy,and with so many spirits,it was likely that some heirarchy was formed,or it could be an organic system where they ignored each other.The systems of leadership they evolved were sometimes rather complex.

Finally he turned his attention to the mortals.They were limping,bringing their dead and wounded back to their ship....Polo.His appearance had brought them a respite,and they viewed his presence as benevolent.He was...gladdened.It would smooth relations with them.Among their minds,they viewed him as a 'god'.Not something he desired,for he did not wish to be seen as such.Personally,he viewed it as a hindrance,for it imposed limits on their minds,entrapping them and not allowing them to question,to learn.

Their leader seemed to be monitoring the situation.Rugal allowed his awareness to encompass the surrounding,monitoring the spirit and communicating with the one named 'Anthony'.He transmitted over high electromagnetic and psionic frequencies,openly speaking to the man,though seemingly concentrating on the spirit before him.

Little one,or would you rather I address you by your name?Do not fear,but be cautious in this vessel.There are forces that mortals should be wary of.It is not good to have offended him,but be wary,Whether you wish to continue to be here or not,I leave to you,but the paths of possibility before me are narrowing to a nexus.I forsee a direct conflict among many foes,and I feel that the parasitical malice within that binds these dead ones here is seeking the conflict to grow.Your safety is unguranteed.

And yes,I am not Yan Lou,but I do know this entity you speak him.In human terms;"a rather friendly fellow,nice chap" as you humans would describe him if you met him.

Noting the dumbfounded look of shock upon the one called Anthony's face,he focused back upon the spirit and asked his final question of the spirit.

So young one,what is your name,and will you take me to your leader.If you wish for humour,tell her that this 'lava lamp' comes in peace...

Rugal possessed a sense of humour,and he allowed it to show then,slightly chuckling at his own,admittedly lame joke.Perhaps later on,when this was resolved,these mortals could see the fragments of comedy in all this.

Main Bridge
Kara shook her head; "not help, cause" she said as if it were clear then she realised she was technically older than everyone in the room; "it caused this…don't know how…but it did, its keeping us from true death", she said. The screen with the Sing Unit changed as an option was selected more green text scrolled outlining Project heaven in all its hideous and ingenious glory.

Project Heaven
Classified Code: Black

Overview
Nothing has captivated mortal beings more since the beginning of time than the afterlife and what it contains, nothing has dominated genetic research more in the last century that immortality. The ability to live forever, imagine a great artist of musician with life times worth of creative output to give into a society. Imagine the inventions a great scientist can deliver given the time to perfect them. Project heaven aims to turn that dream into a reality.


Several readouts followed detailing technical data of using injections and energy fields to manipulate the subject's body and DNA and in essence make them immortal the technical data would be lost on all by the Sing units. It was clear now what the scientists were trying to achieve but only on willing participants. However it was obvious something had gone horribly, horribly wrong making the crew of the Ellis Immortal but on a metaphysical level at the event of their physical deaths…

Where the Polo docked

"Rugal wasn't it?" the old man asked; "You speak of morals, but this one" he said pointing to Rita; "would steal the last gift given to one of ours by her dead husband, a gift she treasured while she was alive, the last thing that kept her sane. You ask what right we have, what right do they have? They provoked us we retaliated," he said simply.

"As for striking you I have no such intention, I harbour no anger to you and as for these mortals they have been adequately punished for there crimes, I have no more desire to harm them…they will live…for now" he replied. In truth the fact their captain had stayed to find out what happened at the risk of his own life impressed him.

"Though even now they kill each other on this ship, fight over the physical possessions we once had; dishonour the souls who died here"

He looked at the 'lava lamp' curiously for a moment as it had coined his own phrase; he found it rather interesting. "Leader?" he said questioningly; "We don't really have a leader most of us are autonomous, some ignore that anything is wrong, others are consumed by there own pain; few are as you would say 'level headed'" he replied still in thought

"Imogen and Ethne are the strongest of us, so I guess you could say one of them is the leader, though you'd get a more level response from Kara" he said. "As for immature, we're not all transcendent beings whom have seen past physical need and cast off mortal existence in favour of becoming a more cosmic being" he added.

Nomi being a scientist understood part of the processes involved but she realised this why the spirits couldn't rest.

"Kara" she asks "this is the key to why you can't die. we need to find out more about it and then theres a chance of putting a stop to its effects.

I don't even know if destroying the ship would help you or not until we know more"

Anthony had been confounded by the silence between the two non-physical entities up until he was addressed by the being that called itself Rugal. The captain was never much for ceremony and that might have been a reason why he left his commission in the Steelwall Line, his homeworld’s armada. He wondered if the old religions were true or if the ‘gods’ he was taught about were beings like this one.

“You can call me Anthony, whatever you are. And I’ve become quite aware of those ‘forces’ the hard way. I’ve lost too many good men today and it could’ve gotten much worse before it got any better. Thank you for stepping in. If these ‘people’ are pawns of some other player then that ‘malice’ is the one responsible for the deaths of my crewmen and I have an obligation to see it destroyed if it’s the last thing I do”

Rita stepped in at these words “No! You can’t mean that! You can’t stay here!”

“I have to, Rita. For Mendes, for Morais, for Hiram, for all of them. Otherwise their deaths would mean nothing.”

“Then I’m going, too” Peter walked down the ship’s ramp.

“No, I need you on the ship in case something happens to me”

“What about me? First thing they teach us in the training camps is that all soldiers are expendable.” It was Kurt. He was limping and a grimace crept onto his face with each step.

“You up to it?” the captain asked

“I’m always up for a fight.”

“Fine then.” He turned to the flaming entity and the spectral figure. “Rugal, we’re in debt to you. We’re sorry you can’t depart this plane, spirit, we’d like to help you solve that problem.”

((Sheesh, I really need to keep the console's screen hidden. I don't want people finding out everything I do))

As the information flashed over the screen, the Sing-unit waved over to the Alter model, while quietly moving to block the others' view of the datastream. "Hey, Sarge, look at this."

The black and white droid, after a sidelong glance to the ghostly little girl, walked over to view what his companion was so intrigued with. He didn't expect, of course, that what he would find would be information on a bio-alteration wavelength data, as well as bio-synthetic injection parameters and their formulas, designed and designated as a way of preserving an organic's mindstate in an theteral form while seperating their coinciousness from a solid form. In other words, a way of ripping the soul from the body.

"Fascinating..."

"I know, isn't it?"

The Alter unit nodded, lowering his voice. "I want you to make a copy of all the information you downloaded and send it to HQ. It may come in handy." With those words, he left to regroup with the others by the spirit girl.

Polo Docking Area

Rugal simulantaneuosly contemplated the various information being fed back to him.The mortals were surprisingly plucky.Of course,they were.He had been mortal once before,and mortals possessed a surprisingly strong will to succeed,some individuals bordering on the point of stubborness.

The choice of these mortals to do so indicated some extent of noble spirit within them,and he knew,unless the spirit was rather thick,that the fact these mortals were at the very least attempting to help,despite the fact that he had murdered their comrades,was not lost on the spirit.

They had traded mere vengeance for a chance at justice;more than likely they were going to die,as well as more of their companions.He glanced at the spirit,before turning to face the wall.So,the ones named Ethne and Imogen.Those with the most powerful energy signatures amongst these spirits.

Young ghost,I do not know your name,but with the power I have,I set you free.You are free to accept death,let it be.For you,I am able to do so,for the parasite's influence is weak in this area.the undeath you suffer now,I liberate you from it.Enter that portal before you,and accept your judgement.

Rugal bent his will to open a portal to the afterlfie,not visible to the mortals,but more than visible to this ghost before him.While this individual was free,he could not do so for others,as it would not solve the problem of the parasite,and doing so would attract attention of spiritual predators,who would be attracted to the constant usage of his power,and would attack the mortals.They were no trouble for him,but with so many mortals around,he did not wish it.An exception to this ghost,and he would see to this Ethne and Imogen.

As he left the ghost to ponder the unexpected developement,he left the mortals to decide with a simple message:Your choice is your own,but a possible future I see is one where all of you spiral into death.Beware that future.

So now,it was left for him to find this Imgoen and Ethne,and to reattend to some matters,perhaps at the bridge.He ceased transmitting radiation in the visible,ultraviolet and infra-red spectrum,ceasing to be visible in most electromagnetic wavelengths.

And perhaps,it was time to let all those involved know that a being of his level was involved.It would perhaps make the mortals more cautious,and perhaps even give this 'malice' a warning.He was swiftly tiring of the hide-and-seek game.Already,the malice was flitting at the edges of his awareness,but still hiding itself,able to mask its presence and make its presence 'small',a mote even he had trouble detecting.

It took a certain amount of restraint not to rip apart this vessel and throttle the damned entity,not that he would be able to,as it could escape into the void of space if he did so.The ship seemed to somehow contain it,for an unknown reason.

He phased through the superstructure to the ships reactor cores,and from there let loose an incredible pulse of electromagnetic and psionic energies,as well as a slight tug of gravity,making all objects with weight feel a slight nudge outwards.After the first pulse,he settled on letting a steady thermal pulse emanate from his being,while he sent out picobots to form a physical structure composed loosely of scavenged titanium and silicon bits,acting as more of a frame,to allow some interaction with others.After the last experience,he felt that perhaps the visible energy being form he took was rather disconcerting and intimidating,though impressive,he had to admit.

Bridge

At the far end of the bridge,a shell of metal formed around an empty volume of air,pulled together by picometre sized robots acting in unison,to form a shape reminiscent of a heavily muscled human.If one were to refer to human mythology,it bore an uncanny resemblance to a being once known as the Hulk.A green-skinned human anto-hero whose existence had been lost in the mists of time.Graphical records existed of this being,though fragmented by time and conflict.

Rugal had decided on using the image of the Hulk,though he made sure that a smile was plastered on the face of the metallic shape-form that he manifested.It served to disarm people.The ancient anti-hero had existed,though in an alternate universe that he had once traveled to.In this reailty,it existed only as a fictional character.

Standing still in the dim lights of the bridge,Rugal watched and awaited their reaction.

Nomi seen the figure form as she talked to Kara.

she asked the entity "whats your business on this ship?"

Polo docking bay
The old man chuckled slightly as the portal before him opened; he could see through to the other side into the afterlife, his wife was waving to him beckoning him in the old man shook his head and said aloud. "Not yet, I have to see this through to the end, I will know peace when everyone is free. It’s a matter of honour", he said. This must have been very unusual to the mortals still watching, as they obviously could not see whom or what he was talking to as the portal disappeared behind him.

"You" he said pointing to Anthony still in his 'voice of god'; "you wish to live on this ship, your going to need a guide and a protector; there are still souls were that want you very dead" the old man said.

Main Bridge
Kara looked at Misa and Nomi unsure what to say; "Project Heaven" she said; "that’s what caused the blue fire?" she added, before noticed a large hulking metallic being simply 'form to her right. She looked it up and down, it was certainly like nothing she had ever seen before; it wasn't mortal or synthetic.

Meanwhile the data readouts continued to pour out information about Project heaven, mostly technical data but there were several references to 'non human' DNA and 'Patient zero' perhaps implying that the technique wasn't developed through human DNA manipulation alone, there were also several references to Lab 16

"This is most illuminating..." Citurs said, pointing to the schematic.

