RP: LSDF Akahar [Interlude] - Are you there?

I'Llus hadn't realized when Keib had entered the bridge, still setting up her console how she liked it and familiarizing herself with the layout. She felt the twitch of her wings but had put it off as little more then an aannoyance at her new station. Looking around as the others groaned and spoke about her, she blinked and was about to speak just as she realized Keib had asked her a question. Something about tea?

"Sure whatever you're having..." She said with a shrug as she watched the New Tur'listan in pain.

"What's her issue?" She asked, thumbing toward Miri as she began to head out toward the coordinates she had been given, getting a feel for the ship now.

"Only interested in tearing him apart. What's it to you anyway?" Veronica snorts at his prodding. "The ride better be more interesting than that. Something I'm sure you hear a lot." Her taunts were from a neverending source, apparently.

Lacking anything better to do, She wanders after him to the bridge. If nothing else to see how he ran the place. "Will admit it was fun to tear into those fucking wastes of skin. Think you'll have more action like that? I could get on board with that..." The purple headed Geshrin was not making many assurances that she would stick with the group. But then again, she was easy to placate, and thus easy to manipulate.

Supposedly, anyway.

Aiesu sat in her quarters. She'd been here for a while now - having failed to find any eyes voices or words worth chasing or even lurking for.

Aside her sat a collection of components and possessions she'd stolen throughout the ship from conduits panels and lockers. Methodically with fixed stare, she reached for each one, stripping panelling down - tossing it to clatter in a messy pile to one side and extracted components with forceps, tweezers and other tools - her arms like factory machinery at work as she went. Each of these extracted prizes sat nearly rowed on her left, each perfectly parallel and obsessively equidistant from one another like the tools of a surgeon.

Gradually, her hands came to pause as they had several times now. Aiesu could hear the server rack she'd assembled, the one thing that hadn't collapsed or been scattered during the attack humming away, the warmth of a thick python like cable against her feet. The elevation of the room's temperature from its work sent a trickle of sweat down her neck and into the collar of her shirt.

In that inward personal silence, her breath was frozen: locked. She could feel it growing louder.

Rationalisation purred through her synthetic mind to quell insecurity. The very design of her mind gave her a unique objectivity organics and most synthetics couldn't benefit from: To step outside your person and look in.

In her mind's eye, she could see the way she hunched over when she sat: perfectly still like a rabbit listening for even the faintest sounds on knife edge. Glued to the spot like a child paralysed with guilt after gathering sand at the beach after dark with the sea licking at her feet: Impulsively driven to finish her sand-castle even at the cost of worrying her parents who would be furious when she got home.

But it was something more. Something she absolutely did not could not speak or think about it.

It grew louder.

Aiesu's breath would quicken as adrenaline tickled through her guts and up through her back like icy fingers, constricting her veins, brain deciding to go into fight or flight. Her sympathetic nervous system buzzed wildly: carbon dioxide rapidly building in her blood like boiling acidic syrup as her breath became quicker and quicker. With CO2 the only marker of suffocation, she could feel it: her body was telling her she was dying. You are going to die. You are dying. Breathe! More air! More air! Faster, faster! More CO2. More adrenaline. More air! Faster and faster, cycle in cycle, endlessly getting faster and faster until her body couldn't keep up.

But then something kicked in, silently: some unspoken circuit of her brain brought her breathing back down, forcing her to exhale slowly. The burning, the sweat, the heat soon slowed -- and her heart-rate returned to normal. The buzzing was gone.

It took her a moment to realise what had just happened, that she'd just had a panic attack.
Only then did her features gain any semblance of expression.

And only then, like a machine, she - the mighty 'it' - resumed her work.

Merril went slack-jawed for one of the only times in her life at Keib's effective rape of the mind, letting a few choice expletives slip her breath as she watched. No sooner had he left than she looked to the medkit in her hand. Then back to the corpse.

"Th' fuck I even come down here for?" She mumbled, tilting over the slumped body. The wildcat shrugged after a quick examination - no matter how one looked, the guy was clearly deader than a fox in a hunt. She spent the next few minutes stuffing the corpse into an ill-fitting bodybag, then bringing it to the incinerator on-board, marking the bag with a "Save footage of burning for Cap'n."

She didn't hear what Vithr heard. She didn't know in what way this was personal to Keib. Merril did know, beyond all else, that watching something you hate catch on fire was supremely satisfying.

The Engineering Bay

One moment Kam'kebek was standing idly by waiting for orders, nothing seeming to be out of order with the situation after Bes'linn said she was going to find something for him to do. And in that next moment, 'Tilt' felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising on end, a sudden sense of lightheadedness - and he registered somewhere in the back of his mind that he suddenly really had to go to the bathroom. Bes'linn still managed to grab the soldier's attention as she cried out. By the time 'Tilt' had crossed the short distance between the two, she had already caused a mess of everything in front of her, and the mug didn't survive the fall as it met Kam's foot in mid-run and was sent flying for another wall by the time he was there.

"Are you okay?!" Instinctively, a hand went to feel for her pulse, and the other on her shoulder "What was that? What happened, ma'am?"

Interrogation Cell
Vithr looked at Merril and shook his head. "I wasn't expecting his life to be long after capture anyway." He watched as Merrill hauled the body off in a bag. After cleaning the room thoroughly, and having considerable trouble cleaning the ceiling, he left to head back towards the main medical bay, wiping his brow.

Bridge
"Psychofeedback," Keib responded to Il'lus. "It's when psychic energy or data from a source, say, a Psionic Probe for recording, exceeds or records something it can't handle and has to flush the input somehow without damaging the hardware." He turned his chair around towards Il'lus but found that it stuck at a certain point in the pivot, forcing the chair to face forwards. He twisted his body around and put his legs on the armrest to face her.

"Psychic recordings of intense psycho-neurological trauma, such as death or neural overload are a good way to cause it to happen. Even memories that are painful enough to recall can send waves through, reaching out and touching the psychosensitive." He looked to his right side and found Greg standing there with a tray and three steaming mugs of Lorath tea, and a serviette with a pair of capsules on it next to one of them, "thank you Greg," Keib grabbed his cup of tea while his erstwhile servant meandered towards Miri. She held her head and grabbed the steaming mug and the two capsules. She blew on the steaming hot tea, put the capsules in her mouth and chased them down with the beverage, breathing a sigh.

The androgynous helashio servant meandered towards Il'lus, looking up at her with the tray as the last person to serve. The unruly orange hair, happily wagging tail, wet nose and a tamed hoary glint in their eyes. The smile on their fangs was a genuine smile though, since amongst helashio and other animals showing teeth was a sign of aggression. Greg had learned that it isn't always that way amongst the civilised. Unless, of course, it was meant to be aggressive. Those sorts of subtleties were not lost on the servant.

"Forgive me if they're a little quiet, doesn't talk much." Keib explained offhandedly to Il'lus. "Loves their algebra, theoretical sciences, chess and scratches behind the ear though," he smiled, genuinely fond of his companion and student.

Engineering Bay
"I think... Keib just let himself go," Bes'linn replied as she touched her forehead and rubbed her temples. "It doesn't happen that often, promise." She looked down at the broken mug on the floor dejectedly. One of the repair drones that had been assimilated by the Freespacer skittered along, picked up the broken shards of mug and disposed of them thoughtfully and merrily.

