RP: Terraforming Ake [Terraforming Ake] P1 - Dust Bowl Children

The surface of Ake. It was the sort of thing there were no postcards of. No cute little plastic coins that would project a tiny volumetric landscape would be available in the Origin gift shop upon their return from this inhospitable wasteland. When they were all out under the scorching sun on the other side of the volumetric field that kept the breathable air in camp, the group was presented with a never ending ocean of orange dirt which had been rain-soaked and then dried up so totally by the sun that a perfect pattern of rippling cracks wormed their way in every direction. It has been said more than once that this landscape is a brownie. As perfectly nutritious as it looked from a distance, the moment the first boot pressed into the soft and dry dirt it was revealed that such a delicious confection was instead made up of tiny sand which sparkled in the mid-day light. Wait, it was still mid-day? Hadn't it been mid-day when they arrived? Of course, the sun on Ake is cruel indeed. Because of the planet's obscene tilt, those equatorial crater lakes were in such a spot that during this time of year the sun would rise around three in the morning and settle on the horizon by nearly ten the next day if one went with the standard clocks that were used on Nepleslia and Yamatai. In the winter, the opposite would be true.

The walk to the other landing site was mostly silent. It can be certain that Akemi opened her fat mouth more than once, and that Franklin probably made a few cracks-wise on his own; but otherwise it was a laborious hike and the breathing masks that everyone except the two Neko had to wear made holding any sort of decent conversation difficult. Also, it took place during a timeskip while I put all of you on plot-rails. Nothing interesting ever happens during those times. Unless someone decides to write a JP about it later anyhow. Either way, they all went to the landing site.

What awaited them was a circle of flattened dirt. In the basic sense, it had been that. On the other hand, there were a few items of interest. There was a spot of raised dirt on the ground, where the soil was mixed with sparkly black rocks that reflected the sun especially well. More interestingly, there was the burnt out remains of a GP-ORV pick-up truck. Whatever color it had been, it was now black. Whatever equipment it had, it was now charcoal. It'd been set ablaze and left to burn out under the harsh Ake sun for so long that the fixtures themselves had melted and warped and only the basic shape of the chassis remained. Perhaps more interesting than that, however; was the ear. It was an Elysian ear by its size and shape, lying shriveled and dry on the sand in a thick red stain that had probably once been dry blood, and just plain blood before that.

As for anything else? There was no sign of anything else. Anything else wasn't even involved in the equation. This land was aside from these items of interest as barren as the rest of the land on the planet. In the distance, foothills and mountains were formed beyond the wavering veil of hot air. In the other direction, the shape of their home landing site could barely be made out beyond a similar haze.

Seeing that there wasn't much to do, Franklin spoke up first.

"Ain't much t' do I reckon." He surmised. "Might's'wull get to it, I guess... Aghyughp."

"Beep-boop-bitih-bip!" Akemi announced as she jerkily began shuffle towards the wreckage while cutting the air with rigid, oddly controlled motions of her semi-outstretched arms, "having cross referenced all related files in my databanks I have come to the conclusion that this appears to be an Elysian ear." Upon stopping in front of it, the Neko picked it up and held it at eye level. "Likely to taste like chicken jerky. If sub-Neko bio beings run out of edible matter they can at least get an earful. Buh-beep-beep-bip! Someone else better hold this before I eat it. Logic core overheating. Initialized restraint protocols... failing."

Naturally Akemi turned to Sapphire for assistance.

Sapphire turned away with her back towards Akemi. She was to busy trying to keep the sandwich she had eaten earlier from filling her facemask. Waving away Akemi indicating she wanted to be left alone and get that disgusting body part away from her. "No, No .. no!"
She muttered, knowing everything was being picked by the FatCOM system and being sent back to the ship. It was bad enough that she carried a weapon that was unfamiliar as can be.

At the moment, all she wanted to be back home in her bedroom on her native planet curled up with Dooby an Fluffy, hearing sounds that signaled a living habitable planet and the aroma of breakfast drifting through the partially open bedroom door. Not on some dead planet with a Cannibal Neko who eats toxic body parts.

"Urp!" Then a burp erupted from her. Not a pleasant one either, but one that signaled the next eruption would be very nasty. "Oh shit! Oh no! Oh shit! noooooo.... "

Sapphire broke seal on her face mask and let loose onto the ground, hopefully none was in the way of the spray. When finished, she replaced the facemask and let training take over in clearing the toxic air from her face mask. She could feel the burning of the ammonia on the more delicate tissues and the delt with the nasty after taste.