"Yes, I say we forget the other destinations, now that we know where we're going," Vine said, absentmindedly moving his hand through Kisa's head, as though he was trying to pat her head.

"Let's move out," Citrus ordered.

----------

Seedling grumbled, he had left his rifle in room 7A and needed to retrieve it. He found it under a bed, he grabbed at it. A glimmer caught his eye, the same bracelet featured in the recording was on a bedside cabinet, it had not been thier before. Seedling picked it up, and stowed in his armour. It may be of some use. He exited the room, ready to catch up to the others.

----------

Bark milled through the terminal he was using, there didn't seem to be anything useful here, except of course, this medical file. It made various references to a certain Lab 16, as well a 'Project Haven'. Bark forwarded it to the other panda-men aboard.

"Brothers, there is something more to this ship," He said over a secure com. "Undead, spirits, or some other devilry..."

"We know," Citrus's voice said over the com. "We are currently looking for answers, we are on the verge of a breakthrough."

Meanwhile,Orchard had wandered over to the strange being that had materialized out of thin air. He gawked and started scanning this creature openly and rudely.

"Being, who..or..what are you? Are you one of them?" He asked, waving a hand vaguely at Kara.

-----------

The panda-men roared in triumph. Lab 16 was in thier sights, just at the end of this corridor, perhaps now, thier questions would be answered.

Bridge

Affecting a chuckling tone,he answered both the one name Nomi and the silicon life-form 'Orchard'.This time,it was in an audible sonic frequency,with a psionic and elctromagnetic component,so that the beings could understand him,to hear him in their minds,in other words.

My name is Rugal.I come in peace.Take me to your leader.

A cliched expression,yes,and rather comical,but then again,this was becoming rather comical as well.Mortals,undead,energy beings,all having to interact in a single derelict space hulk,with a parasitical entity,a being,he was sure of it.

Deciding for the sake of a more ordinary appearance,he compressed all the mass making up this manifestation into a smaller frame of a humanoid 1.7 metres tall,seemingly shrinking in front of the two.

In all seriousness this time,my name is Rugal.I am here to talk to Imgoen and Ethne.I do not wish to expend more time here,and wish to learn of the situation.I come here to aid these undead in being dead,and to alleviate the suffering that befalls the beings here.In the void of space,it is a beacon of sorrow,and a fortune that it has not attracted predators,spiritual or psionic.

If you wish to accept my help,so be it.If not,then I will observe.If you turn your sensors towards the core of the ship,towards the reactors,you will note a thermal anomaly.That is the nexus of my being.This is merely a proxy form to interact with you.My information about the situation is going to be complete once I access the computer cores,and perhaps the synergy of a collaboration will be better rather than separate efforts to resolve the same situation.

Transmitting a trail of picolets towards an interface socket,he accessed the data,taking in the layers of code and information that began to suffuse his consciousness.Finding layers of security coding regarding a 'Project Heaven' already opened,he accessed the records,noting the techniques and technologies used in the effort to make a transhuman entity.....

Within 5 seconds,he had reached an alarming conclusion.The situation now necessitated his direct intervention,and it would require actions,that,while benevolent in its conclusion,might offend these mortals.A necessary evil.

Main Bridge
Kara felt the being in her mind; she wasn't too accustomed to other beings playing around in her head, nor did she particularly like it so she put up the defensive walls auntie Immy had taught her to block this "Rugal" from her deeper mind. She didn't like telepathy too much but even she couldn't help but smile at the 'take me to your leader' comment.

"I'm Kara" she replied simply; "What do you want with mommy and Auntie Immy?" she said aloud rather than with her mind even if it was simply to keep the others in the loop, she liked the two women.

Outside Lab 16
The twin layered Behemoth sized blast doors at the end of the corridor were marked with big white lettering 'Lab 16' evidentially designed to seal the lab in the event of a major containment breach. It was also evident the doors didn't do much to preserve the lives of any crew aboard whether this was by pure underestimation of the forces the scientists were dealing with or because of the extensive damage caused by the attack would forever remain a mystery. However the blast doors still provided a very real, very physical obstacle to the panda men.

Kisa made her form briefly physical for a few seconds to allow Vine to ruffle her hair like he had been trying to do and hugged onto his leg. For a brief moment he would actually feel the small child's arms around his leg before she phased back to her spirit form. "I'm scared," Kisa said looking at the ominous doors ahead.

"OK Rugal" Nomi answers "how can you help these spirits? Do you know something that we don't?"

OOC: Sorry guys for being away the whole day but I had to be at work and it will be that way tomorrow, too so I hope you can be patient with my characters for this weekend.

IC: Anthony looked at the elder spirit in a respectful glare. This being had been responsible for a great many of his men’s deaths and now he warned him of other dangers on this dead man’s vessel. What the captain was about to propose was, at least, ironic; at most insane.

“Agreed, old man. How about you be our tour guide into perdition? And why don’t you tell us your name? I make a point of calling my business partners by their names.”

Vine grinned as Kisa turned physical for a small moment.

"You have nothing to fear," He said. "The worst is already over for you."

Citrus thumped on the blast doors.

"To strong for our rifles, or swords for that matter...You! Seedling! Did you bring a fusion cutter?" He asked.

Seedling rifled around in the crate of equipment they had not yet abandoned, and pulled out a purple device.

"Here, sir," He said, handing it to Citrus.

Citrus grinned, a dark blue flame burst from the end of it, he began cutting through the blast doors.

----------

"Imogen, Ethne? We know these names. They have allied themselves with our brothers aboard this ship, apparently on a quest to free the dead...or something, oh, and my leader is over there," Citrus replied to the shrinking, long-winded being.

Bark waved a hand vaguely, still reading the information on the computer.

If the Ga-variation units had eyebrows, they would have raised them at the apparence of the smiling, metal creature formed of the ship's hull. Not every day you see that, after all.

"Well," droned the Alter unit, looking at Rugal, "There's something you don't see every day." he took the time to scan the area the being had directed them too. "Looks like it's that being that was in here earlier, casting himself in the ultraviolet spectrum...Oh well." He turned back to regard the metal molding in front of him. "Well, -I'm- the leader of my outfit...Unless you want our conjoined leader, which I don't believe we have..."

While Rugal processed the information,the one called Nomi was addressing him.His awareness was racing.If he had possessed his old human body,it would be racing with adrenaline at the revelations he was processing.

Kara,the young spirit,she had put up a psionic block to her awareness.Not that he was interested in that,and he respected their privacy.More or less,he was indifferent to her mind.If he wanted to find out exactly what lay in her mind,nothing could have stopped him from slipping past her barrier,reducing his awareness to mote-size,using brute force on it or slowly eroding it.She was a child,and he did not wish to harm or traumatise the young of any mortal species.Such fragility,potential and wealth within their futures.As expected,mortal beings often misunderstood his intentions,or misinterpreted his messages.She was the larva...spawn...wrong term...'child' of the entity Ethne.He would keep her in mind.

To Kara;Your mother and your relative are in danger if the doors to Lab 16 open.Be careful.Tersely,he answered Nomi as well;Nomi,you and all the oher mortals are heading towards a temporal nexus,a moment in time that spreads off in multiple directions.I can influence the path to freedom,but other future pssibilities fall into danger for all in this ship.A danger that will build up and affect billions of beings in the distant future.This I cannot allow.

He delved into the layers of information,layers of encryption and code laid bare before him.Even deeper layers of encryption that he simply broke through,shattering them behind him.The corrupted video and audio logs of the science team.The tests.....the torture....the uncontrolled psychics,the newly awakened transhumans....LAB16.It had been sealed for a reason.

The parasite he had felt was even more powerful than he had perceived.Only a small mote of its essence had escaped the Lab,the other transhumans and psychics doing their best to contain it,their extinction a final sacrifice.They were drawing on the sorrow of all these people to constantly imprison it.

This ship was attacked precisely because of this project.Project Heaven.A project that ironically laid the path to a hell.This ship was a pathway to a cosmic hell inhabited by parasite similar to this,and this former human,the test subejct responsible,had been attempting to escape to it and bring its brethren to this plane.To feed.

The scientists had not reckoned with the uncontrolled mutations and evolution that could occur,the abrupt increase in mental cognitive ability and expansiveness that resulted in mental paradigm shifts.Done so fast,it created unpredictable and chaotic stresses that could drive a being insane and grant them a level of power they were neither prepared to handle nor understand,a power and access to energies they were not conditioned for.Even his own ascensions had taken centuries.

On infra-red frequencies,he transmitted the information to the silicon life forms before him,the 'Alter unit',these Ga-variation entities.Urgent and scramble,it was an immense amount of information,containing all the restored informations and his analysis of them,detailing third and fourth order consequences that they would take minuted to process.

Looking at Bark,he yelled into the audible frequencies;YOUNG ONE.TRANSMIT TO ALL,DO NOT OPEN BAY 16..He was answered by a cringe as all the beings on the bridge flinched,due to the volume,except the ghostly Kara and the silicon beings.

He swiftly left his hulking form,leaving it to dangle like a puppet on strings as he reformed his entirety into an orb and teleport to Bay 16.Panicking,as much as a being as him who had few emotions could,he frantically pulsed intensely and frequently,across psionic and electromagnetic wavelengths,a simple message;Danger.....

Outside Bay 16
STOP! was the only message Rugal yelled as he folded spacetime around him.Something,an external agent,was delaying him.It was taking far too much energy,and taking time,to teleport,which was an instantaneous process,down to the planck second.

Abruptly,a dark being appeared before him,hideous in aspect,a blur across frequencies,radiating malice and danger before it.Static clouded the spectrum around it,as it pounced upon Rugal.....

"then do what you must" Nomi replies to Rugal before he teleports.

This mission was getting stranger and more dangerous and Nomi wondered if she should be leaving before it claimed their lives.

She still was honour bound to help the spirits even if it meant her own death.

"Misa" she said "return to our craft and wait for me there. When I give the word get out of here as fast as you can warp. I'll join you if i can"

Misa nods and departs the bridge as she descends in the turbo lift knowing her commander knows best.

Outside Lab 16
The Brilliant purple sparks rained down onto the floor as the cutter began to slice into the blast doors Kisa instinctively held tighter onto Vines leg, or as tight as a spirit could. They heard the call to stop all to late as the large rectangular shaped cutting fell through to the other side breaching the lab sanctity to Kisa's surprise there wasn't a large explosion like she had expected after the warning. However inside the Lab the swirling blue vortex awaited along with a body of a patient in stasis…that wasn't human, this was patient Zero.

Outside Lab 16 (Trans-phase dimension)
The large black and purple fire form unleashed its fury with all the subtly of an enraged category 5 hurricane attacking Rugal like a wild animal with pure unrelenting rage as it tore at the Trans-dimensional being. Until four lights pure as light of the sun descended through the ship phasing through its hull like it wasn't even there, four new beings, appeared from the lights. 3 female, 1 male all angelic in appearance and radiating holy light around them. Aineal, Anaria, Anariel and Auron, rarely did the four beings interact with let alone interfere with events on this level however things were fast spiralling out of control and Rugal had a future that required him to live.