"I think I saw what he thinks of Hakahn now, for betraying us," she sighed as her thoughts finally got into order after some breathing exercises. "A bit too personal, perhaps."

Bridge
"Sir, we're getting a transmission." the New Tur'lista bridge bunny said. Keib turned back around, put his feet on the floor and motioned towards the main screen.

"Jump signature detected. It's massive..." the Lmanel reported.

He directed the ship's cameras and sensors towards a focal point. Energy was building there, it was something about to come out of warp, something about to re-adhere to the laws of physics and start playing nice. A bright flash signalled the arrival of a strange, vaguely hexagonally shaped, pointed beast that escaped visual identification, hanging in the myst of its own FTL wake.

"I wonder what that's supposed to be?" Keib asked.

The comms sounded, overwhelmed at first by the background noise of the FTL jump, a crackling that slowly softened.

"This is the Lazarus 883018 Mynydoed class vessel White Giant, on station. How are you holding up, Akahar?"
The voice was warm and oddly familiar.

Keib's eyebrow raised before he realised that this was what he ordered. "Lazarus 883018, we're moving, but I'd say that's about it. Spot repairs here and there conducted by Engineering," he replied back. "but we're short on manpower." Bes'linn, for her brilliance was only constrained by her small team.

There was a long silence before the response came.

"Understood. Issuing repair teams, ETA to arrival one minute."

"Shall I notify Engineering to receive them and brief?"

"That's an affirmative. We'll need damage reports to make the best of how long we're going to be here. We've got a window of six hours before we're expected elsewhere, Akahar."

"Understood. Notifying now," he used his left hand to start tapping orders into the Akahar's consoles and intercoms. A simple message delivered, and sent. Aiesu might want to step outside. "To whom am I speaking to?"

The comms noise finally cleared up: the myst of post-FTL plasma swirling about the thing like a fog. It flowed in waves, gradually dissipating to reveal something that at a glance was more like a space station than a vessel: like some massive tape-worm or assembly of scaffolding and plating with a hollow rhombic center. It hung over the Akahar, almost completely covering the sun in the distance which shone through its turbine like body.

Only then did the visual side of the transmission kick in: the face of one Aiesu staring back at him. Or at least it seemed. Her features were different in some way. Older.Her hair was worn differently - a more regal and relaxed air: the tension and high strung nature of the Aiesu he was saddled with completely gone. Another incarnation of the same person? Keib's eyes visibly widened in surprise on her end of the communications.

A smaller figure stood by the back entrance to the bridge. Her body wanted her to pant, nerves screaming with how much he'd been running but her expression was dead flat as she stared up at the comms window, seeing those familiar eyes that refused to even acknowledge her presence.

"You took long enough" she said, sneering at the face on the display.

Keib turned around incredulously. He knew the nature of what Aiesu was, but didn't expect the world around to be so small. He obviously wasn't allowed to believe in mere coincidence. ROM-Structs.

"Apologies. We ran into pirates prior to ragdnor anchorage. The bulk of their attack didn't make it here though. You caught their reconnaissance run."

"Good to know..." Keib replied while turning back around, "Well then, glad to see you," he addressed them both.

From the thick long blades of the huge thing, tiny white lights flickered - followed by aqua trails of light - disembarking from the Mynydoed and moving toward the Akahar.

"A word with you, Keib" Aiesu sounded, eyeing the comms display incredulously. He nodded, looking between the two Aiesus.

Bare feet padded against the metal deck until she came in range, inching for him to come closer so she could borrow his ear, whispering following.

"Don't trust anything she says or does. Her directives are for the mission and the mission alone, not the welfare of you or your crew. I'd have your engineers double-check any changes they make to the ship, just to be sure."

He made no visible acknowledgement in front of the gaze of the older, stranger Aiesu, eyeing them both down from the viewscreen.

"I'll even take a look myself, if you want me to."

Her expression seemed serene, timeless, lost in whatever else she was thinking about (which judging from the scale of the vessel alone was quite a lot). The hull of the Akahar rumbled as something struck it with an audible clunk of the hangars.

"Repair crew on station."

"Six hours." Keib relayed clinically.

"Six hours. Then we're out."

"Good."

"We're uploading a catalog of hardware, equipment and supplies. You'd be surprised what we can do with six hours."

"I have a few ideas..."

"Relay them to the repair crew. Mynydoed out." The viewing screen flickered to static before returning to regularly scheduled viewing.

"Alright we're going to do this quickly and correctly. An oxymoron, but an achievable one with the right coordination and a constrained enough laundry list," he relayed to the Engineering bay over intercom. "Greet them, make them feel welcome and don't trust them further than you can throw them if you feel as though something's wrong."

Engineering Bay
"Acknowledged," Bes'linn replied firmly as she took inventory of the list of changes Keib was going to make to his beloved Akahar, examining the repair team that had just landed, and seeing her own men and women watching them carefully. There was a tension in the air as the two different crews appraised each other visually.

Those staring back at the Akahar were clad in white vac-suits, covering them from head to toe, each with a golden face-plate and a slightly different pigmentation pattern. Each were androgynous and frighteningly tall: with female builds but no secondary sexual characteristics of any kind. Finally, one would reach up around the base of its helmet - a quiet hiss as the face-plate broke down like a stack of cards from solitaire position and the rest of the helmet retracted as a hood revealing a slender pale face - but not one Keib would recognise over closed circuit camera. He couldn't place the species clearly: Some features Lorath, others Elysian like its ears or those very Yamataian looking eyes. There was something standoffish about that gaze.

The second-in command for the Engineering team exchanged an uneasy glance with Bes'linn, unable to discern what they were exactly. To him, it appeared to be less of a 'who' and more of a 'what'. The head engineer remained steely and said. "Let's get to work."

The only response was a single nod. Her hand rose, making a whirling shape with her index finger: a door on the side of their landing craft opening and some thick bulky diving-suit like body of armour disembarked from the smaller craft behind her - parts tucked under its arm in a ribbon that it pulled from the craft before launching itself back out into space. A number would follow it in teams of four, each painted with differently coloured trim.

The others like her soon took off their helmets, noting the way the stares of the deck crew had changed and that perhaps it might be the right thing to do. The face of each was a variant on the same base theme: hair worn differently or of differing age. They all innately just seemed to know what to do like pale worker ants.

"Alpha team," the lead Engineer addressed the row of four to her right, wearing accents and patches of red, like herself. "You are to integrate the Arc Beam Power Delivery System to the bow of the ship."
"Yes Ma'am!" the Alpha leader replied.

"Beta," addressing the orange side in the middle, "We're going to be changing our modems. There's a series of them to fit and wire. Hops to it!"

"Gamma," addressing yellow to the right. Once accounted for, there were only twelve men and women on the Akahar capable of carrying out repairs to the ship - not including Bes'linn, her second in command or the fresh meat. "Internal job, assist Lazarus team 01 with integrating anything from the catalogue. And Delta, keep an eye on the ARIA Core Integration."

The same that had taken its helmet off first soon stood before him, reaching aside for a pad. "The catalog" she said before getting another glance of the hangar space. "That menu's all you can eat. Go nuts. Considering what you're about to go through, I think this boat could stand to be modernised". She then turned about, making her way back toward the landing craft.

