RP: SNV Gam'trosha [Prologue] The Gathering, and Launch?

Shar read the panel and frowned. She hated this suit since it kept her tail inside, which was pretty uncomfortable. She pressurised her suit and moved towards the panel to prepare was closing the hallway and depressurised it so they can access the cargo-hold. She prayed to goddess that no one was inside and if someone was there, that they survived.

"Okay Tit," she said. "Make sure your suit is pressurised, I am balancing pressures with cargo hold on your mark. We will then enter. Ready?" She asked him and on his go, she did what she explained.

Outside cargo-bay

When Shar interacted with the panel, a reddish shimmering barrier appeared at the intersection, sealing them off from the rest of the corridor. Then, once the two sealed their ABS's, the corridor began to depressurize as oxygen was bumped out.

The panel soon displayed the words: Depressurization Complete. This was followed by the other containment field that was over the door suddenly disappearing, permitting them access to the cargohold and what lay behind, but what they could see right now were the occasional flashing of red and green lights off the cargoholds interior along with some tools and pieces of the hull floating in the zero-gravity.

Engineering

The location of the sound was close, and Keri could hear it clearer now that the cable had been disconnected and was no longer giving off that electrical crackling.

With the crackling over, the only thing that could be heard in the shaft was the slightly windy noise which was coming from above Keri, the culprit being an active plasma torch, which was being held in place by several data-cables that had been torn out from the nearby wall.

There were other things in the air, such as melted tape and even a roll of said tape which was gently knocking against another pipe. On the bottom of the shaft was some more abhesive tape, and something that was slightly red was attached to it, moving back and forth due to the zero gravity and the ships motion.

Bridge

Def's system lit with a response from another ship, but it wasn't the kind of clear response he'd be expecting.

Bridge

Def looked at her station as she continued to make minor changes to their position and keeping their firing accurate. She glanced at the screen when the system showed a possible message. The sensors showed that the stress fractures were now widening on their own.

"Ship Mistress, we got a a possible response from one of the ships, but there is nothing intelligible.

Weapon fire has fractured the object. Time for phase two. I'm no long confident that they are receiving our messages. Hang on to your seat." She said as she moved the ship closer to the object.

The asteroid loomed on the screen and Def monitored her IDT and kept adjusting the scale. She was bringing the ship as close as possible. She switched off the proximity warnings and moved as close as possible to the fissure.

She the spun the Gam"trosha on her beam and engaged the anti-gravity system at full power. With the ship positioned the field from the anti-grav had only the asteroid to push against. Def'leor monitored the engine status carefully. She only wanted to nudge the two halves enough that the other ships would see that the first phase was done. When the sensors showed that the two sections have moved a small distance she accelerated away and onto a vector to get out of its path.

"Its in the hands of the ships with missiles now ma'am." She called out.

Outside the Cargo Bay

Double checking that his suit was sealed, Tite'Yanus looked up at Shar. "Go," he said with a slight nod.

Erm'olai's tail was moving all over the place now as he looked at the issues plaguing the systems. Local faults in the Communication System were an issue he would have to leave the mainframe to deal with, but the turret control system could be dealt with from here. However, as he began to diagnose the virus, the diagnosis of the shield decided to play havoc with the mainframe as well.

Growling, the Software Engineer skipped with the diagnosis of the virus and went straight to quarantine measures. He could analyze it at a safer time, but that virus had to be contained so he could work out the corruption issue.

At least, he hoped isolating the virus would help. "Bridge, this is the Mainframe. Virus in the Turret Control software. I am attempting to isolate and diagnose. I couldn't diagnose the shield generator from here due to an error, corrupted messages have started after the attempt. Communication Systems have a hardware fault located locally, which requires someone to head over there to diagnose and repair the issue," the Laibe reported via his communicator.

Gam'trosha Engineering Bay - Maintenance Conduit

His twitching silver-furred ears now were able to trace the source of the ambient 'wind' noise, now that the distraction caused by the live power cable was over and done with. The kits eyes looked up to a hollow above himself inside the maintenance conduit -- where an active plasma torch was held loosely in place by by some damaged and loosely tied power cables.

