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

When Takeyu heard Sienna's remark, it made the hair on the back of his neck bristle a bit. "I don't joke when on the job," had his helmet not been on, the civilian would notice quite the glare coming from him, one that he hadn't used on anyone - not even a certain Elysian..

"You are right Natsumi, but a quick check won't hurt anything," two drones popped out of his suits hangers to help speed up the search for a useful terminal, hoping his rookie mistake didn't destroy everything. "Were you able to get anything off the corpse?" he asked, glancing over at Natsumi.

"Well, whatever she didn't grab will hopefully still be left," Ramiro grunted as he motioned towards the body that he currently had over one shoulder. "And about that station," he grunted once more as he motioned towards a large hunk of deformed metal over the other shoulder.

Sienna pursed her lips and shook her head, blinking very slowly. If there had been a point to this little expedition, it was now thoroughly lost on her. This ship was hopelessly buried upside-down in the ground, and they had just set fire to what may be the only accessible part of the ship that may have housed anything of use to them, whether it was information, parts, or weaponry. She didn't see anything that four people, power armor or no, could do with this wreck without the aid of huge earth-moving machines and dredges.

Maybe it was just because wading through the bio-mud was nothing short of unnerving to her, or maybe it was because they were surrounded by corpses. Whatever the reason, she didn't want to spend one minute more in this derelict than she absolutely had to.

But it seemed she didn't have a choice in the matter - the others seemed like they weren't in any hurry to leave, and she couldn't very well leave on her own. And judging by Takeyu's exasperated tone, he wasn't in any mood to argue. She wondered if he was a bit sore over the fact that it was his bumbling that had caused the inferno in the first place, if Nekos even had a concept of pride. All the same, Sienna simply cut her mike off and sighed inside her helmet, electing not to push the issue any further.

The dull sense of dread wormed its way back into her mind as she looked around the dead ship, rotting away from the inside like carrion.

Bridge

Through the thick smoke in the blackened bridge, Takeyu was able to finally able to find another terminal but the screen was partially melted.

Meanwhile, the weather report came back from the Eucharis: The storm had finished passing through the area and they had a little period of calm before the next one hit.

Takeyu had to blink a few times. "Ramiro... you are something else," he winked at the soldier although Ramiro wouldn't notice it, the sound of his voice would more than tell the soldier that he was quite impressed.

"Now, let's see if we can jury-rig a screen to this terminal and get it working.." he said and went to work checking the terminal over for 'obvious' places to connect power into and to download information from.

Ramiro sighed as he saw Takeyu start to get to work.

"Boss, maybe they're right. We've done what we can. Even if this terminal doesn't work, there's nothing left in the ship to help us now. Let's cart what we have back to the ship, analyze it there where we'll have better equipment, and call it a day.

Takeyu had to agree, with all honesty, he wanted to stay here and try to get things to work; but they really only had a small window of oppertunity to get out of the area before the next storm arrived.

With a heavy sigh, the Taii looked over at Ramiro and - after thinking for a moment - said. "Ok gents, lets pack things up. Grab what you can for analyze back at the ship. Natsumi, call the shuttle down," Takeyu moved back over to the bridge's entryway and looked over at Ramiro. "Need me to carry one of them?" he asked with a smile.

Ramiro let loose a sigh as he heard that they were headed back. He was tired of this hell-hole. Looking at Takeyu, Ramiro looked at the bodies on one shoulder, then the station on the other, and then back at Takeyu.

"Isn't that what they gave you enlisted for?"

"I got a little bit" Natsumi replied. "Name and rank of their Captain, also they were part of an exploration division, definitely pre-Yamataian. I wanna say they were Uesureyan, but my knowledge of stuff from that era isn't the best" she gave her report.

Natsumi was glad when Takeyu finally agreed it was time to go. She happily signaled the orbiting shuttle and issues orders for it to descend to their location. She knew Sienna would be happy to get out of here too. She had kept an eye on her and could see how uncomfortable she was to continue to be in the wreck. Natsumi did not like it one bit either.