"We make do," was the simple affirmation that came back before the contents of the Catalogue that Keib had selected beforehand were streamed to the Lazarus engineering commander. "The captain made his picks based on ... something, he just does what's good for the ship and maybe for the mission."

"You'll have to do better than that," she announced, voice billowing deeply throughout he hangar-deck as she climbed up the side-hatch of the boarding craft, staring back at her before disappearing into it.

Tell that to Command, parrot. She scowled and nodded upwards at her. It took the lead engineer a moment to realise that she hadn't assigned two of her newest Engineers to a squad, and that they were awaiting orders. The Freespacer, and the Pariah. "Kam'bekek, Pratima, follow my lead." She presented the list to the two. The Second in command's eyes boggled.

Job List - LSDF Akahar
Current Jobs

• Omega (Command) - COMMANDING
• Alpha (Engineer Pri.) - Arc Beam Power Delivery System
• Beta (Engineer) - Lazarus Quantum Modem array
• Gamma (Engineer) - FE-Type APQSA ("Frozen Eye") Sensor System
• Delta (Info Tech) - ARIA Core Integration w. LT03
• Lazarus Team 01 (Engineer Pri.) - Structol Substrate Cabling systems
• Lazarus Team 02 (Engineer) - Installing Energy Management/Delimiters
• Lazarus Team 03 (Info Tech) - ARIA Core Integration
• Lazarus GENI (Dedicated Repair) - Taking all Repair Duties
• Lazarus GENI (Hull) - Hybridised quasicrystalline hull, Structol first-strike outer-laminate

Pending Jobs

• Delivery of 2 (Two) Argenton Class Heavy Transport Shuttles
• Delivery of 40 (Forty) LZ-U301 GENI "Frog" Worker frames
• Delivery of 120 (One Hundred and Twenty) LAZ-G3501 in Torpedo Launched configuration
• Delivery of 100 (One Hundred) Silva Anti-biological rifles for crew use
• Installation and Integration of Structol Conscience Computer
• Delivery of 4 (Four) prototype LZ-AMX-201 Winter IIs
• Delivery of 4(Four) Prototype LZ-M2s
• Delivery of 1 (One) LZ-AMT-101 Tank chassis mobile armour weapon
• Final Assessments, Catalogues and Checks
• Debrief of 883018 Mynydoed class vessel White Giant

"Goddess on a tricycle-" The Second in command stammered after appraising the list, getting a dirty look from Bes'linn. "He and that strange woman really went all out."

"For us, or for the mission, I wonder?" Bes'linn was thinking of something for the two new recruits to do. It'd be a waste of their skill to simply be involved in delivery. Since they weren't accounted for, they could assist any job as an assistant. "Pratima, perhaps assist the Gamma team with getting the cables laid. Kam'bekek, assist Alpha - Keib needs to ensure his extension works."

Kam'kebek offered a quick salute even if, as always, it was a rather lazy one, "Yes, ma'am."

With that the "Pariah" turned to follow after the suited folks he'd seen identified as "Alpha".

"And its kebek." He muttered under his breath when he felt he was out of earshot.

Following along with Alpha, Kam couldn't help but feel uneasy about the group. He had felt that way from the very first moment they had appeared and watching them moving around his new "home" wasn't making that any better. Something about them had him on edge. For the most part he kept himself looking busy as he followed along with them. He'd help them where appropriate: applying his technical knowledge and expertise, especially where they might have found trouble dealing with rather exclusively Lorath equipment and design. The entire time he kept a watch on them. He wasn't fond of shady business and it was hard to get more "shady" than this big group. As much as he may not have been a fan of the government, he would have preferred to not have contractors like these aboard the ship. It said something about the ship commander to trust this lot.

Mars walked onto the bridge a minute ago. She saw the captain, one of the bridge bunnies and I'lus who generally was the newest bridge bunny there sharing a cup of tea. Greg was there as usual, which quickly explained the appearance of the tea. Where there was Greg, there surely was tea. Or Coffee, when he knew Mars was around. If Gref was not ex-slave he would be a perfect man. Pampering his own like that.

"Hello Captain Keib," Mars said with a grin. It did not matter Keib was not captain official. He was captain for years in a manner. "I hear you went all out during the interrogation. So what info did you get? Should I start getting the groundpounders together?"

"Nah, He just dry humped the fat bastard and squeezed his head. The most boring show you've seen." Veronica snorted in displeasure. "Fine, fine I'll go watch them mess with your ship. I guess I did fuck it up a little. Eheheheh." Her remorseless chuckle at being partly responsible for some of the damage wasn't likely to earn her any favor, but she gladly took the chance to slack off watching the whatevers try to make love to the holes in the ship.

Not that she really understood what was being done to half of the repairs, not being any kind of engineer herself, so she wouldn't be able to tell if they were doing anything suspicious most of the time... unless they noticeably were trying to distract her or hide something from her.

BRIDGE
Keib groaned at Veronica's cheekiness. There was only so far his hospitality could stretch, and she did double back on her employers to further the mission. Such a notion made him wonder though. Did she double back on the crew that invaded the Akahar for herself, for the Mok'Ro, or for something else entirely? As the agents and beings of Lazarus started invading the ecosystem of his ship and were replacing parts and pieces of it little by little with their own environment. He gave Aiesu a nod and opened up the command console. A few keystrokes, some beginner knowledge and a some short command line arguments, and he was watching a realtime log of everything that was happening on his ship. New lights were flashing constantly, going at blurred speeds.

Together, he and Aiesu were examining it as they went. Nothing was unlogged. The process of making something to obfuscate logging was even more obvious than logging itself. A thought entered the back of his mind - he knew one other person who'd go to similar behaviour to ensure things would run smoothly. Hakahn. Keib had a good reason to monitor the Lazarus personnel invading his ship - he had no reason to spy on his own, he just had to trust that they'd do the right thing.

Then one of the few people he could truly trust came in to inquire about what to do next with the ground pounders. He looked up from the console with a smile and let Aiesu take full reigns for a moment. "Bastion, good to see you," he turned around in his seat and twisted to her with a smile. "Making full combat preparations would not be ideal. We'll be here for perhaps six hours."

He then thought of something a woman of her talent and oversight could do. "Keep an eye on the armoury, supervise the delivery of combat gear we've got coming in." He passed her a spare datapad. "We might have gotten Plasma rifles from the Matriarchy, but we've also been given..." Glancing down at the datapad showed the following:

Pending Jobs List said:

Pending Jobs List ( For Bastion )

• Delivery of 120 (One Hundred and Twenty) LAZ-G3501 in Torpedo Launched configuration
• Delivery of 100 (One Hundred) Silva Anti-biological rifles for crew use
• Delivery of 4 (Four) prototype LZ-AMX-201 Winter IIs
• Delivery of 4(Four) Prototype LZ-M2s
• Delivery of 1 (One) LZ-AMT-101 Tank chassis mobile armour weapon

Click to expand...

"...these things. I believe drones should be automating the delivery of the smaller items marked in blue right now."

AKAHAR CYBERSPACE
Pratima's instinctual and constant connection to the ship's cyberspace meant that she was observing things go on. In addition, she could see the digital manifestation of Aiesu, inspecting the ship herself, and something that appeared to be Keib, though he was looking at security feeds and monitoring hardware additions and removals. Perhaps the two were looking for malicious lines of code or overseeing the firmware installations of some of the new equipment by the Lazarus and Akahar personnel alike.