Chains of holy light wrapped around the black and purple creature and glowed bright white as they tried to bind its rage and fury the creature pulsed brightly shattering the chains like they were mere strings. Once again the four beings bound the creature in chains of holy light this time pouring more energy into them. Immy and Ethne appeared and also bound the creature in chains this time of fire. Between the six entities they had contained the creatures attack for the moment but it was draining them every second; what they were to do next was unknown.

Corridor
"Hwang" the old man replied sensing something big happening on the ship he seemed to zone out and look around wondering just what has happening

the turbolift stops and opens letting Misa out and she steps onto the deck.

the atmosphere was still holding so she conserved her oxygen and opened her helmet slightly. The air was stale but still breathable.

as he walks back to the dock where the warp shuttle is she sees the figure in the corridor. It looks like an old man and Misa approached him.

“Alright, Hwang. My name’s Anthony Santos and I’m captain of this vessel” He pointed his hand at the Polo. Kurt approached his captain form behind, holding a large automatic rail gun in his hands and whispered.

“I can’t believe you’re siding with this guy. He tried to kill us. His ‘girlfriend’ tried to burn me to death!’” Kurt was livid at the thought of helping someone who had, just moments before, tried to murder his friends.

“You know the rules, Kurt. They were here first which means no salvage. They’re prisoners here, too. And I’m not about to let that go on.” Anthony was being forgiving. In his heart he knew he couldn’t forgive Hwang for his deeds but he could help him out of his situation.

Rita was observing Hwang closely for signs of treachery. He could just be luring them out of the protection of their home. He seemed absent all of a sudden.

She asked “Is something going on we ought to know about?”

"By the gods, what have we done?" Sap asked, staring intently away from the vortex.

"Do not enter...we must wait for guidance. We have blundered immensly, whoever told us to cease our actions knew what they were dealing with...I assume they will be along shortly," Citrus said.

Creeper stared at the patient in the stasis pod. He groweled slightly, something was not right about them.

Vine brought Kisa closer, he would not admit it, but he was just as terrified, if not more so, as her.

Outside Lab 16

YOU FOOLS! was all that Rugal could transmit in anger at the beings.Their intent was benevolent,but this abomination was beyond them.They could seal it,they could bind it,but it would break free.They were not powerful enough,yet.Their conjoined power would only serve to delay it.

He looked at the beings before him.His peers.They had though to save him,but they were muddling the probabilities and he could not see through.These 'angels',they had chosen to serve a greater deity,while he was what could be considered an independent agent.Either they intervened of their own accord,or they had been sent.

The seal had been broken,and the vortex was the confluence of the malicious essence.The parasite,it was drawing its power from its brethren already.It would be too powerful for him to handle alone.It would take the intervention of entities even more powerful than himself to purge it.Either an intermediate cosmic deity,or a Greater Star Dragon.A planetary deity would be mere dessert to these beings.Either that,or a plan using the working synergy of all parties on this ship.As far as he knew,no such powerful deities or cosmic beings inhabited the area for a distance of 200 000 light years in all directions.

He stared at the abomination before him.Its initial assault was shocking,but he would handle it himself.He had been unprepared.These beings,they were draining themselves defending him,and Rugal needed no other being to defend him.Whether his essence was dispersed and he ceased to exist in physical form or whether he triumphed over this threat was his future alone.Once the abomination got free,it would devour their essence and trap their souls,growing stronger.He had a balanced chance of defeating it,and perhaps...he would succeed.If not,then so be it.In his mind,he knew it was a fact that these beings were needed by the mortals more than him.Rugal had not survived millenia without learning how to survive.

You,let it go and let me handle it.Gripping it with tendril of psionic energy,he bent his will against it.Just as it grasped it,it suddenly drained his power,sapping his psionic abilities and breaking the binds to it.At that moment,it sensed the mortal souls nearby,and escaped,leaving the non-physical realm.Rugal reeled back.He would recover,but it obviously was no use to use psionic energise against it.

He launched himself after it,just as it entered the physial universe,the shape of a mutated hellhound its physical form,burning with purple flames,tendrils of psionic energy whipping out from it.

Rugal,in true anger for the first time in 5 millenia,took upon his energy form,flaring with blue,red,purple,black and white flames.An energy being of terrible aspect that leapt in front of the small party.Both held their ground as they charged and collided with one another,sound and light flaring from both in the struggle.

All of you,RUN!I will fight this beast alone.To the spirits in the alternate dimension,he sent a great shove,a signal to leave him to the fight.They would look after the mortals.They would only be a hindrance if they got in his way during the fight,as he would be unable to access his full power.

He bodily picked up the beign by its 'tusks' and hurled it through the hull,shattering the thick metal,as it entered into an isolated hold.In the darkness,it hid itself from him,planning to ambush Rugal in the dark of the hull.

Rugal stepped through the hole in the thick,reinforced wall,leading into Bay 14.If he could smile,it would have been the devil's smile.No need to restrain his powers now.He quickly sealed up the hole behind him,picobots mending the hull and remaking it.Vibrations reverberated through the hull,as the hellhound unleashed its torrent of power.This time,Rugal was ready....

Ic: "Crap, where'd she go?" The Kazecis advanced slowly, making sure that she wasn't still there, just hiding. Nope, gone. They rushed forward, grabbing John's battered body. Quickly, medical aid was administered and the pain began to fade, the bruising slowly going away.

Ic: The Kazecis spread to the two walls on either side of their attacker. From their new positions, it was impossible for her to block both directions with the body of their friend. They also stood a ways back, allowing for better protection.

((OOC: He's already knocked out, a blood choke can knock someone unconcious in a matter of seconds, and it's lethal if held for longer. It cuts the blood supply to the brain, and it's very painful, I know from personal experience. Also, if your men can shoot at her, she can shoot at them.))

She held the unconcious body in one place, absorbing the shots from as much of the room as possible. She was being worn by the shots, but her suit was absorbing a significant amount of the blow. She aimed her pistol at the shoulder of the right most enemy. She squeezed the trigger, and compensated for the shock of one of these non lethal rounds. The bullet went flying out of the weapon at hundereds of feet per second.

Lab 16
The Being was just getting warmed up with its previous assault just a mere taste of its power. As it started to unleash it's full fury on Rugal feeding on the power from its brethren though the Vortex growing ever stronger every second. Its assault on Rugal was unrelenting, unstoppable and merciless. The four angelic beings sighed in mild annoyance such arrogance from one so young, at least in the cosmic terms they were using. He was capable of great things but also still had a large ego. They figured it had come from when he was a mortal but it would take more an Rugal's admittedly vast power alone to seal this rift and destroy this abomination to the laws of the universe however they would for now let his ego run away with him. Anaria, Anariel phased through to the physical plane. Appearing as two beautiful human women, in white dresses and radiating a white light.

"This way", Anariel said with a wave of hand quite vexed that a 12th level being would be diminished to mere traffic duty for mortals the fact a being lesser than herself only a 7th level being had ordered it was even more annoying to her. Anaria followed her closely. "You people need to move now", she said.

The other two 12th level beings Aineal and Auron observed the fight between Rugal and the creature ready to leap in and save him at just the right moment which they would inevitably have to do. It was quickly becoming apparent that Rugal had underestimated the creature and the beings that had come to save him the first time as its body changed to silver flame and started to consume the very fabric of reality around it. A single wrong move and the sliver flame would not only consume this ship but the entire solar system.

Corridor
Hwang laughed and said aloud "she's not my girlfriend, I'm dead not deaf son" he said pointing to his ears; "I have good ears" he looked over at Rita, she was suspicious of him, understandably so but if he wanted them dead he could easily do so with impunity. He nodded to her question "Something big" he said honestly unsure exactly what was going on.

Anthony smiled slightly. At least Hwang had a sense of humour. And he seemed to know what was transpiring on the Rachel Ellis in real time, although not completely. “Perhaps we should take a look and see what we can do about it? Lead the way.”

Misa finds the old man occupied and returns to the warp shuttle finding it still there where they docked.

She could see from the scanner in her suit that the shields were up and she opened a commlink to the AI.

"Kaede, let me in" she says and the shields drop and she opens the hatch closing it behind her.

looking at the holographic girl she asks for a progress report.

"nothing to report Ensign" the girl replies and Misa scans the planet and reads the scans she gets back.

In seeing her take aim, her target hit the deck. Despite having a small amount of warning, he wasn't fast enough to avoid the shot completely. It grazed his left shoulder, ripping open then cauterizing flesh with blinding speed. He cried out in pain and pulled to a corner behind a table.

The others pushed forward now, still shouting commands for her to surrender and firing at exposed parts of her body. She only had one weapon and there were 7 of them. She couldn't take them all.

Templar and PDU 696 rounded the corner, closing in on the tracking device Pixious had activated. They almost snuck past the room Nickel was in, then they heard multiple people yelling for Nickel to put her weapon down. Templar darted into the room, followed immediatly by 696. They weren't as forgiving as Nickel with their aim, they shouldered their rifles and aimed for lethal positions on their targets. Seven shots rang out as two three round bursts, and one pistol fired. Nickel aimed at the one she had injured before, the other two aimed at the first two targets they had seen.

((Wow, so much to grasp on to at once. Curse vacations))

Even after the other beings on the Bridge had all but left, the Ga-variation synthenoids still stood there, still as if they had been deactivated, while the information fled through their automative minds. It took them a total of six minutes to descrypt and fully understand what the datastream meant; while that was not exactly long, it was nonetheless plenty of time for everyone to have left.

'A Parasite,' the Alter unit thought to itself, having probed through the entirety of the transferred information and analysis.

'Just what we need, another freakin' parasite. And oh boy, it's a psychic one.'

With what could loosely be called a "Robotic Sigh," the black-and-white droid turned on his heel to face the squad before him. "You all get that?"

They nodded in turn as his head swiveled on its axis to face them one by one.

"Great, great...So, we've got one hell of a psispawn onboard the ship-" He glanced down into the hull of the ship and towards Lab 16, where he could see the epic folds of combat between the Trans-Dimensional Rugal and his equally, if not more powerful rival, the abysmal creature of awakened transhuman potential. He had his Sensor Array to thank for that, though he could not say he was exactly pleased with what he saw. "AND, it's escaped apparently. Wonderful, just wonderful. So we've got a Transy, a Psispawn, and a Glarck of meatbags on this ship, which by the information, is essentially a portal into the deepest pits of the abyss from which that demon-thing came!" He slammed a fist into a nearby terminal, literally crushing the already mangled console into a V-shape as its ends came to meet eachother. Apparently, it called him down.

"So...WHAT, I repeat, WHAT, do we do now? Any suggestions?"

Sing unit 3, holding the plasma autorifle, quietly raised his hand before replying in a somewhat timid voice. "Uh...Go back to the ship?" He shut up quickly as he noticed the blank stares the others were giving him.

"No, no, don't think that's it...If this psionic spawn of a transhuman awakened through unnatural transfusion is as powerful as that Rugal-thing said it is, then we shouldn't be letting it go alive."

"But what can we do?"

