RP: The Fringe [Chapter 3.0] - Strangers in a Strange Land

Main Corridor - Outside Starboard Cargo Bay

There was a soft "clink" as Tam's pistol barrel touched the top of the flailing, crippled drone's dome-body, and its red eye seemed to twitch upwards for an instant, as if looking with sudden realization at what was about to happen. Then, with a sharp crack, one round ripped through the robot's exterior armor and circuitry, pulverizing its interior like a pike through the brain stem of an animal, and the mechanical monster jerked once before dropping dead on the deck.


Cockpit

Sienna didn't have the time to notice the nasty look Amelia gave her, nor would she have if she'd been looking at her featureless faceplate. The captain dropped down into the pilot's couch, shoving her arms through the harness straps as quickly as she could, wobbling a little as her eyelids drooped ever so slightly for a moment. Shaking her head to throw off the fatigue and pounding headache from where she'd smashed her head against the crate, she yanked the flight controls towards her, assuming control of the ship as her left hand flew over a flurry of volumetric displays. The weapons were still online and primed, and she saw the ship was still targeting itself - a small holographic representation of the Veil hovered between the two women, with six flashing red pinpoints on the ship's underbelly. A few more virtual keystrokes returned a barrage of trigonometric calculations, vectors, angles, and numbers. While the exact mathematics were over Sienna's head, their message was clear: the guns couldn't hit the remaining drones still stuck like leeches to the hull without potentially destroying the ship.

On two other displays, each easily noticeable by Amelia and Sienna both, a dire warning about a shield generator fault screamed. The problem from their initial descent still persistent, apparently. "Frak," Sienna spat, biting down on her upper lip apprehensively, and her eyes darted around the consoles and out of the canopy at the thinning atmosphere through which they were rapidly ascending. After a second's consideration, she looked over at Amelia. "Shut down the CFS and give us gravity," she commanded. "Hold everything inside that ain't strapped down right where it is the best you can. I got an idea."

Shrie did not wait up, hobbling past Sienna towards the cargo hold. She saw strange alien finish off the drone, but she was not lowering her pistol just yet. What if there were more. Slowly and carefully, she inched inside the cargo bay, ready to kill the rest. Besides, Oreza needed Six-Four fast and Shrie was only one who knew ho bad Oreza's leg was. That meant it was her job to get the Freespacer to him.

"Six-Four." Shrie shouted at the Freespacer. The Fyunnen was moving through the cargo-bay, her gun at the ready. It seemed that Six-Four was looking for another drone among the scattered cargo. "Oreza hurt. Go. I will deal with what is here."

Cargo Bay

Tam noted the flames threatening his equipment and looked for something, anything to put the flames out with. Not seeing anything obviously easily accessible he ran for the box that he recalled held blankets and other linens. Grabbing the heaviest blanket he could find from the box he started running from fire to fire with the blanket, trying to smother them before they got out of control and caused catastrophic damage.

Cargo Bay

Six Four was debating weather or not to vent the cargo bay to relive the fire or to start serching for the robot when Shrie came in releving it of its current task.

"This one understands." Six Four said before turning and promptly leaving the cargo bay.

Veil somewhere on the ship.

Still concerned about the integrity of the ship, more so the possibilty of robots still in the passageway, Six Four kept its flamethrower in the ready position as it searched for Oreza. Thanks to the circular shape of the ship however, it didn't take much time to find the first mate.

"This one understands you are injured." It said setting down its weapon and removing its gloves. "Query: Do you believe this injury this require will require any surgery or amputation?"

Starboard Cargo Bay

Tam began smothering the flames licking at his belongings with the blanket, making fairly swift progress until he rounded the end of one row. Without warning, the remaining spider drone sprang out from hiding, catching the Gartagen off-guard and knocking him flat on his back. Its spindly legs astride his chest and pinning him to the floor, an electromagnetic whir spun up inside of the thing, and reacting barely in time, Tam dodged his head to the side just as a red cutting laser burst out from beneath the drone, burrowing into the deck just inches from his face. He could instantly feel the searing heat radiating from it on the flesh of his cheek.