They could see the codes being run. They could see points of origin and whereabouts they were on the ship. A new node appeared within cyberspace suddenly, and it was on wire near a hull breach. It appeared to be a program running something. The balls were in Aiesu and Pratima's court. A physical location of the running program could not be ascertained and had to be triangulated.

A couple more of these errant programs were springing up like leaks in a bucket. All points of origin were yet to be determined, but something was running, and each leak seemed to be connecting to each other to create a web.

CARGO BAY
Small drones were automating the delivery process of the torpedos and rifles, scurrying about through the path of the Raptor Class Expedition Vessel that was now looking less and less like another production Raptor Class cruiser, and more like something shaped like itself, a sort of 'Akahar Class', the external retrofits and internal retrofits and software changes made it practically impossible for someone unwilling to read the self-written documentation to operate the ship.

The currently redundant cargo technicians could see the Lazarus made drones moving around, and one of the technicians could see a pallet with a load of torpedos upon it heading towards the torpedo loading areas. The torpedo loading process in the advent of a ship to ship attack was automated, but they simply had to be loaded into the ship's magazine by hand (or robot) prior to firing. "I wonder who controls them?" One of the technicians asked.

"Probably robots," the other said.

"Yeah, but who wrote the robot's code?" That shut up the other. She leaned forward from the wall they were leaning on and said: "Let's follow one, we have nothing better to do right now." So they did. The cargo drone was following the route to the torpedo rooms as they'd anticipated, and took an elevator down with it. On their floor, another drone wanted to come in to head back to the cargo bay to pick up a new palette of torpedos. They then followed the drone to the magazine.

Different drones were making a similar relaying journey to the Ship's armoury, which was also in the process of being repaired by GENI drones, who appeared to be polite enough to let their cargo bearing cousins offload the weapons where there was repaired, retrofitted or untouched space available.

AKAHAR REPAIR TEAM ALPHA
The Akahar's Alpha Team and their addition were suiting up into EVA suits and gathering the materials for the Arc Projector. "Keib wants us to put it on the front of the ship," the Alpha Team leader said as something delivered to them. It was the parts. "We'll EVA out with the parts and transport them to the site, and make the retrofit there. Alpha 02, follow me out to work from outside in. Alpha 03 and 04, you take the new guy and work from the inside out. We'll split the materials between us to work together,"

Alpha 01 appeared to appraise Kam'kebek. "First day on the job in fire, good luck," they then turned around with Alpha 02 and a floating disk with the materials strapped to it, mostly the arc projector's cannon and electrodes. Alpha 03 and 04 had a disc of their own with everything behind the cannon.

"Follow us Kam," Alpha 03 told Kam'kebek after he'd suited up. They were heading through the halls of the Akahar to the bow of the ship, and taking the materials with them.

The starport was busy, busier than Null had seen it before. She'd been working there on EVA, everyone there knew her as Voidwalker Seven One. She wasn't what one would call a skilled EVA specialist, but she was a warm body, and that was what they needed, they were desperate and she fit the bill for those exceptionally low standards.


She was on garbage duty today, simply go out and find any and all objects that had relative speed under 10kph and snag it away so that it wouldn't become a bullet when some random micro asteroid came zipping through and sent it correning into a solar array. A warning beeped in her ear, there was a bay opening up close to her, she ignored it, it was far enough away that she didn't pay it any mind to it, focusing on the spots lit up by her visor. She paused for a moment to watch the ship coming out of the bay, it was huge, the largest bay at this starport, she just hadn't realized how large before. The ship slowly lumbered out of, still though for its size the speed it was generating was impressive.


A poorly digitized voice chimed in her ear instructing her to continue working or her pay would be docked. She snatched a screw that had been floating near her head, and placed it into the pouch strapped to her hip.


She hit her booster to get to one last piece. She released her figure, but nothing changed, the booster still pushed her. She tried the trigger again but nothing the switch was stuck. She started to flail as she tried to get the booster to shut off. She was spinning now, different small boosters turned on and off seemingly at random.


A sharp pain shot through her and with a bang a crack appeared, cutting through her vision. A hissing sound came from just behind her ears and her eyes stung as sealant was sprayed into the suit to keep air from escaping. Her booster had finally stopped, now she was drifting away from what ever she had slammed into. It wasn't the station, it had to be a ship. The hairs on the back of her neck started to tingle.


Azure...


Azure...


Azure...


Everything was azure. Null couldn't make out anything other than azure, there was no sense that didn't answer as azure. Null wondered if this was Valhalla or Shangri-la.


******


As the ship came out of FTL, a small husk floated away from it, unmoving, too small to be a living creature. Slowly it floated, its outside having a byzantine shine to it from the top of the helmet to where it suddenly ended, just below the right shoulder cutting shear through to under her ribcage on the left side, her left arm somehow managing to be spared. Her exposed flesh and the skin of the suit burned together. Her face was frozen with an expression of confusion to what was going on.


There were three lights blinking on her left ear, calling out for a miracle, in a cold and ambivalent universe.

Merril decided against waiting. After all, why wait to burn a corpse and let it stink up the place, when you could burn it now and be done with it? She set a datapad to record before throwing the body onto the slab that fed material to the incinerator. She grinned to herself as she fed the ex-captain's corpse into the blazing furnace.

Minutes later, Soft Touch washed her hands in a logically convenient basin, then retrieved the pad.

She trod down the halls of the Akahar, passing through one of the few halls with a window in it. A window on a military vessel was a hard thing to find, but they existed to remind the crew of the empty, vastness of space.

Ironically, what Merril saw when she idly looked out the window was not emptiness. Not completely.

A body slapped against the window in some morbid facsimile of a comedic gag. This was no cartoon corpse, unfortunately for Merril, and she frowned.

"Ah, hell," she muttered, taking a snapshot with the datapad and sending it to Keib's communicator with the message,

Keib looked at what Merrill was looking at with the picture that was sent and shrugged - she definitely wasn't lying! "I'll get one of the Lazarus bots to bring it in. Can you identify the race from there? Is it Lorath?"

One of the Lazarus owned repair drones grabbed the floating corpse and turned it over a few times to inspect it before making some experimental beeps. Keib then singled out the robot and gave it a command - bring it to the nearest EVA and report when finished. It carried the corpse to an EVA area on one of the maintenance bays, just dropping it just outside the EVA hatch before closing it, turning around and heading back onto the hull to finish its repairs and retrofits.

A dot appeared on the medic's datapad.

Merril followed the notification dot to the airlock where the body rested, not bothering responding to Keib's message until she trucked it in. Flipping the transition switch, she waited for the small room to fill with air while she watched the body through a tiny porthole.

"Not infested with anything, obvs. . ." she mumbled, noting the cracked helm and lack of NMX critter burrowing. The door pneumatically opened with a delightful "PSHHHHHH." Soft Touch turned the corpse over and did a precursory pat down of the back. No wings.

Merril had hardly gotten a chance to put the pad away when it beeped with her superior's response.

"Good. No wait," She sighed, heaving the body up. Merril hauled the corpse over her shoulders like one would a calf. Minutes later, she reached the medbay. She stripped the body down and started to perform a precursory examination.

