What's new
Star Army

Star ArmyⓇ is a landmark of forum roleplaying. Opened in 2002, Star Army is like an internet clubhouse for people who love roleplaying, art, and worldbuilding. Anyone 18 or older may join for free. New members are welcome! Use the "Register" button below.

Note: This is a play-by-post RPG site. If you're looking for the tabletop miniatures wargame "5150: Star Army" instead, see Two Hour Wargames.

  • If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy
  • 📅 October and November 2024 are YE 46.8 in the RP.

RP: Terraforming Ake P2 - O, Death!

Joacim

Sapphire wandered through the nearly empty animal holding ship. The scents reminded her of the farm and home the family had lost to greedy developers and competition. Yet in a perverse way, she was glad to be free from the overbearing grandma dictating her life, as she walked through sunlight and shadows.

She didn't want to know what happened in the Medical between Franklin, The Expedition's Doctor and prisoner. She was dreading having to go through all of the vids and auditory recordings. Maybe she should program something up to handle that type of surveillance and storage.

She could hear the one of the Expedition's Jeeps come to life. It seamed that two more were leaving the safety of the encampment to explore this planet. She paused before one of the stalls that held a few of the remaining cows. She watched them lazily chew their cud for a few minutes. Knowing she would return to Medical when called upon.

Maybe later she would go swimming in lake later on, if work permitted.
 
Having not received any special advice from Daziel, Akemi simply chose to leisurely fly about in a wide zigzag pattern in the direction they had last seen the pirates taking. As she moved she stayed low to the ground until she came upon significant elevations and ascended them for better views of what lay ahead and sat above. She also tried to conceal herself to a degree by traveling along the contours of any rock formations. Akemi hoped she'd see something cool and kept her eyes peeled and her suits sensors active. Any wildlife, abandoned equipment, mineral deposits, amusing landscape shapes or lone pirates would be sufficiently stimulating to qualify as such. With none of these things immediately present upon departing Akemi decided to imagine what she'd do to Sapphire the next time they were being gross organics in private.
 
Elijah

Alice let Franklin go with just a smirk on her face and a nod. She had little interest in him romantically, but she realised, she started to see the man as a friend. It was probably same with him, he just had to do his flirty remarks and Alice was okay with that. Should it be troublesome, she could always honestly tell him. The man was pretty reasonable after.

"Well," she replied to Daziel. "I should be fine on my lonesome. Try to get some liquids into that prisoner and maybe toss a blanket over him as well. I will tie Mr. Fred to a bed and wait till her wake up. Meanwhile I will do my best to do something resembling an autopsy on our dead man. I am not a coroner though, so do not expect much. I should at least be able to find out what killed him. I am not sure Sapphire would be comfortable here, while I am cutting into a dead body though. She is still young."
 
Outside

Mako kicked in her power armor's anti grav systems and zipped after Akemi, grumbling about being left behind and such.

"Hey what's the big idea goin off without me, huh?" she complained over the comm. "You're not going to deal with any pirate scum out there by yourself" she added as she caught up with the bigger neko and fell into formation, already sweeping the brownie landscape with her Sylph's sensors, looking for anything of interest.
 
Compound

Sapphire lazily moved back out into the sunlight, feeling the dry heat slam onto her. She squinted against the glare as her eyes got used to the brightness. Sighing as she remembered her sunglasses and put them on. She looked around the compound, hating the drabness of area and the sunlight gleaming of the various bared metal of the ships.

She knew she should be getting back to the infirmary to resume overseeing the recording equipment. But she didn't want to go after seeing the results of Franklin's interrogation of one of the prisoners. Life was weird or was the place beginning to effect her mind.

Looking out between the ships out over the never ending flatness. in the distance through the shimmer of heat rising, a mirage of a lake appeared with dusting rising from the passage of the group's vehicle. Or was it Akemi and Mako passage.
 
"Well hey," Akemi nonchalantly responded, "you're in a pretty speedy and nimble armor compared to what I've got. I figured you'd be fine. So anyway, whaddya want to talk about while we're out here? Anything 's good with me."
 
"Fast and zippy, maybe" Mako replied. "Gee, what to talk about." she paused, thinking as she piloted her SYLPH and scanned the terrain.

"Hey, you were in the army too, what's your favorite gun? I like big guns thst make lots of boom" the little neko said with a big grin on her lips.
 
Time Flies Under an Oppressive Sun

In less than an hour, Franklin and Seiji had reached the first cave they were ment to explore, conveniently located under the shade of a rocky overhang. The sun blared down the whole ride over, but once they set in at their work zone things were almost tolerable as far as the dead, dry heat was concerned. In masks and harnesses, they began to set up a tripod that would digitally survey the the cave structure based on readings from their handheld scanners being shot back to it.

