RP: The Fringe [Chapter 2.0] - Salvage

Concordia Veil - Lounge

With a brief glance at Oreza, Sienna nodded as she turned her head back to Vel, her lips pursed in mild annoyance at his tardiness. "We got one prepped for you already," she said, then looked over at Six Four, eyeing her from head to toe, the slightly annoyed look staying on her face when she noted the Freespacer's preference for her reading material rather than paying attention. "For you too," she continued, a little louder to pointedly attract the medic's attention. "Though with that getup of yours, do you even need one?"

Concordia Veil - Lounge

Flipping down the datapad it was staring at Six Four looked at Sienna, "The pressure suit this one is wearing is adequate enough, however if the Captain would prefer Six Four to wear the other one, it will oblige."

Cabin 1?

Crash sat there motionless, Not even when Six-Four was there did It move. To the outside world Crash was a dead security bot. Internally though It was raging....


Crash would have chittered if it's spiderbot was still functioning. It had pissed It off that Val had violated the computer system... Violated part of Crash Itself... And Crash believed in retubution...

Concordia Veil - Lounge

Sienna shook her head. "If you don't need one, you don't need one," she replied simply, and looked at the three others one more time each in turn. "Right. Then unless anyone's got something else to say, go grab your gear and let's go." With that, she turned around and opened the door, stepping out into the main hallway.


Concordia Veil - Central Airlock

Her clothes sloppily folded in one of the lockers, Sienna was already wriggling the Dusk Suit over her shoulders with her back to the door when the first of them followed her. A massively sized suit, obviously set up for Oreza, hung in the locker next to hers, and in the open one on the other side of the room a more slender, standard-fitting one was set out for Vel. The captain turned around as she finished closing up the seams on the durable fabric that would stand between her and the vacuum of space, and reached into the locker again to retrieve the PHC, pistol holster, and stun baton lying on an upper shelf. One by one she fixed them to their respective places, strapping the PHC around her wrist and checking it briefly, sliding the baton into a long pocket along her left leg, and strapped the holster to her right thigh just before testing that the gun was secure.

Standing back up to her full height she opened and closed her hands, rotating them in front of her face as she retested the fit of the gloves, and twisted her torso back and forth a few times both to loosen up and to check that everything in her suit fit comfortably. It still somewhat surprised her that even though the equipment hugged her body much more closely than she would normally prefer, she felt unimpeded and unrestricted, free to move anything in any way possible were she not wearing anything at all. It was an odd sensation, considering that she was about to step out into the void with only it for protection.

Lowering the helmet over her head, she watched as the suit's systems booted up and flashed the diagnostics across the display on her faceplate HUD, then opened a channel to the cockpit. "Amelia, we'll be ready to open the hatch in a few minutes, once everyone's finished suiting up. Everything still quiet up there?"

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

Amelia idly flicked to the displays, while she actually watched the wreck that the ship was slowly orbiting. She scratched her head, making her unruly hair even more so, then finally relaxed back into her seat, sighing; She was gonna be left back out again, but at least it didn't feel as bad as before after what she had gone through. At least she'd have someone to speak to while the team was aboard the other ship. The one thing that caught her attention was when one of the displays on the ship beeped in a warning: Someone was trying to access the computer remotely and didn't have the proper authorization, which she quickly brushed aside, thinking it was probably Crash messing with it again.

Hearing her Datajockey beep in the familiar noise for the channel she had set up with the not-spiderbot just as she was about to pull it to confirm it, the Astrogator pulled the pad up in front of her. 'Talk about timing,' She thought as she read the message that was on the screen, biting her thumb in apprehension and already poking out of her seat to look if there was anyone behind her. The raven-haired woman turned back towards the datapad's screen, read the message again to make sure she had gotten it right, and then frowned. No wonder the display had warned her then, instead of the several times that the not-spiderbot had accessed it itself. No wonder the captain was so uptight about the Iroma, the person had barely gotten aboard the ship and he was already trying to access into the computer, which she considered worse than actually carrying a gun like Sienna had forbidden him to. No wonder she had found something off about him from the start when he simply walked away when the captain was (de)briefing the crew.

Amelia quickly put the Datajockey down, leaning forward and pressing a finger against the headpiece, pushing it closer to her ear when Sienna's voice came up. 'Talk about perfect timing,' she thought as she pressed the headset's ''send'' button when the captain had finished her question, "No, we have unauthorized remote access to the ship's computer," Amelia said, pulling up one of the volumetric displays closer and quickly reading the computer's log, "someone poking around with the sensors. Might wanna ask the space goat there," she said, referencing the Iroma.

