Bridge

"Just get the intruder please," Sa'kira said in her message to Tite'yanus, she sounded annoyed. "But, do try and limit the damage, and becareful around those explosives. Heavy weaponry will almost certainly set them off," she warned and moved over to another station.

Engineering Maintenance Conduit

As the power supply was disconnected, the light on the end began to rapidly blink. A whine could be heard from the internal ciruits which grew louder with each second, then the sound died down before the light winked out.

Down the corridor, a clanging of metal against metal could be heard, something moved slowly against the darkness... Keri wasn't alone..

Cargohold

The liquid appeared to be water.

As Shar approached the forward hold, she'd notice lots of glass floating around, presenting another hazard for her to deal with. The glass was everywhere, and just beyond it, was the flickering cargohold light that was illuminating several large water holding tanks. Just from the distance Shar was at, she'd notice at least one of the tanks was punctured, but she'd have to get closer to check the others.

Shar frowned at what she saw. Holding tanks in the cargo-hold? What could be there? Were they just prepared fro anything they should fine on their travels? Gam'trosha was supposed to be exploration ship, wasn't it? If they caught live animal and wanted to study it, they would need to put it somewhere. Shar had a bad feeling though. She felt her fur tingle and her tail would probably twitch around from nervousness, if it was not stuffed in the sealed suit. Her hand slowly went to holstered plasma pistol, and caught its handle, read to pull it out if needed.

"Ma'am?" She contacted bridge. "Was something in the holding tanks?" She asked slowly and varily moving forward.

Bridge

"Ma'am we are receiving a garbled message, it appears that the communications system is partially operational." Def'leor called out to her commander.

She then keyed the comm system. "This is the NSV Gam'trosha. Your message came through garbled. How do you read us?" she said.

Well, that was something at least. The virus had been isolated in the secondary memory banks. Now was the time to analyze his catch and dissect it. Copying the isolated virus into its own, empty, partition for analysis later on, he began to purge the invader from his systems and repair the damage it had caused. Luckily, a military ship such as this normally had back-ups for issues such as this - or at least it should have such back-ups.

If not, he'd have to do the programming and repair work from scratch, which would take time the ship obviously did not have given the situation beyond the mainframe door. He could still hear the sounds of movement beyond it, why had anyone not taken care of that problem yet.

He was beginning to wonder if the Marines they had onboard were worth the air they breathed.

So, Erm'olai decided to take matters into his own hands. While the mainframe devoted a microscopic part of its processes to find the back-ups they needed, the Systems Engineer accessed the electronic locks to the mainframe door to analyze what had been done to them.

If the individual outside had been hasty, he could have just locked them from the outside and been done with it. If he or she were a professional, then they might had physically damaged the lock.

Drawing his sword with one hand, he began to figure out his situation.

Tite'Yanus shook his head to himself as he neared the Mainframe area. He set his weapons to use a low-power setting as to avoid detonating the explosives, but he feared that it may not help since it was still a piece of heavy weaponry.

He poked his head around the corner to locate the assailant and the ducked his head back around the corner. Checking his tail to make sure it was attached properly, he took a deep breath and used his hind legs to leap around the corner and face the intruder. BANG!

Gam'trosha Engineerinng Bay - Maintenance Conduit

Keri'cruen held his breath as the light on the detonator blinked at an increasing pace and a whine could be heard, issued from the device and echoing through the maintenance conduit. For a painful second, the young kit thought he'd failed and activated some kind of hidden failsafe that would set off the explosive -- until the noise began to die and the light inevitably winked out of existence. Only when this happened, did the Hardware engineer exhale and began to breath again.

"Damn me..." The young kit exclaimed, beads of sweat dampening his soft silver fur. Exhausted, he just laid back against the hard metal conduit framework for several seconds -- trying to steady his heartbeat before returning to the Engineering Bay. Unforunately, Keri'cruen's brief moment of respite was interrupted by yet another foreign noise intruding itself upon his awareness -- further down the conduit, a sharp clanging could be heard; the distinct sound of metal scraping against metal.

The kit groaned and muttered in a pained whisper, "What now?!" Crawling down the conduit with the de-activated plasma torch he had recovered earlier in one hand, the young engineer sought the source of the ominous new sound.

Bridge

On the main screen, an image of a male Laibe appeared, but the video was disorted and flickering in and out with the occasional static burst which happened once every two seconds.

"Gam'trosh...." the Laibe spoke, the voice sounding rushed and panic'd. "sa....te... are..."

"Can you try and clear it up C'bar?" asked Sa'kira who floated back a bit while pondering what the officer was trying to say. When she heard Shar's new question, she glanced downward for a moment to think, her mind partly taken by the message and the problems they were having.

"Water," was her response to Shar's question.

Cargohold

A closer look revealed four massive water tanks, each had an inward blown hole. Fluid leaked out as bubbles through hole, but this was also the largest concentration of the water. Although something about one of the tanks looked odd, a faint blinking light inside illuminating it.

Mainframe

The lock showed that there had been a short circuit within the mechanism itself, auto-engaging a locking system that would seal the mainframe from the rest of the ship for security purposes. The system still showed the other outside lock wasn't operational.

Outside Mainframe

The intruder continued to fiddle with the explosives, but their attention was sudden taken when they heard the firing of a weapon nearby, they turned their head in time to see a flash off to the right but watched as the bolt of plasma splashed harmlessly against the far left wall.

The plasma, despite being in a low power setting, still burned a bit of the wall. The intruder stared at it for a moment in disbelief, then at the My'leke before pulling a rifle that was on the other side of them and firing off a hasty volley toward Tite'yanus and then started moving backwards.

Maintenance Conduit

Everything was quiet again, whatever sound Keri heard receded into the background noise of the ships engine. Then, more noise could be heard, the sound of something rustling against the conduits deck, like knee pads scraping against carpet. Something was moving in conduit right beside the one Keri was in..

Outside the Mainframe

Tite'Yanus cursed as he attempted to dodge the incoming fire. Meanwhile, he raised the power on his own weapon and began openly firing at his assailant.

"Bridge, Tite'Yanus. Engaging hostile, taking rifle fire. Will report back when I disable him."

Bridge

Def'leor nodded in response to the commander's request. She started by trying to isolate the communications system. To determine where the static was coming from. At such a close proximity the message must have been crystal clear. She ran through a list of possibilities to explain the problem. Damage to the communications system; someone actively jamming them. She considered the first more likely, so barring the sabotage what could it be.

That explosion and impact from the debris must have damaged something. Probably dorsal antenna. I can try rerouting communications through the ventral manually. As she thought it, Def pulled up the system schematics and worked to send the commands to switch to the auxiliary antenna.

"Switching to the backup antenna ma'am. Its possible the external explosion may have damaged the primary." she said as she hit the transmit key.

"This is NSV Gam'trosha your message came in garbled. Please repeat." she sent.

Shar took a deep breath and frowned even more. Something was blinking at her from inside the tank. She had a bad feeling that it was a bomb. If it would be fun, all she needs to do is to take it out and throw it out into the space. Sounds easy enough. It could be also something else.

Shar walked warily to the tank, taking a hold of the edge of the hole. She then disengaged her mag-boots and pulled herslf in through the water flowing out.