The Alter unit hefted up the barrel of his weapon, the heavy cannon seeming to weigh nothing in his mechanized arms as he turned to face Unit 2. "I'll tell you what we're going to do...We're going down there, and we're going to give that hellbeast something to think about! To the lift!"

The squad cheered, the five immediately springing into a full-out run towards the hallway and the lift that lay at its end, oblivious to the entirety of the doom the spawn of chaos and torture would bring.

(OOC: GadgetCorp, I have to wait for Rugal before I can make an IC post..but I just lol'ed at your IC post)

((Thanks, I try))

Nickel's shot was insufficient to penetrate the heavy table behind which her target hid. Not that that made any difference to the two Kazecis who now lay dead on the floor. The team, what was left of it, took cover behind the large table as well.
"S***! there's no way out!" One of the Kazecis hissed.
Jim, who had been back there longer than the rest, pointed to a hole in the floor just wide enough to fit a man. It was hard to see, as the room was dark and smoky and the room below was the same.
"Good work." Tom said as he reached over the table to provide suppressive fire. One at a time, they began to slip through while those still topside provided cover.

Templar handeled the shrapnel grenade with years of training. He let it 'cook' a little before he tossed it behind the table.

Nickel in the mean time had started bounding the unconcious soldier. She tied his arms and legs before collapsing, exausted. 696 saw her collapse and stepped over by where she was sitting.

"You alright ma'am?" He said, offering his hand.

"Errrr, I'll be fine, just need a minute to let the bruising go away, and my blood to thicken again," she spoke into the radio.

After each man got down, he fled down the hall into another room further off as was planned. They needed a head start on these pirates.

True to his Kazeci training, one for all was the only thought that entered his mind as one of the previously injured men sprang toward the grenade, hoping to cover it with his body and shield the others. Luckily for him, he didn't have to. The explosive miraculously fell through the hole in the floor and detonated in the room below. Seconds after the fire cleared, the Kazecis began to rush down and away, knowing that there wasn't much time before another came and that their cover fire was weakening quickly.

*bump*

Within about two minutes Nickel was back on her feet, and she was less than happy. She hoisted the bound Kazeci over her shoulders, and called the main ship.

"Hello Captain Puller, we need a deathsquad (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v650/deathwitharifle/helghastsoldiers.jpg) to help us hunt some persistant rats. We have one hostage, but he's unconcious, so at the moment he is of little use to us."

"Aye aye ma'am, we'll send two of these squads out for you."

She gave no response, but instead started back to the ship that brought them here. She was escorted by PDU 696, while Templar stayed behind and was going to help resolve Pixious situation.


Two more ships were launched from the main Nofian ship, and started in towards where the other had attached.

((OOC:Amazonian Beasts, waiting on you for Pixious's situation))

OOC: Whoa, everybody's back..

IC: The two droids advanced on the table which Pixious was behind, identifying her as the last remaining enemy in the room. The four commandos were behind various pieces of cover on the other side, only their guns revealed. The lead droid cocked his wrist, in the process shooting a small canister behind the table. The canister exploded upon contact with the wall, green stun gas billowing out from the hit as the two droids pulled off, standing behind cover themselves to see if the target now was rooted out of it's hole.
Ulic watched the gas from a tiny slit in his position. He tapped to his other three companions before intiating a private comm "Activate your atmospheric filters so the gas doesn't affect us."

The Kazecis now fled with great speed down a hallway, directly toward the bridge. Tom panted into his com. "Kazeci presence is down to six, hostiles aboard the target have been exceedingly violent."
"Return to the insertion point for immediate extraction." Responded the captain.
"Negative, we can't scrub the mission. Protocol says that in order to go ahead, we must maintain a presence on-board to determine minimal loss."
"Protocol says pull all teams out when there is significant danger or heavy loss."
"We're not leaving." Tom had strong convictions, as always.
"Fine, Tom, just don't get killed. You'll have backup in a moment."

Space:
Another identical shuttle burst out of the massive salvage destroyer, headed for a dock close to the bridge so that the two groups might meet up.

Bridge of the Salvage Destroyer:
"Sir, I've got something weird on my scanners."
"What's your best guess?"
"It looks to be two shuttles flown between us and the target vessel. I'd never have seen them on normal scanners, but there's definitely something there- look at the way it's playing with the data we're receiving."
The captain stood up and moved to face the salvage function portion of the bridge. "Tractor the two anomalies. I want to know what they are. Don't let them get away."
As soon as it was said, dozens of powerful tractor beams lashed out toward where the sensor anomalies were being generated. Each groped for anything solid to grab hold of.

(OOC: Animarnia, I've been waiting for Hwang to lead me to the action near Lab 16 or wherever might be more interesting for the past four days.)

(OOC: Animarnia, I've been waiting for Hwang to lead me to the action near Lab 16 or wherever might be more interesting for the past four days.)

OOC: Yah..Sorry about that, I was waiting for a reply from Rugal first rather than make a really short post.. looks like I'll have to..

IC:
Corridor
Hwang Nodded to Santos and began to lead them through a maze of corridors and intersections honing in on the source of the disturbance Hwang could feel it getting stronger like a beacon as he walked towards it unsure of what was going to come next.

The group followed their guide through the dark hallways illuminating the way with the flashlights mounted on their shoulders. A mixture of mistrust and anxiety ran through them in different amount in each one of them. Kurt’s hands grasped his Auto-Rail Gun and he was on full alert. If need be, he’d blast Hwang in the back at the slightest provocation. He thought to himself: This guy nearly killed our folks with electricity. What if these things are electromagnetic in nature? Could my gun hurt them at all? Maybe if I got close enough… He discarded his thoughts for a moment. This was no time for giving his guide cause for retaliation. But what if something more destructive, something more savage came at him? What then?

OOC:sorry for not posting.setting up a military display for civilians by my unit.

IC: The beast careened into Rugal,slamming him into the bulkhead with enough force for it to get crushed by the impact of the collision.Causing the air to vibrate with an inhuman howl across frequencies that would have shattered normal steel,Rugal plowed into the beast,grappling and striking it with physical force,his energy form constantly phasing between physical,energy and transdimensional.

It was a reality warper.Rugal did not consider this beneficial to anyone on this vessel.The celestial beings who had come were emissaries of a higher force,while he was a free agent,and they though he was arrogant.Their mental paradigms were rather different from his.He could feel their disdain for him radiating of them subtly.Indifference to them was all he felt.They were from another plane of existence and thought themselve more enlightened.If there was arrogance,then they were the ones possessing it.Still,they had their uses,and were powerful allies in the coming fight.

The mere fact that he was matching the beast while they had part of their powers drained and could only delay it was a telling event,in terms of their power anyway.Certainly,he would grant that they were more wise and enlightened.

Suddenly,he felt the sutle shifts as the quantum strings of the universe converged around his locality,threads of probability reeling into chaos,the quantum filaments of the dimensions and planes of existence coaelscing into actual,physical form.Spacetime aroud him 'rumbled' as it began to warp,the laws of physics being broken,metaphysical realms being bled into the fabric.

Rugal knew his own power at reality warping severely outpowered that of the beast,but his control of his powers was,at the best,subpar.He had developed his power,but not his awareness and control of it,over time,only investing a century,as humans measured it,being mindful of the control.Using it now was a risk,but it was the only valid option he had now.The temporal nexus that surrounded both now began to destabilise as Rugal sent forth his vast power,to unmake the creature,to stabilise the warping,and he felt his mind begin to strain.

The beast strove against him,at its unmaking,at its unbending.On a spiritual and astral level,they struggled for dominance,until finally,the beast devided that if it were to lose,it would pull Rugal into oblivion with it.At that moment,is brethren reach out with their energies,empowering him.The beast,with its own power,barely matched Rugal.Now,it stood with the power of the lords of its brethren behind it,against Rugal.

Rugal drove all his will,all his energies into a final strike that sent the beast reeling back into the vortex,before he fell into unconscious oblivion for the first time since he had been an energy being.As he began to fall backward to meet the hard alloy flooring of the hull.His awareness sharply reduced,he was aware of a victory,of the beast's physical form disintegrating.Somehow he felt hollow within.As he touched the floor,the orb of energy that was his totality and the picolets that were a part of his consiousness dissipated and dispersed away,through the hull and into space.He felt his consciousness,his self-aware mind dividing,a mote being all that remained.

-----
In the darkness,Rugal woke up.He felt...different.As he raised his arm...his arm!Rugal stared in blank shock at the hand before him.He tried to turn back to a plasma state.Nothing happened.Shock seemed to seep into his system as he tried to figure out,using his computer-like abilities,to access the stored information of his immense being.It drew a blank.


He lashed out at a bulkhead and recoiled his hand in pain.Rugal stared down at his hand in shock and dawning awareness.Somehow,he had become human again.
-----
If anyone looked at him,they would have seen a naked human being of a rather mixed heritage,dark skin and green eyes speaking of Irish,Indian and countless other ethnicities mixed within him.Lean with a proportionate amount of muscle,he looked exactly like what he had been in a past life,as a human soldier.His face was what women would consider pleasing and attractive,with lips that were pleasant to kiss,as women at least ten thousand years ago would be pleased to touch,with a body to match.All in all,someone that would have sired healthy and strong children,and a quality that women found rather attrative at a primal level.

Not knowing what to do,he sat in the darkness of the sealed room,listening to the vibrations of the hull.Somehow,he knew that he would regain his form.Intuition,honed over his whole life,told him that he would transform back to his transcendent state,more powerful and enlightened than ever.But for now,he was a 'weak' human being again,disconnected from his senses,and all he could do was to go with the flow....

Pixious was unnafected by the gas, her suit had filters so it would filter the air. Seconds after the gas grenade went off, Templar saw entered the room, and opened fire. Pixious used his entrance, along with the gas to mask her path of travel towards where Templar was. After she reached him she would exit the room.


Aboard the ship, one of the bridge crew yelled to the captain. "Sir, one of the salvage ships is using a tractor beam to take in the two leech drones."

The captain stewed over this for a minute. "Send ten leech drones with full capacity to attack the ship, make sure deathsquads are aboard. Also, send two more leeches with half capacity to the hunk of junk after the other ship is occupied."

"Aye Aye sir," he said as he typed a message to the boarding parties.

Shortly afterwards ten of the leech ships shot out and instantly went straight for the Kazeci ship.

"Picking up what seem to be more of these shuttles sir, they're headed right for us." The shields immediately went up without order. Along with the standard energy shielding, Kazeci particle shielding was activated too. It consisted of countless tiny bits of shrapnel spinning around the ship at high speed which, in theory, created a barrier too tight for a fighter or missile to squeeze through without being torn to pieces. It was a highly effective first line of defence, but for this salvage destroyer it was the only line of defence. Hopefully this would stop the intruders.
"Damn it! Initiate lock-down procedure." He turned, "And kill those bastards we tractored!" Silently, dozens of cutting beams lashed for the transports who had been caught. They were joined by particle disassembler arrays, green beams groping for matter, which pulled solid matter apart atom by atom and stored it.

Lt Nomi Taka was still on the bridge unsure of what to do now.

by accessing the internal sensors she had figured out part of what was going on.

a fire fight was in progress in another part of the ship and there was trouble in another bay of the ship.