Central Airlock

After returning to its office, Six Four decided the logical thing to do was to ditch the tie and normal doctors jacket seeing as they would do little more than inhibit the doctor in the zero gravity vacuum of space. Strapping a medical kit to its thigh, packed with gauze and other medical devices it didn't literally have up its sleeve, the freespacer gave a nod before going to join the others in the airlock.

The Doctors white medical helmet was a stark difference to the dark grey and black suit it wore, though various colorful markings and patches that looked like they were from military uniforms dotted it in various places giving a bit of life to it. The most noticeable were the two large medical icons on either of its biceps, denoting that this indeed was a medic of some sorts, and a name tag above its left breast pocket that read 'Pat' in dark block letters. The only thing the suit didn't cover, aside from Six Four's helmet of course, were its dark black skeletal hands which were left exposed about an inch before the wrist. Doing a final prep of its suit Six Four replaced the gloves covering its hands before taking a seat and removing its datapad from a cargo pocket on its thigh, putting its nose in it once again before the rest of the crew arrived.

Air lock

Oreza stepped into the compartment and made a quixk job of stowing away his clothes in the locker and grabbing his suit. He pulled the large size dusk suit on and sealed up all of it's fittings and air tight seams. He double checked everything, then strapped on his gunbelt and well worn service pistol.

The handgun would not work in vacuum he knew, but if they restored life support on the derelict it would function just fine. That and its weight on his hip was comforting.

"You all set?" He asked Sienna as he picked up his helmet, tucking it under his left arm.

"Doc" he nodded to Six Four as the Freespacer entered the airlock sans tie and mad scientist lab coat. Now there was just one left to join them and suit up.

Concordia Veil - Central Airlock

Sienna's jaw slid sideways slightly when she heard Amelia's response, and her eyes flicked toward the inner lock door, but her face otherwise remained unchanged. "Copy that. Contain it and see if you can reverse whatever he did," she replied into the radio. "I'll handle the rest."

She turned her eyes to Oreza, not hearing his question due to her helmet already being on, but nodding in response to what she knew it was. It was then that Vel entered the airlock, wearing the same strangely satisfied expression he had on earlier. Sienna didn't say a word to him, but instead pointed at the remaining Dusk Suit that her first mate had laid out for him. As the Iromakuanhe moved to don it, she looked back at Oreza with a knowing look, and tapped her helmet's faceplate, just in front of the side of her nose.

Airlock

Oreza watched Vel with much suspiscion when he finally arrived, glancing back in Sienna's direction just in time to catch her look and the tap to her helmet. The big Nepleslian gave a slight nod silently, then spoke up to the others.

"Let's make this quick. Daylight is burning" with that Oreza slipped his own helmet on amd locked the air tight seals in place. This hiss of air from the life support system filled his ears immediatly as all sounds from outside were muffled.

"Comm check" he said into the mic pickup, then turned his attention back to keeping an eye on their guest.

Central Airlock

With the arrival of the other two members to the party to arrive Six Four begrudgingly put away its data pad and did I final once over on itself.

"Communications are functioning." Six Four messaged in before interjecting again, "We are in space, The concept of daylight is not really present on this particular vessel.... Also this one does not see how you can set light on fire... very hard to burn fast moving particles of enegry... Though from Six Four's understanding they do generate some form of heat which may be considered burning."

Six Fours ramblings became muttered as it started to debate with itself on how that was possible.

Concordia Veil - Central Airlock

"Good radio," Sienna replied to Oreza, then turned her back to Six Four and rolled her eyes at the Freespacer's continuing habit of literal interpretation, shaking her head with a sigh. "Six Four, can you shut the hell up, please?" she said in a mock polite tone to silence the Freespacer's one-person debate, and twisted the handle in the wall to begin cycling the airlock. A series of loud clanks and bangs filled the chamber, followed by a prolonged hiss that faded away into silence. After a lengthy pause, the dorsal hatch above them slid open, revealing the void of space, and beyond it, the one-tomb graveyard of the remains of the mining ship looming over their heads.

Looking up, Sienna instinctively touched the pistol and stun baton at each of her hips as she surveyed the nearby wreck, and drew a long breath. "Right, this is it," she stated, looking back at the three others gathered with her, and placed one hand and foot on the ladder. "Six Four, you're after me. Vel, follow her, and Oreza, you bring up the rear. Switch on y'alls mag boots now. We'll gather at the top of the ship and lock up before we figure out the best way to jump across."

