NationStates Jolt Archive

Edwrad cracked his neck a second before the PA system let loose a burst of static. "This is the captain all hands to stations, all QCS head to the briefing room." Edward chuckled. "Finally, you heard the man."

Seth sighed So this is it...

Keeping his rifle slung, he started walking toward the briefing room. Along the way, he activated the EMH, deciding that the Doc needed to hear the briefing too. He was, after all, a part of the team and would probably prove to be invaluable to everyone should injuries be sustained. Though there was no cure for the virus, the Dominion military took advantage of the superior capabilities of an AI and found a way to slow down the spread of the virus via an artificial antibody, buying the victim days to weeks depending on the severity of the injury. Total eradication was next to impossible unless the Doctor reached a victim within ten seconds. Even then success was unlikely.

Edward tapped Seth on the shoulder. "So whats your story?"

Thomas Vanek walked along. He saw everyone, so different, so distant from himself. Nobody knew what it felt like-to be him. Nobody else in the universe was like him. Nobody.

Vanek entered the briefing room, took a swig very quickly, and sat down.

Seth turned, "Up until two weeks ago I was the CO of Dominion Defense Forces Brigade Delta. We've seen the most action out of any other unit and earned..." he counted the ribbons on his chest, "about twenty different unit commendations. When the call went out for a skilled soldier to join the QCS I was first on the list. To tell you the truth, I was pretty sure I'd seen everything. Now I'm being told I've got to exterminate the walking dead. It's like something out of Revelation."

Ed chcukled. "This is much worse then some biblical apocolypse." He stretched his shoulders. "As for me, militarys all i've known, my adoptive father," He pointed at Winter. "Was in the military when I was very young, used to tag along with him to the bases. As for these." He pointed at the three medals at his chest. " Order of the Union, First Class, Purple Heart and the Republic Medal of Honor." He shrugged. "I really didn't do much, just recaptured old Arkheim during the Imperialist uprising."

Naomi, and by extension Shiva, walked to the briefing room. The two of them were engrossed in an ongoing conversation, which was kept private by the armor.

"So, are you just going to move on Naomi?"

"Why?"

"Because they've told you no."

"That's never stopped us before. I'll pitch it again, then if they say no, I'll make up my mind about it on the fly."

"... Very well thought out."

"I thought so."

The stations AI projected itself into the briefing room. Its form was based on a class 4 AI template, a typical Union officer. It brought up several maps and blueprints of the archangel medical station. "You're mission is simple exterminatethe afflicted onboard. That is all." The AI winked out and Edward shrugged. "Bit blunt, but it gets the briefing done mighty quick." He cracked his neck. "Lets roll."

OOC: Sorry for the short post, had to leave.

Vanek pulled out his sabre and his rifle and nodded towards the others. "Where is this exactly?"

"Let's go!"

EDIT: Good ole timewarps.

"Currently its in Geo-stationary orbit over luna, could be a bigproblem if it gets off the station." He slipped a small chip into the holographic display. "This message was the last we've recived from them, it was sent about two hours ago." A hagard looking man in Marine armor appeared on the screen. "Leftenant First Class James Peters reporting, those bastards have smashed through the last two barricades, the only thing keeping them back is..." He shifted the camera to the access door to the station, appearently he was holed up in one of the hangar bays. "That door should hold them for quite a while, we've managed to pull as many troops, civies and medics as we can into here, but our numbers are running thin." He scratched the stuble on his chin. "At last count we have twenty marines, five medics and only two civies, the rest are either dead, infected or hiding somehwere on the station." He sighed. "We can't hold out much longer, I'm sending this message as a last ditch method for extraction." he saluted the camera. "Over and out."
Edward flicked the holo display off. "As you ca see, we did get the message, but per Lawrence protocol, we can't let them leave until we've determined they aren't infected. Our mission is to extract those personal and exterminate others." he lifted his index fingers. "No grenades or high powered weapons, I don't care if your amor is self contained, this is an importan medical station, decomping it will pretty much ammount to a capital offense and you'll be draged before a Union military tribunal, with or without your nation of origion's consent".

"Good to see someone with some vigor." Said Winter. "Careful you don't get bloodlust from it."

Edit: I love timewarps, reminds me of the goold ol' days of thread jacking.. *gets all misty eyed*

"Hahaha, I have that already."

Winter chuckled. "Been a while" He whispered.

Winter chuckled. "Been a while" He whispered.

"I think I'm the only one left." Thomas whispered back, immediately taking a sober mood. "Though it can only help while zombie-hunting."

Winter tapped his helmet, the universal signal for radio. "Yeah, as i've noticed. The old days are long gone now... last time I saw you was at my 'funeral' right?"

"I think so.... time goes by so quick. Yet, when you've been around for a good 200-300 years... well... you lose track."

Seth checked his gear a final time before looking to the General, "I take it we go back the way we came to the hangars?"

"I'll say. Watching several generations of Harkers die, that takes quite a toll on you." He shook his head. "And worst of al, I'm not effectivley immortal, I just age really slowly. That also takes its toll on you when you realize your not as young as you used to be and it all passed you by in the blink of an eye." He looked down. "Sometimes I wonder if it will ever end."

Edward nodded. "Pretty much, except turn at the red arrow instead of the green, that'll take us to the dropship bay."

Naomi deploarized her armor's faceplate.

"So, you're still prohibiting my EVA run? Even though I can do a lot more good outside, with Shiva running damage control?" she had a mixture of cross-ness and determination in her face, "I just want to be sure before we head off. From my angle, its the only viable way for me to operate. I got out of the CQB game a long time ago, guess its been, oh, 2 and a half years since I was a shooter."

She leaned back, it was odd seeing her sit, as she didn't display any of the normal levels of motion found in most people, she was almost dead still, her breathing had the well regulated rythym of the practiced sniper, and her eyes were fixed on the generals, daring them to deny her mission template, and secretly not caring if they did.

"If you really feel that its 'necessary' to force me into the confines of the station, with a sniper rifle that's bigger than I am, then I can't guarantee you that I'm going to be able to help worth a damn, and I'm not running my pistol dead unless I have to. So I'm gonna give you a simple choice here, my EVA mission template, yes or no."

Her voice was almost unnaturally forceful, her eyes were slowly working toward a faint red glow, she wasn't quite furious yet, that could come later, depending on their final answer.

Edward shook his head. "No." he said. he flicked on his comm. "Get the weapons officer down here, one of our squad memebrs is ill-equiped. No large guns."

"You even try to touch my sniper rifle, and you'll be regretting it for the rest of your natural existence."

Her eyes had clearly flashed to glowing, quiet brilliant red. She was standing again, in a slightly lowered, poised stance. She may not have operated in close combat for years, but she was still a first-class master, and instructor, of Shenyangi Close Combat Martial Arts.

Shiva analyzed the situation, if things broke down to combat, she predicted that Naomi only had a 42% chance of winning, more if she could calm down. She chose to stand back and let Naomi handle this, she was liable to set everything off.

"Call off your weapons tech, I'll kill my pistol if that's what you want, but its gonna be damn near pointless to put a sniper inside the station, unless you have a sick sense of humor."

She remained in the same level of poise, waiting for their response, she wasn't going to let them touch her sniper rifle, she'd had it for years, and any tech that touched it was liable to screw up her precision calibrations. Beyond that, since she was unmarried and had no children, or even nieces or nephews for that matter, this rifle was as close as she had to a child, and she protected it fiercely.

Edward shook his head. "its protocal, no weapons with enough power to blow a station, besides Wesley is the best weapon tech I know, he won't even think about touching it unless you give the go ahead." he shook his head. "Eddy, what do you think?" Eddy projected himself using the holographic projector. "In my opiion, be a gentleman and let the lady keep the big gun, besides, if she is a sniper, she won't miss." Edward sighed. "Shoot, screw protocal then, keep your sniper, just don't aim for the walls on purpose."

"Although," Seth chimed in, "We may not need to decomp to get the desired effect. The air can stay because it would make little difference to a zombie, but what about deactivating the gravity? Magnetic insoles are easy enough to come by and the zombies would be more or less helpless."

"I honestly don't care if he's the messiah. I don't let anyone touch it but me, and the Team Foxtrot weapons tech. He only gets it when something out of my depth happens, which means he's touched it twice."

She hadn't relaxed.

"I don't need your help 3DDY, if he tried to take my SRS-299 from me, I'd handle it myself. As for your protocols, they're entirely pointless, just about any weapon used by any of our militaries will go through the hull, atleast any that'll kill someone will. Plasma, rails, directed energy, particle beams, anything can go clean through the hull of a space station."

She turned and quickly left the briefing room. She wasn't interested in continuing this argument, especially since she'd won a minor victory.

"that didn't help Eddy." Said Edward. "Just trying to be cautious my friend, the dominion can be a bit touchy about weapons." Edward shook his head then reviewed the blueprints to the station. It was built to exact Union protocol, Weak EM in the corridors, extremly thick plasma glazing and reifocred trimantium. "The inside alone is on-par with most battleship grade armor." Said Eddy. "And then some." Edward shrugged. "So even if she wanted to..." Eddy chuckled. "It would take about five clips before the glazing even started to melt. Don't worry."

Winter sighed and shook his head. Kids these days... He brought his .50 magnu out of its holster and twirled it around his finger, he missed those days.

"Although," Seth chimed in, "We may not need to decomp to get the desired effect. The air can stay because it would make little difference to a zombie, but what about deactivating the gravity? Magnetic insoles are easy enough to come by and the zombies would be more or less helpless."

Winter chuckled. "What about afflicted marines? Union armor automatically responds to a drop in gravity, even if very little of there armor is intact, its an independent computer system."

OOC: Reference Post:

SRS-299 Sniper Rail Driver System (SRDS):
Power Source: micro fusion reactor
Calibre: 4.4mm
Muzzle Velocity: 262318400.75 m/s
Muzzle Energy: 832.61241 PJ (petajoules (1x10^15 joules))
Unit Cost: 3 billion USD
Number of Examples in Existence: 5 (3 in use, 2 attrition replacements)

Sub-table:
Rail Statistics:
Dimensions: 4.4 x 17.6 mm
Material: Osmiridium (the densest material currently known to man (osmium - iridium alloy, exceedingly rare))
Projectile Mass: 24.2 g

"True, very true. Though it would still be drastic drop in opposition. I'm willing to bet there are more afflicted noncombat personnel than armored, geared up Marines."

"True, very true. Though it would still be drastic drop in opposition. I'm willing to bet there are more afflicted noncombat personnel than armored, geared up Marines."

Edward rubbed the back of his neck. "Since it is a medical station, the Marines on board are few in number, the garrison is only about thirty marines with only light combat duty, they're mainly there to keep order in the case of an outbreak. And from the reports, the outbreak started in the quarentine zone, faraway from anywards and not even remotly close to the marine HQ, so most likely we only have a few afflicted marines." He nodded. "Sounds like a good plan, I just hope the new G-compensators work.."

OOC: Reference Post:

SRS-299 Sniper Rail Driver System (SRDS):
Power Source: micro fusion reactor
Calibre: 4.4mm
Muzzle Velocity: 262318400.75 m/s
Muzzle Energy: 832.61241 PJ (petajoules (1x10^15 joules))
Unit Cost: 3 billion USD
Number of Examples in Existence: 5 (3 in use, 2 attrition replacements)

Sub-table:
Rail Statistics:
Dimensions: 4.4 x 17.6 mm
Material: Osmiridium (the densest material currently known to man (osmium - iridium alloy, exceedingly rare))
Projectile Mass: 24.2 g


OOC: I don't hvae any statistics page like that for any of the rail rifles the Union has, but for this thread lets say the "custom" rail snipers (made by wesley) are along that specs. Except instead of only having the solid slug, it also has an energy burst surrounding it. (For use in taking down heavily shielded and armored targets)

OOC: Wasn't mereshka supposed to have a character here?

OOC:
Yeah, he was, wonder what happened.

On the topic I refuse to drop though: (I’m dropping it with this post FYI)
You do realize that the amount of energy I provided for the projectile I am using is enough to bisect a heavily armored and shielded frigate stem to stern and keep going, right? That whole ‘rifle’ is just a demonstrator for what can be done, not what can be used by, well, almost anyone. The recoil alone (should something fail) will rip one’s arm clean off or send them flying off a near-warp velocities, the firing system has to be kept at a temperature no higher than 10 degrees Kelvin to avoid vaporizing itself. It needs its own fusion core to fire, which means the core had to be built into the weapon, along with an autonomous reactor regulation system, cooling unit, and all the other accompanying equipment. They took 60 years of R&D to construct, and require about 12 different manufacturers to build the components, as no single manufacturer can encompass all of them. There’s not a target in existence that this thing would have trouble damaging, quite severely to be frank. It’s the absolute most impractical weapon for anyone to develop, which is why they cost so much, and only five exist.

Whatever, even though my rifle really could punch a hole in the station, quite easily to be honest, I’ll drop it.

(unless you’re not telling us the thing has an hull that’s about 55-75 meters thick, and comprised of interweaving carbon nano-tubes reinforced with aggregated diamond nano-rods every few centimeters (mind you, such a hull while possible, would be so obscenely expensive as to bankrupt several dozen 10 billion pop. nations in the process of building it, and require the destruction of 3-5 planets in the search for raw materials))

I will not for the purposes of the RP punch holes in the station, even though I think that it’d give me a chance to really get descriptive.

Beyond that, I had an awesome plan for shooting from outside and even had a pretty good series of posts worked up for it, but c’est la vi, I’ll let it go.


IC:

Naomi made her way to the docking bay. She found the insertion craft and boarded silently. Sitting down in one of the empty seats, she rechecked her weapons. She felt a slight ache in her shoulder, from an unfortunate accident when one of the tertiary recoil buffers in her weapon had failed. She had dislocated, and then shattered her shoulder, firing to defend her team over 4 months ago. The navy docs had done an amazing job fixing her shoulder, essentially, they’d regrown everything in there, it was all destroyed anyway. Still, there was the inherent ‘phantom pain’ that came with such a traumatic injury. She flexed her arm to make the feeling pass.

It wasn’t long before she was feeling totally normal again. She went to work on her gear, making adjustments for the now zero-gee environment. She ran diagnostics on the SRS-299; she did not want another failure. Last time it had been hit by lightning on a ‘search and destroy’ operation in Ruthless Slaughterian territory, hunting zombies on a planet they kept a small colony on. She had fired

The main reason they hadn’t had any really major zombie outbreaks was because Shenyangi special forces had been running the borders for several decades, correcting problems that their military wouldn’t be able to respond to.

When the lightning hit, it had fried a tertiary recoil damper, which in turn gave the thing an exponential recoil boost, she later found it was roughly equivalent to having her shoulder hit by a bus, 250 times. She’d had the systems reinforced against any future strikes, but she still kept a watchful eye on it for any problems.

Everything checked out, she reattached it to her back. She made a few adjustments to her pistol, she was a crack shot with it, but it would still make things much more difficult. After she’d checked the gear, she leaned back to rest before the impending storm.

“Naomi, I’ve been thinking…”

“About?”

“The Dominion soldier, Seth, there’s not much of a difference in your ages and…”

“…you want me to try and hook up with him? Is that it?”

“Well, yes, to put it bluntly.”

“I don’t even know him.”

“How will you ever learn about him without taking a shot?”

“We’ll see what happens, but you’d better not be trying to go behind my back with this.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Yes you would.”

The two fell silent, as Naomi rested, Shiva studied the information on the station, the outbreak, and the transmission logs. From what she could estimate, there wasn’t going to be much hope for survivors, and they could be facing a few thousand zombies. Not exactly the best odds for anyone. Beyond that, they had no data on any variations aboard the station, so they were pretty much going in blind. She didn’t like the look of things at all.

OOC:
Yeah, he was, wonder what happened.