Wiping the sweat of the endeavor from his brow, Franklin looked out over the combined flats and mountain ranges and voiced his feelings about what was to come.

"Well, it's raght hot out here, I reckon, but I figure it'll be nice 'n cool in that there cave, Chickenshit." He remarked, grabbing a spare mask and a few extra filters before rigging up his harness and making for the cave.

Northern Skies

Below Akemi and Mako, something other than a wrecked pirate ship emerged in the landscape below. It was a small group of cargo containers, surrounded in the desert by what seemed to be a make-shift fence. They were arrayed in a livable manner, easy access to and from one another, and visibly sealed against the atmosphere. Somebody was using this as a hovel of sorts, and had been here for some time.

Camp

The autopsy results were in. A nanomachine virus had lain quietly inside the dead patient's blood stream. They'd remained deactivated during the previous scans, avoiding detection by simply being inactive microscopic peices of metal. If anything, before their activation, they'd only appeared to make the normal zinc levels in any Nepleslian's blood stream sligthly higher than average, but by so narrow a mark as to seem mere anamoly instead of sleeping killer. Greg was still asleep, and his 'companion' was rocking on his own cot mumbling and quietly crying to himself out of fear.

While Alice Mason finished her dissection of the dead prisoner, Daziel had dragged Sapphire to the Sister Sara's engineering section. He explained to her that the internal communications arrays on both ships had fallen silent, all the while prying off maintenance panels.
"So if you could, my dear," He asked her kindly, "Tell me if there's anything in your expertise to indicate why such a malfunction would befall us. I've taken the liberty of scanning our surroundings with the ship's sensors, but there's nothing nearby-- simply nothing at all."

Above, Niel awoke first. He ran a hand idly across Yori's shoulder next to him, then his eyes widened as he remembered all too well the night they'd shared and this nap. Internally, he cursed himself for coming onto such a young girl while externally he pulled her close once more. The nap had done wonders for his battered ribs, letting the nanogel work overtime at closing up his wounds. He was still nowhere near as cured as a Yamataian would've been or any kind of close to what a Neko could do-- but the throbbing fire in his chest had been reduced to a tolerable dull ache when there wasn't much pressure. And so, he smiled down at Yori and gave her a light nudge to awaken her.

"Well, I feel eight-thousand percent refreshed." He informed her in a soft morning tone, "Though I can't say I feel any urge whatsoever to get out of this bed. You just look so beautiful when you're relaxed and not worrying about anything."
 
Sister Sarah

Sapphire removed her sunglasses for a better look. As she removed Circuit Boards Plates to look at them closer. Finding nothing wrong with them from visual inspections. Even after a shake, a few mores of dust fell to the deck. "I'd have to test to each boards. Could it be from low level EMP waves? Or that Volumetric Program being manipulated and causing the problem. I done my best in setting up security protocols as demanded by Origin CompSec when an intrusive program like that appears in system." Trying to sound adultish, by quoting Origin security protocol. "Rest of the close communication systems are working fine."

She looked worried as she was going to miss her allotted time to contact Ake station and talk with her parents and brothers.

She moved from panel to panel, looking each over. "This will take a while. Only other possibility, solar flare would be interfering with the frequency." Sounding a bit unsure of herself. "Try boosting the signal from all three ship at once?" Glancing over at Deziel with her expressive blue eyes sparkling like sapphires.. Her skin darkening from the time she spent outdoors.
 
Elijah

Alice frowned as she finished sewing up the dead body. She took of her gloves and toss it into biological garbage can nearby. She then procedeed to put the dead body into cold storage. At least she found what killed him and now she should be able to find it again. In theory. If the bots are only in the blood, than she had a way to take care of it. She would have to touch their blood reserves though and Alice was not sure, she wanted to do that for the pirate.

Alice washed her hands and picked up her communicator, dialing Daziel.

"Boss this is Mason." Alice reported. "I have finished the autopsy. It was nanomachines, they were dormant so it seemed like just metal in blood. Nothing out of ordinary at first glance. I might be able to pick it up from now on. Anyway we still got one pirate alive, but either one of our techies de-activates the machines somehow, or I might try o filter his blood, which might be impossible or I will have to touch our blood reserves and change his blood all together."
 
