RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 19.2B] Clues (HX-12 II Crashed Ship)

One side was easier to move on than the other due to the tilt of the upside-down ship. As Natsumi cleared the way, she and Sienna could see bunk rooms and living facilities on both sides. Matresses sat against one all and Stryofoam cups floated in the muck in what appeared to be a kitchen area. Their feet were constantly bumping into food cans and other unknown and unseen objects. When the sludge was almost to neck level, Natsumi and Sienna encountered the door to the ship's bridge at the lower end of the upside-down compartment. By now, both were almost completely covered in dark teal goop.

"Ayahh so gross!" Natsumi grumbled and tried not to think about the sludge and dead bodies she was wading through. She called her drones back to stick close when Takeyu gave the order too. She hated loosing the advanced recon, but it would be a pain to have to go and retrieve one if it got stuck.

Natsumi approached the door labeled 'To Bridge' and paused for a moment. "Okay, here goes" she said and pushed the door open.

Sienna could hardly believe she was willingly wading through this mess. The vile, thick liquid was now lapping at the chin on her helmet, and even though she couldn't feel it through the polymer, the involuntarily imagined sensation of the alien slime was making her skin feel like it was literally crawling over her body. With every step her feet brushed unseen objects of varying weight and softness strewn about the "floor" below the muck, and every time she made contact with them she had to resist her instinct to recoil in revulsion. She didn't know what any of the obstacles would be; she didn't want to know what they could possibly be. She failed to fight back a violent shudder before she took a deep breath, staying close behind Natsumi. If the Neko weren't suited up in power armor that boosted her height and size a bit, she likely would have been in past her eyeballs in the goop.

She brushed off a wispy strand of the transluscent fibers that Natsumi had brushed away that was now fluttering about in the thick air. Looking on either side of her, she saw the empty bunk rooms, and the haunting feeling increased again. What had happened here? What happened to the crew? And yet again, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

They reached the hatch on the far wall of the galley, submerged almost completely below the surface of the muck. With the way the ship was leaning, Sienna wasn't at all sure that what lay beyond the door wasn't flooded entirely. The AMES suit she wore was doing little to make her feel protected, even if it was actually doing so.

Sienna clenched her fists, cracking her knuckles in nervous anticipation as Natsumi opened the hatch.

Natsumi held her breath as she pushed open the bridge door, intentionally opening it slowly, just in case there was a reason to keep the door between her and whatever was beyond.

Truthfully, Natsumi half expected a giant squid or some other terrifying monster to lash its tentacles out of the new opening and drag her inside to be eaten or a torrent of slime to come gushing out into the open space. As she pushed, she directed her drones to squeeze through into the bridge as soon as the door was open enough for one of them to fit.

As the door groaned loudly in protest as Natsumi pushed it open, Sienna stayed perfectly still, watching the portal intently. She peered over the Neko's shoulders to watch as the drones slipped through the crack, tightly clutching the handle of the knife strapped to her thigh.

"Although old and derelict, once the door opens, move in cautiously..." ordered the Taii as he pushed himself up against a wall so as to clear his rifle of the sludge, he aimed at the door; ready to fire in case there were any hostiles inside.

Takeyu steadied himself, or rather, as best he could given the sludge wasn't making it easy to keep his footing.

As the door opened, the sludge flowed into it, sucking the team into the bridge. The bridge was halfway quickly filled with the muck when it was done but the floor and control stations remain clear. When they they were able to wipe their faceplates off they could see the bridge crew in spacesuits still dangling in their upside-down seats by their harnesses, with skulls looking out of their helmets.

It was quickly apparent what was about to happen the moment Natsumi shoved the door open and the muck began to flow in. With the sickening slurping and sucking sound of the sludge, Sienna reached out and grabbed onto the hatch's edge and held on for dear life, fighting against the gushing torrent of heavy ooze. The force of it was unreal, however, as in less than a second her strong grip on the doorframe failed her once Takeyu was violently shoved into her back, knocking her through and on into the bridge.

She went down face first in the sludge, and all she could see was the disgusting brownish teal streaks and specks swirling about in her field of vision. Even though her suit and faceplate kept it off of her, it still disgusted her to no end. The powerful flow continued to bowl them into the next room, tumbling them about under the rushing slime, and there wasn't a thing she was able to do to stop it. She felt like a rag doll tossed about in a stormy sea.

After a moment, the sludge seemed to equalize itself over the threshold, and finally she was able to find the floor with her hands and feet. Were she not encased in her own personal environment, she would have come up coughing. Actually, she wasn't even certain her head was above the surface; her faceplate was entirely covered in a film of ooze.