On the topic I refuse to drop though: (I’m dropping it with this post FYI)
You do realize that the amount of energy I provided for the projectile I am using is enough to bisect a heavily armored and shielded frigate stem to stern and keep going, right? That whole ‘rifle’ is just a demonstrator for what can be done, not what can be used by, well, almost anyone. The recoil alone (should something fail) will rip one’s arm clean off or send them flying off a near-warp velocities, the firing system has to be kept at a temperature no higher than 10 degrees Kelvin to avoid vaporizing itself. It needs its own fusion core to fire, which means the core had to be built into the weapon, along with an autonomous reactor regulation system, cooling unit, and all the other accompanying equipment. They took 60 years of R&D to construct, and require about 12 different manufacturers to build the components, as no single manufacturer can encompass all of them. There’s not a target in existence that this thing would have trouble damaging, quite severely to be frank. It’s the absolute most impractical weapon for anyone to develop, which is why they cost so much, and only five exist.

Whatever, even though my rifle really could punch a hole in the station, quite easily to be honest, I’ll drop it.

(unless you’re not telling us the thing has an hull that’s about 55-75 meters thick, and comprised of interweaving carbon nano-tubes reinforced with aggregated diamond nano-rods every few centimeters (mind you, such a hull while possible, would be so obscenely expensive as to bankrupt several dozen 10 billion pop. nations in the process of building it, and require the destruction of 3-5 planets in the search for raw materials))

I will not for the purposes of the RP punch holes in the station, even though I think that it’d give me a chance to really get descriptive.

Beyond that, I had an awesome plan for shooting from outside and even had a pretty good series of posts worked up for it, but c’est la vi, I’ll let it go.


IC:

Naomi made her way to the docking bay. She found the insertion craft and boarded silently. Sitting down in one of the empty seats, she rechecked her weapons. She felt a slight ache in her shoulder, from an unfortunate accident when one of the tertiary recoil buffers in her weapon had failed. She had dislocated, and then shattered her shoulder, firing to defend her team over 4 months ago. The navy docs had done an amazing job fixing her shoulder, essentially, they’d regrown everything in there, it was all destroyed anyway. Still, there was the inherent ‘phantom pain’ that came with such a traumatic injury. She flexed her arm to make the feeling pass.

It wasn’t long before she was feeling totally normal again. She went to work on her gear, making adjustments for the now zero-gee environment. She ran diagnostics on the SRS-299; she did not want another failure. Last time it had been hit by lightning on a ‘search and destroy’ operation in Ruthless Slaughterian territory, hunting zombies on a planet they kept a small colony on. She had fired

The main reason they hadn’t had any really major zombie outbreaks was because Shenyangi special forces had been running the borders for several decades, correcting problems that their military wouldn’t be able to respond to.

When the lightning hit, it had fried a tertiary recoil damper, which in turn gave the thing an exponential recoil boost, she later found it was roughly equivalent to having her shoulder hit by a bus, 250 times. She’d had the systems reinforced against any future strikes, but she still kept a watchful eye on it for any problems.

Everything checked out, she reattached it to her back. She made a few adjustments to her pistol, she was a crack shot with it, but it would still make things much more difficult. After she’d checked the gear, she leaned back to rest before the impending storm.

“Naomi, I’ve been thinking…”

“About?”

“The Dominion soldier, Seth, there’s not much of a difference in your ages and…”

“…you want me to try and hook up with him? Is that it?”

“Well, yes, to put it bluntly.”

“I don’t even know him.”

“How will you ever learn about him without taking a shot?”

“We’ll see what happens, but you’d better not be trying to go behind my back with this.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Yes you would.”

The two fell silent, as Naomi rested, Shiva studied the information on the station, the outbreak, and the transmission logs. From what she could estimate, there wasn’t going to be much hope for survivors, and they could be facing a few thousand zombies. Not exactly the best odds for anyone. Beyond that, they had no data on any variations aboard the station, so they were pretty much going in blind. She didn’t like the look of things at all.


OOC: Well, uh, just didn't want to punch holes in the station, I got some plot things relying on it.


IC:

Edward sat down in the seat closest to the door, he was going to be the first out. He pulled a golden pocket watch from a hard case on his ammo belt. He flicked it open and inside was a picture of a Man and a woman craddlinga baby, the woman smiling at the camera. He flicked it closed then kissed the case. "This ones for you, mom and dad." He picked up his rifle and rapidly unloaded and reloading his rifle. Eddy chimed in with his usual buzz. "I'm detecting elevated bio levels, are you all right?" Edward stifle a chuckle, covering it up with coughing. "Yeah, just fine." Eddy gave a confused grunt, well, as close to it as an AI can get. " Then what is it." Edward didn't even try to stifle his chuckle that time. "Its a thing called battle fever, its the main reason why the veterans stick around, they love it." Eddy gave another confused grunt. Edward sighed. class 5 sentient AI and it doesn't even know what battle fever is "It's basically an adrenaline rush without being in danger, your mind pumps you up for the battle ahead so you hit the ground weapons blazing." He loaded his rifle one last time. "The medics say its a new evolutionary feat for humanity, it keeps you in peak fighting form on the battlefield, supposed to keep you alive longer."

Once people started filing out Seth took some room on the conference table and did a quick field strip of his rifle. Examining each piece with uncommon scrutiny, he carefully put it back together. He then did the same with his pistol, though he moved much faster in doing so. Dominion soldiers always had competitions on who could break down and reassemble their rugged sidearms the fastest. Being the commandind officer for Brigade Delta, he made sure he came in first.

Satisfied, he nodded to the Doctor who deactivated himself. Putting the mobile emitter into a belt pouch, he moved to the dropship and eased into a seat. He moved around a little, getting used to the different configuration. The ships he flew in had seats ergonomically crafted to conform to DDF armor. Once in a comfortable postion he depressurized his armor and removed the helmet, placing it on his lap. He pulled a ration bar bar from his pocket, broke a piece off, and ate it. Swallowing, he offerred Naomi piece,

"Want a bite? You know the old military methodology, 'eat whenever you can, because you never know when you will again'."

Naomi flicked her eyes over to Edward.

"Shenyangi snipers are trained to circumvent that reaction, while you might be tougher, you're whole body goes into overdrive, respiration accelerates, heart rate skyrockets, muscles can tense up, which in turn throws long range accuracy to hell. Even in close-combat, especially against the undead, we've found that a cool head and a relaxed body are much more helpful than aggression that will be wasted on something with no concept of fear."

She shrugged, and returned to her state of rest, she was still listening for a response though.

Shiva projected herself from the suit's projectors. She was now full-size, about 5 feet 5 inches, she looked around the small craft and took a seat across from Naomi. She ignored any odd looks she was no doubt attracting, its not everyday that an AI takes a full-sized form, and didn't do something dramatic in the process.

Of course, this is entirely common in Shenyang, as AI are full-citizens, so Naomi took no mind other than checking the power drain Shiva was putting on her armor, it was negligible and she stopped caring.

"I'm fine, thanks for the offer."

She removed her helmet, and gave him a pleasant smile. It was enough to really highlight her features, which were not diminished by the harsh lighting aboard the vessel. She noticed that Shiva had a very slight smile on her face, she hardly cared about what she was up to now.

"You know what, when we get out of there I'll take one, so you'd better not die on me."

When she smiled he tried not to let any reaction show, but he was sure a little got through.
Professionalism and discipline never stood a chance against a smile like that...

Seth returned the smile, "Well, dying isn't a part of DDF strategy so I hope you're hungry."

He rewrapped the bar he was working on and stowed it.

"It'd better not be."

Naomi sat back, and began napping again. She may not have subscribed to certain cliches, but 'sleep when you can' was one of the few she did believe. She'd never been known to snore, but was one of a near non-existent minority in Shenyang who whispered in their sleep. She slowly settled into a light sleep.

Shiva couldn't contain her pleasure, things were going just as she expected. Her covert smirk turned into a legitimate smile.

"Goodnight Naomi."

Almost silently Naomi whispered, "Gotcha," almost as though she was responding.

Shiva looked to Edward, she still fiercely disliked him, and her color shifted ever so slightly. She whispered to avoid waking Naomi.

"So, any plan, or are we just going to go in banner flying?"

Winter entered the landing craft and took the gunners seat at the ramp of the craft. Uncomfertable, but at least he didn't have to ivnolve himself in the conversation. Edward was becoming annoyed He flicked his finger to the comm button. "Where the hell is the pilot?" He nearly shouted. The reply came back without a seconds hesitation. "Bringing him up now. All due respect sir, he's cut from the same cloth as you." Edward brought his finger off from the comm button and shook his head. It can't be.. The sound of the dropship hangars main door opening brought his attention towards the rear of the bay. Two marines escorted a single man, appearently in mag-cuffs. They lead him to the opening of the dropship before deactivating his cuffs. "Remember, you're on a dropship full of the galaxies finiest, even try to run, well, we'll let you ponder that." Both marines spun on their heels and exited the hangar. The prisoner stood rubbing his wrists. "Fredrick." Edward said. The prisoners head snapped up and eyes brightened on seeing a familiar face. "Eddy, good to see you!" Edward shook his head. " I see you made good that vow to be a pir-" Fredrick held up his indx finger. "Merchant of opportunity." He corrected. Edward shrugged. "Whatever, you our pilot?" Fredrick shifted to the side. "Its my...sentence really." Edward chuckled. "Sentence?" Fredrick looked down, then muttered. "I made a plea deal.. serve as a pilot for the union and be wiped clean." Edward laughed. "And why is that so bad?" Fredricks head snapped up. "Because my crew is without a captain!" Eddy laughed and Fredrick looked around. "Whos... laughing?" He asked. Eddy laughed again then projected himself, all six feet of himself. "Me." Fredrick looked at him. "You the one taking care of my boy?" Eddy looked puzzled. "Your boy?" Fredrick laughed. "Yeah, my boy. We were in the same crew during the imperialist uprising. Privateers before the Union enlisted him as a merc." Eddy tilted his head. "Really now?" Fredrick nodded. "Yeah, really. Best damn gunner I've ever seen. Crack shot with a rifle to." He held his hand to the side of his mouth like he was trying to cover his speech, even though he said it loud enough foreveryone to hear. "Although he can be a bit hot headed, and he tends to be quite the ladies man." He chcukled. "Just like his old boss, right kid?" Edward looked away but Eddy laughed. "Ladies man huh? Well 'kid', hope the fact that we have a woman in the squad deter you from your duties." Edward reached up and cut off Eddys projecter before he could say anything else. "Both of you, shut up. Fredrick, get this bird into the air." Fredrick saluted. "Aye, kid."

Seth looked up at their 'pilot' and though his face was behind a helmet, uncertainty was still visible in his body language, "So we've got a prisoner flying us? All due respect sir, if you're short of personnel I could give it a shot."

Shiva quickly accessed any data she could on their pilot. His credentials, if gained through illegal activities, were still impressive. She decided to give this Fredrick a chance. She got up, and walked through Eddy. She nodded in greeting to their pilot.

"I'm willing to give you a chance, since no one else seems to want to. I'm SHIVA, Shenyangi 'Smart' Artificial Intelligence, attached to Naomi Marshall. Pleased to meet you Fredrick."

She nodded toward Naomi to acknowledge who she was paired with. She didn't extend a hand, she wasn't a material object after all.

"Don't try to shake my hand, my current appearance doesn't have any real physical presence, all photons projected from her armor, unfortunately."

Fredrick looked at his outstretched hand then put it behind his back. "Now, I'm sure y'all have some conercerns about being flown around by a convict, well, i've got more experience in flight then probably most of you put together." he held up a finger as if to shush an imaginary audience. "And its not the kind that the military would have. I've been dodging military patrols for years, I've got covert skills even the black ops can't touch." He looked at the bulkhead. "Besides, i'm a merchant of opportunity, not a pirate. Never slaughtered any crews, I conscribe to the 'gentleman of the road' theory that was oh so popular during the eigthteenth century, so I'm not going to vent the troop bay the first chance I get." He shrugged. "Besides, someones got to wtach out for my boy here."

Obviously he's never seen our Black Ops. But then again, neither have I which I guess is the point...

His concern subsiding slightly, he reclined in his chair and decided that a quick nap wasn't such a bad idea. He stretched, put his arms behind his head, and allowed his eyes to close.

Winter looked back from the gunners seat. "We gonna get out of here or are we just going to have an ice cream social?" Fredrick headed towards the cockpit. "Waiting for one more person." he said. He eyed the controls, then turned around. "I'm going to go be a grease monkey for a bit, be right back."

Naomi woke up, and saw that the ship was still waiting to leave. She looked around trying to figure out what was up.

"I take it we're waiting for someone."

She popped a small panel on her armor, it opened silently, and she carefully pulled a pair of glasses from the inside of the compartment. She checked to ensure they were clean, and put them on. Then glanced around again.

"In Shenyang, while we've perfected optical corrective procedures, most people don't bother with it. I'd much rather not have lasers fired into my eyes unless I really have to, being a tiny bit near-sighted isn't enough of a problem for me. The armor can auto-correct, or I can wear these, hardly a major hardship if you ask me."

She glanced around the cabin to give everyone a clear view of the glasses, in case they doubted her. They had very thin frames, apparently made of a silver metal, and weren't very obtrusive. She liked them, and didn't have a problem with wearing them at all. They had quite a few features built in, including a projector that could fire information onto the lenses.

Fredrick headed towards the pilot seat. "Screw it we're leaving." Winter pulled his feet in as the dropships main door closed, leaving him in the most comfortable seat in the ship. The ships auto-pilot spoke through the comm system. "Destination, Archangel medikrck,chk....." Fredrick leaned back, a grin of pure joy on his face. "Hated the auto-pilots, I prefer manual."

Seth smiled at Naomi briefly before putting his helmet back on, the suit repressurizing with a hiss.

"Don't blame you in the least. Don't care who's shooting at me, doctors or soldiers, I'd avoid it completely if possible. Personally, I'm a contact wearer myself. That coupled with a neural lace more than compensates."

He turned toward the cockpit, "Man after my own heart. Autopilot makes for too easy a target if you ask me."

Fredrick looked around the cockpit, he had never flown this model before, but he was a quick learner. He hit a glowing orange button, the signal that the dropship was ready for takeoff. A red light winked green, and there was a slight shimmer as the plasma shield in the bay wined out. Frost gathered on the edges of the plasma windows before melting. He looked around and found a small blue button over a compartment directly in front of him. He pressed it, and a thruster control and stick unfolded from the compartment. "Manual Piloting engaged" Stated the dropships AI. "Shouldn't be to hard." He whispered to himself. He tapped the disengage button on the HUD. The Hud flashed for a moment, then disolved to be replaced by a holographic image. "Fredrick, I told you, this is Union military prperty, and what did you do? Fry the auto-pilot." The captain shook his head. "This is going to be a demerit on-" Fredrick smacked the HUD, and the holographic image dissapeared, replaced by the HUD itself. A scond later the docking clamps disengaged, and he pushed the stick slightly forward. The dropship lurched towards the bay exit. Not to diffrent from the Pelican dropships He slowly guided the dropship into open space, and when they were clear, he leaned back. "BUckle up kiddies, I'm not gonna stop for anything." He looked for the jump activator, and found it near the thrusters, he scanned for any open jump portals, and found them all closed, priority access only. He leaned back again. "I meant it, pirate jumps are a bit jerky." he set the coordinates for the Archangel station before engaging the jump. A portal just big enough to fit the dropship opended before it, and he pushed the thrusters forward to max. The split second before he enetered slipspace, another transmission disrupted his HUD. "A pirate Jump, you crazy or something?!" Exclamied the captain. Fredrick merley smiled, he enjoyed pirate jumping.

The dropship lurched. Not just a gentle rocking like Dominion Phoenixes, but a violent, turbulent lurch. He took a few deep breaths and tried to further tighten his harness as the vessel passed into what nations that used it called Slipspace. The techs back on Homeworld had determined that constantly rending the fabric of space-time wasn't the best thing to do. All Dominion vessels had warp drives powered by a matter-antimatter core, which consequently transitioned a lot more smoothly than even a standard Slipspace jump. In short, he was far from used to this sort of jump and was feeling a little nauseous.

There was a brief sting and a hiss coming from the back of his neck as his armor automatically injected a mild stomach settler and he immediately felt a little better. He preoccupied himself by sending the files he'd pulled of the other squad members across the helmet's HUD and getting to know the people he'd be putting his life on the line with. All in all, he was glad that he hadn't had more than a bite or two of ration bar and Naomi had refused. He wasn't sure either of them would have kept it down through transition.

