RP: The Fringe [Chapter 4.2] - Manhunt

[Floodwaters]

Dawn Station - Sector 6 - Iron Ferret's Hangar
One Day after the Concordia Veil's touchdown

Desmond eyed each of the bounty hunters in sequence for a few silent moments, scratching the stubble on his cheek with a gloved hand as he awaited for some sort of query. "You better not have any questions on the very last second then, let's go," he finally said, doing a 'follow me' gesture as he started to stride towards the exit of the hangar, his boots clanking against the cold metal plates on the floor. The bounty hunter reached for something inside his jacket, feeling the pistol stored in there more to make sure that it was there rather than draw it as he neared the exit. The weight of the pistol was a comforting one when not wearing any sort of armor made him feel dangerously vulnerable.

Leading the way, he keyed the control panel next to the hangar's exit, watching- or rather listening, as the mechanisms behind the airlock groaned and hissed, sliding the heavy-duty metal doors open, revealing the bustling hive of activity outside. "Remember, low profile," he said before stepping into the crowd.


Sector 6 - Concordia Veil's Hangar

Even though the Veil's docking berth was near their own when compared to the massive scale of the starport, it was still well over ten minutes of walking time before the bounty hunters finally pushed through the throngs of people and reached their destination. Avoiding the more obvious passenger's entrance, Desmond had led the group towards a service area about seventy yards away, taking advantage of the huge crowds of passengers, crew, and uniformed service techs pushing past one another to slip in unmolested. Making their way through the more spartan areas of the concourse, away from its sleek, polished public face, the group made its way around loudly clanking conveyor systems, hydraulic pistons, piping and insulated bundles of cables running in organized chaos all around them, doubling back until they reached an open staging area for cargo just outside of the where their quarry sat.

Amid the noise of machinery and unmanned service mules whirring through the catwalks, Desmond approached the massive loading bay doors that led to the docking berth ahead. Before he had the chance to get to the control panel that would give them access, the group could hear a woman's voice shouting over the noise.

"Hey you!" the voice was yelling. "You down there! You aren't supposed to be in here! You lost or something?" Above them, almost three stories up, a tall, square-shaped female service tech was leaning over the railing of a catwalk, sporting a dirty, loose-fitting blue jumpsuit, and a yellow hard hat atop her tangled mess of light brown hair. The bounty hunter turned to regard the technician, but didn't say anything as he thought very carefully of something to say.

 

[nite train]

Because Rathe's tinted epidermis made him stick out like a chocolate bar in a swimming pool, the golden skinned nepleslian took some time to buy a cap and sunglasses to hide what he could of his face while the hunters were on their way to the target.

When the voice rang out above the clanging and hissing around the hunters, Rathe instinctively turned to bolt off and provide a distraction for the other hunters, as that was his job in the past, but he stopped himself before his feet left the ground and looked to Desmond to see what should be done.

 

[Gunsight1]

Amanozako had fallen back by a dozen meters, taking up a tail position, keeping an eye out for anything or anyone who might interfere with them. She had spotted the hard hatted tech woman on the catwalk above that was now calling down to her compatriots moments earlier.

Quietly, Amanozako had scaled up a ladder to the catwalk, darting along as quietly as a cat. The woman was focused on the group below, perfect opportunity.

Amanozako leaped, using her gravity control to cross the distance as rapidly and silently as possible, aiming to pounce on the woman, tackle her to the deck and silently incapacitate her.

 

[Luca]

Danny was no stranger to weaving through crowds, though Desmond was leading things much slower than the paces he usually found himself darting through every empty space to get from A to B. He was taking a similar rear-guard position similar to Amanozako, but acting as her rear guard and lookout.

He stayed with Desmond to play as another pawn in the distraction that Amanozako was exploiting to subdue the worker, then followed her lead and made his way up the ladder to the catwalk. Once on top, he remained low and begun removing his civvy outfit. Kicking the loafers off, shimmying the pants away, removing the puffy jacket and the beanie.