Struggling against the gravity and the thick muck, she brought herself to her feet and worked to wipe her helmet clear enough to see through.

Once she had, she wished she hadn't.

The bridge was an inverted graveyard. Ghoulish skulls peered slackly out of cracked and aged helmets attached to bodies suspended from their places still strapped into their chairs. She groaned slightly as yet again she felt the contents of her stomach turn, threatening to come back up. Aside from her revulsion, she was starting to get a bit angry with herself. The last thing she wanted was to come off looking like a fragile little girly girl, but she simply wasn't used to seeing such things.

Swallowing hard, she turned her eyes firmly back toward the waist-deep muck they were standing in.

"Yikes!" Natsumi squeaked in disgust as she was sucked into the Bridge with the torrent of slime and muck. She attempted to hold her footing, but to no avail. She was thrown in, face first into the new compartment and slid almost to the forward bulkhead before the rush slowed to a stop.

"Oh jeeze I'm gonna barf if this keeps up..." she gasped and struggled to get to her feet, almost loosing her footing more than once as she stood back up and wiped the faceplate of her MINDY clean, well clean as she could.

She immediately wished she had not, the imagery from her drones and what she could see with her own eyes was disturbing. The bridge crew, still strapped in their seats. They must have all been killed when attempting to save their ship.

She felt a sudden pang of sadness deep in her stomach and her mind played out possible future scenarios. The Eucharis falling out of the sky, her Ramiro and the Shosho fighting to keep them from burning up and crashing. Natsumi shook her head, trying to rid herself of all the morbid thoughts running rampant in her mind.

"Everyone on this ship died...they all died trying to save it, but they didn't make it..." she said, turning her eyes away from the long dead crew. "Can we get out of here? This ship is a tomb" she looked at the others. She didn't want to be in here anymore. " I feel like I'm stepping on the graves of the dead by being in this place."

Takeyu had hoped that being above the sludge would've helped. However his feet on the other weren't and when the door opened, the speed of the sludge caused him to slip out of his position and right into the bridge.

He laid down in the muck, which covered his power armor; as he did so he pondered whether or not he wanted to put this in his logs. With a heavy sigh, he sat up and wiped the sludge from his helmet and cleared his visor.

"Well, that about answers one question..." he remarked when he saw the bodies of the bridgecrew still in their restraints. "While doubtful," he said while standing up. "See if any of these consoles will work..."

While Sienna didn't exactly share Natsumi's respect for the integrity of this upside-down mausoleum, she did wholeheartedly agree with her sentiments of getting as far away from the alien muck and cadaver chandeliers as possible. Takeyu, on the other hand, true to the soldier he was, didn't seem so resolute on bailing out before finding something useful, to say nothing of the storm raging outside.

She said nothing, afraid that any wrong breath would cause her to vomit inside her helmet. It was all she could do to keep her queasiness in check as she wiped more of the sludgy film from her faceplate, slinging it off of her hands as it came off in goopy gobs. Swallowing hard again, she sloshed through the swamp to the console nearest her, fixing her eyes on its dead instruments as she tried as hard as she could to ignore the decaying body hanging nearby.

Reaching above her head, she started to poke around, trying to find some indication as to its function, and whether or not she'd be able to restore power to one or more of the ship's systems. Whatever she had to do in order to satisfy the Nekos' curiosity so she could get out of this disgusting cesspool.

Derelict Ship

Although Sienna had managed to stand and smear most the gunk off her faceplate, having through the residue at a bright spot in the middle of near-dark conditions did not make it easy to see the features or text of the control panel hanging above her head a little bit above the dead body that was swaying just in front of it, bouncing its gloves dead hands on her arms as if it wanted to continue running the ship again. She reached the control panel with substantial effort but its surface seemed as dead as the corpse. It probably hadn't had power running through it in quite some time.

Sienna fought to keep her focus, violently brushing the corpse's hands off of her each time they bumped into her helmet and shoulders as more of a reflex than a concerted effort to keep them off of her. It didn't take long for it to become apparent she was getting nowhere, and she dropped her arms with a sigh of frustration as she quickly moved away from the swaying body. She worked to wipe some more of the goop from her faceplate, but with her gloves covered in it just as much of the sticky, slimy substance, it didn't do much good. Her vision was about as clear as it was going to get.

She swung her headlamp around the dead room, searching for anything she might recognize as a potential power source. She knew it was a shot in the dark; it would be a long shot to expect the bridge of a starship to house its own power source in the same room. Still, she held on to the faint possibility there might be a backup power supply nearby.