As an SLAST soldier Naomi was used to rough slipspace transitions. One of the most common methods for insertion was using cloaked drop-pods, which were fired while in slipspace.

The transition with these pods was almost instant, and best described as having every single hair on your body ripped out, while having the wind knocked out of you and all the blood drained from your head.

This wasn't that bad, luckilly. She shook her head to clear the disorientation that so often followed a slipspace transition, and looked around. She saw that Seth had been shaken up pretty badly in the transition.

"Just breath deep, you'll be fine. I've done this plenty of times. That's it, there."

Her eyes showed mild concern. She may have orders to keep him from taking any samples of the virus by whatever means necessary, but that didn't mean she was supposed to be callous.

Seeing that he was fine, she pulled out her plasma pistol and made a set of checks she'd made thousands of time in the past. She spun the oddly-shaped weapon, then placed it on the seat next to her. She put on her helmet, sealing the environment. Shiva got up and began pacing.

"Shiv, if I'm not nervous..."

"...then one of us ought to be. Remember what our mission is Naomi."

"It'll be fine, trust me."

"You know I trust you, still, its a dangerous mission."

"We've been through worse, besides, you watch my back and we'll both come out alive."

Shiva nodded in agreement, and returned to her seat.

The dropship ripped another portal open in slipspace and appeared barley a few kilo meters away from the medical station. "Always over calculate." Fredrick muttered. He leaned back. 'Sorry for the rough ride, would've been smoother if the Union was nice enough to grant us priority access to the jump gates. Pirate jumps are far from gentle." he pinged the station several times. "I've got nothing, we're going in hot, so be ready for hard contact."

Naomi grabbed the pistol and ran the initial boot cycle on the shielding. The momentary glimmer of the systems kicking in showed that she was getting ready to fight. The sword found its way to her off hand, and she disengaged the safeties on both weapons.

Shiva tried to get a system handshake from the station, it was weak, but it was there. She entered the system and began examining all the data she could. She activated internal sensors, and began scanning for contacts near the dropship's docking point.

Naomi crouched down into the same fighting stance she'd been in earlier, she rocked back and forth slightly, she was ready for action.

Fredrick activated the external cameras. "Theres no one here." He siwtched to the rear camera, what he saw almost made him lose his lunch. Blood and pieces of corpses were smeared across the deck like jelly, the main hangar door was torn open. He leaned back. "Unknown number of contacts,none in the immdediate area. Its like a slaughterhouse outside..."

"So much for 'just close the hangar bay doors.'"

The sickening sight only barely phased Naomi, an effect of having seen it so many times in the past.

'Every time I try to get out of this kind of work they come crawling back. 'Oh we need you...' '...You're the best we've got...' Next time I'm just flat out saying no.'

Shiva recoiled slightly at the sight, she was accustomed to seeing single targets have their skulls exploded from several kilometers, seeing so many dead at close range wasn't something she was entirely ready for.

"Do you think those people..."

"Yes Shiva, they did, for much too long."

The projected woman shuddered.

Edward looked around. "This is bad, those doors can take dozens of rounds from a tank before they go down, designed that way to stop hull breaches if something goes up." he looked at the door. "Something tore right through, it doesn't look like theres any visible signs of strain except around the hole, whatever it was, it can rip through that door." He checked his rifle. "Fredrick, you coming or staying?" fredrick got out of the pilots seat then rumaged through a small box in the copilots seat. He produced a small bag of parts, then rapidly assembly a plasma carbine. "Why not, if I sit here I won't have any protection."

Seth thanked Naomi for the adivce and took several deep breaths, his nausea subsiding. When the ship retransitioned, he was more prepared and fought off the sickening feeling with little effort. Improvise, overcome, adapt

He got up, perfectly comfortable in the moving dropship as long as it was in real space, and checked his gear before looking for himself.

"You know, I can honestly say I've seen worse while hunting a renegade group called Reavers. Vicious bastards, they adorn the hulls of their ships with the skins of their slain enemies. Hard to believe they're technically human. Anyway, let's land this crate and get to putting the dead back in their holes. The size of that hole'll pale in comparison to the new one I'm gonna rip whatever made it."

He charged his pulse rifle and looked at each of his squad members. It was unlikely that anyone would even be remotely dressed like any of them if they were even still alive, but it never hurt to know your teammates.

Fredrick dropped the bay doors. "You want the honors?" He asked Edward. He rolled his eyes behind his helmet. "Eyes sharper than knives, move it."

The Major followed Edward out, keeping him covered with his rifle and using the motion tracker mounted atop his gun to monitor the hangar.

Fredrick pulled a small cylinder off his belt. It looked like a standard issue plasma grenade, except in place of the activator, their was a small camera. "Never doubt pirate ingenuity. Bonus is that it scares the shit out of anyone who sees it." He rolled it towards the hangar towards, and when it was swalloed by the darkness, actived a small holoprojector. He twirled a small joystick and the camera movd with it, the area outside the hangar was clear. "See, even convicts have handy doo-dads."

Seth smirked, "A regular James Bond. Now, if it had a cup holder I'd be really impressed. All the same, comes in handy. Hate to have found out for myself what was over there."

Edward shouldered his rifle. "Lets get moving." He squeezed through the small gap and accessed the emergency door release. He pulled the lever back and compressed air forced the doors open. Fredrick came through first, and pulled a TED (Tactical Eye Display) out of his gear pouch and fit it over his ear. The display shifted out of the ear piece, extending and then folding over one eye before enaging the holographic display. "Not as good as night vision," He explained. "but it sure beats stumbling in the dark."

Naomi moved through a standard sweep pattern. She found everything devoid of targets. She activated her motion tracker and initiated the ITEV (Integrated Tactically Enhanced Vision) System. The world took on a blue hue as the night vision systems engaged. She waited for someone to disengage the gravity, then she'd be substantially more mobile, but until then she kept her feet on the ground.

"Sniper-1 confirming, Docking Bay is clear."

Edward re-entered the bay and threw a sall oval device onto the deck. A holographic map of the station bloomed into existence. He pointed at the top of the station. "This is the command room, from here we can deactivate the gravity." He traced his finger down the map, a red line following it. "We are here, not to far from the main elevator, however, I highly doubt its working, so its going to be a long climb."

Seth keyed his radio, "Delta six confirms Sniper-1, bay is clear."

He turned to the display, "Sounds good. Any objections if I take point? I wouldn't mind going the shaft one-handed."

He slung his rifle and pulled his blaster pistol, turning the safety off and activating a small laser sight.

"Go right ahead." Edward said. "Just remeber, if somethings in the shaft in front of you, we have to shoot over you." Winter stepped forward. "But then again, its worse then getting dragged down to the bottom of the shaft if somethings behind you, I'd rather be shot then fall to my death."

"It's largely academic, either way you die, and unless you end up with a major head wound you can be turned into a zombie before you die. Sad little fact."

She shrugged, she began wondering why Shiva couldn't just disable the gravity from the computer, she shrugged it off.

Seth shrugged and walked to the shaft. With aid of the strength enhancement his armor provided, he forced open the door and looked up the shaft. Satisfied that it was clear, he started climbing the ladder. It was a little awkward only using one hanbd, but nothing too impeding.

"You guys coming? Hate to think I'd have to grab all the glory!"

"Yeah, hold on one second." Fredrick braced himself against the mergency ladder and a wal before throwing a flare down the shaft. A sickly red color filled the shaft as it fell, illuminating nothing out of the ordinary. Clear at the bottom." "Showoff." Edward muttered.

Naomi glanced down the shaft, then up. After putting the sword away, she stepped back and got ready to jump. She took three steps, and jumped out to the cable in the shaft. Her fingers wrapped around it and she found purchase on the metal cable.

The cable swung clean across the shaft, and Naomi kicked off the wall and holstered her pistol. She grabbed onto the cable with her other hand. Slowly she began pulling herself up the shaft hand over hand. Occasionally she'd stop, pull her pistol, and sweep the area ahead and behind for any threats. She took up a trail position in the group, to cover their six.

"Naomi, why aren't you using the ladder?"

"Because Shiva, if one of them falls, then they'll take out everyone behind them, out here I can try to catch anyone who's falling."

"Hmm... you have a point."

"Why can't you shut down the gravity remotely?"

"There's too much damage to the systems. I'm suprised that they even still have a working system."

"So we have to climb the whole way."

"I'm afraid so."

"Beautiful."

Seth watched Naomi climb as he periodically looked back to ensure all was well. It took him a second to figure she wasn't on the ladder and he activated the magnetic insoles of his boots. Now he was effectively secured to the ladder, with the worst happening being his hanging upside down. All the effort of a sit-up would fix that.

Graceful, and intelligent too...damn

He utilized his night vision to sweep the shaft above him, "All quiet on the western front. Hell, I'm not even getting the normal background sensor ghosts on motion and thermal that indicates power output. I hate to sound cliché but it's quiet...too quiet."

He continued his climb, keeping the blaster pistol close to him and at the ready.

Naomi began to wonder how far it could actually be to the control room. She looped the cable around her foot to hold her in place and let go of the cable with one hand. After checking for any threats she flipped her hand out before her in a sideways L-shape. A miniature version of the shaft appeared beyond her hand.

"Of course, why would it be a short shaft? Why would life be anything but a series of problems and disappointments? Why do I even bother?"

She dissipated the image and whipped her foot to free it from the cable. She climbed on up the cable with relative ease.

"dammit." Edward swore. "This whole thing is a textbook case of a smooth opperation, but it just feels wrong." He continued to climb. "No contacts, sensor echoes, not even white noise on any of the channels, nothing." He shifted his rifle closer to his arm, if anything decided to pop out, itwould feel the heat, literally. Fredrick chuckled. "Isn't it always like this? Quiet one moment, and the next were being swarmed by the undead?" Edward cursed again. "I hate horror movie cliches..."

"Keep talking like that and I'll give you something to be afraid of."

Naomi wrapped her legs again and let go of the cable, she swung upside-down and stared down the shaft.

"Your flare died, I think something's moving down there."

She pulled her pistol and aimed carefully down the shaft. Her vision enhancement showed that the form was humanoid, and given that it wasn't acting very human, she decided it was a target.

"Sniper-1, firing."

She depressed the trigger, and a brilliant emerald lance of plasma flew from the end of the weapon. It struck the form at the bottom of the shaft, and pierced clean through it, head to toe. The scorched form dropped to the ground without a sound. The now dead form lay at the bottom of the shaft, smoldering.

"Sniper-1 slash 1."

She flipped back up and holstered the sidearm. After unwrapping her legs she started upward once more.

"Lets keep moving, if that was one of them, then the plasma shot will have gotten the attention of more. If it wasn't, then they were just spared a slow painful death."

Edward shook his head, he knew snipers had to be cold, but this kind of cold made him angry, if it wasn't an afflicted, she just killed an innocent life, one who could've helped them. He reached the top of the sfat and pulled himself onto the thin lip projecting from the door, he searched for an access pannel and opened it. There was no manual release, standard issue in case of boarding. He pulled a small rod off of his belt and fired a bright blue bolt into the door before he reconnected them. The door poped open with a faint hiss."The magic of slcing." He unslung his rifle and braced the stock against his shoulder, he was nervous, but not enough to make him loose it. He swept his head over the entire control room, vision filtering sharpening and brightening images."Its...clear. Lets set up a position."

"Roger."

Naomi took up a at the top of the shaft itself. She hooked her legs over the bracing at the top of the shaft and hung upside down, staring down the shaft. She pulled her sniper rifle and activated its systems.

She sighted down the shaft, watching for any targets of oppurtunity.

"Sniper-1 going on station."

"Roger, moving in. Cover me," Seth moved into the room, sliding to one side and sweeping his rifle back and forth.

"Contact, far left end," his voice was barely a whisper over the com, "Moving in to ascertain identity.

Fredrick chuckled."Lets give them a good reason togo after us, shall we?" He pulled an ancient LED flashlight from his belt and swept it over where the contact was. It lifted its hands and shook them around, shouting. "Don't shoot!" Fredrick lowered his flashlight as Edward strode over to him. "eddy, do a scan of his biosigns." He subvocalied. He turned to face the man. "You injured, bitten, anything?" He shook his head vigorusly. "All right, get into the light where we can see you." The man stood then moved to the center of the room. A torn medical uniform with obvious denotations of rank hung on the man like an illfitting robe. "You sure your not bitten?" The man nodded. "Just banged up a bit." Edward looked at him for a bit, trying to see if he wa injured, seconds later Eddy came back with the scan results. "Nothing but some minor bruises and a scrabe of non-organic origion, looks liek he dragged his leg over some wreckage." Edward nodded at the man. "Name, Ocupation." he said. The man ran his fingers through his shiny black hair. "Thomas Peters, I'm the station commander." Edward looked at him. "And what are you doing up here?" Thomas looked down,then muttered weakly. "I came to hide."

A very unwelcome sound came echoing up the shaft. It was barely audible at first, but soon it droned in Naomi's ears like a swarm of angry wasps.

"We've got inbound. Looks like I was right, that was a zombie I blasted."

She stared into the darkness, searching for motion in the abyss. It dawned on her that she was essentially hanging over her own demise. If something let go then she'd fall down the shaft into the invariable horde of undead shambling at the bottom of the shaft. She pulled a small plastic rod from her gear.

"Deploying chem light."

She cracked the tube and dropped it down the shaft. The green glow accelerated for a time, then hit terminal velocity. Finally, it plummeted to the bottom of the shaft. The diminutive green tube bounced, then came to rest at the feet of something humanoid.

From her vantage point atop the shaft Naomi saw several forms look up. They appeared sickly in the green light. Through her scope she zoomed in, closer, closer.

"Contacts confirmed as zombies. Engaging."

The sniper rifle let loose with a thunderous series of reports. Electricity arced to the walls of the shaft, it also followed the projectile for several feet, then dissipated. The Osmiridium rails heated on contact with the air, creating an instantaneous lance of orange light. The rails connected to the zombie skulls.

The rails kept going, vearing wildly inside their targets, then tearing out in a shower of blood and charred bone, on contact with the shaft they shattered in a spray of ultra-heated metal micro-shrapnel.

"Sniper-1 slash 4. We're gonna have company up here if they keep coming, so get that dammed gravity disabled."

She kept watching down below.

Seth lowered his rifle and nodded to Naomi, "On it."

He ran to the main console and began looking over the the various panels.

"Alright Commander, help me out.

Thomas ran over to the consol. "I'm going to initiate an emergency override of the grav systems, otherwise I can't get them off." His fingers flew over the control panel. "Hit that switch," He pointed at a grey square next to his control console. "When I tell you to, otherwsie I'll have to reset the whole thing." Edward leaned over the shaft, the chem light cast a sickly glow. "Incindeary out!" He dropped the incindeary down the shaft, moments later, liquid plasma coated the bottom of the shaft, casting a firery orange glow, sizzling on the glazing. "That should light up anything down there, hopefully it buys us some time."

'Just shoot the console, that'll break it,' Naomi thought, 'Its not like its not a fragile piece of electronic equipment or anything.'

She glanced down to see that the plasma fire, in addition to warping the metal, was attracting more undead. Some got lucky, and began climbing up. She fired, the lightning arced once more secondary jolts played over her shields, trying to find a path to ground. The shields gleefully absorbed the incoming energy.

More projectiles fragged after over-penetration. It created quite the light show. The perforated corpses fell back, and were immolated, like a short fall into the pits of hell. Of course, it was just as much of a threat to her as it was to them.

"Just shoot it?!?" Thomas exclaimed. "This is a delicate procedure, I don't know where you come from, but destroying this console would cause a system wide lockdown, meaning all terminals, access ports, mainframes, everything would be locked down." He gestured around. "Whats worse, anything without a Union IFF or its allies would be shot to pieces, while that may not be so bad, we'd be locked out of everything!"

Seth snorted, "Not so bad for you maybe, but I'd rather not be on the wrong end of a defense grid. Tell you what, we won't shoot it, and you tell me when to hit the big red-er...gray button."

OOC: That was her thinking, not speaking, as I've said time and again, if I use '____' its thought, if I use "_____" its dialouge. Hell, I even put the words "Naomi thought," into the post. Is he psychic and you're not telling us?