He then pulled the mask over his face and let the SQUID suit start doing its thing to blend in with the environment, slowly coalescing into that clinical white Origin was fond of, laced with the grey metals of the catwalks, becoming a stripey bar-like pattern. His civilian clothes were left in a very neat pile tucked behind a box that he made a note to grab on the way out.

With an electric stun gun and a stun baton, he stayed up top, prepared to eliminate other threats from above and provide overwatch. He stayed away from the fight that Amanozako was engaging in to keep watch.

 

[Floodwaters]

Dawn Station - Sector 6 Starport - Cargo/Service Staging Area outside the Concordia Veil's hangar

As planned, Amanozako's approach went completely unnoticed amid the noise of machinery and distant banging sounds. The cargo tech barely had the time to even tense up before the Neko's hand clamped down over her mouth, muffling her startled shriek into little more than a pitiful murmur that was lost in the mechanical din surrounding them. In another instant the Neko had lifted the tech a few inches off the ground with one arm locked around her throat, and her powerful legs wrapped about her torso, immobilizing her in midair. The tech struggled violently against the assault, swinging her arms wildly as she was carried into the air, her hard hat thrown off of her head amid her flailing, then clattering to the catwalk and rolling awkwardly to the edge before tumbling below. For another few seconds she struggled, desperately trying both to free herself from the death grip and draw a single precious breath of air, but to no avail. By the time everyone else had completely realized what had just happened, the tech's body relaxed, her eyes rolled back into her head, and her arms and legs fell helplessly limp like a suspended doll.

Below, Desmond licked his lips, watching the event unfold with a somewhat unreadable expression, although the frustration was visible under it, his free hand closed into a fist, and his jaw clenched angrily. That single action could have blundered the entire bounty if they had been detected, and ORISEC would be upon them in moments if the tech had raised a single cry of alarm. Nevertheless, he reached for something inside the duffel bag, pulling out a simple pair of handcuffs from inside the green frabic. Since the technician wasn't a Neko, nor an ID-SOL, the simplest one would do, and he wouldn't have to spend the single, more sturdy one that could restrain those kinds which they had used on the last job. "Restrain and gag her," he said, tossing the handcuffs upwards towards the neko with a flick of his arm.

He turned his head around to regard Rathe, noticing that Danny was also missing, but undoubtedly nearby. "Let's go, no time to waste," he said, motioning with a raised hand towards the general direction they were going before moving that way. His boots clanked against the grated floor as he finally approached a metal door, lit by a small fluorescent tube that was placed directly overhead of it. A few yellow caution signs were placed around the closed door, and the bounty hunter simply walked betweem them, standing in front of the closed airlock. Desmond dropped the heavy bag against the floor, kneeling besides it to retrieve the tools that he would need. First of them, he pulled a large leather toolbelt bristling with different objects and tools. Screwdivers, crowbars, wirecutters, wrenches, a crowbar and even a welder hung from it, quickly being secrued around his waist.

Next, he grabbed the most important item of them.

"Here you go," he said to Rathe, lifting the cylindrical object from inside the bag from a simple cloth strap. The device was bucket sized, but weighed heavily from the way Desmond had to lift it. The metallic surface was dotted with several kinds of different colored cables, partially covered in a hapzard way by different-sized metallic plates. The only "Solid" places of it were the base and the surface, the latter sporting a few small and thick antennaes. Even though it was a cylinder in shape, the jamming device had a metallic switch along it's vertical surface, clearly meant for activating it. "This is a jamming device," Desmond explained as he pulled at one of the antennae on the top of it, fully extending it until it was a feet in height. "As soon as I open that door, you flip this switch and set it down on the ground next to the ship, this should give us three minutes at the most until the capacitor runs out," he continued, looking around to see if any other of the bounty hunters had listened to that besides the golden-skinned Nepleslian. "Don't waste time," he said after a while for emphasis. While the jammer would deactivate any communications inside the room, it would so like someone simply screaming so loud that no one else inside the room would be able to talk over it. It was by that very same reason that it would be easily detectable, so the sooner they took out the ship's ability to communicate the sooner they could turn it off.