"Test," she said, flipping on the standard audio recording device. Her hands, gloved in latex, traced over the features of this one."Beginning examination. She's female. People shaped. Not Lorath or Elysian. . . or Yamataian either, I think. Space burn ain't right. Unusual hair colour, but not dyed. Probably not Nepleslian."

The L'manel tugged at the choker on the corpse, noting that it couldn't be removed. And something else. . .

"Accessory, collar, stuck to necklace. Either burned on or as a part. And. . ."

Her eyes travelled across the body, noting the hands.

"Crispy lichen on hands. Hm. Definitely not a Yamataian body. Small body, not heavy at all."

Merril's eyes trailed back to the head.

"Kind of pointy face, but not that pointy. Small ears. Some minor head trauma of some kind, definitely bruising. . ."

Vithr had been watching the Lazarus repair teams walk by as everything unfolded around him. He noted that their body structures didn't neatly line up with any of the races or xenobiology he'd studied. He concluded that they were perhaps heavily modified, or even automations. He turned back around to Merrill and inspected the corpse. "So how'd you find them again?" he asked as he looked at the husk on the slab, writing down Merrill's notes as she spoke aloud.

"You see that Nepleslian movie about spies with the high rise? The comedic one?" Merril asked, retrieving a flashlight. The ship's doctor shook his head and shrugged. "Ah, forget it. She banged against the ship's window. Seems unlikely, if ya ask me."

"I didn't get any pings on the radar for signs of life, save for that weirdo Lazarus ship that showed up," he inspected the skull and the eye sockets of the deceased and noted cybernetics. "Seems too frail to be Nepleslian. I think it's another one of those... those..." it was on the tip of his tongue and one of them had been annoying him all morning.

"One of those? . . . you mean like our Lazzy lady?" Merril asked, pointing the light into the eye of the cadaver.

"No, the one that put an arcade machine in Engineering, I think that Lazarus woman's too dour for that."

"Oh, Freespacer? Shit they don't teach you about in med school where I live."

"Mostly because we're still trying to figure them out after Yamataians killed, what, eighty percent of them," he scribbled some more notes. "It makes things considerably difficult."

"Wait, so if she's a robot. . . can't we tie a hover bike battery into her and call it a day?" The doctor shook his head.

"Not quite. Y'know how Nepleslians have cybernetics, and are mostly organic? Freespacers are cybernetics and organic at the same time."

Merril guffawed. "Aw, really? Well, I guess we oughta tell the Captain and maybe rope in one of our new robot-buddies. See what we can do down here."

Vithr turned around and started inspecting his now restocked and not-shot-up medical cabinet. "Medical nanomachines, nutrient supplement compound, waste disposal..." he started putting bottles down on the counter and started gathering pumps and syringes for the task ahead.

Meanwhile, the ship's medic was hard at work relaying the information to Keib via the datapad. She held off on calling Pratima, since it'd be better to get the captain's permission to do so first. Most of what the medic was gathering boiled down to was a solution of water, essential minerals, electrolytes, protein, and synthetic blood cycled in and out of the corpse to slowly and steadily rebuild things from the ground up.



"Cap'n gave the green light to light this golem up!" Merril declared, giving a nod to Vithr.

"Process should take a couple of hours," he said as he started inserting tubes into the husk's anatomy, "hopefully by then the Lazarus ship's gone. That thing gives me the creeps with it's non-standard smooth line geometry bullshit."

"Ah, it ain't that bad. Could be shaped like a giant Mishhu. Ugly bastards. All of 'em." The doctor nodded with a harrumph.

"Alright, pump on; throw the switch and see what sticks." the doctor relayed.

The wildcat nodded. With a dramatic slam of the switch, she said, "And the Lady said, let there be light!"

It wasn't nearly as dramatic as it could've been. The pumps started whirring to life quietly and depositing medical nanomachines, nutrients, proteins, acids, all the good things to the husk's body. Vithr examined the corpse slowly and set up a camera to watch it and to make time lapse footage, as well as watch the process again and again to prove it could be repeated.

"It'll look good on my chann- er, resume, yours too. Greg's good at editing video."

"I'd hope so. I don't wanna look stupid for nearly breaking that switch," she sighed, leaning against an wall populated with nothing more than a small cabinet and a boring motivational poster that's been there since the ship was put in service. A picture of a drop-bear hanging off of a ledge, with the words, 'Hang in there!' under in a comical font.

Somebody had a sick sense of humour, surely.

Vithr whipped out a comic book from Nepleslia and waited for time to go by, occasionally looking up from his reading to see how the husk was doing. It was starting to look more like a cadaver than a husk after an hour. An ideal start, but the ECG was still a flatline. "Snack?" the doctor asked as he pointed the medic to some microwave meals in another cabinet, with a microwave sitting atop it with the words 'NO SCIENCE ALLOWED IN THE MICROWAVE. FOOD ONLY. -V' in big red letters on the glass.

"Naw, I'm still full up on jerky from earlier."
Merril yawned, looking at her lack-of-watch on her wrist.

Vithr shrugged and prepared himself some spicy Yamataian instant noodles in a styrofoam bowl. He snapped the chopsticks in half and started eating the noodles dispassionately while observing the corpse still on the slab. He drank all of the soup in the bowl and proceeded to stab the bowl apart with his chopsticks and throw it in the rubbish bin.

And then, half an hour later there was a beep. "Merrill," he nudged the medic with a hushed voice.

"Hwat?" she mumbled, snapping awake from her half-slouched standing nap against the wall.

Beep.

"ECG activity."

"Well, ain't that a beauty of medical science."
Merril walked over to the body, feeling the temperature and pulse for herself. The eyes were partially regenerated, and unfit for eyesight for now.

Azure that was all that had gone through Null's mind since what had now seemed like time immemorial. Slowly her senses were saying things that no longer said the comforting azure, but an odd mix of pain and ecstasy, or maybe it was just pain that she was feeling, she tried to move shake her eyes open, but there was no response. Slowly after a new hell she had never once encountered in all her days or the days of the heroes of her peoples relived through the archives.

"Shit, we've got a live one!" Merril cackled, her laugh coming through heartily. She gave some reassuring pats to the naked freespacer, clearly noting that her patient was as blind as a bat.

"She's trying to wake up," Vithr observed as the ECG beeped more and more. Her brain activity was starting to peak. "Her body's not ready yet." The Lorath tongues were completely foreign to the freespacer.

Cold, the sense had died down from their fire, to the gentle sensation of the metal table pressed against her back. She was no longer thrashing about. Her deteriorated cornea were reconnecting, though little good it did for her, was her head continued to stare at the bright operating light and the two backlit figures standing to her left side. One of which was gently forcing the freespacer onto the table to make sure she didn't injure herself any further or disconnect from any of the medical devices.

The other had turned around to leave for a moment, and returned with a device, placing it on the side table and turning it on. It looked like a radio with a microphone sticking out of it and pointing to the patient's face.

"The hell is that?" Merril asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Translator," he replied hastily, grabbing the operating table lights to push them away from the patient's face and give the Freespacer a better look at her two benefactors. The doctor was a sullen faced, pale Lorath man with dark blue eyes. Some of his face was concealed by a mask he was wearing over his mouth and nose. The medic was a lot brighter in expression, but darker in skin tone. Yellow eyes matched a catlike grin.