Having dramatically liberated the farm girl's last meal she swiftly turned about to make Franklin her next victim. She felt pretty bad about causing the cute one to throw up but now that that had happened there was no turning back. She might as well maximize the value she could get out of her prize. "Warning! Warning! Consumption is imminent!" The Neko shook and swayed from side to side causing the ear to flap about in her two finger grasp.

Yori was rather quiet the whole way to the site, looking around nervously every time she got the slightest feeling that maybe something was approaching When she arrived though there was almost nothing there to speak of which was more than a shock.

"This is the landing site correct?" She spoke as she began to walk over to the Origin made jeep, it took her a little thinking to recognize the model but once she did she began typing on the tablet as she examined it's exterior, taking notes on it's condition. "There should be more than a jeep present."

She ignored Akemi's antics, she did not have the stomach to deal with something like a severed ear and was actually glad someone else picked it up so quickly before she could get a good look. So she just continued on her examination of the vehicle, moving to check under the carriage and under the hood to look at the mechanical components once she jotted down a very detailed, almost nit picky description of the condition of the exterior.

Seiji had been picking up the rear during the march, and post the volumetric field had not been much in the mood to say anything, choosing to suffer in silence. When they arrived at what was once assuredly a camp, Seiji took a moment to look over the dusty scene, it really did not help him feel positive about what they where doing. It was then that Akemi started playing with the ear. Seiji winced, not because of the morbid nature of it, he was far to much a scientist for that, because evidence was being lost every time the Neko played with it. It also didn't help with everything slowly being contaminated by projectile vomit from Sapphire.

“ Stop playing with that! Argh. We are here to find out what happened to these poor souls and you may have shaken off something important. Anyone have a crew manifest? Maybe we can still at least confirm if whoever that ear belonged to was part of the crew” He pulled out his hand held scanner. It was as good a place to start as any.

Alice looked at the so called landing site with raised eyebrows. It was not pretty, it was not pretty because there was almost nothing there. Just a burnt car, some old blood and an ear. And of course the ear was soon taken up by a mentally ill or at least semi-retarded nekovalkyrja. Alice just sighed, let the medical bag fell off her shoulder and take out a plastic bag. With that she reached out to Akemi.

"Put the ear into this, I will run some tests when we get back," Alice said with calm voice. "It would be too bad if you ate it, because I would have to cut you open to get it out. It is good, that you cannot die from that."

"Yori, anything on the vehicle?" Alice asked the young girl as she moved to the spilled blood to do her own test on that. So she crouched there and played with medical things that would usually be used to do such job.

"Geez, fine," Akemi responded after a brief pause, quickly dropping her act and the evidence. "Who doesn't want to try some Elysian or Lorath? I can't be the only one. I bet some would take is as a compliment. Y'know, literally lookin' good enough to eat." Seeing how wrecked the vehicle was, thus likely lacking evidence and the doctor was already busy examining it, the super security guard decided to put her power armor to use and fly to the nearest hilltop to have a casual look around.

Sapphire resumed scanning the area so that the FatCOM could see what she was seeing and sending it back to the ship. She had an easy walk that made the viewed picture smooth without the jerking of an amateur cameraperson. She was glad that Akemi had stopped playing with mummified ear.

She zoomed in close on the ruined vehicle and the ground around it. Hoping to pick up anything that might be useful when reviewed back at base camp.

As the cat flew off to scout or masturbate or whatever, Alice resumed her study. Still she could not help herself to make a remard, that could be heard by others. "Someone should explain to that cat, that even if eating people of other races is technically not a canibalism, it is still not okay to do it." Alice said with calm voice as if she was talking about the weather.

Sapphire checked her equipment making sure things were working properly. She was a bit envious of the Nekos that they could fly. She looked back the way they had came. Already the wind had started erasing their tracks. She turned to the group.

"Look for depression and or crumbled in cracks in the ground." Sapphire spoke up, remembering a bit from a television show where the group's tracker used them to follow the bad guys. Unsure how that would be taken as she was the youngest and inexperienced in most outdoor activities. "That ought to give some sort of clue of what happened here. Or we haven't gone far enough to get to the actual site. These people that used this vehicle could've been fleeing."

She panned the area again with her cameras and recorders. Getting plenty of video recording of each individuals of the group.

Yori crawled out form under the truck and sighed some. "Well aside form the obvious fact that the truck isn't going to work any more, it's been burnt up pretty well. I'll have to take some time and go over my notes to see what exactly happened. But can someone get residue samples? Maybe we can figure out at least what kind of fire it was that burnt this thing up."