Main Corridor - Just inside the Ventral Loading Ramp

"Knee broken," Oreza grimaced, looking up at Six Four. "No amputation. Just... help me get to the medbay."

Starboard Cargo Bay

Tam reacted rapidly to the drone's attack. 'Confined space, explosive charge contraindicated, alternative attacks needed' was what ran through his mind at lightning speed. Tam lashed out with one of his fists, using the armored gauntlet to protect his hand as he threw a punch as hard as he was able to considering that he had minimal room to maneuver in order to knock the drone off of his chest and enable him to get to his feet and draw his sword.

Starboard Cargo Bay

Sparks flew as the drone single-mindedly tried to sweep the cutting beam for Tam's neck, straining against the powerful Gartagen soldier. The first blow slammed into its body, but the robot held fast. A second blow landed, rattling the drone again, but still it maintained its grip, fighting with unwavering tenacity to decapitate its target. Finally, after rearing back a third time and letting another savage punch fly, his gauntlet connected and broke the thing's hold on him just enough to give him a split second to throw it off. However, the cutting beam was still active; one wrong move would point it at his body, and every nearby target was potentially fatal.

Tam decided that the time was now for one last savage hit , hitting the side of the drone that would cause the cutting beam to aim away from his body to give him time to get up and grab his Gael'Kash and slash the drone, attempting to bisect it once and for all.

Starboard Cargo Bay

One last hit knocked the drone away, but not before the cutting beam swiped across his left arm parallel to his wrist, then shut off. The drone clattered to the deck and slid a few feet before it righted itself, and charged at him again at full speed. Just as it went to pounce again, the Gael'Kash came down hard and met it in midair, cleaving the thing completely into two halves. The remaining sections flew to either side of Tam and crashed to the deck, lifeless.

Looking down, he noticed a sliced-off section of his armor lying on the ground, tendrils of smoke curling off of it. On investigating his arm, he noticed that he had fortunately gotten away with little more than second-degree burns on his now-exposed skin.

Tam noticed the missing piece of armor and resigned himself to having to do some maintenance once he managed to get settled in. He picked the blanket back up and started to smother more of the fires.

With last bot dead, Shrie put the safety on the gun on and put it behind her belt. She then grabbed a blanket and went on to help the alien with the fire. She felt a useless, running here for nothing. It was not like Oreza needed the freespacer right away. Shrie would probably be more useful elsewhere, like controlling the turrets or something. Captain will probably think she was useless and Shrie felt that way for sure.

Cockpit

Amelia spared a brief glance at the captain, but then did as ordered. For a brief second, she felt the ship's artificial gravity overlapping with the planet, but then normalized once it stabilized. "Shutting down CFS," the astrogator echoed, flipping a few switches on a panel besides her.

Sienna's hands worked over the consoles around her in a flurry, and amid her swinging she called up the ship's general address intercom. "Y'all hang on back there," she barked, and gripped the flight sticks in her hands as she braced herself in her seat. Pulling back on the controls, she pitched the ship's nose upwards, increasing their angle of attack through the atmosphere, causing the already jittery ride to roughen significantly. The sound of clanking metal around them grew louder as the vibrations intensified, and still Sienna continued to pitch harder, exposing more and more surface area of the hull to the brutal forces of friction and drag.

Meanwhile, Amelia kept monitoring the displays and watching the readings in front of her as the ship shook. She understood, finally, what the captain's intentions were, and the calculated risk that it involved. She just hoped that the drones, being cheaply built as they seemed to be, wouldn't be something else than they seemed to be in relation to that.

More alert tones started to angrily chastise the women in the control couches, warning of the increasing hull temperature and the fact that the ship's shields were offline. Sienna bore down harder into her seat, pressing her feet as hard as she could against the floorboards to firmly hold her haunches in place as she continued to increase their angle. The shaking was approaching the point of a violent earthquake by then, the rattling forces threatening to tear the ship apart. Gingerly she released one hand from the controls, adjusting something on a display, and grabbed hold of it again. "Get ready," she yelled over the chaotic noise, and with but a tilting twist of the controls, redirected their thrust to a straight forward vector all at once, slamming them both hard back into their seats.


