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RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 2] Little Problems

Falling in last after sealing her helmet, Tweak looked around. "What do these do?" she asked in a way that could have been to her squadmates and could have been just to herself. She got as close as she could to one of the machinery nodes in the ceiling, wanting a better look at its workings.
 
Code: 
What's that... hole? Is that a hole in the ceiling?

Dream's consciousness drifted through virtual space together with Keziah's, hanging on to Flower, swirling around.
Her voice echoed through Flower's external speakers. A rather crude and low-quality audio output, but still comprehensible.

Code: 
So... that's why the tube clogged up? Where did that stuff GO, anyway?
 
Code: 
I really don't think you want to know.

It took her a while to figure out the audio uplink. But one more dip into the datastream, snatching fragments of Dream's current experience, was very instructive. To make it work outside of a neural virtual reality, though, would've been difficult. Figuring it all out from scratch, and mixing her Nepleslian background with 'Spacer tech would've been nightmarish. But the communal network--not Polysentience, it was too small--was remarkable.

Code: 
Maybe it's the toilet sludge of half the station population. Good thing we can't smell it from here.

A part of Keziah wondered what it must be like for the marines down the hole, listening to two different voices coming out of Flower.
 
"So...someone took the machines from the ceiling...I'm guessing that they clean the pipes because the clog is directly beneath the missing machinery." Tweak said, moving to where Flower was inspecting the ceiling. "Hey, let me stand on you, then I can get a better look...this is strange. Stuff this big shouldn't just disappear..." she said, putting a hand on Flower's side and waiting for the Junker to allow her on.
 
Code: 
Maybe it's the toilet sludge of half the station population. Good thing we can't smell it from here.

"We're getting it just fine down here." Responded, not surprised to hear multiple voices coming from Flower. He'd seen vocal relays before, back home when they were working in between the various radio dead zones in the Yard.

"Hoo, look at tha'. An us wi'out a paddle." Cyril said, looking at the blockage. It had to be at least a half meter tall, and who knows how deep. He glanced up at the gap in machinery over head.

"An' five getscha ten tha' where Miss Peke's 'ammer was." He idly wondered just how that was expected to work. What, did they map out the flow down here and find out that this was the only place where a jam would occur? Yeah right. And there didn't seem to be any remnants of track or anything. But whatever. Cyril looked around again and then keyed the suit's radio.

"Control? Where're those 'oses?"
 
Serra, lacking a mental uplink jack, was content to moniter things from her data pad with the uplink plugged into it. Seeing the miniature polysentience through the small window of her display was not as much an enjoyable sight as Keziah's direct access, but she was probably also fairing far better due to the lack of integrated three dimensional craziness that she partly witnessed through the screen.

Thankfully her data pad also has a microphone and speaker option in the volumetric display and she could easily keep in touch with the brave souls in the sewer.

Speaking of sewers...

It was rather... disgusting, that hole and pipe and garbage. She was personally glad that Dream had an industrial robot on hand for this kind of thing. Though the large clump of refuse was what made Serra curious. Taking a moment to check if her own vocal uplink was working, Serra attempted to get her musing across.

Code: 
Cyril, can you do something for me?
Serra's voice sounded a little more distant and hollow then the others, but she was using third party equipment through a spray painted soccer ball robot that also had two other voices in it, so that's not all that concerning.

Code: 
That mass in the pipeway. If you can find something suitable to use, can you give me a sounding of how thick it is?
Yes, she just asked him to stick something in a pooper. No, that was also not a joke.
 
Ozz almost let out a snort at Cyril, "Did she just ask you to stick something in the pooper?"

Ozz stepped up to the mass and pensively prodded it with his finger, "I say we push Flower's arm through. If this tube is meant for the flow of liquid.....and this thing is blocking it....it doesn't take a genius to know there's some pressure building up behind it. If this breaks.....I'd rather be behind Flower that elbow deep in muck."

As he spoke, he took a keen eye to the mass, the tubes, the nodes in the ceiling.

With a chuckle, "Hey if someone wants to find me enough alcohol, I'll run through this. Either that or someone point me at the hoses."
 
Code: 
Tell you what, Ozz.

He could practically HEAR Dream smiling over the audio relay.

Code: 
If after we fix this mess I can get this shrine thing up and running, I think I can justify a reasonable quantity of alcohol as... "liturgical pa-ra-phernalia", which I think is the way religious stuff is called by this bureaucracy things of yours. You deserve it, and the Gods smile on a work well done. Some of them smile more on the party afterwards.

Flower prodded the disgusting mass with a tentacle.

Code: 
Damnit, if I were there in person it would take no time to figure this out... Mhh. All right, stand back. I'll ask Flower to force one of his tentacles through, but they have a maximum reach of about 110 centimeters. Do you think this stuff is thicker?
 
It was thicker. The mound dwarfed the junker droid, and if set on level ground with the other members of the squad members, would reach roughly 15 feet into the air, and the added girth was not much help. Flowers' appendage received little resistance as it sunk in, reaching in its full length without discerning any unusual results...other than it was deeper than first believed.
 
"Dibs on a bottle o' that sacramen'al wine." Cyril said absently, watching as the little droid began to push a tentacle into the slime. He couldn't see the end of the blockage, there being little light to amplify in the tunnel, but what he could see was that it was farther then the little guy could reach.