She turns to Kara and asks "is there anything we can do or are we just going to continue the suffering that has been going on here for the past 50 years? There has to be a way to stop that enity"

She had considered the possibility that if they remained onboard and died that they would become ghosts just like the others they had met. that was why she had sent Misa back to the ship.

((Military display? Neat))

Their clanging footsteps echoing down the halls, the hurried squadron of Ga-variation droids sped down the corridor, literally barreling over anything and everything in their way.That included fallen pieces of machinery, metal crates, broken metal panelling, and the occasional Void Rat that had found its way to the ship. The latter usually ran away squeaking before they were hit, back into the hull of the ship, but a few slow and unlucky ones were kicked by the metal feet of the synthenoids to fly into the ceiling.

"HOLD IT!" yelled the Alter-model, causing the entire unit to skid to a halt and send sparks flying about the hallway as their footpads ground against the panelling. The sound was unbearable, or was at least so for any Void Rats that were around.

"Alright, stop, stop. Last readings showed that they were directly below our position, and since we can't seem to find an elevator-" He took the time to glare at Unit 4, "we'll have to improvise. Unit 1, if you would..."

With a nod, the Sing unit holding the Tesla Claw activated the three-fingered weapon, its transistors crackling to life and the electricity on it clearly visible as it illuminated the darkened hall with a blue-white light. He pointed the menacing weapon towards the plating that made up the floor, a small, red dot appearing as he flicked on the auto-lock. As he squeezed the trigger, a thin line of lightning erupted from each of the three claws, joining as one and striking exactly where the dot was, despite all their wavering and spasms while enroute. The metal where it touched quickly grew to be white hot as crackles of electricity ran down the halls and out of sight.

Unit 1 slowly moved the arc of electricity around in a circle on the floor, slowly burning a hole as small globules of liquid metal formed around the thin line on the floor. Below, Rugal might have noticed the same drops dripping through the opening if he wasn't blinded by the absence of light, but likely, he was limited to just hearing the small drops they made as they hit the floor of the room he was in.

As the lines of lightning completed the circular pattern on the floor, the thick metal plating of the floor, along with the even thicker hull that lay beneath, dropped to the room below with a loud, resounding CLANG!, the Ga-variation droids following in suit to land standing on the platform it made.

"Uh..." Unit 3 rubbed the back of his metal head. "We have the right section?"

The Alter unit, obviously thinking the same, looked around, spotting the human Rugal's thermal signature. He activated the light projector on the side of the head, the "flashlight" shining a wide circle of illumination that cut through the dark to reveal the Trans-Dimensional Being turned Human, sitting in the dark.

"You. Human. You haven't happened to notice a titanic collision of epic proportions between a Trans-dimensional being and a Hellbeast of unimaginable horror within the last five minutes, have you? If so, which way did they go?"

Main Bridge

Kara looked at Nomi; "We have much power on this ship, but even we cannot stop mortals determined to kill each other; Mommy already intervened once" she said shaking her head with a sigh.

"Something…is different" she said looking around, she felt like huge chains had just been released from her body, "Something has changed on this ship". It was like breaking the surface of water after being held down for so long, feeling fresh air in your lungs for the firs time in many years.

Ethne and Imogen felt it too, so did Hwang and all the other spirits on the ship, like chains were shattered. The four transcended beings looked over Rugal, he had burnt himself out rather than accept help, very stubborn indeed but then, that stubbornness, that willingness to never give up would be exactly what will be required of him in future events. He had done well for this was his trail.

Outside Lab 16
A huge wave of energy flooded through the corridors, literally melting right through the sealed doors and headed towards the panda men like an energy explosion of epic preparations Kisa cringed behind Vines leg instinctivly. Immy appeared before them and raised her ghostly hand an wall of fire, like transparent lava appeared in front of her and repelled the energy protecting the panda men from its wake and directing the energy elsewhere

Corridor
Hwang stopped suddenly feeling a disturbance; "do you hear that?" he asked, when he felt the massive energy wave approaching. He quickly shoved the mortals that were accompanying him into an adjacent room off the corridor and created an electrical barrier around it to protect them as he himself was consumed by the energy wave…

Elsewhere…
The massive energy discharge continued to travel through the ship as Ethne tried to direct it through uninhabited hallways but there was no guarantee it would not make it to those currently engaged in a fire fight, they might not even see the huge blue wall of energy approaching…

The droids swiveled to face Templar, rattled a bit by fire, before swathing shots away themselves as they slowly advanced. The commandos stayed low, firing pulse shots towards the door.

“HWANG!” Anthony yelled out lying on the floor with his hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the blinding light out in the corridor. He looked on as Hwang’s existence was dispersed by the inexplicable energy wave that passed by. And then it was gone and so was he.

“Can you believe that?” Rita was in awe of what had just happened. Not only did a catastrophic blast of energy almost kill them, but Hwang, someone who had been set on murdering her crewmates just a few moments ago, had sacrificed himself to save them. “If it hadn’t been for him we’d be goners.”

Peter got off the floor and looked out into the hallway. “What now, cap? Should we keep going or go find another job?”

Anthony paused for a moment and raised his head to meet his friend’s gaze. “This only proves that Hwang and everybody who’s a prisoner on this hulk are good people despite what we’ve been the targets of. We keep going. We go to Lab 16 and see what we can do to help the rest of them. Let’s move out.”

Rita had already moved out into the corridor before Kurt could get in to a point position with his heavier support weapon. She looked at the burn marks where Hwang’s electrical barrier had met with the energy wave that destroyed him and raised her hand to touch the wall with her gloved hand. “Thank you. May you receive the peace that was denied to you for so long.”

Rugal looked at the robotic life forms through human eyes for the first time in millenia.He felt blinded by it but blinked it away,fluids coating and lubricating his eyes naturally.There was still work to be done,the vortex wasn't closed.Even in his transcendent state he knew that he lacked the power to do it,and that battle had resulted in a division of his consciousness.

The abomination would return,once it recovered,and if it did so while he was in this state,nothing would be able to oppose it effectively unless everyone combined their efforts to that end,and even then victory was not certain

He tried to use his psionic powers to communicate,but found even them gone.Using his voice instead,he told them simply;"I am Rugal.The hellbeast has been delayed for now.As for being gone,well,my awareness has divided,due to the unexpected results of the clashing powers,as well as my being,and here I stand.Your titanic collision of epic proportions is over."The sound of his voice after so long shocked him slightly.It was....unusual being in this form.He could change form to this when he wanted to,as an immortal being,but he usually chose not to.Now,he had been forced into this form.

Rugal noticed a feeling enveloping his body,and tried to figure it out.It was then,that he realised that he was cold.Figuring that the social conventions still demanded that he don some form of clothes and be armed,he requested so from the robots.

"As you have noticed,I am cold,gauging from your sensors,and required clothes of sort and footwear,and if possible,a weapon.Your aid be be thankfully accepted".

Rugal figured that he would probably offer them free upgrades and some advanced pieces of nanotech once he regained his form,if he could find a way to summon it and reunite the two.

Being this close to the vortex made him feel nauseous,fear and terror welling up within him.He suppressed them,detaching himself from his emotions.He acknowledged his fear,and breathed deeply to calm down,all the while maintaining an expression of indifference on his face.Of course,he knew the robots would detect the physiological changes happening,and it would confuse them,as to whether he was dealing the truth,or an individual somewhat insane or suffering shock.

"Sweet Gods above..." Vine gasped as the massive wall of energy was channelled away from them.

"We are fools to simply stand around. We must devise a plan of action," Citrus barked.

Bark and Orchard padded towards them, they had long since left the bridge.

"How do we fight the incorporeal? Our rifles or swords would have no effect against a dark spirit, unless..." Vine mused.

"Unless what?!" Yelled Bark.

"There is a body in that labratory, perhaps if one was to destroy it...this patient Zero...the dark spirits may crumble...." Vine continued.

"And if that doesn't work?" The other panda-men asked simultaneously.

"Then...we are doomed," Vine finished lamely.

Vine snuck into the lab, his mag-boots in full magnetic lock against the floor to keep himself from flying into the vortex, and layed an armed plasma grenade next to patient Zero's body.

"Let us pray to whatever god that is listening that this works," Bark grumbled.

The panda-men fled the lab, hoping to get to cover before the grenade detonated.

Unit 1 turned to face the Alter-model, glancing at the bare-skinned human Rugal as he spoke. "You believe him?"

The black and white synthenoid shrugged, his well-oiled armor plates not even creaking in the cold. "I don't know what to believe anymore. His cerebral emission patterns seem to be a bit jumpy, but he still retains some of the same mental patterns as the Rugal did. Besides, he's naked. I say we give him some clothes."

He opened a small access plate located on his right arm, revealing what appeared to be a PDA crossed with a Laptop installed into the appendage. He tapped on a few of the keys, activating a small number of lights on the console, and spoke into it. "Unit Twelve? Yeah, it's me. Could you send down an LS-229 and a Mazer? Thanks." The Alter unit closed the hatch once more and turned back to the human. "Should be arriving in a few secon-Ah, here it is."

Glancing down, the six beings in the room would notice a small mass of blue, phasic energy, slowly solidifying and taking shape. When they completely reorganized themselves into their original state, one would find that they turned out to be a set of clothes and a strange, slightly twisted weapon. There was a jumpsuit, completely white, with flexible carbonite plates covering the breast, shoulders, knees, and forearms; beside that sat an irregularly cylindrical helmet with a fiberclass visor that made up the entire front third and seemed to have what was likely a Rebreather where a human's mouth would be.

The third object, the weapon, was most certainly the strangest. It was, essentially, a two-foot long metal pole, with a rifle grip and a shimmery, metal sphere at the end. The body of the weapon could not have been more than two inches wide, and was cylindrical, with a small computer, likely a targeting system, installed two-thirds of the way down.

Picking up the three items, the Alter unit tossed them towards the Human Rugal. "Suit's form-fitting. The helmet's equipped with a rebreather and melds with the suit. Don't ask, I don't want to have to go in with the details. As for the weapon, basic point and click interface. Also has a self-targeting mode. And never point it towards yourself unless you want to be swiss cheese."

((For future reference, the Mazer is essentially the Weapon-equivalent of a Disco Ball, firing out dozens of small beams of laser from the front-half of its rotating sphere-head, totaling fifty.))

OOC: hmm this seems interesting, is it too full to join you guys or not?

The ships were incredibly fast, two of them got caught in the shrapnel shielding, and the others backed off, but still swarmed around the ship. One of them radioed back to the main ship.

"Sir, they have a shielding we can't bypass, our ships are immediatly destroyed when they touch it."

"Keep the swarm up, if you guy's can't get in, then that means they can't out or attack us. The second they open that shield up to let something either in or out I want you guys in that hole faster than Ron Jeremy."

"Aye Aye sir"

Two more ships exited the main ship, and made their way to the abandoned vessel. This time they were sent with several dummy ships to draw fire in case they were tried to pick up again.