Outside the Ship

The drones bolted to the belly of the ship were taking a beating from the intense heat and thick air battering their cheaply-crafted bodies with all the brutality of a flurry of hammers. For some time, they continued to hold fast, some of their legs starting to scramble about as they struggled to maintain a hold on the hull, or at least keep from being ripped away by the pounding air. One of them split open under the strain, bits of it starting to be torn away like the layers of an onion, until finally it disintegrated down to nothing more than the rivet and the lower section of its dome. The others held fast, at least up until the sudden change in direction. Their inertia, coupled with their weakened structures, caused their bulk to continue along their original path at first, and instantly every drone but one was torn away, blasted to pieces and tumbling back down to the moon's surface like metal slivers of rain.


Cockpit

Amelia gritted her teeth as the ship pulled some Gs, and to feel lightheaded and her vision greying out as the blood in her head started going down towards her legs. To counter that, the astrogator took deep and quick breaths as she tensed the muscles on her thighs and abdomen, forcing the blood back to her head. "One drone. Left!" She yelled between breaths, still watching the displays beside and in front of her, her knuckles white behind the gloves as she gripped the armrests of her seat.

The captain, head still spinning from the blow she took and now from the intense G-forces ripping her every which way, was noticably rattled by the maneuver, and her face was completely drained of color. The ship lolled over to the starboard as she slumped in her seat slightly, only for a second, but more than enough to toss the ship and its contents even more than before. Were it not for the artificial gravity assisting, competing with the moon's gravity, the sudden sway may very well have killed anyone inside not properly braced. Sienna instantly awoke from her near-lapse in consciousness, righting the ship in a panic, tossing them back the other way. "One left," she repeated in a weak voice, and cleared her throat in determination as she pulled back on the stick to repeat the maneuver.

The astrogator braced for the maneuver again after a brief flash of surprise, grabbing into her own set of controls this time in case the captain blacked out again.

Sienna strained to stay awake as the ship started to shake violently again, pouring all of her strength into the sticks. Her bleary eyes turned to the side at Amelia's hands briefly, some of her hair stuck to her eyebrows, then rolled back out towards the canopy. "May... need you to... get this one..." she muttered, and clenched her jaw as she fought back the blackness.

"Got it!" Amelia replied, both hands holding firmly onto her own controls. She understood that it was just a matter of time until Sienna, who probably wasn't conditioned to these effects, to black out, and so she grabbed onto the controls to keep the ship from veering off course.

The ship's pitch neared its apex again, rocking and shaking with the buffetting force of the atmosphere, and once again Sienna redirected the thrust to rip the final drone away from the hull. With the sudden inertial force bashing them again, Sienna's pounding head would take no more. She was thrown back into her seat and was unconscious before she struck the cushion, her arms going limp and flying free of the sticks, as the ship lurched again, and had it not been for Amelia having a firm hold of her own controls, would have gone spiralling out of control back towards the moon's surface.

The astrogator tried to stabilize the ship as best as she could with all the stabilizers and automatic systems offline, briefly cursing Crash from leaving them to their own devices at such a time. She struggled to keep the ship from veering off its original vector towards space, hoping that the sudden changes in temperature would also take its toll on the remaining drone. Gritting her teeth, she cast another glance to the side at the unconscious captain. If this kept out for too long there could be permanent damage from the g-LOC.

On her console, the volumetric representation of the remaining drone leeching on the ship dissipated into dozens of tiny dots and "poofed" away from the holographic symbol of the ship. The maneuver had succeeded, but the alarms around her continued to scream. Amelia felt the accelerating force behind her sputter and become erratic, jostling her back and forth in her seat as she was thrown alternately between the atmospheric drag and the erratic blasts of the gravity drive. Another volumetric display blinked to life, rotating an image of the ship to a top-down view, and the engine section started to flash a plaintive red. Their speed plateaued, and started to fall as the drag overtook them, and between bursts of forward motion, started to drift back down towards the moon in a freefall.

Amelia felt her body lurch from the inertia as she felt the ship stop accelerating away from the planet. Brushing the display away, she quickly worked on rebooting the engine, adding all power to it and the ship's CFS.