Null could feel the acid in the pit of her stomach, she started to struggle against the forces pinning her on her back, she could see the fuzzy outlines of several figures around her, her eyes still not quite able to focus properly on them.

"Hey, sshhhhh! Shhh! Calm down. . ." Merril shushed, lowering her tone.

Noises hit Null's ears, she couldn't make out what was being said, each part of what sounded like one curse after another. She tried to struggle harder, but soon after her muscles were already screaming at her, she gave one last fit to get free but that to failed her. Now she just lay there, seemingly surrounded by what she could only assume were devils and demons. Part of her wondered if these were Yamataians, preparing to sacrifice her to what ever dark gods they worshipped.

The revivification process was starting to head towards the non-essential organs now that the five senses were mostly complete. Null's ears heard another momentary crackle, and she realised that her mouth was dry. The nutrient paste that she'd been provided with in this process, though filling wasn't necessarily tasty, and it was consumed rapidly by the revivification process.

The smell of recently boiled noodles was the first thing her nose discovered, followed by the smells of the various nanomachines in her body and that strange sterility, similar to that cloying lifelessness she encountered whenever she was near the grinder back on her home ship - wherever it was. Finally, the last thing she could discern was life.

The freespacer gave a hacking cough as she took her first breath of air, larynx stiff and requiring a stretch.

"Vithr, turn the translator on already. I wanna be able to have a regular conversation with this robot." He pointed to the device and it was already turned on.

Null continued to lie there her lungs feeling like they were full of glass, though with each new breath it slowly became easier for her to break. She could hear more voices, but what ever the words were they didn't seem to be directed to her.

"Well, look at her, say hello," Vithr gave Merrill a verbal nudge.

"Helloooo sleeping beauty!" Soft Touch cackled with a grin. Staring directly into Null's eyes. The doctor could be seen slapping his hand to his forehead gently and exhaling beneath the mask.

There was a voice, that Null could hear, and then a second one. The first was using harsh words that made no sense but had the sound of an organic creature behind it. The second she could understand, even if the dialect was strange to her, and had the sound of a laughably robotic voice. Her mind was still swimming, before she knew what she was asking the words were out of her mouth "Am I your sacrifice?"

Vithr's eyebrow rose as he heard the translator feed back Null's speech. He looked at Merrill incredulously.

Merril gave an equally incredulous look back to Vithir, a sort of 'I don't even know the fuck' sort of look.

"Uh, this ain't that kinda ship, robot. We just scraped you off of our hull and brought you back to life," she finally said, her expression turning quizzical. Vithr nodded with her. Though, the part about human sacrifice might've been up in the air, Pirate Captain and all but the patient didn't need to know.

Null turned her head away from where the voice had come to, she was now certain what type of ship it was. "Robot..." The words made it clear what they thought of her. "Than this is a slaver ship. And I was simply a lucky find for you."

"We're actually a salvage ship by trade," Vithr offered. "A long distance one. We tend to get a lot of visitors like you - though they're usually alive," he nodded solemnly as he inspected the Freespacer's body. It was now looking very healed, less like a sunken cadaver and more like a living being.

Null felt the hands that had been holding her down, retract from her shoulders. She slowly pulled herself up and looked around the room, not quite able to focus on the faces of the people there. She slowly became distinctly aware of the cool air and frigid table beneath her. Null pulled her legs up to her chest, less out shame of her body and more in a hope to rid herself of the goose bumps that were spreading over her body.

"Oh, uh. . . do we have a spare set of fatigues or something lying around? I don't think our new passenger'll like walking around in the buff." Vithr nodded and walked towards a cupboard. He returned a few moments later with some basic clothing, mostly for off-duty personnel, consisting of a loose t-shirt, a grey sweater, black sweat suit pants, socks, sandals, and a knit cap with the Akahar's emblem on it and a blank space where the rank pin should've gone.

He placed them neatly on the slabside table next to Null. "What's your name, ma'am?" he asked.

Null looked at the clothes that had been placed on the side table for her. She eyed them with suspicion, they were a salvage ship and she was a robot to them, a being that they had no problem with the idea of selling freely. She noted the emblem on the cap, and looked from person to person attempting to find it on their clothing,

Merril cocked her head, seeing the hostility in Null's eyes.
"What's wrong? You some kinda nudist? Because this ship's kinda cold. You don't wanna walk around naked h- wait, you got a name?"

Her eyes shot to look over the one who was talking. She spotted it, the person had the same emblem on their clothes as the cap, she was their slave, Null was certain of it. Slowly as if resigned to her fate she took the clothes off the slabside table and turned away from the majority of the people, though it now occurred that she was likely being recorded from all directions. She looked at the sweat pants and tried pulling them on, the waist was giant on her, she gave the draw string a tug to tighten it, but the string snapped near the back of her hip. She stood there looking at the two halves of the broken string as the pants sat crumpled around her feet.

She simply shook her head letting the broken draw string fall to the ground. She pulled the sweater over her head, it was large on her, not as bad as the pants, but the neck hole was large enough that she always had a shoulder exposed, and long enough on her that it could have been a dress, the bottom of it, going down to her knees.

Merrill's datapad started speaking. "How's the patient?" Keib's voice could be heard. His face was on the datapad. "Are they healthy?"

"Uh, they're healthy, but not all that talkative. You wanna talk to her face-to-face, Cap?" Merril replied, pulling out the pad.

"Sure thing."

Merril tilted the screen so Null could see it. "Captain, robot girl. Robot girl, Captain."

"They're called Freespacers, Merrill," he browbeat the medic. "Sorry about that, she's a bit blunt. Anyway - welcome back to the land of the living, my name is Keib," his voice was welcoming and fatherly to the new arrival, "I'm the Captain of the LSDF Akahar, which you're standing in right now. I trust Doctor Vithr and Corporal Merrill did their best to say hello." "I tried!"

Null turned to look at the screen that she had been introduced to, there was a man on the other side of it his skin looked like it could have been brushed steel. She did her best to look him in the eyes, but found her gaze lowering to his chest, where she found a shirt that had no place in this exchange she thought. No matter how much she fought it, her gaze kept falling. "My designation is Voi-" She stopped for a moment, if she was a slave now she'd rather be a slave with her name. "My designation is." She restarted what she was saying "Stargazer Null-Null 00-8909-8888." She did what she could to look in the video's eyes as she said it, but had to fight hard and it was strangely tiring for her at that moment.

"Well then, Stargazer, you'll probably get along with Pratima - another Freespacer, or, should I say, Freespacers. We found them around a Polysentience hub. You should meet one of them soon and get reconnected. Right now though," he cleared his throat, "we will provide you with the following, free of charge. A bed, three square meals, water, a local Polysentience connection and medical aid. Do you understand?"

Null didn't raise her head as she responded to him. "Of course, and once we get to port I will be sold to the highest bidder." This wasn't a question, she knew that was the fate that awaited her.

"What?" his face looked at Merrill and his eyebrows wrinkled at her. "Not at all. At the conclusion of the mission, you will be taken to the nearest Freespacer Embassy to get back into contact with friends or family. That is a promise."

Null looked up now for the first time not having to fight the downward drift of her gaze. The surprise at his words were clear on her face, she'd been resigned to being sold. This was a salvage ship, and they had salvaged her, that is how non-freespacers worked. She opened her mouth to say something but it just hung there, unable force the sounds out of it. After a moment she just closed it.