*******
Pixious made her way out the door right behind Templar. Templar stood fast, even though he had taken several shots, wasn't the first, and probably wouldn't be the last. After she was secure, he readied a grenade and tossed it, quickly making his exit. The second Pixious saw him exit the room she slapped a device onto the door frame. The second they stepped out and explosion would kill at least the first one, if not the second.

Both of them injured, they made their way to the leech drone they used to board the ship, where they would wait for the death squads, along with several of the deathsquads battlesuits. With these new suits they would impervious to energy shots, and damage from other types of weapons would be greatly reduced.

Unit 1 turned to face the Alter-model, glancing at the bare-skinned human Rugal as he spoke. "You believe him?"

The black and white synthenoid shrugged, his well-oiled armor plates not even creaking in the cold. "I don't know what to believe anymore. His cerebral emission patterns seem to be a bit jumpy, but he still retains some of the same mental patterns as the Rugal did. Besides, he's naked. I say we give him some clothes."

He opened a small access plate located on his right arm, revealing what appeared to be a PDA crossed with a Laptop installed into the appendage. He tapped on a few of the keys, activating a small number of lights on the console, and spoke into it. "Unit Twelve? Yeah, it's me. Could you send down an LS-229 and a Mazer? Thanks." The Alter unit closed the hatch once more and turned back to the human. "Should be arriving in a few secon-Ah, here it is."

Glancing down, the six beings in the room would notice a small mass of blue, phasic energy, slowly solidifying and taking shape. When they completely reorganized themselves into their original state, one would find that they turned out to be a set of clothes and a strange, slightly twisted weapon. There was a jumpsuit, completely white, with flexible carbonite plates covering the breast, shoulders, knees, and forearms; beside that sat an irregularly cylindrical helmet with a fiberclass visor that made up the entire front third and seemed to have what was likely a Rebreather where a human's mouth would be.

The third object, the weapon, was most certainly the strangest. It was, essentially, a two-foot long metal pole, with a rifle grip and a shimmery, metal sphere at the end. The body of the weapon could not have been more than two inches wide, and was cylindrical, with a small computer, likely a targeting system, installed two-thirds of the way down.

Picking up the three items, the Alter unit tossed them towards the Human Rugal. "Suit's form-fitting. The helmet's equipped with a rebreather and melds with the suit. Don't ask, I don't want to have to go in with the details. As for the weapon, basic point and click interface. Also has a self-targeting mode. And never point it towards yourself unless you want to be swiss cheese."

((For future reference, the Mazer is essentially the Weapon-equivalent of a Disco Ball, firing out dozens of small beams of laser from the front-half of its rotating sphere-head, totaling fifty.))


Rugal looked at it and decided that while its aesthetics were not the most pleasing,it was functional.After all,poverty or lack thereof of power reduced ones scope of choice.

Donning the suits,he decided to follow the robots.After all,his survival chances were higher if they stuck together.

Star Core
The picobots slowly upgraded themselves,while transdimensional energies and the fusion fire of the star burnt around them.The plasmic form lay inert,absorbing energies from the star's fiery reactions,drawing sustenance from it.

The electromagnetic tendrils of energy fluxed around it,as the picobots slowly became femtobots,while across the spiritual and astral planes of existence,power drew to a focal point.A lesser deity was about to be born,but it was not soon.The awakening would come,when it was ready...

The four freight workers walked down the dark corridor illuminating it with their shoulder lights. They held their ion particle based Shock Rifles up and at the ready. Hurt had point and carried a heavy Auto-Rail Gun. Their approach on Lab 16 would be a cautious one.
Just before turning a corner, Kurt looked around it to find five androids, the like of which he had never seen before, and a human wearing a strange white outfit. These foreigners sure have the strangest tastes in clothes. He thought to himself readying to fire a hail of electro-magnetically-propelled rounds. But before he could take another step forward Captain Santos took hold of his arm and whispered:

“No. There’s been enough killing here. And there’s something familiar about that man... It’s like I’ve met him before.”

The captain raised his rifle up to the ceiling resting it vertically on his shoulder and raised his other hand up to show it wasn’t armed and cautiously walked out into plain view of the other group much to the horror of his three crewmen.

“Hello. My name is Anthony Santos and I’m looking for Lab 16.”

"Lab 16?" questioned Unit 4, holding his weapon somewhat tightly in his cold, metallic hands. "Yeah, it's right around here somewhere...Not that you'll want to see it. Just a bunch of damaged consoles and crossed wires now, I bet..." He turned back to glance at the human Rugal a moment before swapping his gaze back to the newcomers, walking smack-dab into a slap thrown by Unit 2.

"Idiot!" he whispered in harsh tones, glaring at his companion with non-existant eyebrows. "How do you know he's not hostile? How do you know he hasn't got twenty of his friends hiding behind a wall? How do you know-"

Unit 2 was silenced when his head was smashed into the faceplate of Unit 4
by Unit 1, who then proceeded to reactivate his Tesla Claw if for nothing
else than to look menacing towards the lesser-equipped pair. "Shut it you two. And you as well!" He swung around the crackling and sparking weapon to face Unit 3, who was snickering in the background at his squad members' antics and immediately froze upon seeing the small jumps of electricity pointed at him.

The Alter model sighed as he watched his teammates go into an all-out brawl, over something which he doubted any of them even remembered at this point-he didn't even know what they were fighting about! His shoulders slightly slumped, he turned to regard Santos.

"Yeah, uh..." He raised a finger, pointing to the hallway that led off to the right. "I think it's that way..."

Bridge:
The Kazecis finally arrived at the bridge, out of breath. Slowly, they entered, weapons drawn. Tom searched for a face he could recognise as friendly from one of their earlier encounters in the hall. Seeing none, he decided to let someone else speak first. They closed the doors behind them.

Lt Nomi Taka looked at the new arrivals on the bridge and asked "whats going on in the ship. I'm beginning to doubt what the internal sensors are telling me."

She was still wearing her red power armour and was working at a bridge console.

"In truth, we just had 3 members of out team killed in a fire fight, bringing our total to 8 out of 14 dead. It's a very hostile place. We came to the bridge for protection, assuming that good people like yourselves would be here and hoping for strength in numbers. They may attack us when we are few and poorly armed, but when we outnumber them," He looked around at all of the weapons in the room. "and out gun them, they should leave us alone." He was calm, true, but chemicals the brain releases during stress can cause the mind to function out of expected response. To give the words "eight dead" any meaning would cause a break down for them, and so their meaning was blocked out.

ooc: EDIT: Crap, sorry about that. I've edited.

Nickel Seven and PDU 696 were already standing in the hall where their leech drone had attached to the ship, when they saw the and heard the tell tale signs of two of them attaching to the walls on either side. They darted into their drone because the drones were not friendly to anyone in the hall, friend or foe.

Two six foot in diameter circles were cut out and heated. Then a small explosive charge blew them up, filling the hall with shrapnel. Finally, in a testament to how destructive they were, the hall filled with flames, successfully frying anything alive. The hall was then filled with the sounds of heavy footsteps. These soldiers were professional.

"Ma'am, we succesfully made it aboard, we have some new battlesuits for you and your squad. These are the standard death squad suits."

Nickel Seven nodded, and stripped out of her suit, her long white hair falling down around her bare back. On her shoulder a tattoo of four aces and a three of diamonds glared back at anyone who so much as tried to look at it. It wasnt long before she and 696 were fully dressed. She tossed her first battlesuit into the leech drone, and noticed the prisoner was waking up.

"Four of you, wait here for Templar and Pixious, interrogate the prisoner while you're waiting for them to get back. Find out what his team is doing here, where they are heading, and the like. Don't kill him unless he is being incredibly resistant. After that you guy's search the ship for more beings. The rest of you come with me."

The other thirteen heads nodded, and started off behind the leader, on a path towards the bridge. Thirty glowing orange eyes made their way down the hall, the rest of the uniform was pitch black. Belt and drum fed weapons reigned in this fifteen man wall of death, weapons capable of bringing down small buildings with relative ease. Although the men were strong, the suits slowed them down considerably, all things considered they were moving at a normal pace. The suits helmet illimunated the dark coridors, and tracked most motion.

The Mercenary State of Nation of Fortune didn't want robots, they wanted men, and women, who were indestructable and would show results. Soldiers that wouldn't wince at the thought of pain or death, and thus their life revolved around becoming soldiers. From ages of two or three they would be stripped of everything they knew, thrown into intense military training for six long years. Before they could graduate, they would have to pass the rigors of the final exam, a solid week of being put into every possible battlefield and survival situation with no rest. At the end of the exam the students would pair off with another and fight to the death with nothing more than the company of their bare hands. After graduation commenced they would spend three more years training in a more specialized area.

"Sir, the derelict is being boarded by craft identical to the ones around us now." The sensor's position reported.
"Comm, send our men a reminder that there is danger aboard."

Two new craft have docked, rather attached, the derelict. Judging by their actions out here, they won't be friendly in there. We're sending backup, they should beam directly to the bridge shortly.

Another Kazeci bullet transport tenitivly detached from its landing port inside the massive bay. The door was already open, now all that was left was the run. They'd have to trust the operators on the bridge not to hit them during their blind dash. The craft accelerated, reaching maximum speed by the time it was out of the bay doors. One of the fastest small craft in the galaxy at full speed. Tractor beams activated behind them, they pushed the craft even faster and covered any hole that might be left behind it. Just as they reached the barrier, the hole had become large enough for them. It began to close quickly behind as they sped for the derelict.

Never slowing, they made a pass by the bridge and beamed 7 fully armed Kazeci soldiers onto the bridge. A wide circle and they began to approach the salvage destroyer again.

"I see you've brought reinforcements" Nomi replies recognising the similiar uniforms. This started as a salvage mission and now you've a warzone"

she ponders and says "have you thought about self destructing the ship and gettting out of here otherwise your people could end up like the spirits trapped here? I'm not sure if it will deal with the entity in lab 16 although"

"We could dismantle the vessel in a heartbeat, but there are people aboard. That would be murder. And any technological gains we may make would be lost if we just went ahead with demolition." They had blocked out the possibility of 'spirits' as it would ruin their beliefs about life and existence.

"What's in lab 16?" One of the new arrivals asked, moving over to the other group. Each of them stood with a 6' white-silver staff by their side, beautifully etched and engraved. 6 of them held 2, but soon gave them to the other, lessor armed, Kazecis. These babies were lethal.

Nomi regards Tom and says "I'm not sire whats in Lab 16 but it looks extremely dangerous. do you really want that getting loose?"

she hits a button and the internal cameras pick up the scene in lab 16 and she says "take a look for yourself and tell me if this is worth any amount of technology"

((for a while there where I was in my own little world, I kind of only skimmed the rest of the posts- there were a lot- but it's some kind of ghost/evil entity/demon, correct?))

((for a while there where I was in my own little world, I kind of only skimmed the rest of the posts- there were a lot- but it's some kind of ghost/evil entity/demon, correct?))
((OOC:Something like that. I'm not exactly sure, but thats what I got from it. I'll post sometime later prolly about 1700 PST))

Rugal stared at the robots,the Alter Unit and its attendant partners.He suppressed a chuckle at their antics.However,he felt heavy doubt regarding the movement of these individuals to the lab.Their chances of survival would decrease eponentially once they were within the sphere of influence of the entities,as well as suffer emotional and psychological distress,if they engaged the being.Being in his mortal state had caused the stress to come to the fore,a result of the fight.