"Oh srisa, you have got to be kidding me!?" Keri'cruen exclaimed as he set wide eyes upon the source of the offending noise. The young kits eyes watered and were suddenly pained by looking directly at the plasma blade directly, causing him to quickly turn away.

Muttering under his breath, Keri'cruen slid one of his hands into a pocket of his uniform's jacket and withdrew his light vision goggles. Removing his glasses and sliding the goggles into place, he adjusted the filters so that he could look at the plasma cutter directly without his eyes hurting -- though due to his natural short-sightedness his vision was somewhat burred and indistinct without the aid of his glasses.

Though usually slow to get upset, the sight of the maintenance conduits interior had left Keri'cruen appalled and increasingly angry. "If I ever find out who did this... I think i'll tie them up with the data cables they've been yanking out of the ship and see how they like being on the receiving end of a plasma torch."

Keri'cruen considered the offending tool for several long seconds -- getting around the active beam would be awkward with his blurred vision so he had to be delicately careful not to physically injure himself. Whilst laying on his back, he slowly raised his hands up and reached around to grip the handle of the plasma torch... seeking out the off switch. For what seemed like an eternity-- though probably taking no more than a few seconds -- Keri sought out the power button and gently disentangled the torch from the damaged data cables that held it aloft. Eventually, he deactivated the device and set it down beside himself after releasing a sharp sigh of relief.

Before trying to crawl his way back to the engineering bay, Keri'cruen took the time to more carefully look around to see what other damage out-of-place items he would find.

Shar looked in the cargo-hold and did not like what she saw one bit. She activated torch on her helmet and let stream of light cut through the darkness. Scarred daur could see that cargo-hold has lost its gravity.

"Shipmistress," she opened communication line to bridge. "We are at the cargo-hold. No gravity and almost no power. I can't see anyone. Entering now." With that she waved at Tite, activated magnetism in her boots and entered cargo-hold.

Tite'Yanus did the same as Shar'ica. He used on of his paws to scrape at his headlamp until he finally found the button, followed by the headlamp flipping on and illuminating the room in front of him. He then activated the magnetic feature on the boots of his suit and followed Shar into the cargo bay.

"You see anything?"

As Shar started moving in she was looking around. So far she only saw bunch of boxes and equipment drifting around. Luckily no bodies so far. "I don't see anything Tit, but be careful. Don't let anything hit you and look for survivors. Be ready for anything though." She said and pressed on.

Maintenance Corridor

With the flame off, the corridor descended into darkness for a few brief moments before the shafts auto-lights came on to illuminate the area. There wasn't much more to see, with the exception of the debris that was already floating around, and an out of place black and white wire that was flamsily floating in the air.

One part of it ran to the pipe beneath below not two feet away, where the appeareance of something faintly red could be seen, while the other end ran had been snaked around a large pipe, there was a very faint, flashing yellow light reflecting off the pipe and the wall.

Bridge

Sa'kira scowled at the message, a virus in their system? That made her suspicious even more. "Our system is isolated from the outside, there shouldn't have been any means of getting a virus into the system even through the communications array due to filters," she floated backwards.

She then contacted engineering, to request that they send someone to repair the communications array. All she got back from Quin was that they'll get to it when they are able, stating that Keri was trying to trace an electrical short out and that he should be done shortly.

"Remind me when this over," she started saying to Def. "To have several back up systems put into place..." she sighed and shook her head. "We have no one to repair the communications system right now, so we have to wait until Engineering is capable of sending someone, but a virus in our system...." she started rubbing her chin, something was nagging at her as she looked at the wall.

The ship rumbled slightly, another explosion outside, only this one much closer than the previous. On the display, they watched as missiles flared and streaked toward the asteriod.

Cargo-hold

There was debris everywhere, limiting the visual range of Shar and Tite'Yanus. Crates full of tools and other kinds of supplies were everywhere, but one piece of debris was notable and that was one of the cargoholds two elevators which helped ferry cargo from the bottom of the bay to the top when the ship was in gravity.