She frowned at Ramiro's comment, especially since she was the only enlisted woman on the away team. "I think you two big strong men have that handled just fine" she interjected as she began the crawl out through the thick oozing sludge, trying to clear a path for Sienna as she went along. "And the shuttle will be here in a couple of minutes"

Sienna's eyebrows shot up in surprise at Takeyu's surprise changing of his tune. Not that she was the least bit disappointed; it simply caught her slightly off guard for him to be so stubbornly resolute one second and then suddenly exhibit signs of being reasonable the next.

She was further intrigued when she spotted Ramiro carrying both a dead body and the entire control console that had broken free from the ceiling in the fire over each shoulder. She shuddered faintly at the idea of carrying a corpse like a sack of laundry, but was both amused and mildly impressed at the same time.

Now that the team seemed to have come to agree that out was the best way to go, and also because Ramiro's overt display of equally laughable and applaudable machismo, she felt a bit more inspired to be cooperative. So much so, in fact, that she glanced back toward the burnt-out shell of a bridge to see if anything else was half-sunken in the biomuck that was worth salvaging.

As she surmised before, there wasn't anything that wasn't bolted down or otherwise inaccessible that she could see, though sticking partially out of the sludge she spotted the charred remains of a few cables and what looked like the corner of a circuit board. It probably had been torn loose from the console that Ramiro was carrying like a lumberjack when it broke free, and Ramiro may have negligently dumped it out of the open back end when he hefted it over his shoulder.

Sienna flipped her mike back on. "Hang on a sec," she said quickly, and waded over to her find. Reaching down, she grabbed what she could see above the surface of the slop and started to pull it out. The biomuck put up a bit of a fight, trying to suck the objects back inside itself, resisting her pulls much more than she'd expected. Soon enough she figured out why -- the cables and circuit board were part of a bigger jumbled mass of singed and blackened electronics. She held the mess in front of her face, tilting her head as she examined it briefly, then looked up, shining her headlamp inside the innards of the console Ramiro had. She was certain they were part of the same system. The parts were in bad shape, most of their components burned beyond all hope of repair, but she could see several spots that looked relatively unharmed by the fire and by the unsympathetic passage of time. She had no way of knowing whether or not they could piece the ruined computer together enough to get anything useful out of it, or if the terminal was nothing more than just that, relying on an offsite computer to give it any semblance of function. Either way, she felt that if nothing else her gesture would be one step in making the others think she could be a team player too.

Tucking the jumble of cords and circuits under her arm, she pushed through the sludge to Natsumi. "After you," she motioned with her free hand nonchalantly.

Ramiro nodded at Takeyu's orders. He was glad that his old friend was still able to take his counsel. A sign of a good leader. Waiting for the new girl as she waded through the muck, he was slightly impressed as she returned with some circuity from the system on his shoulder. He gave a short grunt of thanks before he start moving towards the exit of the ship.

"Let's get out of this hell-hole."

Derelict Bridge

Just as they were getting ready to go, the control station Takeyu had been messing with blinked on and a video message appeared. "...Commander Alessandra Bekele of the starship Discovery. An away team is are currently investigating the alien artifact of the fourth planet. In the meantime, we plan to swing by the second planet, which is host to some sort of teal life. With luck, it will be habitable. Coordinates of the artifact are displayed at the bottom of the screen. We have been experiencing some technical issues and as soon as we are done, we will need to return home early for repairs. I will send another update tomorrow."

With that, the screen flickered out.

The sudden bright light behind her from a video monitor in the darkness made Sienna stop, perplexed. After exchanging a glance with Natsumi ahead of her, she gradually turned about to look for the source. How could anything back on the bridge still be working? Takeyu had been messing with one of the more-intact ones; had he gotten a delayed reaction from one?

She listened to the recorded message, recognizing the name of the woman from the corpse Natsumi had cut down. As the screen flicked off, she clucked her tongue once. She couldn't help being at least a little impressed with how robust the equipment up there must be in order to survive a fire like that and still function at all.