The lights throughout the ship flickered and some went dark as the ship struggled to re-light the engines, all the while gaining momentum as it plunged back to the ground. It started to pitch and roll sideways, falling with its port side towards the ground, and the artificial gravity went offline, throwing everything and everyone inside not bolted down to the walls. The altimeter's readout dropped faster and faster. 2 kilometers... 1 kilometer... 800 meters...

With a sudden blast of energy, the gravity drive regained its footing and came back online, and Amelia felt the power almost surge back into her hands. She started accelerating back to regain altitude, gritting her teeth again as the ship pulled more Gs to reduce its falling speed before it could actually start to rise again. The crushing forces continued to bear down on the slight-framed astrogator for several seconds more as the altimeter continued to spiral its numbers down towards certain doom, but just as the ship dropped to less than a hundred meters above the treeline, the numbers slowed to a crawl, and then stopped. In a screaming, inverted parabolic arc, the ship was righted and started to climb, at last rocketting away from the moon's surface.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Amelia faced the displays again. Sweat wicked her hair and forehead inside the helmet, much more from the stress of the situation than from the temperature, since the suit's insulation would remedy the latter. She quickly worked on redirecting the power to the proper systems so that the ship could safely exit the atmosphere this time since it was safe from the drones clinging onto the hull. She looked at the still blacked-out captain besides her for a brief moment, but then returned to the process of safely guiding the ship with all its automatic systems offline.

Sienna only groaned softly.

~Concordia Veil Hallway

Six Four made a mental note of Oreza's condition before leveling itself underneath his arm.

"This one apologizes for any mild discomfort you may feel." It said before lifting him up off of the ground. The doctors leg servos squealed in protest as it lifted the nepleslian that easily outweighed it and the extra gravity didn't help much either. Using itself as a support Six Four began to lead Oreza down the hall when Sienna shouted for the crew to hang on.

"Query: Hang on to what?" It said before the first wave of G ' hit it.

Concordia Veil Main Corridor

Without Oreza pulling himself up by his arm braced across Six Four's shoulders, the Freespacer may not have been able to lift the Nepleslian at all under the circumstances. The first mate let loose a short yelp of pain, followed by a hissing grimace as he hobbled his weight on his good leg, trying to minimize the movement in his broken one. "I'll live," he grunted through clenched teeth. "Let's just--"

The captain's warning over the intercom cut him short, and no sooner than Six Four's intoned query left her mouth, Oreza leaned his massive shoulder into her, shoving her against the bulkhead, gingerly trying to brace his shattered knee against his good one. Wrapping his arms tightly around the Freespacer, he clenched both his flesh hand and his mechanical one as tightly as he could around one of the vertical rungs set in the outer wall of the circular corridor. "Press against the wall and hold on to whatever you can, as hard as you can," he commanded her, bracing himself between the floor and the wall as the ship's gravity started to compete with the moon's, compensating for the sudden change in angle, and assisting in holding them in place.


Starboard Cargo Bay

As soon as the ship started to pitch, the gravity generators kicking in apparently disoriented yet another drone that had managed to hide amongst the crates, causing it to go skittering sideways, almost tilted on two legs, like a drunken animal of some sorts. For a second it appeared confused, trying to reorient itself against the conflicting gravitational forces and the erratic, incomprehensible input from its gyroscopic stabilizers. It stumbled straight back into Shrie's legs before tipping over, nearly knocking the Lorath from her feet, and fell onto its back. Its spindly legs thrashed and flailed in the air, frantically trying to right itself.

Tam and Shrie were tossed about as well with the first maneuver, but the ship's gravity made it easier for them to steady themselves.

Starboard Cargo Bay

Tam braced himself with one hand, grabbing onto the entry hatchway with an enhanced grip that almost left divots in the material of the hatch. His other hand was ready to catch Shrie if he needed to. He was not looking forward to what seemed to be likely to be coming due to his experience in previous microgravity events and catastrophic ship failures.