This elevator floated aimlessly around, but looked as if someone had taken a plasma knife and literally carved a crescent into it. However, as the elevator floated by, something ominous quickly came into view.

A six foot tear in the ships cargohold, running from the top of the bay, down toward the bottom floor, and almost completely around to the other side of the bay in a horizontal fashion. The metal was curled outward toward space, but one area of the tear was larger than the rest and actually resembled a hole that was eight feet in diameter.

Occasionally, laser fire flew past this hole, lighting up the bay in a brillance of reds and greens.

Mainframe

As the mainframe worked to isolate the virus, several of the memory banks active lights flashed several times, before returning to normal, indicating the mainframe was running hard.

Near the door, something faint could be hard, a rustling of movement and a 'thud', the door panels which had a green access light, suddenly changed to red with the words 'lock engaged'

"They really need to make one of these suits with some artillery attached," Tite mumbled as he wandered over towards the tear in the cargo bay. As he walked he made sure to check around all of the corners, just to make sure there wasn't some terrorist hiding behind the debris.

"Shar, you wanna call this one up?"

Def considered what the commander had said, but she saw a more sinister situation. She turned towards the Ship Mistress and said.

"Ma'am there are two other possibilities. The virus was loaded into the system with delay in activation programmed. By whomever sabotaged the mainframe and our other systems. Or the virus was just recently uploaded into the system, which means the saboteur is still on board. It also means we can not trust the computer at this point until we are sure of its integrity."

With that she switched her controls to manual override. "I am switching helm controls to manual." She gave the ship another brief burst of acceleration but restrained herself since they had people operating in non-gravity conditions on the shiop.

Gam'trosha Engineering Bay - Maintenance Conduit

After removing his light vision goggles and settling his silver-framed glasses back where they belonged, the young kit gently nudged aside a piece of broken debris that looked to be a fragment from one of the conduits interior panels. Once the piece of debris was out of the way, Keri's gaze caught notice of a floating strip of black and white colored wire that he didn't recognize as being of the standardized variety commonly utilized in Neshaten naval's vessels.

Disturbed by the sight of this out-of-place object, not to mention all the other oddities he'd encountered so far today, the young engineer felt compelled to follow the wire and determine its source and purpose. Picking one of the two possible directions he could take, Keri'cruen pulled himself down the maintenance conduit and found himself approaching a faint, flashing yellow light which grew steadily in intensity as the kit came closer.

As the kit grew closer to the source of the light, Keri felt the knot in his stomach grow increasingly tight -- fearing the possibilities of what else could possible be amiss.

Shar looked at and could not believe what she saw. She checked Cargo-hold she was sure nothing was there, except that box with sealed containers. But could they do such a damage? She looked at the hole and wondered what caused it. Explosion or whatever it was happened within the cargo-hold. Shaped charge maybe? She quickly looked around if box with sealed containers was flying anywhere.

When Tite asked her she looked his way and gave him a nod. She actived her communicator and called bridge. "Ship-mistress you should see this. Streaming video to you know." She said and activated camera on her helmet.

Engineering, Maintenance Corridor

The wire that Keri followed lead to a small tubular object measuring only a foot long, the flashing light was coming from the 'top' of this object, while the wire was inserted haphazardly into the bottom.

Much of the object was stratched and any descriptions as to what it was had been scrapped off, but the general appearance of the item was more than enough to identify what it was: a remote detonator.

Bridge

Sa'kira cursed, which is something she always tried not to do. "Srisa..." she stared at the image's that Shar was showing them. The image appeared a bit granny, which she figured was probably due to the problems they were having on the ship, occasioanlly it'd get a bit fuzzy with noise drowning it out but after a moment the signal would clear up.

A tear in our cargohold... and the way it looks..., thought Sa'kira before she turned her attention to her aviator. "What's your opinion?" she asked.

Cargo-hold

When Shar sent her message, she could hear feedback from her communicator, it was brief but there with a slight squelling sound in the background. Then, something moved across Tite'yanus's helmet, streams of small goblets of liquad that resembled water, floating aimlessly toward the tear.