OOC: See above post for the reasoning behind this one.

Naomi kept watch, the plasma was playing havoc with her sensors, the wavering field of fire slowly dimmed, cooling through red, and finally it evaporated. The metal glowed like it had just come out of the smelter, and in places it ran down the walls, creating pitting and pools of molten metal at the bottom of the shaft.

"Atleast the sniper rifle only punches small holes, if they keep pitching those things they'll burn clean through the hull."

She was muttering to no one in particular.

A zombie stepped into one of the pools. Its foot immediately burnt away, the sudden loss of balance caused it to fall into the pool. The body thrashed as it was swiftly engulfed in fire, Naomi closed her eyes, she didn't enjoy watching slow painful deaths, even for the undead. She checked to ensure the suit's environment was sealed, the scent of burning flesh was the last thing she wanted to smell today.

The light of their ignited comrade called forward some slightly luckier undead, these began attempting to shamble up the shaft, the punctured armor denoted that they were some of these infected marines they'd been told to worry about.

"I hate magnetized footwear."

She pulled a Shenyangi Type-04 plasma grenade from her gear and primed it. The blue sphere pulsed as it counted down, a 5 second fuse for a 3 second fall. She let go of the weapon as soon as it was primed. The pulsating blue orb dropped further and further, then as it came level with the heads of the 'lucky' undead Naomi pulled the trigger on her SRS. The rail impacted, detonating the weapon amid the targets.

A sudden burst of blue-white light engulfed the shaft for 5 metres in either direction, the undead were instantly vaporized inside their compromised armor. The charred, cracked armor fell back down the shaft, its internal power systems interupted by the proximity of the plasma burst.

The suits hit the deck, deforming the soft metal before coming to rest.

"Sniper-1 slash 7, it looks like your plasma incendiary did a hell of a lot of damage down there, I wouldn't suggest touching it for several hours, unless you'd prefer to lose whatever you touch it with."

OOC; Whoops, I'll just retcon that as a warning against shooting the console.

IC: Thomas activated the sequence, the gray box lit up a bright green. "When it gets the red, uh... well, I think you know the cliche"

"You got it," the button flashed red and he hit it.
Acting quickly, he activated his armor's magnetic soles to avoid drifting away.

"Blood should stop rushing to your head now Sniper 1, but you might want to leave the shaft. Your buddies down there will be coming up fast."

He readied his rifle, leveling it on the bottom of the opening.

Thomas clutched his stomach and floated away. "Think I'm gonna be sick.." Winter walked over to the edge of the shaft, the plasma had finally fizzled ou, leaving charred remains of the afflicted. "Doesn't look to bad, long as they bite ya, right?"

Instants before the gravity was disengaged Naomi released herself from the top of the shaft, she began free-falling. An instant passed before gravity disappeared and her acceleration cut off. She activated her 'wings'. They extended from her back, reaching a few feet away from her body. She free fell down the shaft, stopping about 5 metres from the bottom.

"Your plasma incendiary did a number on this stuff. I wouldn't trust it to hold weight when the gravity comes on again."

She heard Winter's comment, she rolled over in place, safely above the reach of any floating zombies.

"Okay, I may be cold, but that's just wrong."

She reengaged the thrusters and rose quickly to the control room.

"Call me an old coot then, here I go." He grabbed the edge of the lift door then kicked off towards the bottom of the shaft, laughing all the way. A zombie floated out of the hallway, flaling in a slow manner as if trying to move. "First kill of the day, comin' up." He drifted towards the zombie and grabbed it by its back. It tried to twist around, but Winter kept it pinned. "Smile and say ah." He said, then spun the zombie around. It immediatly opened its mouth to bite, and without a seconds hesitation, Winter withdrew and antique combat knife and plunged it through the roof of its mouth, tearing through bone and brain, before withdrawing cleanley and stabbing another floating zombie through the eye. "The fun I could have." He said, whistling a merry tune.

Naomi locked Winter out of her next transmission.

"That guy is insane, I know insane, and he's it."

She engaged the wings to take her half-way down the shaft.

"Shiva, make me an opening on Deck 4."

"I'm on it."

Naomi pulled her pistol and waited for the doors to part before her. They obeyed, and a grotesque zombie fell through the new opening, apparently having been floating toward the doors moments earlier. She reacted in typical fashion, she fired through its skull and through it back through the door.

"Foxtrot-7 going in. Deck-4."

She pushed forward, hovering dead center in the hall like some kind of psychic. She carefully cleared the lift gallery, ensuring that no undead were waiting in ambush.

"Gallery clear, don't expect it to stay that way."

----

Shiva was monitoring the station's internal sensors, for what that was worth. There was persistant damage throughout the station, some systems were completely dead, others so badly damaged as to be a threat to anyone attempting to use them. What normally would have been a simple operation of tricking the computer into cutting the gravity had been thwarted by severe conduit damage on the command deck.

"Naomi, 3 targets, 4 o'clock low to 5 o'clock low."

She saw Naomi spin in space and fire twice. She managed to take down all three targets. The electromagnetic distortion from the plasma fire momentarilly blanked the sensors in the area.

"Naomi, the sensors are having trouble with the compressed plasma weapons, be advised, I won't be eyes-on for 3.125 seconds after you fire."

"Roger that, do your best."

"I always do."

Edward floated down the shaft next to winter. "Really dad, you've got to stop doing that whole 'joyful' killing thing, most people don'tlike it when... eh.." Winter chuckled. "When old coots like me do it? Well, after decades of combat, you'll get used to it."

Naomi had been shooting her way down one of the halls, when Shiva suddenly gave her a warning.

"Six o'clock, watch out!"

Naomi spun in time to find a zombie had floated down the halls, masked by the distortions caused by the plasma fire. It was within arms reach, she couldn't fire at such close range without risking hurting herself. She punched the zombie in the face. With the armor's enhancements the skull was crushed with seemingly little effort. She shook her hand, it hurt a lot. The armor scanned her hand and found a few hair-line fractures.

Naomi pulled a small cartridge from her gear and engaged it onto her arm. The cartridge released a very small number of 'Class-IX' medical nanites. They quickly went to work on fixing the damage to her hand. She'd never quite gotten used to the feeling of the nanites working. They made one's skin crawl and tingle. She tried to ignore it. Her 'wings' fired and she turned back down the hall, she saw an undead marine coming toward her, atleast, she thought it was undead, if it was a soldier then he was either entirely drunk or grossly uncoordinated. Given the options, she took the shot. The zombie's neck exploded, and its head fell backward onto the ground.

"Looks like this deck is pretty active, request assistance in clearing deck 4."

Seth keyed his com, "Roger, moving to assist."

He finished the zombies in his LoF and moved toward Naomi, "Somebody call for a knight in matte black armor?"

Edward headed down the hallway with Winter. "So, whats the order from section zero?" Winter chuckled. "Like you don;t know? Secure all combat data and ensure no transmissions or samples reach other intergalactic governments, if this virus falls into the hands of a power hungry government, the results could be the first and last biological war ending in the extinction of humanity." He shrugged. "Grim propect huh?" Ed nodded and entered a junction between sections. "I'll take the med bay and get the data from there, you secure the marine HQ."

"Not quite. Lab ahead, wierd. This looks like a treatment level, why would it be here..."

Naomi hovered toward the door, it required a pass-code. She pointed her plasma pistol a it, then paused.

"Shiva, can you get me into this lab here? Its pass-protected."

"On it, done."

The door slid open before her.

"Laughable encryption on that one, who uses a series of prime numbers as a pass-code any more?"

"People who don't expect AI to come busting into their labs."

Naomi floated through the door. The lab was the typical sterile environment one would expect, except for the blood spatter all over the walls and the fact that almost everything was broken. A dead man leaned against a door leading to a cryo-freezer.

Naomi moved the man, who seemed to have died of a horrifying slash across his gut, and prepared to open the door. Whatever had done this had to be in there.

"Already on it Naomi."

The door's locks disengaged and a small light that had been red flicked to green. She heard a clearly automated female voice.

"Deep-freeze disengaged, temperature is now survivable."

She opened the door part way. She heard a thump on the far wall, well away from her. Then the door exploded off its hinges. A grotesquely mutated former marine floated out with the door. The force pitched Naomi across the room, ramming her into the far wall. She blacked out.

Shiva quickly analyzed the situation.

"Dammit."

She extended her presence back into the armor and activated its emergency overrides. She began moving the suit herself. She'd never had to do this before, and found that the input system was meant to be used in tandem with human movements, so it was going to be clumsy as all hell. She quickly brought the plasma pistol up and fired at the zombie. The first shot went obscenely wide, hitting a small canister of chemicals, which duely detonated. The second shot however found its mark. The plasma blast was fired at point-blank range, and Naomi's shields flared as some plasma recoiled back onto them. The zombie, now dead, slammed into Naomi, who was still out cold.

The impact roused her. She let out a predictable scream upon finding that a zombie was clinging to her. She kicked it away and fired twice into its skull. She looked around, horrified. Shiva couldn't tell if she was having a panic attack or a nervous break-down. She had to do something.

"Naomi, calm down..."

It wasn't working, she was desperately looking for a target. Inside her head she could almost sense that danger was close-by.

"Naomi!"

It still wasn't working. Naomi fired twice into the freezer, seemingly at nothing. Without realizing it, she also switched the comm over to open broadcast.

"GET A GRIP YOU STUPID B***H!!!"

Naomi immediately snapped out of it.

"WHAT!?"

"That did it, calm down, you were knocked out, I killed that thing, then you over-killed it. I think you were having a panic attack, you weren't responding to anything I tried."

"So you...!"

"I had to get your attention, breath, thats it, its okay, you're okay."

Naomi tried to clear her head, slowly the terror passed and he was able to return to her normal level of composure. It took her several minutes of Shiva reassuring her that everything was okay.

"I'm okay... thanks Shiv."

"You'd have done the same."

Naomi nodded, then she realized that they had been broadcasting to the whole unit. She didn't know how long it had been going, but she switched back to closed communications, and prayed they hadn't heard anything. She tried to continue with her usual level of professionalism.

"Sniper-1, I've got a lab on Deck-4, Talbitt, get over here and help me figure what its for."

Before she had even sent the transmission, Seth came running as fast as his magnetic soles would allow upon hearing the ruckus. He charged in, hefting the rifle in one hand and a large, quite frankly mean looking knife in the other. He stepped over what was left of the Marine and walked over to her, all the while keeping one eye on the freezer. He noticed from her body language that she was breathing hard.

He sheathed his knife and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, his rifle aimed nonchalantly toward the freezer, "You all right? There was a ton of noise and your AI went ballistic over the com. You really don't look so good. Wait here, I'll clear the freezer."

He charged his rifle and pushed a button toward the front of the weapon. An orange beam of energy extended about a foot from the rifle in the vague shape of a blade. Cautiously, he made his way inside-

And was instantly waylaid by two more Marines. He put two shots through the head of one and deftly brought the rifle butt crashing into the gut of the other. Quickly turning and hitting it again in the head, he sent the bayonet straight through its skull.

The two undead slumped to the floor in all of roughly two seconds. Looking arouns, he noticed much of the room was like a meat freezer, complete with hooks hanging from the ceiling. There were a number of cryopods as well as what appeared to be monitoring equipment.

"This is Delta 6, lab cryo is clear," he then activated the EMH. The Doctor wavered a little and then came into being.

Seth switched off his com and made sure that Naomi wouldn't see them, "Doc, do what you gotta do. Then go treat Naomi for shock.

The Doctor nodded, producing a vial and scooping up some frozen blood then concealing it before stepping from the vaporous fog emanating from the freezer.

"Sniper 1, are you in need of medical attention?"

OOC: Damn, someone beat me to an AI taking control of a person, even if it was there armor. Oh well, I got some stuff for some rather..interesting plot lines down the way.


Edward opened the door to the marine HQ, what lay beyond sickened him. Dozens of marines lay about in various positions humans were never meant to be in, all of them looked like they had been in a hard core brawl with something big, something very big. A few of the marines were actually pulped, remains of armor keeping them in a recognisable shape. He noticed a large bodie wearing the shreds of the jumpsuit under the armor, plasma burns were spread across mostof its body, exposing bone in place, but what gave Ed a sigh of relief was that most of them were concentrated on its face. He glanced over at the marines. They died taking this thing down, whatever it was. He clambered over the bodies to one of the few terminals that wasn't smashed or melted and initiated the sequencer code. The terminal flashed and transfered data to his suitscomp, a secondary copy was transfered to Eddy for review. "Oh very nice." Said the voice in his head. "All this raw combat data, personal logs on the mental breakdown of the survivors, even reports of mutiny, then again, what less could you expect of humans in a situation iof desperation?" Edward chuckled. "In case you haven't noticed, you're in a humans HEAD, try being a bit more courteous." Eddy chuckled. "Just analysing the data." Edward turned away from the console, half smiling under his helmet. "Try not to over analyze, its a bit more human that way." His smile froze and died, the hulking corpse had dragged itself to its feet, massive fists raised in a crushing blow. Edward tried to duck, but he was to slow, the blow caught him on the side of the helmet, the force of the impact popping his helmet seal. he was already unconsious when the helmet left his head, his mag boots de-activated to prevent his legs from popping out of their sockets with the force of the impact. They re-activated when he had flown almost half way across the room, brinign him slumping down to the ground. The hulking figure moved closer, fists raised again in a death blow.

While all this was occring, eddy was thinking. Is this really the end of me? Can i do nothing? He begna to think of ways out, anyway at all. Nuerons, nuerons are electrical based, I'm electrical based, I could try. he surged a small energy spike into Edwards head. His fingers twitched, then went limp. More, got to use more He surged a larger spike, he could feel Edwards arms before it faded again MORE!!! he spiked all he could without killing him, feeling rushing through Edwards limbs, his limbs. His eyes snapped open. Barley a second had passed. he rolled out of the way of theblow, and brought his plasma rifle to bear on the thngs head. Bolts of plasa erupted fromthe rifle like liquid fire, arcing towards there target with deadly accuracy. All of the bolts hit, instantly liquifying whatever flesh and bone was left on its skull. It wavered for a moment, then came crashing down. Eddy/Edward stod up, then emptied what was left of the clip into its head. "Like that, do ya?" He shouted at it. Along stream of curses in German flowed to his lips as he tried to stand, he tottered like a toddler trying to walk, then stiffened his legs and took short strides toward the door. " Call sign Blaze, requesting assistance." he hit the door frame and slid down, Edward was still unconsious, leaving Eddy in control.

OOC: All I'll ask is this: 'Chrome-Dome'?

"I'm fine, that thing really shook me, but I'm fine."

She heard the transmission from Edward, she thought he sounded odd.

"Sniper-1 and Delta-6 moving to your location. ETA 5 minutes."

She turned to Seth.

"So, think you can keep up? We shouldn't get separated."

Naomi checked her pistol's charge, it read as 91%, still good to go. She began flying out, using a standard Shenyangi Zero-Gee Strategy, to constantly keep moving, while scanning both visually and with senors in all directions for anything that could be a threat, then engaging anything that was.

OOC: Just a slight alteration of it. You'llsee in the next thread.

Eddy started to pant and crawl down the hallway, even though he was a class five AI, he had never learned how to walk in the physical world, at least not with the human musuclar structure. He dragged himself further down the hallway, hoping nothing hungry would hear him. His heart fluttered like a dying birds, even though he had technically forced his way into Edwards body, it was activly trying to restore control to its original mind by rejecting the "alien" presence inside. Rivers of sweat flowed down his face as he crawled towards the junction where he had come from, hopefully, someone was there. He draged himself as far as he could before he collapsed and rolled over. Big mistake. An afflicted shambled towards him, lips drawn back, moaning the entire way. He weakly lifted the rifle, but didn't have enough strength to steady it, let alone pull the trigger. It dropped to the floor, clattering with a distrubing finality. he sat back, waiting for the teeth bite into his flesh, when the afflicted's head exploded. A long blade extended from the puply mass that was left, and from what he saw, the blade was attached to an arm,and not just a simpleprosthetic or attachment, the bladewas the arm. The stranger nealt next to him, red eyes glowing. "Better watch yourself construct." he sad in a deep raspy voice. " Didn't they ingrain it into AIs not to try and physically control their hosts?" Eddy/Edward shook his head feebly. The man chuckled, a dry, throaty chuckle. He withdrew something froman equipment pack. "This'll help contain the massive rejection your host is going through, at least until he wakes up." Foot steps echoed in the hall behind him. "And now, its my turn to dissapear, just remeber, next time we meet, you owe me a glass of bourbon." He steped into the shadows and dissapeared, and in dissapeared, as in the whole, there one second, gone the next. Eddy/Edward sank his head back against the floor, the medication was kicking in, and he could feel Edward waking up. "Least I got to be human for a brief bit." Hesaid outloud.