"Young...Anthony,is that correct?I do not suggest going down that way to the lab.There are rather...unpleasant beings inhabiting it right now.If you take my advice seriously,you would follow us to the bridge,where we can brief everybody on this most unfortunate event."

He glanced at Anthony and took him in,noticing the neutral stance on his rifle,but the ready grip of the hand on the trigger.He was under stress,but a managable amount,and would most likely have some men hidden away from view.Of course,the robots would probably have noticed by now,given their sensors,and the chemical traces as well as thermal signaures given off by any human being would be detectable.A group of untrained and unprepared freight workers against a transhuman and other extradimensional entities of vast spiritual,physical and psionic power,with the ability to drain psionic powers as easily as he drank orange juice.Their chances of survival were rather remote,to say the minimum.

Being in a human form again was not to Rugal's liking,but he suppressed it for now,hoping that the time he would remain as such was short.It was both exhilarating and uncomfortable being in a human form again.

The soldiers approached the bridge. Nickel made some motions with her hand, and the soldiers all pressed buttons their suits. Once more some motions were passed, and the soldiers started filing into the bridge.

Nomi noticed the door open and the newcomers entering the lift.

"I hope you don't plan on taking your fight up here" she tells them "whats going on in Lab 16 is going to be a problem for all off us"

The Kirisuban woman walks over to who appears to be her counterpart and adds "we have a common problem and your little war isn't helping things"

The Kazecis took up positions behind obstacles immediately, readying their weapons. Tom called to Nomi, "I suggest you take cover, these are the bastards that killed three of my men! We don't want to fight here, but they're looking for trouble. I'll not tolerate their presence on this bridge." The odds were different this time, the Kazecis had 13 more than lethal weapons pointed towards the pirates.

If Nickel Seven's face could have been seen, it would not have been a pleasant look, it was a pity it could not have been seen. She immediatly raised her voice towards the comments aimed towards her and her comrades.

"First off, I would love to know how you recognized us, because these uniforms are completely different. I know for a fact we haven't killed three of your men, which in light is nothing compared to the sixteen of mine you have killed. I would also like to point out the fact that first you open fire against us, unprovoked, and now you raise your weapons at us, unprovoked yet again. To top it off, you insult us, multiple times. I'd say the killing of two men, when we are acting on defense trying to find nothing more than information as to what is going on, is more just than tractoring two unidentified vessels, and then breaking them down atom by atom."

She reached up and loosened her helmet, removing it. Her cold green eyes glaring in the direction of the Kazeci who had spoke. Her white hair fell around her shoulders, and seemed out of place on a face that looked to be twenty five.

Nomi regards Nickel and recognises a woman that could just as easily fit into the Kirisuban space service.

"Then let this stop now and we'll be able to get off this ship" Nomi says to the people assembled.

"you can both check the ships logs to see whats been going on since we arrived and find the truth for yourselves. we have bigger fish to fry elsewhere on the ship and it'll take us to have a united front to deal with it"

Nickel was more than capable of joining any service across the galaxy, her life however was destined to be that of a mercenary. She was in better shape than most people across the galaxy, her stamina was near limitless, she had been tried and tested in most battlefield situations, and was more than capable of taking on multiple people at once.

"Right now, I'm more concerned about how these psycho's will react," she said, her eye's not moving, "killing so many people, acting so hostile then playing the victim. Years of experience tell me that yes, there is indeed an overlying force that is dangerous, but that same training say's we won't be able to do anything about that if these psycho's get to us first."

She was biting her lip. The soldiers behind her made no motion, just stood still, weapons in hand, but not a firing position.

Anthony was confused. Though he had never met this man, he knew his name and genuinely fretted for his safety. The only other person, or rather being, on the derelict that gave any concern for his crew was:

“Rugal?” the captain risked. “Yes, I that’s you then I believe you.”

Many strange things had already happened on the dead hospital ship. It wasn’t out of the question for Anthony to believe that an all powerful life form could take human form.

“If what you say is true, Rugal, then let’s get to the bridge like you say.” He turned his head to the corner behind him and called out for his crewmen to come out.

They hesitantly came down the corridor, Kurt still alert and weapon discreetly ready for any foul play.

“Again, we’re taking some alien’s word.” Kurt didn’t like foreigners much. He had grown up in an isolated society and off-worlders were an extreme rarity.

“Don’t worry, fellas. I guarantee these people are on the level.” Anthony turned back to the droids and the human he suspected to be Rugal. “Let’s go then. My people will lead the way.”

EDIT:
(OOC: I just want to remind everyone that Pandemic lobbed a grenade into Lab 16 a few posts back and we still don't know what happened in there since then.)

Tom spoke again, shouting and shaken with his own anger. "We have done no such thing! Until moments ago, we had no weapons capable of killing. Only these." He tossed his Shove wave pistol out into the open. "We could not have killed any of your men. You, however, have killed three of mine!" He ceased to address them, but spoke to Nomi instead. "They held one of my men at knife point after he fell, when he could have done no harm to anyone. Then followed us after our escape. A friendly reminder to get the f*** away from us from our non-lethal weapons had them throwing grenades and taking hostages. If you're looking for a psychopath, she's standing right in front of you." He turned to address Nickel again. "As for how we knew it was your dishonorable, lying a** that just walked in, we've got a destroyer sitting out there, and she's not blind. There's nothing on this vessel for you. Now get the f*** off of this bridge!"

One of the new arrivals was a little less emotional when he spoke to Nomi. "We do need a united front, but that will never happen with these people aboard. They kill without provocation, and then send in death squads to finish off those who escaped. They practically hunted us here, deploying more troops only after we got away then coming directly to where we are now. These are not the kind of people who you ever want to 'serve by your side'. They are back-stabbers, through and through."

EDIT: OOC: Just like using the term pirates before, death squad is only a coincidence. It sounds sinister and pretty much describes your party, so it was used.

"Backstabbers and profesional soldiers are something completely different. Highly trained soldiers when thrown into a hazardous situation will respond accordingly. Falling through the ceiling caught him off guard, and no use of a knife was brought into play until after we were threatened. I would also hardly call a flash grenade lethal. We never used lethal force until our forces were threatened. Even after we tried to calm the situation down, you continued to beat on your own soldier, who I assure you is quite alive, bringing the total killed by us to two, and the total killed by you to sixteen. After you left your dead comrade, we took him somewhere to where he could get field medical attention."

She let this sink in for a minute, before continuing.

"If you feel so strongly about us, why don't you kill me, right here, right now."

She threw off the body guard of her uniform, revealing that she was still only wearing trousers.

"Go ahead, if it'll make you happy, kill me," she said as she started walking forward.

A different Kazeci spoke this time. "When the f*** did we kill any of your men, let alone 16 of them?! We didn't have the capacity to kill until recently! And when were we a threat to you? 'Oh, boo hoo, they defended them selves with non-lethal force, I think we out to chance them down and kill 3 of their men!'" He mocked them in his own rage. "It was me whom you held at knife point! The second I fell there was a knife at my neck, and it took some, some," He struggled with the thought, still blocking the ghost's existence but not its actions, "something to knock you flat on your a** before you would let me go! Then you come chasing us down the hall, stalking us! What had we done at that point to provoke anything? Still you followed us, after we warned you and tried to flee! You took a hostage, who's now dead, and threatened his life! Our attempts to disarm you with non-lethal force at that point were well justified! And to top it all off, you come in here, following us yet again, with your damn death squad ready to do some more killing!"

Tom's voice was firm. "All we ask is that you go. We don't want a fight. Leave the ship and the sector." He, along with most of the others, took a better grip on his weapon and made an aim for her exposed body. "If our man is alive, as you say, let him go."

The first started in again. "Everything they've done deserves death! Murder, decet, being borne!" He stood and lunged at her from the back of the room, only to be struck back by a rather firm shove wave from the butt of Tom's staff.

"Go."

"So suddenly, ripping apart sixteen men atom by atom, with no provocation, is excusable, while killing two, not three, in self defense isn't? And you provided no threat, it was someone else in the hall. "

A smile almost broke out on her face when the man nearly jumped at her.

"No, let him fight if he wants. You think killing three of our men will put us even, I'll gladly fight you, when I die, it'll go to the next soldier. Unlike some people here, we have honor. Hell, I'll even wear a blindfold if you wish. I think the odd's are heavily against me, an unarmed blindfolded woman fighting an armed man."

"We'll not fight you if we don't have to. Why do you keep insisting that we've killed 16 of your men? You know perfectly well that we a) couldn't have and b) didn't!"

"No, I know perfectly well that you did, and that it was you who did. You were the one's who tractored the two unidentified crafts without any warning, and then you ripped them and the ships apart atom by atom. This is proven by the fact that a transport came out of the ship, and beamed several men to the bridge. So if it is even you are looking for, we should kill all of you."

Tom looked to the new arrivals for an answer. "There were two anomalies, it looked like transports were between our scanners and the derelict, so we tractored to see what they were. We held them after confirmation because we knew that you were in trouble and certainly didn't need any more potential hostiles aboard to deal with. The captain had no intent to harm them, but the ship came under attack by similar craft. It's not like we've got a brig aboard to hold prisoners, and to keep the particle-shielding up we needed to disengage the tractors. It only made sense to blast the bastards out of the sky, they were the ones attacking us after all, and had they the opportunity, they would have boarded us. Kill or be killed, sir."

"So he used the PDAs on them? I suppose it's better than cutting beams, at least we get something out of it."

"It's not like it would have hurt, sir, I mean, with a dozen PDAs each, it only took a few seconds before they were totally gone."

Tom turned back again. "And you're holding us responsible for the defense of our vessel? All I see is 16 people killed in self-defense and two who were of no threat hunted and killed without cause. Perhaps you can explain your inverse take on the situation?"

"Their inverse take on logic..."

"Tractoring a ship without giving warning is means for war, so you admit to commiting acts of war against my nation. Our ships were more than just in deploying. There wasn't even a positive identification on the ship."

Her voice remained calm and emotionless, the loss of her comrades angered her to no extent, but being an officer of war fighting troops meant there was a time and place for emotions, this was not it, rational thought must be applied.

"Using someone elses slain in such a manner is barbaric. Soldiers deserve the honor of a proper burial, as do all that die in combat, not being stored in some cargo hold to later be sold for scrap. My offer still stands, I'll fight unarmed and blindfolded against one... no, two of your men. Death on the battlefield is the highest honor a soldier can afford, and with a world filled with scoundrels like you I'm not sure I wish to partake in this world anymore."

Nomi looks at Tom and Nickel and says firmly "i've already suggested a way to find the truth. the internal sensors have been working since I reached the bridge and the cameras have been recording everything since then.

If you both agree to a short truce and take the time to look over the logs and the cameras you'll find out what happened for sure or better still ask Kara.

After that truce if you still want to fight each other go right ahead and send each other into the great void. Then you'll be easy meat for whatever is in lab 16"

Rugal looked at the man.Perceptive.He kept quiet,not keen or desirous of illuminating and explaining his current state of existence to the man before him.