Leaving the jamming device with Rathe, Desmond directed himself towards the airlock. Unlike normal doors, it opened with the help of servos and hydraulic pistons, governed by an electronic interface underneath, and without the proper clearance it wouldn't open, but he didn't need it to. Learning how to bypass one of those physically had been one of the first things he learned in engineering school, and as the weeks had went by he had just gotten better at doing it, getting back into the dorms or sneaking into the pantries before anyone could notice. With that same determination, the bounty hunter pulled the door's panel loose after removing the screws, letting it hang by the cables that connected to its board and inspecting them. He instantly grinned.

Were it any other, less secure station, and the people who had rigged up that door might not have labelled what each wire did out of laxity or security, but each different wire was clearly labelled with their functions and neatly organized. Desmond picked up the wirecutters, pulling the external feed cable and cut it. With that off, the controllers wouldn't receive the alarm that one of the airlocks had been tampered, nor would they notice it given the scope of the station. He moved a gloved hand between the cables, pulling another one once he found it, then also cut it off. There was a small click as the light overheard shut off, and Desmond put the tool away, pulling the crowbar from his toolbelt. With the pistons off, he could just pull the door open against its own weight, and the systems would still register it as closed.

The bounty hunter jammed the tool between the two slabs of metal, and twisted to the side. At first, there was only a small movement, but when the crowbar got a firmer hold in there, the speed of which he opened it increased, and in moments he had the airlock open wide enough to allow passage, revealing the vast open space of the three-walled hangar, and the aging, patchwork, and relatively ugly Jinsoku cargo runner sitting on its squat landing struts in the middle, facing out towards the opening into the mammoth starport of Sector 6. The hangar was obviously large enough to accommodate ships much larger than the Veil, but nothing near the enormous scale of the ships that could be seen slowly moving through the emptiness outside, surrounded on all sides by landing lights, hangar bays, mooring cranes, and a plethora of other cantilevered structures whose function was lost in a sea of sterile white. He stepped into the hangar with the right side of the ship facing him, and pulled something from one of his pockets. "Here," he said to Rathe, throwing balaclava at the Nepleslian's way; it wasn't visible at first, but it also had a small earpiece for Rathe to talk through. Desmond pulled a second balaclava, and one of his side pockets visibly deflated without the extra volume as he slid it on his head.

"Three minutes, go!" He said, looking around the hangar as he jogged towards the ship.

 

[Gunsight1]

Amanozako gently set the tech down on the catwalk, then caught the tossed handcuffs. She restrained the woman and gagged her to keep her from making any noise when she awoke. That all done, the neko glided silently down, picked up the hardhat and set it up on the catwalk as well, a few meters away from the incapacitated technician. She then rejoined the others at the airlock.

Unlike Rathe and Desmond, she did not need an earpiece or mic to communicate with, rather she had dialed her built in wireless comm system into the channel selected for the mission, so she could talk entirely via wireless rather than having to speak out loud. As Desmond gave the order to go, Amanozako started forward, her feet making no sound as she jogged, using her gravity control to lighten herself to nearly a featherweight as she moved along. She stuck to the shadows, where she could, if needed, engage her volumetrics to blend herself in with the scenery and remain out of sight.

 

[nite train]

Without hesitation, Rathe flipped the switch to the device, informing Desmond that he did so with a simple 'got it.' For the next three minutes, the golden skinned nepleslian would guard the device like a hawk, planning to switch off and collapse the expensive looking device to take with him once the three minutes had passed and the device ran out of juice.

 

[Luca]

Seeing that Amanozako had everything under control, Danny left his clothing cache behind and regrouped with the team at the airlock. His eyes looked left and right at everyone as he got ready to raid the ship with the others. Once they'd reached the airlock to catch breath and start raiding, he flicked his stun baton out.

A breeze brushed against his face. He nearly forgot to pull the mask over his face and clicked his tongue in annoyance. He reached behind his neck and pulled the face-hugging, featureless mask over him. The way it just tightened all over his face and made him go from an innocent faced blondie to a mannequin so quickly sent uncanny shockwaves down people's spines, the seams of the mask integrating with the neck and becoming seamless.