The Doctor nodded, "Very well, but if you have another panic attack, I must insist on a very mild sedative to calm you down."

Seth stepped out of the freezer and brushed some ice accumulation from his armor, "I wouldn't be worried about me keeping up. Let's get moving."

He turned to the Doctor, "Up for a little jog Doc?"

"For God's sake Major, I'm a doctor not an athlete!" Doc glared at him but began moving nonetheless.

They followed Naomi down the hall toward Edward's postion. The Doc handed Seth his medkit in case he needed to go intangible.

They came upon Edward's position in time to see him start stirring. An afflicted was dead nearby.

The Doctor kneeled next to him, taing his kit back and scanning with a tricorder, "He appears to be delerious. He's not making much sense. I'm reading somewhat severe whiplash and head trauma. Whatever it was hit him. Hard. Administering pain killers."

He produced a hypospray and began hooking it up to a port in the armor.

"Doc, you even consider giving me sedatives and Shiva will tear your base code down line by line."

Shiva projected herself from the armor. She tooked angry, she wasn't purple yet though.

"I'd do it, trust me on that. Wouldn't feel bad about it either."

Naomi continued.

"Not only do they play havoc with my aim, and pretty much knock me out, but I'm severely allergic. 'Mild' ones were administered to me when I blew every bone in my shoulder on Phi Octanus VII, damn near killed me. That doc is currently attending a series of imposed seminars on reading medical data presented to him in standard Shenyangi format. You, couldn't expect that kind of hospitality."

She moved into the room Marine HQ, and saw the dead zombie.

"Definitely ZIV-09."

Shiva examined the massive form. It was definitely formerly human, but it was way out of proportion, the classic example of a Class-3 Afflicted Human. Naomi continued clearing the area, she paused and switched to her SRS, then continued.

"Shiva, you've seen them before, I need sensor data sis."

"Of course..."

Something was odd, she couldn't quite place it. She let it go for the moment and returned to monitoring the internal sensors.

"Directly opposite that door I've got something, not sure what."

Naomi popped the door and fired a round through the skull of the zombie, and as a result, through the far wall. She moved into the room, and was shocked by what she heard, wimpering. She turned to the source of the sound, a young man in a hospital gown was crouched in the corner. His eyes were darting around. Shiva tracked down the man's medical records.

"We've got a live one, Doc, get over here with your medical gear."

Naomi floated to the man, who was hovering in a very bizarre version of the fetal position in zero-gee. She depolarized her faceplate.

"Sir, calm down, I'm Naomi, I'm here to rescue you."

Having stabilized Edward, Doc ran into the room and reached gently toward the victim, "Sir, please, if you'll allow me to assist you. I'm a Doctor I'm here to help."

Seth stayed with Edward and offered a hand as he came to, "Need a hand? Whatever happened to you, it was over by the time we got here. The Doc's given you some painkillers and stabilized you but he recommends an examination when we get back to thye station. Whatever hit you did it a good job."

Eddy felt Edward finally starting to gain awareness. he chuckled softly, then withdrew back into his nueral lace. But something was wrong, he couldn't access it. He tried again repeatedly, each time it denied him. what the hell.... Edward woke to find Seth extending his hand to him. "Don't know why your doing that, but thanks." He grabbed it and Seth helped him up. He dropped his helmet and gingerly touched his head, pain lancing over the bump rising. "Somethin' did a number on my head, glad you guys managed to get me." he stumbled for a bit, then regained balance. "I found something interesting while I was tinkering around back there, thought you might want to see." He pulled a holo projector off his belt and activated it, threading the data through it. A holo-cam feed appeared, the time was set at four hours ago. A man with black hair and a surgical gown was standing with another man, a Calizoristan officer. "So, Pytor, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?" The man in the surgial gown laughed. "You know what." The officer lit a cigara, a minature cigar, then exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Yes, I do, you are a dead man, I saw the report." The other man laughed. "If I am dead, then you are speaking with a ghost!" The officer flicked his cigara at Pytor, it bounced off him and lay smoldering on the floor. "Mind telling me what this is all about?" Pytor extened a hand. "I'm offering you the power of the word, my friend." The officer considered the hand, then pushed it away. "I don't make deals with dead men." Pytor laughed, a bone chilling laugh. "Very well my friend, come my pet, spread the word." A howl erupted fro the speaker as something tore through the door and stabbed the officer through the face. He fell to the floor, standing seconds later with a moan. "Alex, my friend, I offered you the power of the word, instead you chose to beomce its slave." He turned to the thing. "Spread the word my pet, spread it well." It dashed through the door, howling all the way before the recording ended. "That is waht disturbed me, I ran it through all the filters I could, Pytor is mots definently a dead man thats cheated death. Waht really worries me is this 'word' he keeps refering to."

The Major stared intently at the holofeed, not quite believing what he was seeing.

"You mean to tell me that he's got control over those things? And what do you mean by 'cheated death'? Last time I checked, that and taxes were the only two constants in the universe. Then again, taxes went out when the Dominion abolished currency so I guess anything's possible. Either way, we have reason to be very, very concerned. I'm not quite sure what this 'word' is he's touting either, but I intend to find out."

Eddy repeatedly tried to access the nueral chip in Edwards brain before finally giving up and gaining direct access to Edwards armor. he projected himself to full heigth before clearing his throat. "I believe, and this is a disturbing possibility, that perhaps the word he is talking about is the virus itself. History has proven that cults form over the strangest thing, and a cult simmilar to this has formed. However, this cult seems to have actual control over the creatures, not just worshiping them. If it is a cult, things could turn very deadly, very quickly."

"Yet another 'righteous crusade' in the name of religion...as if people haven't suffered or caused enough suffering in the names of their gods. If your theory on the word is right, then it's logical to assume their methodology revolves around controling something if you know its real name, a belief that's manifested itself in hundreds of religions over the centuries. Most were pagan and most involved human sacrifice. You're right about them being dangerous. We've had to exterminate several cultist settlements along the outskirts of the Dominion and they'd fight, quite visciously I might add, with the kind of intensity that comes from zeal," there was a grim tone to Seth's voice, "But these guys have the virus, and that makes this all the more dangerous."

Naomi piped in with her take on things.

"This is a long way from a simple belief, if they have control of the undead, then they're not just a bunch of zealots."

She left the man with the doctor and headed out.

"What the hell happened to you Edward, you called for back-up and we had to come running, only to find you unconscious on the ground."

Edwrd shook his head. "I don't know, I got whacked on the head then wake up here with Seth helping me up, beyond that, I don't know." Eddy turned away, then spoke up. "It was my doing." Edward looked at him. "Did you take control of the armor or something?" Eddy turned back to him. "No Edward, I took control of you."

Seth cocked his head to one side, "How in the galaxy did you pull that off? More importantly, good job. You saved his life."

The Doc walked in, his expression somber, "Well, there's good news and dreadful news. The good news is I've stabilized our friend in there. The dreadful news is that he's been bitten and is changing rapidly. The infection retarding drugs are barely phasing it. I fear we're dealing a whole new strain," he paused and looked at everybody, "You all seem shocked, did I miss something?"

"Great, ZIV-09 all the way. This is what we get for some psycho biological weapons developer messing with the wrong technology on the wrong bug."

She shook her head.

"So, we going to shoot him now and save him the pain, or wait for him to turn after an obscenely painful transformation process, and risk that he morphs into something worse than a normal zombie? I'll do it either way."

She slung her rifle and pulled the pistol.

OOC: I want to be the one who RPs the change, if that's okay with everyone.

OOC: All right


Edward shook his head. "As much as i love shooting things, you're all set and ready to go, so you do the job I'm not feeling to good right now." He turned to the side and heaved up whatever was in his stomach. "Oh thats gross... what kind of sedative was that?"

The Doctor seemed puzzled, "Only a mild painkiller. I would assume that vomiting was more a result of your head injury. Nausea is usually a symptom of a concussion. I'll scan you again to be certain."

He pulled out a tricorder and began going over Edward again very thoroughly.

"If it is the medication, a counteragent can be administered with no ill effects. Are you experiencing a throbbing in your head that seems to be getting as opposed to better? Dizziness perhaps? If you would remove your helmet, I would like to see if you have become sensitive to light."

Seth turned to Naomi, "You'd better put him away quickly before the virus really kicks in. It's for the best."

OOC: Tell me what you think, since no zombie movie shows the transformation process clean through, I had to free-form this one.

IC:
Naomi simply nodded, she'd had to do this all too many times in the past. She walked through the door, and into the small room.

"Sir, as you no doubt know, you've been bitten. I need you to understand something, this virus is going to kill you, and turn you into one of those things, we can't save you, I'm sorry. Do you understand?"

The man was being racked with pain. He somehow forced a nod.

"I need to know, do you want to wait out the cycle, or do you want me to make things easier for you?"

"W-w-wait... n-need closure..."

Naomi nodded, she was one of the only SLAST known to grant the final requests of those about to be executed when infected. She took her pistol, and flipped a small switch on the side to 'overcharge'. The top of the weapon popped up to reveal the green glow of the fusion core.

The man's eyes fixed on the weapon.

"I set it to overcharge mode, I promise you, you won't feel a thing when I fire."

"T-thank you."

The man floated, contorting in pain in zero-g. He let out several moans, then screams as his flesh began to rapidly deteriorate, the hallmark of kill method of ZIV-09 was rapid tissue necrosis. Naomi simply stood by, she was muttering something in Shenyangi, the SLAST Rites for the Fallen.

(translated from Shenyangi, audible over comm system)
"Though we are far from home, in the midst of battle; the most violent act of our civilized societies. Though we will likely never see our families again. We take solice in death, for in death there is peace, and only the dead have seen the end of war. Thusly, we commit this man to eternal rest, that he may find in the next realm, what he fought for in this. Amen."

The man howled in agony, entering violent convulsions. Blood poured filled his mouth, he had bitten his tounge in two. The dying man shook several times, coughed as the blood cut off his air. The blood sprayed out into the atmosphere, narrowly missing Naomi.

Shiva appeared, it was normal to have a witness at one of these events, she stood at attention at Naomi's right shoulder.

The man let out one final wail of pain as blood vessels throughout his body burst. The now lifeless body slumped in the air. Naomi saw that his vitals were all flat. She took a deep breath, and leveled the pistol on the slowly tumbling body's head. A few moments passed, then the body started. The eyes opened, revealing a blood-shot, feral gaze. It began clawing at the air. Then came the stereotypical moan. As its head cleared the horizon of its torso Naomi squeezed the trigger. The plasma pistol discharged an emerald pulse that was brighter than the brightest star. The ultra-compressed lance hit the new zombie directly between the eyes. Its head evaporated in under a second from the sustained beam. The beam continued on and melted a hole through the wall into the next room, then the next.

Naomi released the trigger and flipped the switch back to 'semi'. The weapon returned to its normal configuration, andshe holstered it on her hip. The decapitated body spun slowly in the air, twitching from the systemic shock of the ordeal and the electrical charge of the plasma. It bumped into a wall and stopped convulsing. Naomi turned away, and floated to the door without a sound. She and Shiva exited the room, closing the door behind them.

"He asked me to let it happen, its over now."

Shiva rested an ethereal hand on Naomi's shoulder.

"We did what we had to do. He's at peace now."

Naomi nodded slowly, took a deep breath, then looked at the others.

"We should get moving."

Seth let a gaze his gaze linger on Naomi a moment longer than the other. Though he said nothing, his body language conveyed the question,"Are you sure you're alright?" He turned and continued sweeping the area for more.

The Doctor hit a button on his tricorder, "Personal log, note death occurred at 2245 hours. Subject was infected and neutralized slightly after turning. Team health and vitals are for the most part intact and the mission will continue on schedule."

Edward shook his head rapidly. "No way in hell I'm letting you near me with that medicine again, I'll just pack my own." He looked over at the headless corpse as it floated by. "I've seen a couple zeds transform in the training sims, never actually seen there flesh melt." he caught its body and pulled it towards him. On the tips of its finger were vegistle claws, barley poking through the skin. He pushed the body through the door at the far end of the coridor before sighing. "I think that might have been a mutant strain of whatever virus this is, looks like it did nasty stuff to him."

Doc nodded, "Indeed, I haven't seen anything like this. I'm positive now we're seeing a whole new strain.

Seth chimed in, "It could have even been made by the cult which would account for the uncommon levels of control they have over the afflicted."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, "A cult? Excuse me? I see very little religion in this."

"You missed the in-mission movie, I'll bring you up to date once we're back in the dropship. It's not pertinent to our current mission but it may be useful later on."

Naomi nodded, then engaged her cloaking systems. She floated, silent and invisible down the halls with rifle at the ready. As she came upon more undead, she fired, which in turn would attract others, which she would kill on sight.

She prowled the halls looking for other severely mutated zombies, she didn't want to leave this to chance.

OOC; Sorry I've been gone for so long, been kind of busy.

Edward looked around. "Wheres Fredrick?" The PA in the corridor crackled to life. "Everywhere kid, you guys went after classified stuff so I went back to the control room, looks like our Friend Thomas split." He projected himself into the corridor. "I've been monitoring something, think you might want to see this." His hands flew to an invisble consol, and the image flickered to a feed of a hangar. In the center stood Thomas Peters. "You going to come out or what?" He said to an invisble person. Someone stepped out of the shadows behind him. "Been here for a while Pytor." Said the man. Edward looked at Peters, then mentally searched for similaritys between him and Pytor, sur enough, they were the same person. "I'm suprised you managed to make it past my converts, but you'll find me harder to deal with then the lower diciples." The man withdrew an old revolver and fired twice, once into Pytors gut and the next into his head. Pytor fell, then drew himself back up. "it'll take a lot more then that to ki-" The man fired again into Pytor's groin. "Heal that." Pytor fell, clutching his groin and gasping. "Get him!" he shouted. Two creatures flung themselves at the man howling the entire way, he calmly sidestepped the first, put a slug through its head then flicked a knife through the other's head. "And now for the master." he calmly strode over to Pytor and knealt beside the gasping man. "i... I can offer you power beyond...your wildest dreams." The man looked at him. "Really Pytor, I've got all i need." Pytor looked at him, eyes filled with rage. "You will burn w-!" The man fired a round through Pytors throat. "Now now, no spilling any secrets." He withdrew and incindary, pulled the pin then placed it over Pytor's chest. "See you in hell." he stood and walked away, Pytor tried to scream at him, but the detontion cut him off.

"...and its days like this that make me wish I would retire already. Get out of this twisted game and settle down, have a family. Why should I do that? Some random back-water planet is experiencing a revolution, and we need to stop it, cake walk."

She continued to talk to herself, as she kept fighting.

"Have the rifle hit by lightning and blow my shoulder apart, no big deal. Nearly die during routine surgery, nah, that's okay. End up thousands of light years from home on a space station populated by the undead and a bunch of mutant cultist psychopaths, all in a day's work. I need a long vacation, some where away from this..."

She rounded a corner, and came face to face with a very large, very grotesque zombie. She spun backward, kicking it in the jaw, sending it sailing down the hall into some 'normal' zombies beyond. She brought up the SRS and fired 5 times. The bodies floated in zero-g, quite dead. She continued on.

"Maybe I should check out the beaches on Basis, nice and calm, out of the way in Shenyangi space, perfect little resorts, no terrorists, revolutionaries, zombies, pirates, nothing... ...great sunbathing..."

She flew up and over the corpses, checking each before moving on.

"...definitely, Basis."