Without waiting for a reply, Sienna ascended the ladder up to the open hatch.

Airlock

With Sienna's command to shut up Six Four's head darted up and over to 'look' directly at her. "Acknowledging: Understood, this one has concluded that it will need a doctor to figure out the correct answer to the previous question." Six Four paused for a moment, holding its finger up " Explanation: Well this one is a doctor, but not that kind of doctor. Six Four is the doctor that helps people. It needs an astrophysicist or someone else with a doctorate that is trained in the matters of science... Though anatomy and surgical procedures is a science itself...."

Six Four Glanced back over at Sienna who it could tell was probably still starring it down. "Apologetic: Shutting up....."

Airlock

Oreza was the last one to climb the ladder and exit the ship. There was the reassuring hum and thunk as his magnetic boots grabbed onto the,outer hull, securing him with just enough grab to keep him from floating away, but not enough to impede his walking.

A grin touched the big Nepleslian's lips as he took two steps needed to place him behind Vel, grab the man by the back of his dusk suit with both hands, one just below the neck, one at the base of the spine and haul the Iroma off his feet. Vel's mag boots protested, increasing power to keep him dowj, but it was no where near enough or fast enough to stop what Oreza was doing. In the same motion it took to lift Vel, he swung his arms, then released his grip.

Vel tumbled off, away from the ship, away from the derelict or any of its dismembered components.

"Try swimming now bub," Oreza sneered and watched the irritating creature tumble away.

Space - Above the Concordia Veil

Vel's surprise at suddenly being grabbed and thrown by the bearlike Oreza was only matched by the sudden horrific realization that every one of the thrusters on his supposedly prepped Dusk Suit was depleted, and the grappling thread had been removed. He was utterly powerless to stop the slow tumble he now found himself in, or the momentum that carried him slowly further and further away from the Jinsoku freighter orbiting the wreck.

At first, Sienna didn't seem to notice what had happened from where she stood anchored by her magnetic boots atop the Concordia Veil. When Oreza quipped, she idly turned her gaze from the floating mass of debris and wreckage above her to the flailing suited Iromakuanhe drifting further and further into deep space. She did not, however, appear to be the least bit surprised upon seeing it; in fact, the way she turned her stance to face the sight and placed her hands on her hips made it clear that she had very much expected it.

Taking her time, she knelt down on the hull and cycled the dorsal hatch closed, and opened a comm channel to the cockpit. "Amelia, we're out," she said, and rose back to her feet, looking back up at the tumbling suit dwindling in the blackness. "Do I have your attention, Vel?"

For a moment, only silence was the reply. Finally, however, Vel's voice came back over the comms, hot and seething with rage. "You are going to pay for this treachery," he hissed.

Sienna shrugged. "Not really sure you're in a position to make threats," she replied, her voice sounding more disinterested than hostile. "I would thank you for bringing us here, but since we ain't had a chance to see if there's anything worth a damn on board, that's probably a bit premature," she continued. "But either way, I can't afford to risk having you aboard my ship. You got an itchy trigger finger, you seem to have trouble figuring out who's in charge, and now it seems like you've gone and poked your nose in where it doesn't belong."

"What are you talking about?" Vel's voice spat back.

"The computer, Vel," she replied. "Did you really think nobody'd notice? Now, I got no idea how you did it, and that's what worries me. You're a liability." The captain shifted her balance and gnawed on the inside of her cheek for a brief second. "Consider it 'risk management.'"

An incomprehensible plethora of incomplete sentences and half-thoughts crackled back. "You poor, stupid humans," he growled. "You think you can just get rid of me this easily? You all would be well advised to pray I don't survive and find my way back to you."

"Yeah, keep the insults coming, brainiac," Sienna sighed. "You'll have a lot of time to think of a bunch more before your air runs out." With that, Sienna cut her feed to Vel's suit, and switched her address. "Amelia, jam Vel's suit comms for as long as we're here. He ain't coming back with us."

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

Upon hearing the response from Sienna that she would take care of it, Amelia clicked her headset twice in confirmation, not actually bothering to answer it verbally. Instead, the astrogator quickly worked on her station, following the digital trace that the Iroma had left on the system until she found the fault that he had exploited to tap into the ship's sensors; She was still unsure whether it had been done intentionally to catch someone trying to break in or it had been an actual fault, but it was fixed either way.