"Favourite gun? I dunno, I guess whatever's actually in my hand when the fighting starts. I had fun helping take out a Lorath mecha and a bunch of power armor with an Iroma HLS Bazooka once. That was pretty cool. The more powerful the better. I love having a high ammo capacity too. NSPs are swell. I wish I had gotten to use the Type 28 SMG." Spotting the little camp, Akemi decided to look all around it carefully with her suit's sensors before actually approaching it. Maybe there were other things of interest nearby. "Feel free to be the one to knock."
 
Sister Sara

Yori groaned and slowly awoke at being nudged. She felt much better but was a long way from being in perfect condition. It took a moment for her mind to catch up with her and recall the past several hours but she at least remembered why Niel was in her bed, so she didn't panic. She sat up after gathering her thoughts and scratched her head. "We can't just idle in bed though, not while everyone else is working." Though she spoke of such a thing she did not sound the least bit enthused.
 
As Franklin made the statement about the cave being nice and cool, Seiji could only sigh heavily. He had to know this was coming, but a small part of him had held out the hope that Franklin would have done the smart thing and simply seen to the task that was assigned to them. He decided to plead a bit for sanity that wasn’t going to come; in fact he was so sure of it he was already reaching for extra filters for himself.

“We have to visit all the caves today before the end of the day; that could take a lot of time. I am not sure we–” He interrupted himself as his glasses fell off, jostled by reaching for a filter that had fallen. He slid them back on. “–have the time to go exploring such places!”

Thankfully, Seiji had really no issues with small enclosed areas, or this would have been a nightmare. Two things he did have issues with, though, were spending more time out in this horrible heat then absolutely necessary, and getting caught alone by all the potential murderers, pirates and ruffians that were now hiding behind every corner in his mind. Unfortunately, the murderers took priority in this case, and being around the old Nepleslian with a proper fighting spirit and firearms training was a lot safer then minding the vehicle in this heat.

“I mean, the scanners alone should be enough to tell us what we need to know.” Yet more helpless pleading as Seiji swiftly caught upon his spindly legs.
 
Camp!

Two sharp cracks, snapped out of the air moments apart, followed by two dust poofs appearing before Mako and Akemi. Over a very short ranged comm channel came a gruff, smoke deepened voice. "What the fuck are you doing on my land..." The voice paused long enough for it to relocate to another good spot in the camp. "I'll give you to the count to 10 to give me a reason not to put a round through your pretty heads... or you leave my CLAIMS."

"1"
"2"
"3"
...
 
"What the fuck are you doin' on mah giant chocolate brownie?!" Akemi's voice boomed back full of righteous zeal as she continued to circle the compound. "I'm with the Star Army of Yamatai and I already killed a bunch of pirates. How do I know yer not one too? Huh? I'll give you till the count of 1 starting at 11, because you called my head pretty even though you can't see it behind my helmet."
"11"
"7"
"9"
"2"
"5"
...
 
Last edited:
Camp

"I have my papers..." The voice said over the channel to the folks trespassing on his land. He wasn't going to plan any games, unless they pop up with some official reason for being there, or offer trade, he was going to run them off.
"4"
"5"
"6"
 
"And I have a big gun and a soon to be bigger pirate kill count. I'm here protecting Origin. How 'bout you produce your papers?"
"47"
"86"
"99"
"Don't make me shove this mini-Neko where the sun don't shine."
 
"Hey!" Mako grumbled as she slowed her approach and scanned the compound. "I'm not for shoving anywhere!" the little neko replied and frowned in her tiny pod buried deep inside her trusty SYLPH. "Mister, if this is your land we are not here to bother you or take it from you, rather we are looking for the pirates who attacked our outpost. If they are around here they are just as much a danger to you as they have been to us" she explained, now talking with a plenty calm tone.

"We just need to search the area and make sure it is clear of pirates, then we will move on. No need for any violence" she said, "From either side" she added with a gflance towards Akemi.
 
Camp WataFuqa

Roland shifted a little under his faded duster and thought for a moment. His count paused.

"Ok you two come down... But... You can use the rebreather's in the container near the gate... and leave your PA's there...." He stood letting them see him from his hiding spot on one of the other cargo containers, and waved then pointed with his left arm. His right still held onto his sniper rifle.

"Oh and if you two think you are being cleaver the whole area by the gate is mined..." He waved again before slipping down and dissapearing into one of his containers.

He was digging through his desk looking for his claim for the 300 acres and his rights to be here. But higher on his mind was the fact he knew his time on this dust ball was coming to n end if the big companies were rolling in.
 
"Pffff. I'm not taking my suit off," Akemi said as she came to a stop in front of the camp entrance, crossing her arms. "I'm the one who's suspicious now. I should have Mako here give you a cavity search to make sure you aren't carrying any contraband."
 
RPG-D RPGfix
Back
Top