---

Shiva was quite puzzled by Naomi's actions, she wasn't normally so sarcastic, and she'd had to execute infected people before, she was worried that something else was wrong, maybe that knock on the head had caused some damage.

She began a full bio-scan, looking for anything she might have missed. Sure enough, a minor concussion, nothing serious, but enough to put Naomi in a very bad mood.

"Naomi, you've got a concussion, you should really calm down."

"Oh, of course, I'll try."

"That's the Naomi I know."

Seth gave a wry laugh, "You always prone to monologues? Besides, for a soldier, it sounds like Basis would get pretty boring after a while. I mean, you can't be telling me you're not having fun?"

He fired a few bursts at head level into a crowd of the afflicted surging up a corridor. Judging by their uniforms, they'd been maintainence staff.

"Quite frankly Major," the Doctor chimed in, "Basis sounds like a lovely place. I may be a hologram, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough not to know I'd much rather be somewhere else. Plus, I feel some tanning would be good for me.

He gave Seth a mock-scrutinizing glance, "And you too, for that matter. A few more deep space missions and I'm afraid you'll be paler than those things you're shooting at. Don't you have about a month of leave saved up? You should use it, you've been under a lot of stress lately."

"I don't need a vacation Doctor and now's hardly the time to discuss my emotional health and morale," they argued back and forth between bursts of pulse rounds, shouting over the moans of the undead, "It's my personal call that I'm fine and fit for duty and I can dare you to find one counter argument."

"You're losing your temper and yelling," Doc smiled and raised an eyebrow.

"I HAVE TO YELL! THE D*** UNDEAD ARE AROUND US!"

"You're only in your twenties and yet you have one or two gray hairs around the temples."

"For the last time Doctor, I'm-," he turned, worry in his voice, "Really?"

"Yes really. NOW FOR GOD'S SAKE TURN AND FIRE!"

Seth turned just in time to point his rifle right in the face of a zombie, it's nose just brushing the barrel. Barely flinching, he squeezed the trigger and sent a gray mist shooting everywhere in little spheres thanks to the zero gravity.

"Maybe I could use a vacation. Just a short one. When my work here is done."

"Oh, the time of my life."

Naomi spun around, bashing the skull of a zombie with the butt of her rifle. She'd escued the cloaking, it was putting a drain on her shields, and she wasn't going to float around without the shields.

She had finally shot the first magazine dry. She ejected it, reloading another without even glancing at the weapon she held in her hands. After securing the empty magazine she reshouldered the rifle and floated deeper into the facility.

"What are you talking about Seth? Long monolouges kick ass if they're interesting." He sent a round through a zombies skull. "For example, if your arch nemisis," he punched through a zombies face. "had you right where he wanted you, wouldn't a monolouge be a great distraction? After all, he is giving you the perfect opportunity to kill him while he's ranting on about killing you." He dodged a zombie that leaped at him. "And besides, basis does sound pretty nice, however, I'd like to spend my vacation in Honolulu on Origon, thats a vacation."

"Always been a fan of watching the sunset over the Blackridge Mountains on Alaris Prime myself. You get a dazzling display of colors bouncing off the water of Lake Tarsus," he sighed wistfully as he impaled a zombie with his energy bayonet, "Nothing but me, the fish, and any one of the billion bright lights overhead that I could be fighting on but am out in the wilderness relaxing instead. Now that's a getaway and a half; anywhere but the bustling cities of the Dominion or some wartorn backwater that needs a peacekeeping force."

The Doctor smirked, "Don't worry, you'll get your chance. As soon as your little stint here is over I'm mandating you use a full two weeks of your leave not counting getting your affairs in order or travel time," his smile widened before he finished with, "Doctor's orders."

Seth shot him a glare through his helmet but said nothing. His recollection of Alaris sounded more tempting than he was willing to admit.

I guess I HAVE earned a little R&R, haven't I?

"Then again, I heard Titan was supposed to be pretty during the day, suns supposed to create a lightshow off the ice sheets." He speared another Zombie through the head. "Say, does that door look familiar?"

"Way too cold for sunbathing though... ...you mean the one from the video, or the one smeared with blood right across from it?"

Seth pushed thoughts of a peacful wilderness retreat from his mind, "You're right, it does. I think we've found where to look next."

He clubbed another zombie with his rifle and advanced toward the door. He hit the button to manually open it when it didn't slide open automatically.

"Seems to be either locked or jammed...Maybe something from the other side pushing up against it and keeping it from sliding open?"

"maybe both, lets make some noise, shall we?" He detached a small round device from his belt. "Five seconds top, cover me." He slapped the door breach charge onto the door and keyed in its activation code, setting it for a ten second delay. "Ten sec delay, get clear." he said. A small sphere of liquid plasma erupted into small gap of the door, clearing the locking mechanism. " Hoo yeah, Olympus Mons sounds good right now." he shoved the door open. "Looks like we hit the jack pot." A charred corpse and several howlers lay in the room.

"Definitely would have been a messy job getting rid of them otherwise," Seth moved toward the door, "Let's take a peek, shall we?"

Edward whistled. "Looks like our mystery man did more then was on camera." He pointed to a arge pile of corpses on the far side of the hangar. "Hope we don't run into him."

"They always do, I'll continue this way, you two check things out in there."

Naomi continued around a corner, and found still more blood stained halls.

"Anything I should know about Shiv?"

Shiva projected herself into the hall.

"No, this happened hours ago. Internal sensors are I a mess in this area, but schemaics indicate that there's a power room right over here, I'll check it out."

Shiva walked up to, then through the door before her. Naomi kept watch in the hall. Several moments later Shiva reappeared through the door.

"Go ahead, the systems to the power core are too damaged for me to interface, but the panels seem to have power, they might still be usable."

"Anything in there?"

"Not quite sure, the sensors are all dead in there and I didn't see anything, but there's a lot of machinery, stay sharp."

Shiva melded back through the door and Naomi got ready to go in. She pulled her pistol, and headed through the door.

Fredrick activated the squad comm. "I'm getting alot of interference from your area, don't know wh-" His words were cut off in a wash of static. "-it! Get ou-!" Static washed his words away again, but Edward thought he could hear the faint sound of weapon fire. "Thats probably not a good thing." Eddy said with a hint of humor. A clattering noise from the hangar door caught his attention. He turned to see a small, live grenade. "Conc nade!" He shouted. The grenade detonated, sending shockwaves of concusive energy throughout the hangar. "Clear!" Said someone from the entry way. he lifted his head to see twelve people in black armor enter the hangar, rifles leveled. Another one in black armor strode forward, obviously the commander. "Your mission here is over General, command is pleased with your work, however, they have ceemed it neccisary to send in a cleanup squad." Edward sat up, only to be kicked down by one of the soldiers. "Who the hell are you!?" He shouted. The man laughed. "Officialy we don't exisit, figure it out. It hit Edward. Section Zero....

Naomi came running when she heard gunfire. Her pistol was leveled and her sword active in hand. She came through the door ready to fire when she saw these black-suited men. She still didn't lower the weapons, just because they weren't undead didn't make them friendly. She whispered to Shiva.

"Shiva, I want you to scan these guys, scan their gear, and profile each and every one of them. Genetics, gear, everything."

"Working... ...done."

"Who are you?"

The commanding officer strode over to her. "We are Sectio Zero, and as of now, you are under our authority." he snapped his fingers. "Disarm this young woman before she hurts somebody." Two soldiers stepped forward, one kept his rifle leveled at her while the other grabbed her pistol. "I would advise that you not touch the railrifle Mister Grey, she has a particular attachment to it." The soldiers stepped back, ekeping their weapons aimed at her. "We had a deal." Edward said. "I secure any and all samples and you keep your nose out of this." The officer chuckled. "Really Mister Harrison, we don't obey orders from anyone but boss, and he had a change of heart." The hangar door hissed open and three soldiers dumped a limp body on the deck. "I've already called for your transport, your pilot will fly away and this incident never happened." The door hissed open once more, and Winter entered, carrying a body. He dumped it on the deck. "Really Leon, did you think sec zero could stop me?" The officer took a step back. "You, impossible!" Winter stepped forward. "Believe it. Now get your asses out of here and leave my squad alone, clear?" Leon saluted, then twirled his fingers, the signal to form up. "Boss won't be happy." He said, then strolled out of the room with his soldiers. Edward stood up. "Lying bastards! They agreed to leave the entire opperation alone if we supplied the samples!" Winter shook his head. "That was never their intention, besides, if they had secured you, no body could've stopped them." Edward slammed his fist against the bulkhead. H let out a scream of rage. Winter clasped his hand over his shoulder. "Take it easy, next time we encounter them, we don't have to be friendly." Winter smiled. "Section Zero of the constitution protects the black op teams, but it also states that they are not accountable for what happens because they don't exsist. The beauty of political loopholes." Edward chuckled. "So next time..." Winter laughed. "We can shoot the hell out of them and the Union can't lift a finger in response."

Seth heard the ruckus and didn't bother responding. He deactivated the Doctor and loaded a new charge unit into his pulse rifle. He threaded a fiber optic around the corner in time to see a dozen armored men disarming Naomi and holding the team hostage. He checked his rage and calmed himself down.

What to do...

He pulled a small device from his belt- a pulse grenade that emitted an ultrasonic burst of sound that would knock everyone unconscious- or at least fry their amors' auditory inputs so they wouldn't hear him coming. Quietly, he primed the device and rolled into the crowd. It emitted a screech that was extremely painful to hear before the pitch increased beyond human hearing capabilities. The pain, however, was still there.

Clenching his teeth and setting his armor's sound dissipators to maximum, he rounded the corner and leveled his rifle, activating the energy bayonet as he moved. He came up behind one of the soldiers and brought his rifle butt down on the man, following up with a swift kick before leveling the weapon on another.

OOC: Catching up...Seth wouldv'e reached them before they left.

Naomi pushed the man away, she didn't care that there was a rifle on her, she could have cut the rifleman in half before her shields could fail.

Naomi kept her weapons at the ready. It was obvious that these people weren't friendly by any stretch of the imagination. She saw the grenade sailing through the door and had compensated before it could activate, she stood there, daring these Section Zero spooks to try anything.

The grenade went off, rattling the soldiers armor. "Really" Said Leon. "You don't think we wouldn't have countermeasures for that, do you?" The soldiers filed past, oblivious to his presence. "Next time we meet, we'll let seneteen have her fun with you." He stopped right next to Seth. "And next time, try attacking something human."

OOC: I'll explain what they are later.

"Next time attack something human... ...next time I'll frakkin' shoot first and ask questions later. Don't care if their human, cyborg, arquillian, hell I don't care if their giant frakkin' cockroaches inside human skin, the SRS'll cause enough damage to drop 'em."

She stared after then, eyes as red as they could be.

Shiva came back with her analysis of these spooks.

"Well, they're not human, I'm still working on classifying them, but whatever they are, the certainly don't have any people skills."

"Give me AI any day."

"Agreed."

"Wow, Seth was lucky." Winter said. "Its not like Section Zero to leave witnesses, and I've hears stories they can dodge all but the fastest projectiles." He shrugged. "Nobody knows what they are though, I don't think their lesh holder does either."

"Yeah, shaking in my boots," Seth glared after them, "I've seen much scarier things done by humans. DI is the most compassionless organization I've ever seen. I swear they raid criminal mental institutes for their operatives. Make Hannibal Lecter look like a Boy Scout."

He shook his head, clearing the dull ringing in his ears. He deactivated the bayonet and let out a sigh.

"I hope everyone's alright at least, no lasting damage?" he shouldered the rifle, "Oh well, at least we get a breather, I'm getting kind of hungry."

Though his stomach really was growling, food was far from his mind.

I wouldn't be worried about my having better luck next time. Next time, they won't have the luxury of a close quarters encounter

"Well, we got all we needed, most of the afflicted are dead, all we need to do is torch the station." Edward chuckled. "I've always been a firebug myself, how I got my moniker, 'Blaze'"

"...explains some stuff... ...so, how are we going to torch this place."

She considered the possible options, they could use the reactor and vent plasma through all the decks, it was known as the Naar Directive in Shenyang, it quick, easy, and generally preferable to being eaten and reanimated as a shambling, mindless killing machine.

Then there was the setting of a plasma charge, might not immolate everything, but it would likely blow the station to hell, which achieved the same basic aim.

Pumping the atmosphere full of flammable chemicals and lighting it, which was by far the easiest route.

Lastly there was the self-destruct and a whole myriad of other methods.

She weighed each relative option, then waited to see which they'd choose. Personally, she felt that death by reactor plasma was the preferrable option, but that was just her.

OOC: Once we've returned to base, I've got another pair characters to intro, one is quite... eccentric would be the nice way of saying it, and the other is another AI, trust me on this one.

"Well, this ones rather simple." He pryed off a cover over a computer panel. "All I have to do is 'convince' the environmental system that the air is filling with toxic gases and to neutrilize it, it needs to replace said gases with pure oxygen." He chuckled as he clipped a couple wires and hooked them up to his PDA. "I've done this twice before, all I have to do is rip out some wiring, gain remote access to the power systems, then start said wires sparking, creating a firestorm." He unhooked the wires. "Done, we should get out of here now that I got access, chances are its already started the gass 'purge'."

"Here's hoping Section Zero's still onboard," Seth started moving toward the dropship, allowing a slight smile, "By fire be purged."

Naomi spooled the boosters up to full power and rocketed off toward the insertion craft. She'd seen plans like this backfire when someone forgot to turn off a toaster before, and she perferred the relative safety of having a meter of hull between her and an atmosphere of pure oxygen, wiating for the slightest spark.

When she entered the gravity of the ship she deactivated the thrusters and walked into the vessel.

"Here's to all the pretty things in war." Edward said. "Go!" Fredrick gunned the dropship out of the hangar, narrowly missing the gout of flame rushing from the hangar door. Edward burst out laughing. "That was great! Whatevers on board is dead now." He pulled himself in the co-pilots chair and activated the rear camera. Behind them, the station gushed fires from whatever exits it could find. Fredrick leaned back, "All right lady and Gentlemen, were ready to jump."

Naomi braced, she hadn't taken a seat yet.

"Punch it."

She tightened her grip on the bulkhead in anticipation of the shcock to come.

Fredrick un-did his restraints. "Can never focus with those things on." He muttered. "Roch 'n roll!" He shouted, then hit the activator. The ghostly blue portal enveloped the drop ship, sending it hurtling through the corridors of slipspace. Mere seconds later, real space flashed past the canopy. 'What a rush, gotta love pirate jumps." He flicked on the comm. " Alte Arkheim, this is dropship Pandora, requesting permission to dock." "Roger that dropship, taking liberties with the names, aren't ya?" Came the dockmasters reply. "Best I could think of." Fredrick guided the dropship into the hangar. "This is the fun part about Union hangars." He said. He killed all propulsion systems, an the dropship lurched, only to be stopped halfway through the fall. "Anti-Grav systems built in."

Naomi felt her fingers strain on the bulkhead, and the bulk head strain beneath her fingers. When the ship exited hyperspace she let go and moved to a seat. She'd just sat down when the vessel lurched to a stop.

"You owe me something Talbitt." she said, cocking her head slightly to one side.

Seth smiled, removing his helmet, "You know, you're right. Not exactly gourmet, but I'd say higher end as far as combat rations go."

He opened a pouch on his belt and produced a ration bar. He unwrapped it and offered it to Naomi, "Flavor of the day's turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy and an extra side of protein and carbs to keep you going under stressful conditions."

"Did I hear something about rations?" Fredrick leaned back from the cockpit. "I love those things." Edward tossed a package at him. "Jambalya with coffee, knock yourself out."

"Thanks Talbitt; I think you're the only person in history to say that they like rations Frederick."

She bit into the bar, sure enough, it wasn't really anything like what the wrapper claimed. She'd expected that; no military anywhere seemed to be able to make a decent ration. Of course, she'd survived for months on the things, but that didn't make cough oddly flavored cardboard taste like turkey.

She left the vessel, heading for her quarters. She needed to get out of her armor, she'd been wearing it for over 72 hours, no matter how well it may fit, body armor is not comfortable after 3 days, and Naomi was sick of the stuff.