Natsumi frowned. The bridge systems were just as lifeless as the ones in engineering were. She messed with a few switches and buttons on a console and nothing worked. She glanced over to see Sienna trying another station with the same results.

"I wonder if we could patch in external power from one of our MINDY's to supply external power?" Natsumi asked, turning her attention to Takeyu. He was the engineer and would know better than she would.

While she waited for and answer she started looking for access panels to pop open and give her access to the ships wiring. The thought of powering the systems would be moot if the wiring was all ruined. She found and panel on the back of one of the crew stations. She pulled open the panel and peered inside the access area to see what was left inside.

"It's possible," Takeyu said to Natsumi and walked up, although rather slowly due to the sludge, up to one of the terminals that were 'above' them, he glanced upward at them and looked around.

He ran a hand across one of the terminals. "If there isn't some kind of port to hook up a power cable, which there may 'not' be given how old this ship appears, then we'd have to jury-rig one ourselves which shouldn't be to hard so long as we can find the main power cables that run into the terminals themselves. Splice the cables together and then hope that we don't blow any of the terminals apart."

As he was thinking aloud, not really realizing it due to being 'in the zone' right now. He looked over at the bodies that hung in their restraints. "Someone cut one of them down and check who the crew of this ship was," he turned his attention back to the sludge. For some reason, he was expecting some tentacle monster to come springing out of the sludge and grabbing onto one of them.. I need to stop watching horror films...

Sienna frowned a little bit as she paused her wading through the sludge, turning to look at him without shining her headlamp straight at Takeyu's face. "Gimme two minutes and I can find the power cables simple enough," she replied, "but if y'all're looking for any flight recordings or nav data, I'd bet they ain't stored on the consoles themselves." She rubbed the back of her neck, still trying not to pay attention to the swinging corpses hanging overhead. "These are just terminals. I'm guessin' here, but I'd say they're tied to another database someplace else. And unless we can pump juice to it too, I wouldn't expect to see anything but a pretty light show," she added with a shrug, then turned her headlamp back to surveying the "ceiling," mostly where there were no bodies, in search of any sign of a power source or backup port. "'Course, they coulda already thought of that when they built this bucket, and have an emergency port someplace, like you said."

She stiffened a little when Takeyu muttered something about cutting the bodies down. She certainly wasn't going to be the one to volunteer for that.

Derelict Bridge

The bridge stations had maintenance access panels down by their feet. The trouble was reaching them. If the ship was upright, they'd be close to the floor, but it its present state the panels were difficult to reach for someone that couldn't float, especially with the waist-deep fungal necro-sludge sucking them down. More interestingly, there was a panel labeled "Computer Access" in the floor near the aft of the bridge.

Natsumi decided it was best to leave trying to get power going to the more technically minded people in the room. While she did not overly like the task left to her, she had to do it.

Taking a deep breath and biting her lip, she looked up at the dead crew hanging from their chairs. She decided to go for the one in the obvious command chair. That one was more out of the way from where Takeyu and Sienna were now digging around and might have some sort of access card or something on them that they could use.

Using her gravity manipulation, Natsumi lifted herself out of the sludge and floated over to the dead crew member. "Sorry about this" she whispered and carefully worked on unbuckling his restraints with one hand while she held the corpse in place with her other hand. Once he was free she made sure he did not fall and carefully cradled the body in her arms and looked for somewhere to set the body down where they would not sink into the sludge so she could search them.

Moving the spot of light from her headlamp over the arrays of consoles and cable maintenance slots, Sienna finally spotted the panel labelled "computer access."

"Hey Takeyu, over here," she said, motioning the Taii over to her, but keeping her headlamp illuminating the panel. "Think we've got what you're lookin' for."

The only problem was that it was too high to reach. Sienna was tall enough that the consoles weren't too difficult for her to tinker with since they were elevated from the floor above them, but the panel, being close to the floor itself, was just out of her reach.

"That should work," Takeyu remarked when he saw what Sienna had motioned toward and walked over to it. "Now to just hope that there is no fail-safe in it..." the Taii spoke mostly to himself as he rummaged in his back for a connector.

He braced himself on another terminal and looked the access port over for a moment. "Looks clean," he said. Before he started going to work he gave a look around the bridge, before drawing a cable from his pack and connecting it into the access port.

Now to see if this works, he began to push power into the systems, while keeping his eyes on this suits load systems to ensure that he didn't overdo it. He had to make several correction though when he saw a power spike, although he wasn't sure if it was due to the terminals or something else.