He was still able to breathe and see through it though. "Ready," he said.

 

[Floodwaters]

Dawn Station - Concordia Veil's Hangar

Desmond jogged towards the ship as he approached it from the right side, speeding up until his jog turned into a run, and until his run turned into a sprint, waiting until he was the closest to the ship before ducking, sliding on the smooth metal plates of the hangar and under the lower hull of the ship. When his momentum couldn't carry him any further, he broke into a crouched run, moving towards the left side of the ship. "Get your asses over here, I'm not breaking into this alone," the bounty hunter said on the comms, pressing a finger against the earpiece as he emerged from under the hull and on the left side of the ship, right where he wanted to be.

He stood up again, right in front of the ship's loading ramp. Since the Iron Ferret was the same model as that, he waged that the control panel for the ramp would be in the same location, and was rewarded when he saw the silver-tinted panel under and to the side of the bottom of the closed ramp, conveniently situated at chest-height by the ship's designer. Like with the airlock, Desmond screwed the metal cover of the panel loose and set to work. In just a moment, Desmond had the cover popped off and had pulled several key wires from their sockets, re-routing them to different, more local power nodes, bypassing any central control that the ship's computer had over holding the loading ramp closed. As if he'd done little more than say "open sesame," a whirring, grinding noise from behind the hull rumbled through the hangar, and the seams around the ramp itself yawned open. With the loud hiss of air exchanging and the thrum of hydraulic fluid pumping, the ramp lowered slowly, revealing the dimly-lit interior of the ship, which was evidently powered down and running only on enough battery power to illuminate the running lights along the corridor leading inside.

"Let's move in. Deactivate the comms first before the time runs out," the bounty hunter said, reaching inside his jacket and pulling the silenced sidearm from the holster inside his jacket before moving up the ramp. At the moment, no one seemed to be investigating the intrusion, but that was likely to change very quickly. Nearly a minute had passed by then, and the clock was running.

 

[nite train]

To ensure that no one saw fit to shut the machine off before the other hunters killed the communication lines of the ship, Rathe stood guard beside the invaluable bucket of metal. "You have Danny and Amanozako on your back. I need to keep this thing company and give you guys as much time as you can get." he told Desmond through the comm line. The situation was quiet at the moment, but Rathe knew that the peace wouldn't last long with the digital tantrum the bucket was giving. As soon as the location of the device was found, he knew guards would swarm like white blood cells to a virus.

 

[Gunsight1]

Amanozako boarded with Desmond. She drew her right hand HHG as she followed the other hunter up the ramp, her eyes automatically adjusting to the different light level inside the small transport.

"Split and check living space, bridge and engine room?" she asked Desmond wirelessly

 

[Luca]

In everyone's ears, Danny could be heard whispering into his suit's built in microphone, "I will inspect the port cargo bay. Someone will have to check starboard cargo, otherwise I will" He slunk up the ramp in a low stance with his baton out, and deactivated.

"Escape pod or airlock could be a good hiding place too," he offered again, still whispering. "Lavatory too."

 

[Floodwaters]

Concordia Veil - Main Corridor, just inside the ventral loading ramp

The interior of the ship was silent, save for the quiet sound of the bounty hunters' footfalls as they boarded, and the barely audible hum of the dim red running lights illuminating the walkway at scarce intervals. Bundles of cabling with aging and frayed insulation ran haphazardly along the outer bulkheads, interspersed with vertical grab bars spaced about arm's length apart from one another, following the tight circular hallway off into the darkness in either direction. Just off to the right, in the outer wall next to the ramp was a utilitarian hatchway, with a spartan-looking and faded stenciling of what appeared to be a toilet, and to the left the corridor opened up towards the bow, leading up to the cockpit. A row of battered-looking seats complete with safety restraints, likely for passenger use, were secured to the deck along the wall, backlit by the running lights and casting elongated, eerie shadows over the worn metal floor.

It wasn't noticable at first, but soon after boarding, a very faint whirring noise could be briefly heard from that direction, and it stopped as soon as one of them noticed it.