Seth almost sprinted to his quarters, but it wasn't to get out of his armor or to take a shower. He closed and secured the door behind him and hardwired the mobile emitter into his armor. The Doctor spoke up, his voice only audible inside the armor,

"Well Major, we've done it," he sounded less than pleased, "DI will be elated I'm sure."

"Tell me something Doc," Seth replied, "Do you fell, you know, right about doing this? I mean holographic or not you're still a sentient being with feelings and a conscience. We both know what the virus in that blood will be used for."

"Dammit Seth, I'm a doctor not a rebel. Do you really think I had any more choice in the matter than you did?"

He sighed, "I know Doc, but I'm not sure I can allow this to come home with us. Too many people..." Naomi's face briefly flashed through his mind, "could be at risk."

"Major, if we could dispose of it without any reprisal I would do it myself. They'd decompile me and you'd be worse than dead, a pariah in all of Dominion space. They'd make a false criminal file and all of your friends would tirelessly hunt you until you were dead. It's not like we can say we never got the chance to get the sample."

Gaining a sample is only your secondary objective and only if it is safe for you to do so...

"Unless we never were in safe enough conditions to collect it without compromising ourselves or the operation," Seth's face lit up, "Dominion Intelligence hasn't covered ALL the bases. They don't know we have a sample yet and a strong case can be made toward it not being safe to collect a sample. If you corroborate it, we're saved!"

"Major, lying isn't part of my program and-"

"I'll make this form of it part of your ethics protocol as well as remove the madatory 'nature of the medical emergency' subroutine."

"Done," the Doctor went fully back into the mobile emitter and it detached from the armor.

Seth began stripping off the composite shell and went into the bathroom for a much needed shower.

Now, how to get rid of the damn thing; we can't just flush it down the toilet...

Edward immediatly headed for the medical bay, with Eddy bouncing around in his skull instead of the nueral implant, he needed answers and some painkillers. By the time he wlaked through the door, Eddy had bounced into a diffrent part of his brain, causing his temples to throb. "Did you know how much of your brain you actually do use? The standard human uses about fifteen percent, while you hvae an amazing eighty nine percent!" He whacked his hand against his temple. "Shut up already!" Eddy immediatly retreatd to another part of his mind and immediatly set into it. He lay down on the examination table and pressed the call button, the Medical AI resolved itself into reality. "Edward, its seems like only yesterday I was regrowing the bones in your left arm!" Edward let out a sarcastic laugh. "This is no time for nostalgia Doc, I need a brain scan, now." The doctor dissolved and resolved next to the table. "Symptoms?" Edward sighed. "I've got an annoying infant AI bouncing around my skull." The doctor hesitated for a moment. "I don't have any information about that in any data base, sorry Ed, but I'll have to do some study." Edward lay back on the table. "Whenever your ready doc." The doctor activated the nueral scanner, its beams criss crossing his face. "This is odd." The doctor said. "Not only is your entire nueral structure different from the last scan, but I analyzed the AI as well, according to the data, he is in the very begining of AI infancy." Edward rolled his eyes. "Tell me something I don't know." The doctor noded. "It'll take some time to anaylyze the data, come back later."

OOC: All my prowler-type vessels are named for female characters from Broadway plays (usually musicals); just as a stupid little side note.


IC:
Naomi was in the shower, she was rather enjoying the chance to actually get clean when Shiva interupted her.

"Long-shot, I have bad news. I'm detecting a very small sample of the virus on this station."

"Talbitt... ...we'll deal with this later."

"Understood."

---

Secret IC:
Location: Shenyangi Prowler Nessarose - Slip-space – Approximately 500 kilometers from QCS Base

The Nessarose was a one of several Shenyangi Prowlers that routinely violated interstellar law on recon runs through friendly territory. These trips usually entailed high speed sling-shots past points of interest, often engines cold, while still in slip-space, with the ship cloaked to the point it wasn’t quite sure it was there. As a result, their mission to deploy a few of Shenyang’s finest from slip-space wasn’t too much of a stretch. They’d done this before, just never with anyone like this. They loaded to pod into the launch tube, and fired it on a trajectory to burst from the slip-stream 100 km behind them, and 50 km off to port. The pod was launched. The Nessarose’s crew flared the engines and corrected their path, a perfectly executed deployment on their part, and no one would know they’d been there, except by the pod that should be bursting out of slip-space…


IC:
…right about now. The pod tore a hole in the normal fabric of the universe, in this case resulting in tendrils of blue-green energy flaring as it emerged without an exit window or stealth drive.

The pod transmitted a Shenyangi IFF tag and proceeded on course for the facility. It gave all the correct responses for landing clearance and sent its manifest to QCS Command.

-
Shenyangi Tactical Assault Life Pod RR-0481-EC-77213-O7:
Manifest:

1x Shenyangi Female – Status: Cryo-storage
1x Tactical Assistant AI (Type-2): Stand-by
1x QEMAS Unit: Stand-by
1x Independent AI Sub-Unit: Inactive
Associated Equipment

End Manifest
-


Naomi was in her room, she’d just gotten out of her armor, and had taken the time to shower, as she stood in the bathroom, fixing her hair, she had no idea she was about to have a visitor. She managed to get her appearance in order and proceeded to get dressed.


The pod touched down in the same hangar as Naomi’s fighter, and began venting cryogenic gasses. It began wake-up procedures and brought the AI out of stand-by. The systems scanned both its passengers for any problems, and finding them to be in perfect health continued through standard procedures. ‘Shenyang Female’ woke up. She was stiff from spending several days in the cryo-pod. Since the unit was still enclosed, she couldn’t stretch yet. She occupied her time waiting for the AI to wake up by slamming out a message to Naomi. She finished it and sent it off, with a priority tag, to get her attention.


Naomi had just finished dressing and was putting on her glasses when a slight buzzing issued from her hand-bag.

“Who would be…”

She had thought she was well out of Shenyangi civilian communications service range, but someone was calling her. She pulled the small device from her equipment, and slid it open. She saw a new text message.

“Who uses straight text anymore? Video’s been easier for like, 80 years.”

She opened the message, it was very blunt, and completely vague.

‘Hangar Bay 2. Now.”

Naomi missed the name at the top, or she’d have known who it was. She grabbed Shiva’s mobile projector, and clipped it to her belt, then ran out of the room.

“Shiva, we’ve got a visitor, not sure who.”

“Oh joy, company.”

“At least I’m nicely cleaned up.”

“Good for you.”


The AI finally initialized, it had only taken a few seconds, but in AI time, that was literally an eternity.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning Hrist, would you please open the pod, I’d like to get up.”

“Of course, I’d like to see what this facility is like for myself.”

The top of the pod parted, releasing a cloud of super-cold vapor which hung in the air, obscuring the occupant of the pod as she got up. The QEMAS began standard checks on all its systems as ‘Shenyangi Female’ stretched.


Naomi came through the door just then. She saw the pod and only one word could cross her lips.

“Frak.”

The QEMAS projected two images out from the sides of the very slowly dissipating cloud, a 5’8” tall woman with dark hair and civilian clothes, and a 5’6” tall purple-armored valkyrie. The two images looked around, then ‘Shenyangi Female’ decided it was time to walk out of her little smokescreen.

Now, the deck crew had no doubt seen a lot, they probably thought they’d seen it all, but they scrambled for cover and pulled weapons when they saw this woman emerge from the mist. She was clad from head to toe in black armor, the defining feature of which was the fact that she was quadrupedal. It wasn’t that she could use her arms for anything, and the armor just had 4 legs, her arms were two of the legs. She looked like a wolf and a battlecruiser had somehow produced a child. Neither woman minded that there were about 3 dozen weapons trained on them.


Naomi stood there horror-struck.

“She wore it… and didn’t wait for the people to be out of here?”

“Apparently, and she brought her bi… AI partner with her.”

Naomi glared at each Shenyangi citizen in turn. Shiva for her conduct, 'Shenyangi Female' for causing so much havoc, and Hrist for not having the good sense to dissuade her partner. Then she went back to her normal, more open personality.

She ran up to 'Shenyangi Female', and crouched down to give the armor a hug.

"Its good to see you again Velma."

The projected woman (not the AI) looked somewhat cross.

"Sis, Don't call me that, please use my callsign Naomi."

"Sorry, Crying Wolf, here, can I shorten it to just Wolf."

"Fine, you can cut it that much."

Naomi waved for the crew to lower their weapons.

"She's with me! Stand down!"

The crews' weapons dropped, a little.

"Maybe I should go see the commanding officer."

It is here that both women saw that their AI were staring away from each other, looking angry, both were purple, Shiva because she was angry, Hrist because her armor was purple. In unison the two women yelled at the AI.

"Will you two get over it already!"

Crying Wolf continued.

"You two had better drop this crap and work together, or we'll...

Naomi finished the sentence.

"We'll put you two in hibernate mode, for a month."

The AI(s) looked dumb-struck. Shiva had nearly drained of color. Hrist stumbled backward as though hit.

"Y- you wouldn't."

"Yes we would Hrist. So, you don't have to get along, but work together for now."

The AI glared at each other, then nodded.

At this time the 2 humans, 2 images, and 1 tactile-equipped AI (Hrist) headed for the doors. Hrist touched the door panel and it opened. They headed on to the medical bay. Whether or not it was smart to go and terrify the base commander wasn't quite clear. They still hadn't decided as they entered the medical bay, elicitting the common response of people upon encountering Crying Wolf.

Seth had dried himself off and gotten back into his dress uniform- to his dismay the only change of clothes he'd brought aside from the black jumpsuit he wore while in his armor. He removed the dress jacket, revealing a matching skin-tight muscle shirt underneath. Like most men he'd had the best idea to solve his current problem while in the bathroom.

He pulled his equipment belt off of his armor and slung it over one shoulder like a bandoleer, then opened Doc's medkit to pull out the sample. To his horror, he realized the bio-dampening system on the vial was off. He activated it and stuffed it into a pouch on the belt. He'd hoped it hadn't been detected; the station personnel at least didn't know, otherwise he'd be covered in security by now.

He'd done a little research and aside from the extra bells and whistles, this station wasn't too different from any other UHC installation. He cracked his door slightly, sliding all the way open when he saw no one was in the hall. He quickly opened a maintainance panel and crawled into a small tunnel. Counting the junctions as he went, he came a brightly marked panel cover. Disabling alarms and sliding it off, he was rewarded with the green glow of plasma.

He removed the protective shield and was bombarded by an oppressive heat. He quickly pulled out the sample and shoved it in, recoiling as his fingers were burned. Stifling a yell, he replaced the panels and reactivated the alarm. He made it out the tube and back to his quarters where he activated the Doc and was treated for his burns. Aside from some scarring, no one would be the wiser.

He just put his jacket on when a device in one of his cases beeped and the image of a man partially obscured by shadow appeared.

"Well Major, I see you're none the worse for wear. Did pick up the groceries like I asked?"

"No sir, the line was too long," the Major replied feigning disappointment.

"Sorry to hear that Major. You'll be happy to know that we have a pressing," he emphasized 'pressing', "assignment for you as soon as you are successful. The quicker you are the shorter your stay."

The channel closed and Seth and the Doctor shared a laugh.

"uh...sir?" Captain Vianna walked over to the tech officer. "Yes?" The tech pointed at a section of the station. 'We just had a micro burst of plasma, nothing serious, but I've sent a repair team just in case." Captain Vianna noded. "Understood." he sighed, it was time for his usual run of announcment and protocole. He clicked on the PA. 'Attention, all hands, let me remind you that the incinerator is for biological and medical waste only, not even under emergency circumstances are offensive visual material to be dumped...."


Crew Lounge Deck A

"... That is all." The PA clicked off, and Edward tossed in his cards. "Fold again, jeez Blackie, how lucky are you?" Liutenet Earl Black smiled. "Pokers my thing Eddy, especially texas hold-em." Edward pushed his chair away from the table. "I'm out, call me when Blackie passes out." Earl chcukled as he walked away. "Really ed, you has a ninety percent chance of winning that-" Edward gritted his teeth. "Shut up Eddy." He stalked towards the elevator and slammed the call button harder then usual. The doors hissed open, inside was Captain Vianna. "Jake." Edward said. "General." The captain said. Edwar stepped inside. "Medical lab, deck C" The doors hissed closed and Edward bounced on his heels. "Something wrong Edward?" Jake said. Edward stopped. " Eh, its nothing much, the usual stresses of command." The captain chuckled. "Been giving you a headache?" Edward smiled.'Something like that." the elevator decelerated and stopped on deck C. Jake tossed a small bottle at him. "This'll probably work." Edward caught it and rolled it over. It was a small bottle of Bourbon from the early ninteenth century. Edward chuckled and turned towards the medical labs. "Any news doc?" He said. The doctor materialised. "Nothing you would like." he projected a hologram of the scans into the middle of thr room. "Just a heads up, what I'm about to tell you will make you curl up into a ball and mutter 'why me?" Edward frowned. "Your AI has integrated himself into you." Edwards felt his pupils dialate. "WHAT!" he shouted. The doctor winced. "Almost my reaction, it seems he has encoded his pattern onto your neural pathways." Edward craddled his head. "Why me, why me." he looked up. "So.." The doctor nodded. "You can't get rid of him." Edward closed his eyes. "Could be worse, could be worse." he muttered. The doctor patteted him on the shoulder. "Ais are quite facinating actually, you might like it." Edward glared at him. "Infant AIs, yes.." The doctor muttered, then winked out of exitence.

At this point in time Naomi and her cadre came around the corner, spotting Edward.

"General, I'd like you to meet some people."

She gestured behind her, at the 3 beings. (Crying Wolf, her projection, and Hrist)

Seth stifled a laugh at the announcement.

None the wiser...

The Doctor had Seth by the arm, ushering him toward the medical bay. He winced as the Doctor cut a corner a little too close and Seth's bandaged fingers scraped against the wall.

He winced a little, "Easy Doc, the med bay's not going anywhere. Besides, what do you need me for?"

"Come now Major, I want to see their medical technology and you were instructed not to let me out of your sight. Sentient or not, I'm still a valuable piece of Dominion technology and-"

He stopped short as they rounded the corner, his jaw agape. Naomi was standing beside some kind of mechanized unit and what appeared to be two more AI.

Seth spoke up before the Doctor, "Wow, didn't know our next mission was going to be bad enough to require a mech, letalone another AI. Is that some kind of new infantry support system you guys came out with?"

Crying Wolf bristled at the assertion that she was a mech. She turned to face Talbitt, as did the projection of her. The projection and armored woman spoke in perfect unison, creating a slightly frightening effect.

"Would you care to explain why you think that I'm a 'mech'?"

She advanced several steps.

"Perhaps you should look more closely at someone before guessing what they are. I happen to be entirely human. If you were wondering, I am me, Crying Wolf."

The projection pointed at herself and the armor as she made that extremely confusing statement.

Not to say that the armor was designed to be menacing, but she was doing a good job of cutting a horrifying figure from either angle, her tail moved slowly, tracing a path in the air.

"You owe her and appology Talbitt."

This was Naomi, she had a pleading look in her eyes, they seemed to finish her sentence for her. '...or she'll kill you where you stand.'

Seth blanched, checking his fear-induced reflex of going for his sidearm, "I'm sorry, it's just that I assumed, I mean generally one doesn't expect a person in any armor to be in a quadrupedal postion. Forgive me, but that doesn't exactly look comfortable though I'm you get used to it."

The Doctor trasmitted into Seth's neural lace so that only he could here, "If she DOESN'T forgive you, I'll activate the ECH program and try to hold her off. You run, just run. Get to our quarters and arm up."

Seth's thoughts cut him off One, I'm not leaving you. You're a valuable piece of Dominion tech remember? Two, I'll admit that armor's scary as hell but I'm not one to run. Nothing's impenetrable.

"Very nice, I've heard reports about some kind of new biological-techno stuff from Shenyang, never thought they went this far." he bowed. "General Edward harrison at your service." Annoyance flashed across his face. "Yes Eddy, I'll tell them." He pointed at his skull. "And bouncing around in my skull is Eddy, an Infant Class 5 AI."

"You're considering shooting through this armor aren't you."

The projection smirked.

"Good luck, this armor can take more punishment than a Shenyangi Defiance-class assault corvette. You still want to dance?"