"For now though, you can stay on our ship and move about freely so long as you don't interrupt normal operations, or you can ply your skills with us and earn a paycheck like Pratima is to pass the time. Your choice, we could be out here for a while."

"I don't know where she got the slavery thing from. . ." Merril mumbled with a shrug, though her loose posture didn't tighten in the process.

Null's mind was still spinning, just moments ago, she had been resigned to living out the rest of her life as a slave. She opened her mouth to thank him, but all that she managed to do was mouth "thank you" in her language, never quite finding the voice, she nodded to him, to show him her thanks.

"No worries," he replied simply with a smile.

Null took the toque and the sandals from the table, and slipped them both on, while depositing the sweatpants on the operation table, not quite sure what to do with it. She bit her lip looking around the room and then to each of the people there, not quite sure where to go, not feeling like accidentally finding herself in an airlock, it really seemed to be just that kind of day.

"Oh, pants. There should be a good pair in the room we assign to you,"

"In any case. . . Welcome aboard, Null-null! Full name's Medic Merril 'Soft-Touch' Ghere." Merril greeted, slapping the Freespacer on the back. At least this one acted more. . . 'normal' than Pratima.

Null hopped forwards as she was slapped on the back, not wanting to fall over, she turned on her heel, and did her best to give Merril a smile, though it was weak. She turned her attention to the translator, and switching from what she had been speaking before switching to Nepleslian <Can I borrow that?> She blinked, switching over to Seraphim <I think it might be quite helpful, for the time being.> She gave a slightly stronger smile, wondering, hoping that one of them understood her words.

Merril blinked once. Blinked twice. Then gestured to herself and Vithyr. "Lor-ath." She said clearly, handing the device to Null.

Null couldn't help but let the disappointment show on her face as she took the translator from Merril.

SOME HOURS LATER...
"All systems nominal. All items on the list are delivered and installed as expected," the Bridge Bunnies reported semi-unanimously. Everything that was listed was either delivered or retrofitted and installed.

"Six hours is up, Mar'zhaz Keib," The Aiesu on the other side of the screen said as she rubbed her index and middle fingers together towards him. And just like that, the Lazarus personnel on the ship who had nothing further to do made an about face and started heading back towards the Hangar to regroup and headcheck. The drones on the hull, according to the cameras that Keib was using to monitor and the bridge bunnies were using to watch them scurry like spiders back towards the Hangar's gates and towards available EVA ports.

Keib brushed some lint off of his labcoat and looked at the Aiesu across the monitor frankly. "And I trust you did a wonderful job installing all sorts of foreign things into a ship foreign to its progenitors," he looked into his labcoat and pulled out some banknotes. They were crumpled and worn, and in an age where money was either digital or for Lorath, in the form of heavy stones and ores for barter, this was a comical oddity, "my cheque will be in the mail if I survive."

The Aiesu on the other side of the monitor stared at them both and put her hands on her chin with the back of her fingers, looking at Keib and Akahar's Aiesu as though they were two disobedient kindergartners. "We have a vested interest unlike the Matriarchy, to say the least." Keib dropped the banknotes to his side.

"You sound so ominous," he replied back to the Aiesu on the Mynydoed. "I guess with time to practice in front of a living mirror it becomes easy and easier still when you dislike the reflection. Food for thought!" The Aiesu on the Mynydoed scowled at him, and the one standing next to him gave him a dirty look too.

"Watch your tongue," the Aiesu on the Mynydoed said back before leaning back into her chair. "All of my crew is accounted for and are leaving now. Find anything left behind and it's yours for the taking." The screen then faded to static before fading out again to see the giant, eldritch-shaped vessel accept its shuttles and contingents and fly away, warping back out as suddenly as it came.

Of things left behind, there were plenty. "Man, she should find a good stone to sit on." Keib groaned as he was now content to start the scrub for bugs and rootkits a little more thoroughly. "Alright, Pratima, you there?" he tapped the console.

A Pratima unit responded promptly, dropping out of the airducts. This one was small, and spider-jointed. it seemed... new. "Yes," it stated. "We are present. Can we interest you in some coffee?" It offered Kieb a cup of the amphetamine laced coffee now being distributed by the coffee machine.

He politely turned the coffee down. "Get digital and commence a scan and scrub of all the new software and hardware BIOS installed with the new items." He looked up at the small, spider-jointed item on the ceiling, "Be careful though, who knows what countermeasures they have built in?"

The Pratima unit bobbed. "Accessing files now... We have already detected five phishing attempts in your inbox. Wait. This is the wrong system." Keib blinked for a moment, but couldn't fault the Freespacer's thoroughness. He suspected that something was wrong with one of those emails.

"Commencing deep scan (that's what she said). Would you like a numero-graphic display of our progress?" Keib nodded in reply. Greg came by his side and watched too with a palm-sized computer.

The Pratima unit began holographically projecting what looked like a tree, with gears, wires, and a tangle of webs wrapped around it. Small orange probes travelled along lines and connections, occasionally encountering small blue specks. These specks sometimes changed colour and disappeared, sometimes fled, and sometimes were rounded up.

"Naughty." The pratima unit commented, "It appears that this data load has a large load of polymorphic malware. Some of interest. One of them appears to be designed to infiltrate systems to shut them down by squirt, replacing images on all display screens with organic reproductive displays. Not of lorath programming, to go by the nature of the images. Unless Lorath have interest in 'hawt neko on gartagen action'. It's on the structol conscience central computer, so it would have wound up shifting our structural components into facsimiles of the thri-delta files."

"Someone has a sense of humour," Keib sighed as he motioned to continue.

"One is difficult to crosscheck, and shows interesting structural design for such a simple little piece. It has been quarantined to a data drive and removed. It was designed to slowly use more and more processor power to calculate the results of a very difficult system of equations. Another is a standard tracking bug, many have already been found in the ship's systems and disabled. Belive the origin of the tracker to be Lorath... But the final one is... strange. It's attached to the Arc Beam Power Delivery system. I can't locate it within the system. I can sense the extra traffic it is generating, but I cannot find the actual bug."

"Told you they weren't to be trusted," Aiesu commented dryly as she quietly admired the Freespacer's instinctual ability to interface with the foreign system so easily, like a bicycle rider simply mounting a new bike and going mountain biking immediately, without having to break it in first.

"Can you spoof it, mole feed it or quarantine it?" Keib asked.

"We will need you to send one of your more jumpy engineers to the Arc Cannon with a signal detection device. This requires a quick physical search to spoof it. Mole feeding we can do from here. we can also cut the system off from everything else, but that will make it hard to fire the attached weapon."

Keib remembered who was responsible for the installation of the Arc Beam Power Delivery system. It was one of his own teams with one of the newer members of the Akahar attached to it. "They must've overlooked it when they were installing it. I'll have someone do a quick check." He pressed a button on his console.

Coming back into the ship with the rest of the Alpha team, Kam was more than happy to see the inside of the ship once again. While he enjoyed the views a space walk across the hull gave him as their own small rewards for so much hard training in his profession, after spending the better part of his first few hours aboard a new command elbows-deep in circuitry and hardware he was even happier to be done with it. Already there was a niggling aspiration to get to his new rack, land face-first on the pillow, and not wake up again until his next duty cycle or he was summoned to a station for General Quarters once the day was through.