From Akemi's raised position on the hilltop, she could see the perfect circle of flattened dirt stretched out below her with the crew members moving about in it like little action figures. If she used her imagine just right, she could picture them as figurines trouncing about on a brownie in some inventive child's kitchen. Some poor child who would soon be in for a spanking if their mother found out they'd trashed their brownie instead of devouring it. Fortunately, it was all in Akemi's mind (or not, because maybe she wasn't that imaginitive) and the brownie was dirt and the mother was a black shape that whipped overhead with such furious speed as to kick up all manner of dust. The thing had come from the direction of their home landing site, and it was hauling tail like the wind. It was a wide, blackened T-shaped vessel with bright burning thrust that burned almost as brightly as the noon sun overhead; the painted on skeletal wings and grinning sharp-toothed fuselage seeming to almost wink at them as it burned away from them to escape some sensor sweep or another.

With the wind of the mighty ship blowing at the brim of his hat, Franklin stood up and eyed the thing suspiciously. It hadn't stopped to attack them, but there was no reason any ship should be on Ake. No one came to Ake. As it blazed off over the horizon, he refocused on the task at hand and turned to Seiji with a fistful of dirt from the based of the small, raised pile of rocks that'd been next to the truck.

He held up said fist and let a stream of the dirt fall from his hands while he walked, watching it gleam in the morning light with a muttered, "Platinum."

When he made it to Seiji, the old man began with the instructions right away. "G'head and give her a scan, Chickenshit. If my hunch is right, and I hope it ain't-- this here dirt is gonna have an unusually high osmium content."

Meanwhile, as Yori emerged from beneath the truck, he eyes would briefly pass over something of slight interest. Embedded into the sideboard beneath the passenger door was one of the black stones from the nearby pile, although this one was a tad different. Studded around it were several white, shiny deposits. They were like a growth, or an infectious skin disease-- tiny lustrous warts of something bright and metallic which caught the sun even in the shade of the truck and seemed to gleam like silver. Well, like silver on performance enhancing drugs. If minerals could take drugs, that is.

Moving on. As Sapphire panned her camera-headset expertly over the landscape, she would begin to notice something about the circle of flattened dirt. It was actually three circles so close to one another as to be just one. She would be able to recognize the way the dirt had been spread by thinking of times that an off-world buyer had come and bought a few steers off of her parents. These were the marks a shuttle or small vessel left on the plains when taking off. The three missing ships hadn't been destroyed or swallowed up by the death planet... They'd left on their own power, taken off like any other ship and flown away.

While the October girl was making this conclusion or at least having it handed to her through narration, Alice's equipment was giving her a series of results about the blood sample she'd fed it. The blood was Elysian, just like the ear. A quick comparison with a fleck of cracked and dried skin from the ear would reveal that they were in fact the same Elysian and not that some family or Elysians had been the make-up of the last terraforming team. The scanner also told Alice that the Elysian in question had been the carrier of a rare disease which would eventually strike the immune system (something that likely wasn't a problem for the owner of the ear any longer), as well as being both female and likely pregnant. There were some other things, like a projected age and a theorized appearance but such advanced DNA analysis was beyond the capabilities of Alice's handheld equipment. They would have to be done through Seiji's lab station back on the Elijah. In the meantime, it was at least confirmed to belong to the same Elysian as the ear. A closer look at the ear would reveal that it hadn't been so cleanly removed. Whatever had cut the ear was a jagged, dull, and serrated blade. It was as if someone had taken a bread knife to this poor woman's ear.

Sapphire eyes narrowed as she viewed the shots through the lens of the camera. Seeing the markings of ship signatures. Then the wind partially erased the signatures. She turned to the group and spoke. "Those ships we came looking for? Well they was taken off planet under their own power."

She red flagged the section of video and sent it to the ship for farther review and enhancement. She smiled warmly at being able to help provide a possible answer and she had the evidence to back it up. "Platinum?" As she turned to face Franklin, getting the full view of him and the last of the dirt streaming from his hands.

Yori's attention was caught by the strange stone and she looked it over for a moment before turning to Seiji and Franklin. "Do you two think you can look into this? It doesn't look like it was really burnt up." She moved over to them, still holding the rock up and examining it while she did, giving it to whoever stuck their hand out for it.

"The jeep though it totally burnt up, everything is distorted and fused...it's actually surprising it even looks like a vehicle." She sighed and rubbed her shoulder softly. Hearing Sapphire's analysis gave her an idea of what might've burnt the jeep up so bad at least.

Finished posing majestically, the somewhat imaginative Akemi quickly descended back to the group below her, landing with a sudden gust of air that sent up dust all around them. Deciding to be helpful and indulge her curiosity at the same time, she whooshed over to see what was in Yori's hand and give whatever she was holding a scan of her suit. The Neko didn't really care about the ship that just passed by. As far as she was concerned if it wasn't here now it didn't matter. That didn't mean she wouldn't comment on it though. "Whoever just flew by better not be trying to name anything before me."