"Couldn't tell you 'ow far back it goes from 'ere, ma'am. 'old on a sec, gunna to scramble over, take a look." As much as he was normally loath to trudge through biological sludge, they had a job to do. And all bitching about petty punishments and, well, trudging through biological sludge aside, if you had to do a job you might as well do it right.

His first step onto the the coating of sludge on the catwalk almost sent his feet out from under him. His tail braced against the deck plating, curling itself into a wide base, while he caught at the rail with his hand. Pushing himself back up.

"Little slippery." He said, somewhat sheepishly.

Progress was slow and, frankly, disgusting as he made his way over the blockage. Thankful, the catwalk hadn't gone the way of the hammer, but the waste had mounded up to almost knee hight by the end of the mess. Looking down, he could see the waste flow damming up, though on what he couldn't tell. But there was a definite transition from semi-liquid waste to semi-solid waste just in front of him.

"Coo! Lookit that. We got five bloody meters o' this stuff. You could hide a body in 'ere. By the by, you may wanna get some 'oses for when we get out. Looks like we're work'n down stream."
 
Code: 
Five meters of sludge? You're kidding.

That was simply beyond disgusting.

A part of her wondered why it hadn't clogged up enough to start backwashing to all the pipes.

Then again, maybe it had.

Code: 
We'll have to work above it, then, unless anyone wants to see what the rest of this system looks like.
 
"Nope, sounds good to me. Lets get the hoses on this and start clearing this out. I already feel like I need a shower." Ozz said to everyone.

He then followed Cyril and took a look at what he saw. He's not one for conspiracy, but something about all of this definitely didn't add up. In fact, it stunk, figuratively and literally.

As he peered, he commented just as much to himself as to Cyril, "You can definitely hide something in there......"
 
Cyril shrugged.

"Dunno. If'n you got lock access, then we're surrounded by better places..." Contraband would be best stored in some convent cranny near an airlock, and inconvenient bodies need only be pushed gently toward deep space. But it was still odd that a blockage like this would go unnoticed for so long. There had to be at good few weeks accumulation here, or at least he hoped as much.

Looking around at the stagnating sewage past the blockage, he thought on what Kaz had said. Who knows what might have backed up under that. Hell, who know what was under that. Looking at it, his heart sank as he realized that checking it out likely entailed wading through liquid sewage. But still...

"Kaz has a point. We prolly should take a look at wha's up 'fore we get to it." He turned to Ozzy and half raised his hand in a rough 'scissors' shape. "Rochambeau for who goes goes down?"
 
Ozz couldn't help but laugh.

"Sounds good to me....loser takes a dive.", he added with a smile.

Thinking back to his childhood, he shook his hand thrice and threw out his hand flat representing a piece of paper.
 
For his side, Cyril threw rock. Looking down at Ozzy's flat hand, he sighed.

"Shi-ite" Apt in more ways then one.

Well, fair was fair. Girding his loins, he hopped over the side of the catwalk, not so much splashing as splorching into the liquid below. His slight shudder as he began to move forward was thankfully not conveyed by his armor. On a positive note, at least his suit was still air, and more importantly liquid tight.

Dipping his tail into the muck to feel for any features beneath the surface, he sent a radio message to the triumvirate listening in from the armory.

"Hoo, this is by no means pleasant, let me tell you. Could one 'o lovely ladies drop a schema'ic into me HUD? Be nice to know what I'm doin'."
 
Tweak watched the two men poke around the blockage...and, when they threw for who went in, they conveniently forgot about her. Not that she was very eager to go anyway. So this was what her engineering skills were good for?

She decided to look around the place more...specifically at the missing machinery. But she would need to stand on Flower for that, and the Junker hadn't shown any inclination toward serving as a stepladder. So she decided that tentacles would be better suited. How big was the pipe, anyway? she wondered, doing a mental measurement from the catwalk to the machinery mountings, then another measurement from the bare floor of the pipe below her to the machinery again.
 
In virtual space, Dream fumbled around a bit trying to find her way through the Nepleslian part of the station database.

Code: 
Sure. Gimme a moment, let me find the... ah, here it is.

A 3d wireframe rendering of the Cirrus' innards superimposed itself over Cyril's vision, allowing him to guess what was (or should be) beyond his field of view.

Code: 
So is that huge hole intentional, or is something really missing from there?
 
James went down.

Yes, he went down into the dark, smelly, slimy hellhole of a pit. It wasn't as bad as he thought, but it was still seriously bad. The marine simply stood off to the side as the other contemplated the trivial things. Like what caused the hole, and how the pipe got clogged.

To James, all the chattering was pointless, he wanted to get the job done, and he wanted it done now. His enhanced eyes probed through the dim light as his mind raced to find a better and quicker way to unclog the pipe. Then it hit him.

"Why don't we just burn it?" He said through his suit's comm system.

"Hell, one match coming in contact with all the methane and oil would burn the hole out in less that a second. Plus, with all the cold sewage coming in from the back, the fire would be put out pretty quickly. All we need is a way to light the shit without getting burned to a crisp."

It was simple, even if a little dangerous, but it would get everything done faster, and faster is better.
 
There was an audible pause to what James had said.

Code: 
For the record. I do not want you thinking or talking ever again.

Came the dryly sarcastic words of Serra through Flower. True she shouldn't be saying it, but what James just said was so brain numbingly STUPID, it rendered her silent for a good second.

Code: 
Now, I know some of you Nelpeslians went to school. Can one of you please explain to James what happens when a massive fireball engulfs an enclosed area with ready access oxygen?
 
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