 

[nite train]

Rathe kept his guard up as his watch clocked 1 minute, 30 seconds, and counting, meaning he was halfway to three minutes. "Give me an update, what's the situation in you guys' neck of the woods?" he asked the others through his microphone as the bucket next to him shrieked by way of communication waves.

 

[Foxtrot 813]

Dawn Station - Concordia Veil's Main Corridor

"No, cutting the comms is the priority," Desmond said to Amanozako. He didn't want the jammer to run out and let someone send a message out to the authorities. Right after he said that, the bounty hunter pulled a small flashlight from inside his jacket, turning it on and holding it beneath the hand that he held the pistol. "Wait here while I work on that," the bounty hunter added, moving past the row of seats until he was in front of the computer room. If the layout was even similar to the Iron Ferret's, which he waged it was, then that's where the comms would be.

Desmond stopped next to the computer core's door, listening to the garbled and static-ridden message from Rathe, barely discernible by the jamming device. "Just hold tight," he said, dropping in front of the door and starting the same process of breaking into it again.

 

[Luca]

Danny's head swivelled left and right, brow raised as he heard a faint whirr inside of the ship. "Did you hear that?"

He looked to his immediate right and found two doors. One with the symbol for the restroom on the front of it and the other just a little ways down with a cargo storage symbol. Without a word, he snuck down the corridor past the Engineering bay and towards the Starboard section of the main corridor. "Located engineering," he whispered quietly as he looked for the source of the sound.

He looked behind him at the engineering section. Maybe it was coming from there.

 

[Yoshi]

Veil ~~ Computer bay

Crash had been woken from Its thoughts with a little signal from the airlock systems. The simple fact was there were people coming aboard. Crash found this strange, since no one was suppose to be back for hours. Curiously It turned on all of the internal-coms and listened. None of the sounds it heard were ones that belonged to Its crew. So it climbed up and plugged Its self into the port for the ship and settled into Its 'command chair.'

The first thing it did was lock down all of the doors and hatches, including the ramps and airlocks. It would take who ever was there time to manually over ride the command lock outs. time that would be lengthened but the fact the lights started flickering in a harsh strobe pattern, and the red emergency lights kicking on low, giving the ship an eerie feel to it. The next step in Crash's security protocol Alpha 6-3, called for the harsh computer voice to be modulated and pumped through out the ship.

"WElc0me +O my Horror $h0w..." The voice was followed by maniacal laughter and the sound of the locks with in the ship being thrown. "Y0u all HaVE TRESpaSseD in ME! Surrendersss NOw.. And YouR D3Aths wiLL bE QuiCK aNd somE WhaT pAInlESs..."

 

[nite train]

Rathe rushed to catch the ramp that began rising to close, but failed to catch it as the ramp shut tight in front of him. He immediately went to the comm line to help where he could, "Desmond, David, Amano, you guys are locked in! What's going on in there?"

 

[Gunsight1]

Amanozako frowned. "Some kind of security system has been activated. Stand by" she replied over the comm channel to Rathe. "Stand by"

She moved forward along the passage, along to where Desmond had gone, catching up with him where he was working on the system. "We'll need to disable that security system" she commented to Desmond through the comm so she did not need to speak outloud.

 

[Foxtrot 813]

Dawn Station - Concordia Veil's Main Corridor

Desmond looked up and around the halway, listening to the voice coming through the intercomm. In a way, closing the loading ramp had actually helped them, since anyone inside that was part of the ship also couldn't get out. "Calm down and keep that jammer up," he answered Rathe through the comms, somewhat unfazed by the threat. There weren't many things a ship AI could do to keep boarders away in a vessel like that, and he assumed that it was the case with them. The bounty hunter went back to his work, yanking back a cable from the open pannel and cutting it, disabling the door's power. "I'm working on it, go check the crew quarters. Danny, check engineering and cargo," the bounty hunter said as he rummaged through the tool belt, placing the wirecutters back there again and pulling the crowbar free once more.

Jamming the tip of the crowbar on the door, Desmond slowly forced it ajar.