"Huh," she mused, looking at the others. "Guess nobody caught those coordinates she was talking about?"

Takeyu grinned, this was exactly what he'd been hoping for, something else to sink their teeth into. He was glad that his systems recorded the message, he replayed it a few times in his helmets speakers to ensure that he got everything.

"An artifact eh...." the Taii rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment.

"Away team to Eucharis, we found something of interest while trying to get into the ships logs. This ships commander, a person by the name of Alessandra Bekele, was investigating an artifact of unknown type on the fourth planet. Presumably of this system, he also reports of life on the second planet as well." Takeyu waited a few heart beats, looking over at the corpse that Ramiro was carrying. Was it possible this artifact still existed? Or could it have long since been recovered by another group? He didn't know the answers naturally.

Ramiro stopped suddenly as he saw the light from the panel illuminate the pathway in front of him. Turning his head curiously he listened to the message play through. At the mention of teal creatures Ramiro glanced down at the bio-sludge uneasily. A chill ran up his spine as his mind start worrying itself, basic paranoia. Glancing back down the passageway ahead of them, he waited for the message to end before speaking up.

"I've got a bad feeling about this." He glanced around the hallway a few times before he spoke again. "We should go. Now."

Sienna gave Ramiro a grave and slightly alarmed look. "Pretty sure those were my thoughts all along," she agreed, holding her gaze on him. The fact that the one who'd been playing the part of the cool, collected soldier now looked a little panicked unnerved her. "Don't tell me y'all are just now realizing this crap we're slopping through was -- or is -- alive?"

Shaking herself free of her stupor, she turned back around and started trudging back toward the ladder to the next deck, motioning with her head for Natsumi to lead the way. "Weather report said we got twenty minutes, and that was at least five minutes ago. Whatever you wanna get from that console, you better do it quick."

"Not going to take a chance, no matter how much I want to...." he said though only to Natsumi and Ramiro; he wasn't exactly impressed with Siennas attitude. "Let's get ourselves back to the shuttle," he said to the rest.

He was worried, if this sludge 'was' what the message was referreing to then they could very well be trespassing and angering the natives. If it wasn't, then it wouldn't matter as they had very little time anyway and the amount of time it would take for them to get back to the shuttle would've meant that they'd have no time to try to retrieve the message; at least, not today anyway. "We can come back another day," he remarked; he would ask the Shosho if it were possible during a time when the Eucharis was going through a resupply cycle.

With that, and a sligthly unnerved sigh, he began to make his way out. "Natsumi, find us an exit.. hmmm," he looked down at the sludge and dipped his hand into it. "Also, get a sample please..."

"I've got this." Ramiro said bluntly as he activated his rifle and immediately switch it to sword mode. Glancing around, he took what he knew of starships in general and picked a direction that seemed most likely to lead out. Walking over, he began cutting a hole into the hull.

"Well that explains what they were doing out here" Natsumi commented after the video stopped. It was a bit haunting to see the recording of the long dead woman. Seeing what she had been compared to the morbid rotted corpse she was now.

Natsumi also was not to pleased about the 'teal life'. Was it the sludge they were wading through now?

"Exit, yeah don't have to tell me twice" she replied, then wrinkled her nose at the added order to take a sample. "I think there will be plenty to collect off our armor...." she trailed off as she redeployed her drones back the way they had come. Going out the way they came in would most likely be the easiest rout to take. At least they knew what to expect there and that there were no structural failures.

The familiar spark of a cutting torch made Sienna look back over her shoulder again, just as the blinding flash of superheated gas and melting metal lit the room. She frowned when she saw Ramiro cutting the hull.

She glanced back at Natsumi with lowered eyebrows, then back at Ramiro. "You sure that's a good idea?" she asked calmly. "I mean, we're upside down and buried here. We don't know where this muck came from, and we don't know just how robust this wreck is. We got time to go back the way we came, if y'all want my opinion."