Shrie quickly grabbed onto the closest heavy looking box, to keep herself still. She was glad that bot stumbling into her did not do anything. Her eyes looked at Tam and offered hand. Holding on she moved toward the hatch. The last bit of way, she jumped, catching the gartagens firm grip and using him to grab onto the edge of the hatchway and pulling herself into the hallway. Only there she reached for her pistol, bracing into the gateway and using the free hand to flip off the safety. She took a second to aim at the bot that was struggling to get back on its feets, before she fired twice at center of its body.

Starboard Cargo Bay/Main Corridor

The shot from Shrie's borrowed pistol rang out loudly through the enclosed metal corridors, leaving a deafening ring in everyone's ears for several seconds. The laid-up spider drone caught both of the carefully aimed bullets in its dome, blasting small holes in the metal as its legs instantly dropped to the deck dead.

The ship's vibrations were becoming far more violent by this point, rocking everyone hard enough to make the very act of standing up a challenge, let alone moving. Tam could hear Oreza yelling over the chaos from somewhere down the circular corridor, but out of sight. Suddenly, a loud groan could be heard from all around them, deep within the bowels of the ship, as the gravity generator network strained to compensate for an unexpected acceleration. Tam's arm was yanked taut as Shrie was bowled off of her feet and thrown astern, but he held fast. On the other side of the corridor, Oreza and Six Four held on for dear life at the sudden blast from the engines, barely managing to keep from being ripped from their handholds.

Only a few seconds after the sudden acceleration, the ship seemed to dip violently to the side, throwing the passengers about again, and then the vibrations started over, increasing gradually in intensity.

~Main Corridor~

Six Four braced against the wall as Oreza instructed, gripping the metal rung with all it could muster. As it club on it was thankful that most of its limbs were mechanical, and thus kept most of its blood in it's torso and head preventing it from passing out due to extreme Gs. The downside was that it felt all of the crushing weight and could only imagine what the others were feeling and suddenly passing out seemed like a good alternative.

As the Gs reached its climax the sound of the groaning ship put the relatively emotionless freespacer on edge.As Six Four hoped that the damage caused by the junker drones didn't rattle the ship appart, it gripped onto the metal rung with a bit more intenseity.

Main Corridor

The battering G-forces continued to knock the first mate and the medic about, slamming them against one another and into the bulkhead as they held fast with their respective mechanical limbs on the support rung. Oreza did the best he could to contain the excruciating pain his destroyed knee was causing him during the violent ride, but his thin veneer of tolerance failed occasionally with a loud yelp of agony right near Six Four's head. Had the noise around them not been as deafening as it was, the shouting might have been annoying, but as it was, it was little more than a match on a bonfire.

The pair rode out the second maneuver without too much more trouble than the first, but as they felt the engines fail and the ship begin to plummet, Oreza's eyes went wide in panic.


Starboard Cargo Bay

As the ship's artificial gravity failed and the hull slipped to the side in a freefall, Shrie, Tam, the pile of scrapped arachnoid drones, as well as a few of the crates not secured to the deck were thrown towards the wall nearest to the center axis of the ship. Shrie landed first, coming down hard on her upper back, knocking some of the wind from her lungs just as a drone crashed to the wall inches to her left side. Tam soon followed, tumbling atop a crate that splintered and burst open as it slammed into the bulkhead. The Gartagen spun backwards as his legs hit the exploded crate, fortunately absorbing most of the impact with his tail, and landed perpendicularly across the Lorath's stomach, face-down. Several more bits of drone and circuitry crashed with loud bangs into the metal walls, and the violent shaking continued to worsen.

When it seemed that all was lost, the low, gut-rumbling thrum of the engines roared to life again, and gravity was restored, gradually adjusting against the moon's mass well as the ship leveled out with a nauseatingly ripping change in its velocity. One by one, everything that had been thrown to the bulkhead dropped to the deck in a heap against the port wall. Shrie landed on her haunches, with Tam still sprawled across her lap, both of them with no small amount of bruises and scrapes. The Lorath felt the warmth and wetness of blood spreading across her chest, and while she could sense that it wasn't serious, the gash she had received was stinging again.


Main Corridor

Oreza relaxed his grip on the rung and slumped to the deck in an exhausted heap, catching his breath and trying to suppress the pain in his knee. "I think," he wheezed, "we better get to the medbay. Now."