He saw no reason to explain to them,until the time required it.And if they so desired an answer,the robots could provide as such.

"Anthony,if you choose to call me Rugal,then so be it" was all the reply Anthony received from Rugal.While Rugal cared about these humans,their potential,each and every human,he knew that in the coming conflict,they were expendable,as much as he was.This vessel was a containment matrix for the vortex.If it were to be salvaged.....Rugal did not wish to ponder the consequences.

All the conlict he had felt earlier,the disparate groups,the soldiers and the salvagers fighting each other,due to a miscommunication.One wished to salvage the ship,others wished to explore it.

He should have minc controlled the whole lot and marched them off back to their homeworlds in the beginning,saving everyone the trouble.How he regretted that now.Of course,his code of honour prevented that,and to do such a dishonourable thing would have rankled him no end.He was finally beginning to understand why most species and beings decided to leave for different universes,planes of existence,different galaxies,hide away in the reaches of space,or attain moksha,a liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth.Being in this mortal world was sometimes too....furstrating.

Of course,they needed individuals willing to make a difference,and by is relative youth,Rugal was considered idealistic,in trying to help the younger ones,but now he knew why so few stayed the course.In any case,he would continue to find the answer he had been posed by his mentor;Who are you?

Rugal felt he could find himself in helping mortals.Seceretly,it fulfilled him greatly,though nobody would know that.

OOC: Sorry about my absense; been really ill the last few days, I'll make a post in a lil bit

"I trust them about as far as I can throw them, which is probably more than I should. People willing to give a comrade such a beating, should not be trusted. People willing to commit acts of war against a nation, and then rip sixteen people apart atom by atom should not be trusted. I have offered them patience, respect, and what they desire, my death. They have offered insults, mistrust, lies, and a desensitized view towards killing sixteen men with no reason. I'm afraid no truce can guaruntee the saftey of you or my men with such liers and bloodthirst."

Rugal looked at the robots at began walking in the rough direction he had gauged the bridge to be.He was confident that it was somewhere a few levels above their current location.

"Alter,do you think you could fashion a shorter route for us?It would save us much time."

He blinked,looking at the dust floating in the air.Due to the constant movement of all the people througout the ship,dust that had settled for half a century was now moving in the formerly stagnant air currents,heated by the inputs of energy from the different thermal sources aboard the ship.

For a brief moment,he smelt chemical traces in the air,before it stopped.With a ghost of a smile to himself,he continued to walk toward the location,constantly glancing at the robots and freight workers,who were looking at each other and trying to decided what to do....

ooc: sorry for my absence, but I'm back.

Ic: "Dammit! We told you we didn't even know what we were tractoring, if it even existed, and the second we did, there was no point to hailing them as you had already begun an attack upon us! It's your crew that's the hotheads here, attacking us before knowing the intentions of a harmless act. What we did subsequently was simply strike back at our attackers in the only way available. Tractoring a ship without warning is certainly rude, but none that I know would launch an attack for such a transgression. On the other hand, had you hostages in your hand and their brethren attempting to board your ship, you'd kill them too. We're willing to allow peace between out two peoples, canceling out the loss, so that we may work together."

"Don't try to place your amature acts on me, and acting like trust is something to be handed out like candy to little kids. Tractoring a ship without warning is an act of war, and plenty of places would attack for something of the sort. I pride myself and my troops on being professional, and we only kill when neccesary, otherwise you would all be dead by now. You wish to be even, then best me in combat. I think you have the advantage, myself being unarmed and blindfolded."

Her face was one of complete seriousness, true to her word she would take on the soldiers unarmed and blindfolded.

The Alter unit, who had spent the last five minutes arguing with Unit 2 over the importance of dental hygiene upon the "Squishies" that had branched off from a discussion on Vacuum Rust, turned to glance at human Rugal. "To where? The bridge? Uh, yeah, sure."

As he swung around the massive barrel of the cannon-like weapon in his hands to bear, he moved it to point up into the ceiling, the tracer light scaring away a few Void Rats that had decided to call the rafters home. A small recticle, connected to the weapon via a series of wires, flipped over his eye as numerous small lights flashed around on its surface. His finger hovered over the the trigger as he struggled to lift the immense bulk of the gun.

"I'd suggest you all stand at least ten feet away."

As the trigger was pushed into its ignition chamber, the clear, hollow tubing that connected the cannon-rifle to the silo mounted on the Alter unit's back instatly turned to red, flecked with yellow and hintings of orange. In less time than it took for the image to register in the minds of the humans, but in more than it took for the synthenoids, a literal pillar of a black-red, viscous substance erupted from the mouth of the weapon. The column melted through the ceiling like a heat-knife through Nocturian Sulfur Butter, breaking past the metal and the few cobwebs that hung from it in a matter of milliseconds as the "magma" was pumped through to the next level, and those after.

As the weapon's tube returned to its former, clear self and the slightly sulfurous fumes from the substance died away, the impressive weapon clicked several times as the barrel suddenly began spouting water, meeting the still-glowing goo with a hiss of steam and lost heat. The hallway, and those corridors above it, were filled with a rather thick cloud of an almost fog-like mist as the "magma" cooled and faded away, turning to what appeared to be dust at the touch of the colder liquid.

With a nod of satisfaction, the Alter unit turned to regard Rugal. "Alright, alright. Seeing as you can't move much beyond walking anymore, we'll have to find you an escort." He jerked a thumb towards one of the other synthenoids. "You can fly with Unit 2."

The aforementioned droid moaned.

“Fly? Did you say fly?” Rita was curious as to these alien androids. Not the weapon, it seemed a bit inefficient and too dangerous to be used as anything more than a weapon. But the ability to fly from level to level through a ship was an opportunity a thrill seeker like her wasn’t able to resist.

“Would you mind terribly giving us a lift? Otherwise, we’d slow you down quite a lot...” she said trying to hide her enthusiasm.

“I’m not letting one of them ‘bots lug me around on his back…” Kurt wasn’t as trusting as his companions and was distrustful of foreigners of any kind.

Rita shot back: “Oh, come on. Don’t be such an old woman. The faster we get there the faster we can get back to the ship and leave.”

“Rita’s right.” Peter interjected. “How about it? Will you folks give us a ride through?”

back on the bridge Nomi felt like she was hitting her head against a wall.

with both warring parties not wanting to check the sensors she sends the recordings of what happened to the damaged but still partly working viewscreen.

As the cameras play back their footage she says to them "if you don't believe me i hope you'll believe your own eyes"

"I never said I didn't believe you, I just said I couldn't trust them," Nickel said indicating the Kazeci's.

The soldiers near the entrance of the bridge heard strange sounds in the hallway. They ignored them, strange sounds were abundant on old ships.

"We'd like to forget their transgressions in exchange for their return of the act. We're working for progress, she's bringing us back." He looked back at Nickel. "I already explained that we didn't know if it was a ship, thus no warning could be given. Furthermore, rather than let us talk out our reasons, your crew sent attackers. You'd tell me that while our simple act is cause for war, your making of war was not cause for our killing members of your group, which had made it self hostile? There is no logic in that. Furthermore, your killing of our members and initial hostile actions against our team took place before these actions, thus making you the original aggressors. Logic puts you at fault, and you haven't attempted to disprove this logic, only restate your disproven point. Basic rules of debate say you lose, and thus are at fault. We don't want to kill more and fight more. In addition, logic says not to take you at your request for combat. If you're willing to fight, you either believe you'll win (meaning that you have some hidden advantage or are just plain arrogant) or you're suicidal. Neither truth is advantageous for us. We will not fight you lest we need to. Does your nation not teach logic and debate? Or do you take us for fools?"

"Suddenly, being behind you is being hostile. That logic, if that is what you wish to call it, makes no sense. Laying heavy fire on them without reason cannot be viewed as anything but hostile. The killing of your crew members was done so we could safely retrieve our crew, as were the transport vessels you destroyed. If your sensors are unable to differentiate a ship, from space rubble you are in serious need of an update, regardless if it is an unknown vessel."

She looked at them with a look of pure hatred, losing men is the hardest thing a military officer must face. She had been in many wars, and knew the pain well, but for someone to shrug off the deaths of sixteen men like it was nothing was an unbearable thought.

"Your stating of victory is premature, especially when your disproving facts are nothing more than delusions, hell you're even going back on your words thinking I wouldn't notice. First you say the sensors picked up transports, then you say you have no clue what you are tractoring. Judging from your action I have seen nothing more than lies, and a spineless coward."

She was biting the inside of her cheek, trying to keep herself from losing her cool thus far.

"I offer to fight to make amends, you wish to kill three of us, despite only two of your men our dead by our hands. I live a life of honor, and death in the battlefield holds the most honor. Suicide is nothing more than cowardice.
Even if I know I cannot win the battle, I may secure a better position for my men in that my death may lead to what you bloodthirsty cretins desire."

Her teeth clenched, as she thought of the girl in the red suit. The girl in the red suit was a leader of sorts, she was more diplomaticly inclined though, and would more than likely never know the pain of losing men under her command in a battlefield situation.

Rugal looked at Alter and nodded.The smell had nearly overpowered his scent of smell,while his accelerated vision,while not as developed as the electronic sensors used by the robot,had managed to observe for a scant few milliseconds the usage of the weapon before its intensity forced his retina's to close.The muscles controlling the movement of his eyes were accelerated, which enabled him to clearly see fast moving objects without any motion blur.His toungue flicked out to taste the air briefly.


Now he recognised it.One of his old mortal forms,that of an outlaw he had moonlighted as 4 centuries past,during a brief visit to a planet owned by a distant descendant that had gone into organised crime.Lively place.He felt the words come from Alter,the offer of a ride up the new shaft to the bridge,as if slow.He noted his perceptions had slowly accelerated as well,probably due to the fact that he had engineered this mortal form to possess superconductive nerves and neural dendrites,granting it a reaction time of a millisecond,0.001 seconds,while normal human time was 0.2 seconds.

He could smell the acrid tang and acidic undertones,the excitement of the woman open in the taste of her,slightly changed,spicy to his senses,the reluctance and distrust of the man,the mixing of all the chemicals and scents.The robots simply tasted of metal and assorted chemical traces and alloys.

He suppressed his sense,shutting them off for now.He would reveal them to the Alter unit later.To reveal it now to these mortals would be...detrimental.They were already on edge and distrusted them,not to say him.He was an unknown to them,and the less they knew,the better.

"Yes,I will accept your offer to fly on Unit 2.And perhaps the lovely..... Miss Rita and her friend....Kurt.Would you like to 'hitch' the same ride with me?".He remembered scraping the surface of their mind and finding their names before he had been depowered.


Rugal was unsure if the terms he used conveyed it properly.He had once used the wrong terms on a different human planet,and found much to his chagrin that the connotations of the term had changed.He had accidentally ended up inviting a gay couple,a group of lesbians and several swingers as well as a priest of the Catholamic Church of Allah for an orgy after ending up in a disco in the middle of a sleazy space station,all due to the usage of the word 'hitch'.The lingo tended to change with times as well,though so far,using standard English,already a global language when he had been born,seemed to be harmless.