Mainframe

Quartine of Turret Control Systems in-progress, targetting array isolated - no sign of virus. Memory Banks One and Two isolated, no sign of virus. Beginning stage three quartine of turret capacitor systems.....

Click to expand...

The message flashed across a display window for Erm'olai to see.

More faint sounds could be heard behind the mainframe doorway, another 'thud' against the door.

Gam'trosha Engineering Bay - Maintenance Conduit

When Keri'cruen finally traced the black-and-white wire to its source, the kit initally wore a puzzled expression as he didn't immediately recognise the device he'd found or its nature -- or rather, his mind simply refused to connect the dots. His expression quickly turned incredulous, his mouth hanging open in his surprise as he finally realized what it was that he was facing.

For several long moments he sputtered incoherently -- only regaining the ability to form actual words after several long seconds of mentally berrating himself to make some kind of action. His first fear-tinged words spoken aloud were heavily laced with sarcasm. "Seriously?! Seriously!!!???" He looked upwards as if beseeching a divinity for answers. "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"

The kit examined the device carefully, noting that its status indicator was flashing yellow -- if Keri recalled his training correctly, that meant the device was not correctly functioning and was unable to properly receive its detonation signal -- very likely, someone had already tried to remotely detonate the device already and only some random act of the divine had spared the ship yet another internal explosion.

His youthful voice tense, Keri'cruen used his communicator to inform those on the bridge of his present situation. "Bridge this is Se'verem in the Engineering Bay -- As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I appear to be staring right at an explosive device that's been planted in one of the ships maintenance junctions. From the looks of it, the detonator is damaged and is unable to receive a signal at the moment, but there's no telling what might accidently set it off... i'm going to attempt to disarm it."

"What the hell," Tite'yanus exclaimed as he reflexively ducked. He shinned his light up at the liquid, amazed that Shar'ica didn't see it first since it was eye-level with her. He then moved his light over in the direction that he suspected the liquid had come from, trying to find the source.

"So what did she say?"

Bridge

Def'leor was uncertain how to respond to Sa'kira, there were multitude of things to comment on.

"Well, ma'am. With regards to the visual of the damage in the cargo bay. I am no demolition expert. But the damage is indicative of an explosion from the inside. Perhaps attacked to the hull itself. There is no way explosive decompression would cause that kind of bending of the outer hull.

General situation, the Gam'trosha is hurt bad. We have systems failing faster than we can correct the. Whoever did this had indepth knowledge of the ship, and its systems. If we were not in a crisis I would say power everything down. Sweep the ship and make repairs. But that's not an option.

Using the emergency shutters to try and stop whomever from getting around. Probably won't work. They probably could override the doors. I would say we shut down absolutely everything we can. That way we can keep what power we have going to the critical systems. Everyone is in a suit so we should shutdown life support including gravity. Lighting except in occupied areas. Weapons can be shut down we are done with our part of the op." she offered.

Engineering Conduit

Keri's communicator squeeled loudly when he attempted to send his message, this was followed by nothing but static.

Bridge

"Excellent," remarked Sa'kira as she placed a hand on Def's shoulder. "Do it, but keep life-support active for the time being until we can confirm that everyone has helmets."

She then glanced off to the side as she listened to Shar's message. "C'bar Shar'ica, search the cargohold for any scraps of what might've been used to blow a hole in the bay, search for remains of det-cords or transmiters, given how much power is in a single bar of L-24, you'll probably need to search a wide area, if you can find any - it'll just confirm what we already suspect.. also.." she glanced down at a warning display that popped up, showing their water reserves and how they were in the deep red.

"Search the forward area of the bay please."

On Def's console, an orange light appeared next to the communications system status label, informing them that it was back online but that the system was still having some issues.

Carghold

The liquad was streaming in from an area forward of the bay, and it was a gradually long stream at that.

"I'll take the forward end," Tite said to Shar, following the liquid with his eyes. Slowly, he made his way towards the source of the liquid, peering around as he went.

"Shipmistress, there appears to be some sort of liquid coming from the forward end. I'm investigating more closely."