Seiji watched the ship blaze by overhead with a frown. Visitors? Here? Surely the company had not thought they would get killed quite THAT fast. Its then that Seiji's best friend Franklin made his way over.

Normally he would be resistant or curt , but Seiji had was comfortable, almost Zenlike in his love of his work. Even to the point that relationships and sentient contact mattered little to him. With scanner in hand he started to go to it. Despite the simplicity of the task he double checked it to be absolutely sure of his readings “ Lots of Osmium , Silicone, carbon.. no platinum besides very weak trace elements..” It was then Akemi made her graceful entrance. Out of reflex Seiji raised his hands and closed his eyes against the dust, realizing a moment later that he was already proof against it.

The whole concept of one Neko constantly getting in the way of science grated on his nerves. “ Do you HAVE to do things like that? Some of us are trying to work!”

"Calm yer tits, Chickenshit." Franklin suggested, furrowing his plastic-shielded brow. "Everythin' out here is made of dust-- t'ain't gonna hurt nothin'."

The old guy waved a hand to Akemi. He wanted to want to fuck her, but he was a terrible racist, she was a filthy Neko, and he was at least ten times her age. At least. Besides, she seemed to be more like 'one of the guys' than anything else. Franklin instead addressed Yori next, snatching the stone from her hands and pressing his thumb against one of the silvery bits before holding the whole thing up to the light of the sun.

"It's my hunch alright. Shit luck for 'em." He attested, twisting the rock in the setting sun. "It's platinum ore, and that shit in Chickenshit's scanner is electrolytic silt. Fer fuck's sake, they was makin' money out here... All we gots to wonder now is if they left with the money or if the money left with them. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if--"

There was the interruption of a sharp 'bwip' noise errupting from Mako's forehead. While Daziel had been extremely considerate to purchase her a wing-pack and fit a pair of HGR's to her suit, he'd also been a bit of a dick to install a portable communications array. And a volumetric projector. A square of air was now taken up by his panicked visage, a muted video of the angry accountant still ranting about one thing or another in the background while Daziel's equally excited voice came in distorted by the airwaves.

"... so terribly sorry everyone, hate to be a bad sport," He started. He was facing away from the camera, pulling his old scout katana down from the pegs that mounted it above the door to his quarters. "There seems to be a bit of a troublesome situation outside-- what with pirates taking away our cattle and all."

Daziel turned to face the camera with his katana in hand and went on, one hand pulling his bandana tight against his ears. "Mister Strellan is currently hiding behind Elijah, but he cannot hide forever-- the poor fellow's in no shape to handle these ruffians. I'll go out and hold them off, but please do try to come back quickly-- while I'm certainly quite the rough customer, they've got numbers, you see."

Even in desperate situations, the executive was still long-winded. In fact, by the time he'd finished, Spencer had already hit the sands and started the kilometer jog back to the landing site with his hands reaching for the twin Styrling Mancannon's on his hips. Shit had, as they say, descended.

Sapphire sighed softly at recall back to the three ships base. It was her home for now and she had to defend it. She was scared, and it showed. Combat was not she was trained for. She followed the others, falling behind of the much taller adults. She quickly made a recording as she ran to keep up with the rest.

"Base Camp... puff... Attacked.... pant... returning to.... gasp... wish these things worked better! .... puff... help..." Sapphire got out as she ran.

Akemi of course ignored Seiji's complaint and stared at the old fossil intently examining the rock, quite enjoying imagining it trying to commune with another of its kind. When the distress call came she felt little concern. Sapphire was the most valuable crew member to her by far and she was well away from danger. On top of that, if Daziel felt he could holdout on his own while having to protect others she doubted whatever they were about to face was much of a threat, at least not to her. "Geez, you guys might be better off just taking it easy," Akemi said as she began to hover along with and quickly overtake her already running companions. "I'm like a zillion times more durable and maneuverable than you guys. They could just decide to use you like hostages. You're not the armored ones after all." Having spoken her piece she shot off ahead of them with her Gauss rifle, perfectly content and entirely intent on simply charging onto the scene and trying to hose anyone she didn't recognize down while flying about in the open. The Neko wondered if she'd even need to use her gun or if she could just bludgeon the bandits into submission. Killing cattle sounded pretty small time.

"I guess if you want to owe me one when I deal with them all before they can shoot at you, you can all keep on running, especially you Sapphire. I definitely won't mind," Akemi added smugly, feeling a need to perpetually remind the girl of her interest in her.