Unfortunately for the Pariah, he had only just tossed his helmet into the locker when the call came through to him.

"Kam'kebek, do you read me? I need you to do an eyeball search on the Arc Beam Power Delivery system. Let the..." he looked at the holographic roots on the floor snaking and spiralling through his ship. As far as foreign things went, this was certainly more pleasant than what Pratima was containing, "...let the tree guide you."

"Of course sir, I read you." Kam replied.

Looking to the ceiling with an expression he was thankfully sure the commander couldn't see meant that Kam's next words caught him off guard. The - tree? Where was a tree aboard the ship and what good would it do to help him navigate? Of course in his glancing around to see if maybe his commander wasn't under the influence of strange substances meant he was able to see the glowing line of sorts snaking across the floor near his feet. Twisting and gnarled-looking in places, with - leaves sprouting out from it.

Biting back a sigh in case it might be heard over communications, Kam continued to strip down out of his EVA, and while he was at it he made sure to grab his SDD - the aptly named "Signal Detection Device". If they wanted an eyeball search on the scene, then that likely meant that Pratima had likely detected something funny, but that it was set into the system in a way that made remote access inconvenient for operations or plainly impossible. Now he just had to go crawling around inside the ship's hull for a little bit - following a tree root.

"Okay, sir." He did his best to restrain any tones of annoyance, "Heading out now."

Though to be fair, he was more annoyed with those Lazarus-types than he was with his new commander. First day or no, as one of the ship's technicians this vessel was supposed to be his if only in spirit if not command, and anybody who messed with her would be quick to draw the Pariah's ire when he found out about it. He'd talk to Bes'linn in case this wasn't the only one once he was done. It was likely the commander had already told her.

He got the signal of acknowledgement back and started moving with Bes'linn towards the bow of the Akahar, tools on belt and ready to make a more thorough inspection. "This tree system is an odd way of visualising ship systems," Bes'linn commented dryly.

Some roots of the holigraphic tree were spreading into the halls, expanding to allow for more precise navigation. A part of the tree lit up paisley. "The problem is somewhere in this area."

Since the patch had been sealed after installation of the hardware and Kam didn't quite feel quite so sick of the world as to have a ten gigawatt lightning rod discharge into his heart, he had to go inside the hull in order to find what he was looking for. That was easy enough of course. His training and earlier time in the fleet meant that crawling around in those kinds of tight spaces made his job easier. Though he would sometimes wish it was more like the movies where you just popped open a panel and fiddled around with some wires.

After getting where he needed to be, in the cramped confines actually inside the hull, finding the rather out-of-place black box was something quickly done. It was also something Kam mentally kicked himself for not noticing during the initial installation. He also mentally kicked the rest of the team responsible for it.

The small male Pratima unit (not the spider one, which remained busy) followed them towards the bow. "A mekomp system is a life form. Much like a tree, it exists in the background maintaining our lives, and much like a tree it has many different components that perform distinct functions to make it work," the smaller Pratima unit said, giving Kieb an unexpected hug.

Whatever this was that was sending his SDD in to fits, Kam'kebek could tell it wasn't a standard part of the system. External, seemingly post-production attachment to the wiring of the board meant that it had been added before installation, likely before even being handed off to the team Kam was assigned to, but without the input of the original manufacturer. The whole thing oozed sabotage and Kam didn't like it one bit. It made his nose itch.

"Sir, this is Kam." He moved closer to examine it, "I found it. SDD and the - tree - helped me. Not that I needed the SDD once I knew about where to look. This thing is some seriously third-party work. But I don't know, those Lazarus people seemed iffy enough that this thing was probably latched on before it was even five minutes off the assembly line. Or maybe just out of their ship. I can pulse it if you want, or just yank it off. Only problem is anybody watching on the other end, assuming this is monitoring and not just system sabotage, is going to know I'm messing around with it."

"Pulse it, see what happens," Bes'linn directed.

"Roger, ma'am." Then to himself, "Just hope they aren't monitoring this. Whoever -they- are."

Kam gave a nod even though the gesture was pointless. With a quick and simple motion he grabbed the proper tool from his belt and sent an electrical pulse through the system.

"Ouch!" squeaked Pratima.

One of the roots of the tree pulsed red for a moment, all the way back to the bridge and at Keib's feet. Keib was looking down at the floor due to being hugged, and noticed the red line. "Why is it pointing at my chair?"

"Maybe because it likes you?" Pratima suggested.

"I think it's gathering metrics about how I sit." He stood up, "Disable it."

"Nooo, I think it's part of the secret surprise!" Pratima said. Keib raised an eyebrow. "The crew wanted to make you a more comfortable command chair, as a present.... I'm not supposed to tell you. I think they're gathering the metrics on how you sit."

"So can we disable it safely?"

"Yes...." Pratima sighed. "Do you really think it's dangerous for people to know how you sit?"

"You would be surprised," Keib sighed, having done one such thing himself.

"So I guess I shouldn't tell you about the camera bug in your shower?" Pratima

"Greg already found it." It happened together a while ago.

"I planted that one... I mean, everyone else was planting them, so I wanted in on the fun..." Pratima grinned.

Keib sighed. "I think you're missing the point. Kam'kebek, remove the bug. I don't know what Lazarus wants with an impression of my posterior but I doubt it's sanitary or safe."
Aiesu glanced at Keib and wondered what sort of possibilities were possible with an image or impression of a man's backside and buried her face in her palms as she realised what they were really looking for - probably.

"I have some great video of you! Would you like me to pipe it to your computer? It's helpful to see yourself from multiple angles." Pratima suggested. "I also have your toilet use metrics on file"

"But why." Keib asked, exasperated.

Meanwhile, Kam was eager to finish, and get out from the inner hull.

With the order from the commander, Kam plucked the device from the hardware, stored it in his belt, and began his journey back out from inside the hull of the ship. Not privy to the conversation on the bridge between the commander and Pratima, he could only assume that Lazarus wanted the metrics of just how it was the commander sat in his chair - for whatever reason. At such a low rank and being only a lowly tech who made sure the ship kept running and that the grunt-folk didn't break anything in bouts of feminine rage, his was not to ask why, but to simply do and hope the folks up top weren't giving stupid orders.

With a lazy toss, the small bug landed in front of Bes'linn at her work station while Kam made himself comfortable leaning against the wall. He pointed to it with one hand and regarded her with bright green eyes that carried a light of annoyance. Not at her, though. Just - a seeming state of existence she might over the coming days recognise as passive for him when it came to this sort of work.

"So, was that the only one Pratima couldn't handle or am I about to get familiar with inner workings of this old slag-heap?"

"It was the only one Pratima couldn't get rid of without jeopardising the rest of it. Her other plan involved cutting it off from the network and only activating it when needed ... despite it having a charging and acclimatisation time of about an hour - which takes place before you'd need it."

"That aside," Keib made a global announcement across the rest of the ship "good work today everyone, get some rest. You did good. We'll continue our search for the Mok'Ro while you rest. PS: Since things have calmed down I can now announce that we have a new addition to our ship! Their name is Null, they're a Freespacer, and they were dead." He let that hang in the air for a little. "Now they're not. Go us!"