She turned back to the general, having given Talbitt a taste of real fear.

Shiva smirked ever so slightly at the term 'Infant Class-5', 3DDY wasn't so high and mighty now that he was trapped in Edward's head.

Hrist nodded slowly to the general.

"I am Hrist, Type-2 Shenyangi Tactical Smart AI," She pulled a medieval longsword from thin air, "at your service sir."

Crying Wolf's projection saluted.

"Crying Wolf, SLAST Boarding Team Foxtrot, attached to Shenyangi Central Intelligence."

The armored woman didn't do anything.

"As to my armor, it uses a non-invasive neural-link, obscenely expensive, and complicated like you wouldn't believe, but it avoids your... current predicament, if I may be so bold."

"The AI are kept separated from the user, thusly preventing any mishaps, but it is extremely complex."

Shiva glared at Hrist for going that far.

"It's also secret-classified, so this conversation is over."

Hrist glared back.



OOC: Hrist is a Type-2 AI, while Shiva is a Type-1 AI, they are technologically equal, its just a matter of choice which type each AI becomes, neither is more complex or even newer than the other, in fact they came online at the exact same time. It's just a question of one of the choices that each AI made when choosing their specializations and appearance.

Type-1 AI: No physical form, must interface at computer level, however is more adept in computer system related operations (Shiva specializes in Intrusion, Encryption, Counter-intrusion, and Decryption)

Type-2 AI: Projected with a 'body', image is supplemented by a series of fields, allowing it to interact at a physical level, while maintaining the ability to interface at a computer level, less adept in computer skills, but can use panels, and weapons with own body, and generally impact the physical directly. (Hrist's sword is NOT for show, it may be a projection, but its a projection that cuts through just about anything like a mono-molecular blade)

"Well, I really don't mind Eddy bouncing around in my head, as soon as he gets out of AI 'infancy' he'll be fine." He smiled. 'As for your armor, I don't give a damn as long as it can save your life." He chuckled. "You won't find any more hostility here, I'll order every one to leave you alone, not to be offensive, but alot of these guys have seen some pretty strange things in their day."

But this takes the cake Seth thought to himself.

He cleared his throat, "So am I to assume correctly that you will be joining us on our mishaps through space?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow and cast a bemused smile at Seth, "Maybe mishaps for YOU Major, but I only go on necessary missions for the good of the Dominion. Successful ones, I might add."

Talbitt shot the Doc an annoyed smile, "Way to refreeze the ice there Doctor."

"Please Major, one needs to be able to laugh at oneself now and then."

"For God's sake Doc, you're a doctor not a counselor so don't lecture me," Seth smiled as he turned the Doctor's usual retort against him.

Edward chuckled. "Looks like I'm not the only one having AI problems."

Every Shenyangi in the area looked at on and other, then shrugged.

Naomi accidentally let her thoughts slip.

"And I thought Shiv and I could be disagreeable..."

Hrist, the most articulate of the group, spoke up.

"Its an expression Doctor, its meant to belittle the difficulty of the mission in order to convey a meaning. For that matter, you aren't a counselor, so Talbitt has a point, though yours remains valid, so lets calm down, or things are going to get violent."

Her hands instinctively went to the hilt of her longsword.

"I wouldn't worry Ms. Hrist, I'm also not a warrior. Well, usually," the Doctor smiled, "Besides, I can do much worse to the Major than fight him. His checkup's coming up and the way things are going we won't be back in Dominion space by the time it rolls around."

Seth groaned in mock agony, "I think I'll get a referral."

"Now, everyone calm down, were all allies here." He turned to Hirst. "Especially you, I won't have any fighting in this squad, if you don't like someone, tough, deal with it."

OOC: Happy thanksgivings to all the Americans in the thread.

OOC: Yes, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

IC:
The Doctor chuckled, "Not to worry, we do this sort of thing all the time. Call it Doctor-Patient animosity."

"Yeah, nothing to worry about; it never comes to blows," Seth added.

"I hink it would be funny to watch you and the doctor duke it out, advantage the guy made of light."

OOC:
Yeah, he was, wonder what happened.

On the topic I refuse to drop though: (I’m dropping it with this post FYI)
You do realize that the amount of energy I provided for the projectile I am using is enough to bisect a heavily armored and shielded frigate stem to stern and keep going, right? That whole ‘rifle’ is just a demonstrator for what can be done, not what can be used by, well, almost anyone. The recoil alone (should something fail) will rip one’s arm clean off or send them flying off a near-warp velocities, the firing system has to be kept at a temperature no higher than 10 degrees Kelvin to avoid vaporizing itself. It needs its own fusion core to fire, which means the core had to be built into the weapon, along with an autonomous reactor regulation system, cooling unit, and all the other accompanying equipment. They took 60 years of R&D to construct, and require about 12 different manufacturers to build the components, as no single manufacturer can encompass all of them. There’s not a target in existence that this thing would have trouble damaging, quite severely to be frank. It’s the absolute most impractical weapon for anyone to develop, which is why they cost so much, and only five exist.

Whatever, even though my rifle really could punch a hole in the station, quite easily to be honest, I’ll drop it.

(unless you’re not telling us the thing has an hull that’s about 55-75 meters thick, and comprised of interweaving carbon nano-tubes reinforced with aggregated diamond nano-rods every few centimeters (mind you, such a hull while possible, would be so obscenely expensive as to bankrupt several dozen 10 billion pop. nations in the process of building it, and require the destruction of 3-5 planets in the search for raw materials))

I will not for the purposes of the RP punch holes in the station, even though I think that it’d give me a chance to really get descriptive.

Beyond that, I had an awesome plan for shooting from outside and even had a pretty good series of posts worked up for it, but c’est la vi, I’ll let it go.




OOC: Hehe, you have way too much time on your hands.

OOC: Bout time somebody replied. Go ahead and make your entrance meresh.

OOC: I sorta did in the gathering one, but I figure I might as well get permission before jumping in. (I also explained Akara's lateness.) If its fine with you, I'll have him show up.

OOC: Go right ahead, this thread needs new life.

Akara ran through the station. He had finally gotten someone to take him to the mission sight, and now he was looking for his team-mates. He stopped to listen. "...advantage the guy made of light." Came down a hall. Smiling, he ran towards the sound. He emerged into the room breathless. "Hey folks, sorry I'm late, hows it going?" He glanced at Naomi. "Hey sis."

Edward looked at the new person. "And who are you?" He asked.

Akara grinned, and went into an accent for no apparent reason. "Da names Longspear dont ya know, I be part 'o de squad. Ya really should know your team-mates don't ya know. What'll da superiors tink eh?"

Edward chuckled. "Hardly the accent I would expect from someone raised in Mereshka and Shenyang." He stuck out his hand. "General Edward Harker, commander of the QCS."

OOC: Be back in ten minutes.

Akara laughed with him. "I picked it up from a girlfriend of mine. It comes in handy every once in a while." He took the hand, "The real name is Akara by the way." He grinned wickedly. "Longspears a nickname I got from a different girlfriend. So, commander, whats happened so far."

OOC: Righto.

Edward chuckled. "Just incinerated a station full of zombies and might have exposed a cult, all in all, nothing major."

Akara shrugged. "It happens sometimes. Eventually we'll hit something really exciting." He glanced at Naomi. "So, how has my sister been doing?" He asked casually.

Edward leaned against the wall, from what he'd heard, siblings could either be a real pain to one another or be the best things ever.

Akara coughed uncomfortably. "Well, you see, I just want to see how good a mood she's in. If shes not, I'll wait to tell her how I got here. It wouldn't make her very happy, thats for sure."

Edward blinked. "What? I don't have any siblings, so I don't think I understand..."

Akara laughed weakly. "Well, you see, in order to get here, I had to 'borrow', one of her ships. Well, at least I think she owns it, for all I know I 'borrowed', from the Shenyangi government. Her's or not however, shes very touchy about the way its set up, and while trying to figure out how to fly the thing, I messed with it a bit." By the look on his face, it went way beyond a bit.

Edwrad smiled. "No problem, I'm kinda mechanicaly inclined, so If your sister gave me the specs, I'm sure I could set it straight."

Akara gave a breath of relief. "Whew, for a second I thought I was dead." Then he frowned. "Wait... She'd need to give you the specs? Hmm... Couldn't you do it without her knowing? I mean, it's only a problem with the wing... And the AI.... And I suppose the fact that I tore out the face plate out, or whatever you call it, might be a problem." He sighed. "I'm just screwed huh?"

"AI, huh?" Edward chuckled. "Those I'm not very good with, but..." He tapped his head. "Got an AI up here, and about the parts, unless I get my hands on Shenyang issue parts, she's gonna find out and take it out on some mechanic."

He sighed. "Alright, I guess I'd better tell her than huh?"

OOC: Hehe, figures, I finally come on, and Shen is gone.

OOC: Shen and RS haven't been around lately, VDB never joined but never RPed.

OOC: Haha, figures.

OOC: Really now?

OOC: Course it does. The guy who is most often absent comes back, and everyone else leaves. :( The don't like me. *Sniff sniff*

OOC: Well, they haven't posted in forever.

OOC: Hmph. They probably knew I was coming. ;)

OOC: Well, maybe.

OOC: I'm thinking we should get back to the thread topic.

OOC: Waitin on you.

OOC: RIght, I'll keep it contained in this thread until everyone gets up to speed. Oh, and just a note... the end of this thread will have a bit of a suprise.



IC:


Edward turned to leave when his comm chriped. He opened the channel. "Harrison." A frenzied voice on the other side, almost screaming came through. "Kid, get up here!" Edwards eyes widened. "Fredrick, whats-?" Fredrick shouted back. "No time, get to docking bay A!" Edward turned to the rest. "Get moving, docking bay A!" He opened the PA. "All Marines, Situation black in Docking bay A, unkown amount of hostiles, proceed with lethal force." Edwards commlink crackled to life. "Kid, its Section zero, they've got hostages and something else!" Edwards face crumpled in anger, this special forces unit had gotten out of control.

OOC: Surprise eh? Interesting.

IC: Akara laughed. "Well, 'tis time ta go don't ya know." Hefting his rifle, he looked to Edward. "So Eddy, where, where is this docking bay A?" He waited expectantly.

"Just follow me." every comm system in the station activated. "All marines, this is not a drill, hostiles in Docking bay A and outlying, confirmed reoprts of light armor, uknown number." Edward grunted. 'How the hell did they get armor in here?"

Akara grinned, and pointed at his rifle, "This'll rake care of armor."

OOC: BRB

Edward rushed down the corridor and slid across a corner and came face to face with a mech. However, the mech was more focused at the marines shooting at it. "Down, bring it down!" One of them shouted. The mech swung its arm at him, hurling him through a bulkhead. For the rest, it ripped them apart with a chaingun, their shields flaring, then bursting followed by spurts of blood. "Oh...shit...." Edward said.

Akara rushed towards where the mech was. He looked at the robot, looked down at his 'primitive' rifle, sighed, and started emptying his clips into the thing.

"Every time I try to relax... lets go sis."

Crying Wolf, Naomi, and the AI ran for the hangar bay. Naomi pulled her plasma pistol from the handbag that now hung over her shoulder. She checked the charge, 88%, it would have to do.

Just as they enterred the docking bay, they tried to comprehend the scene, a mech was laying into everything in sight, and Akara was laying into it with his assault rifle.

"Damn kid's gonna get himself killed."

She leveled the pistol, then fired a burst of plasma toward the mech, aimed for it's 'head'. Then ducked for cover behind a solid cargo container.

Crying Wolf and Hrist went to work.

"It's show time, baby."

Crying Wolf activated the weapon mounted to her back, it swung around and locked onto the mech's legs, as she took off toward it the particle beam rifle began firing in a series of milisecond bursts, just like a machine gun. She caught it at full speed, 70 kilometers per hour, at that speed, she carried more energy than a being hit by a city bus.

Hrist jumped much higher than was possible for any human, and materialized a spear from nowhere she hurled it down, impaling the mech, then came down on it with the sword. The spear disappeared, and she looked around for a new target.

Seth followed everyone else into the docking bay. When he saw the mech, he knew his uniform and pistol wouldn't be of much help. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the mobile emitter.

"Activate EMH!" he yelled as the Doctor coalesced into being.

"The Doctor looked around curiously then hit the deck as rounds whizzed past his head, "Major if this is your idea of a joke I'm not amused!"

"Hold on Doc, you're gonna help us out," Seth said as he took cover behind a shipping crate, "Activate Emergency Combat Hologram, authorization Talbitt Omega Zero."

The Doctor's form shimmered and when he became fully focused again he was no longer in his Dominion Medic's uniform. He was now clad in heavy body armor. A pulse rifle was in his hands and a rocket launcher was strapped to his back (just picture Mobile Infantry from Starship Troopers). A bandoleer of grenades was strapped across his chest.

Giving Talbit an 'I hate you' look, his program kicked in as he slung the rifle and armed the rocket launcher, "I certainly hope it likes plasma warheads!"

He loosed the glowing blue rocket directly at what looked like the cockpit/control center. The rocket was jettisoned from the launcher and a lock was acquired before the booster kicked in and the projectile shot forward.

Akara jumped back as the mech had his legs blown out. "Woah, damn". He yelled. He grinned at Naomi, "Hows it going sis? I just killed myself a robot!" He didn't quite realise that you couldn't 'kill' a robot. Reloading his rifle, he started looking around for other enemies.

OOC: Hehe, figures, soon as you guys get on, I have to leave. Can you take over Akara for me Shen?

OOC: Probably it for me at least as well. I don't think UHC's on...

Edward shook his head, he was being outdone by an AI. He walked over to the now immobile mech and fired several rounds into its "head" the top hissed and a sec zero soldiers rolled out, barley breathing. Edward picked him up and slammed him against the bulkhead. "Where'd the rest of your squad go?!" He shouted. the soldier spit on him. 'Ecpect... a visit from old friends." Edward nearly snapped his neck in angry, then flung him onto the ground. "dammit..." He muttered. he keyed into the PA. "All marines, the hostiles have spread to outlying, location unknown."

Hrist took off down a hall, she accessed the station's systems to do a full scan, understandably, they came back blank, she looked for anything that seemed out of place.

"Gotcha."

She took off toward an anomalous disturbance in the system. She entered a room where 2 Sec. Zero soldiers were messing with the panel of a plasma conduit. (The same one Talbitt used to scorch the sample earlier)

"Excuse me, but I don't think you belong here."

The soldiers turned and leveled their weapons for her chest. They began firing, trying to bring her down. She laughed malevolently.

"I'm sorry, you thought I was solid. Try again."

She detected slight variances in the way that they moved, as though they couldn't fathom what she was.

"Shenyangi Type-2 Tactical Assistant AI. That means that you can't hurt me, but I can kill you, very easily."

She pulled the sword, then flipped her grip on it, then in a burst of light, the spear reappeared.

With all the skill of an actual battle maiden, she engaged the two soldiers in close combat. They took swngs at her, which she deftly parried. Her reflexes were as fast as the processors could handle, which meant she wasn't having any trouble with these two. The first soldier recieved a holographic spear through the face. The beauty of beaing made of force fields, Hrist could make anything that wasn't a directed energy weapon, and have it work. As the soldier began crumpling to the floor the spear evaporated in a haze of white light. (Hrist has a flair for the dramatic)

She turned her attention to the other soldier. She swung at him with the inverted sword, cutting deep, through the armor She punched at the man, which he managed to block, only to recieve a standing-start bicycle kick to the jaw. The soldier landed in a heap on the ground. She walked up to the semi-conscious soldier. The sword was pointed for her target's neck.

"Good night sir, I'm sure they have plans for you."

She slammed her armored boot into the man's helmet, knocking him out cold. She lifted him into the air, and began walking back toward the hangar bay.

Command Deck

"Holy shit!" One of the sensor crew shouted. "Captain Vianna!" The captain rushed over. "Report." The crewman fantically pointed at the screen. 'Multiple ships inbound, unknown IFF, but hull pings match several destoryers and at least one battle ship." Captain Vianna noded grimly. "Alert the fleet.



OOC: Sorry for the short post, I got a cold thats kicking my rear.