For the second time, she sighed, reclining back in her chair as she relaxed. Just as she was wondering what the captain would do to the Iroma, and she was sure it wasn't pretty, her doubts were already answered as her radio chimed in, "copy that," was her sharp and curt answer. She didn't exactly feel sorry, but instead felt like he had it coming, but still having to float into oblivion until the life support ran out wasn't a way she could imagine going herself. Though, given the suit's feature of recycling the air back into being breathable and even the water back into being drinkable, it quickly changed her mind.

But orders were orders, and she couldn't know for sure if the Iroma had any friends waiting for them, which just made him more of a liability. Amelia did a quick scan with the ship's telescope on the new small blip that popped on the radar, confirming that it was indeed Vel. Guessing that he was probably wearing a Dusk suit like everyone else, she directed the both the ship's radio and subspace comms towards him, broadcasting the white noise on several frequencies that would render any transmission by him impossible to discern from the white noise to anything that wasn't within the suit's laser transmission. The process would dramatically decrease the Dusk Suit's signal-to-noise ratio, as the sensor's tracked him.

"He won't be calling anyone while we're here," Amelia transmitted back, sinking back into the seat again. She relaxed back into the chair, twiddling her thumbs and monitoring the sensors as she waited for anything else to happen.

Space - Outside the Concordia Veil

Sienna watched Vel's suit slowly drift further and further away into the black void as dull static overtook the signal from his transmitters. It wasn't long before his silhouette vanished from view completely, the eternal night swallowing him. There was a slim chance that he'd survive long enough to be spotted by the next ship of vultures that came this way looking for an easy credit, but it was doubtful. Even if he was, he would then be their problem, and not hers.

The captain sighed and shook her head, clicking her tongue softly. "Waste of a perfectly good suit," was all the farewell or regret she could muster up.

Turning to look overhead at the massive wreck once more, she narrowed her eyes, scanning the visible part of the hull for any sign of a viable point of entry. She'd never been aboard a Hikari before, so any place she chose would be purely a guess at best. The good thing was that thanks to Amelia's calculations, the Veil , and by extension everything in and on it, were moving with the wreck's tumbling motions, so the derelict from their perspective appeared to be stationary.

Clearing her throat, she addressed Oreza and Six Four. "All right. Let's jump across. Save your thrusters until you get close; we may need them again before we come home. Stay together and keep a hand on your grapplers. We don't need anyone else falling out there with Mister Hero there." Locating an elongated section of the hull near the engines that appeared to be ripped open laterally, she pointed. "That looks like as good a place as any to get in, but aim for the dead center of the facing hull," she added, moving her finger to indicate the middle of the nearest flat section of hull. "We're bound to drift a little when we kick off, and I got no idea which way."

Coiling herself up into a squatting position, she disengaged her mag boots and launched herself upwards off of the Jinsoku's hull and began the long, lazy drift across the gap between the ships.

Space - Outside the Concordia Veil

Six Four watched as the the Vel floated off into the abyss, making a mental not not to piss off the captain anymore than it already had. With the more pressing matter at hand of boarding the derelict space craft Six Four spoke aloud, "Querry: Wouldn't it be easier to land the shuttle on to the... relic? Would also be easier to load things onto it."

With a shrug Six Four bent its mechanical knees and did a leap of faith towards the ship following Sienna.

Space

"Are you kidding?" Sienna asked over the comms, looking down at the Freespacer drifting behind her. "Look at that thing. It's literally blown to pieces. I'm not putting my ship any closer to it than I have to until I see for myself that there's a stable place to do it." She looked back up along her trajectory as she continued to coast, arms at her sides, as if she were diving through an endless ocean. "We go in and get our bearings, find out where the goodies are, and then we can worry about getting them out."

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEEEEEE

Six Four listened to Sienna's reasons before blinking to itself, processing the information. "Understood Captain, will add to the on ship itinerary." After floating for a few more seconds Six Four opened up a channel "Query: A question if this one may, what are we searching for precisely?"

Space

Sienna closed her eyes in exasperation, intentionally keeping her comm channel open as she let out a long sigh. "Whatever we--" she started to reply through gritted teeth, but cut her words off in mid-sentence, and paused for a moment. "You know what? Cookies," she finally said simply, her voice laden with apathy. "We're looking for cookies and beer. If we find something else we can make a few credits off of, great, but we're here for frakkin' cookies and beer."