Toxic

As everyone piled up infront of him, Terrins reached down to his thigh and drew his ZA .45 pistol - racking its brown slide against his thigh to chamber a round in the trusty piece of machined steel, "Hold on tight and keep your head down, Miss Quartz."

Spacecase would look up from his work for a second. "It's an airlock, not a death chamber they won't ambush us here it wouldn't be tactical because we would be likely to break their airlock making them unable to leave or enter without defeating the purpose of installing the airlock in the first place so don't shoot. Use a knife or your fists we don't want to kill every civilian in the facility."

Outside

"LET ME UP! IT IS GOING TO GET ME!" Quartz shoulted as she struggled under Terrins' body. She was only human after all, and the combined weight of his power armor and her non-augmented suit was more than enough to keep her from thrashing about.

Though, she certainly tried thrashing.

After a few moments of this she would start to calm down. Whatever was out there certainly would have already gotten them by this point if it WAS going to get them.

"I should never have left..." Quartz said, hunkering down in her suit so that only the top of her head was visible through her visor


Airlock Door (outer)

Spacecase wouldn't even get a chance to start messing with the door controls. As soon as he approached the outermost door it would automatically opening up, allowing him access to the interior of the airlock: A rather large chamber with a single large display over the door, and what looked like ventilation systems on either side.

Geen-Horn would head in first, "Start checking the interior door of the airlock. See if we can get it working." As she entered the interior of the airlock, the display above the door would flicker on.

The screen itself would show what looked like a rather nice office room, white walls, clean, some plants in the background. Even a desk of somekind.

"HEY!"

The voice that came through the speakers sounded very young. Moments later a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes just like Quartz's would pop up on the screen. The young woman looking like she was standing on her tip-toes just to get her face on camera. The display itself making her seem much larger than she really was.

"NO STRANGERS! GO AWAY!"

She shouted, leaning in as close to the screen as she could. Her face slowly starting to take up the entire image.

"DADDY SAID NO STRANGERS! SO SHOO!"

Thad moved to the front of the pack and took a look at the girl on screen. She was soft on the eyes at least but this not letting them in due to being a stranger would have to go.

"I am Thaddeaus Maximus, explorer from the great unknown. Since I am no longer a stranger, would you care to let us in. We come with gifts as well." He said in a smooth voice. He was giving his best cute boy face he could put on.

Frank would crain his neck to look at the screen "delivery service kid, were come to deliver quartz home safely." Frank said sighing inwardly before looking back to space case "hey until you sign my paychecks spacecase I see no reason to say as a order but instead a opinion"

Frank back would glow a deep red near his spine as he grabbed the door with both hands and gave it a hefty pull as some audioble creaks pops and tearing metal is heard as the locking mechanism is broken

Terrins was about to release Quartz from his shoulder when he hesitated, speaking low through his helmet's speaker as he asked the girl on his shoulder a simple question, "Hey kiddo, this Daddy of yours, he doesn't hurt you girls in any way does he?"

This whole situation was giving the Minkan a very culty-vibe and cults didn't tend to treat the women or kids very well - two things that Terrins had no patience for, the grip on his pistol steadily increased in force as the suit's glove creaked slightly.

Airlock

The young girl on the screen looked thoughtful for a moment.

"I... UH... I don't think it works like that mister Thaddeaus Maximus... I know your name now but you are still strange. I'm pretty sure that... hey HEY! YOU! STOP THAT!"

The little girl's eyes darted downward towards Frank who was grabbing the interior door, damaging the locking mechanism. The little girl would disappear off camera for a moment, followed by a loud

*THUNK*

A red light turned on, followed by a brief siren. Even before Green-Thumb could lift her weapon a force field would appear on one side of the airlock chamber and quickly move across the room, slamming Frank, Green-Thumb, and Thad against the back wall. Had they not been wearing armor, they likely would have sustained some serious injuries.

The little girl would show up again after a few moments,

"I SAID NO! I'LL PUSH IT AGAIN I SWEAR!"


Outside

"Only if they are being bad." Quartz said, unconvincingly. "I... uh... I will probably be in trouble for bringing strangers back..."

The unconvincing lie did nothing to push back the rising pressure in Terrins' blood, he let out a huff and walked past his floored allies to approach the door - one way or another they were getting to the bottom of this to find out what exactly was going on.

"Hey, little girl on the camera," the Minkan spoke to the screen, tapping the bottom of his pistol against the wall a few times to get her attention.

"Look again, we were hired to bring your sister back," the armoured redhead continued, turning to show them Quartz's little face across his shoulder before he turned it away again to speak, "will you let us in now?"

It was the truth for the most part, they had been hired to bring Quartz back but things were not looking up for the bunker-folk right now, at least in his eyes.

Frank huffed wispering to Green horn "say the word I'll blow the fucking door open" he said arming his 4omm

Spacecase would watch as the girl slammed his comrades against the wall. He woul then plug into the outer airlock and begin work on deactivating the force field mechanism. He would whisper. "Buy me some time if she notices me I don't think she'll be happy."

Raven looked between all the people trying to get in and frown, stepping up. "You guys, she's just a kid. She's scared and look at it from her perspective. We're just a bunch of new people literally trying to break into her home." She glared at Frank before looking towards the kid on the screen. "Hi honey, I'm Raven. What's your name?" She gave the girl a convincing smile. "Don't you think Daddy would be happy that we brought sissy home? That's all we're trying to do I swear, we aren't going to hurt anyone. We're gonna give you your sissy and then we'll be out of your hair. Heck, Daddy won't even know we were here! Just that you were able to get your sissy home safe and sound."

Damn it to hell Frank. Thad thought to himself as he was slammed against the far wall by the force field. He had wanted to get closer to the team but this was not the ideal way to go about it. He was just happy this armor held up else they would of been maybe dead.

"Frank, that was stupid. Lets not do that again please." He comment as he peeled himself off the back wall. He rotated his arm a few times to make sure it was not broken. "I think that girl Raven there has this. Let us see if this works." He gave Frank a pat on the shoulder. Thad was shocked he had joined a team with someone as trigger happy as he was.

Tecuma's gun began to spin as the barrier flashed to life though it never actually fired. The dimunitive girl growled lightly as she watched the others get slammed around from the barrier and Kitty walk up to the screen.

"Just keep her busy, or get outta the way. She fires up that barrier again and I'm gonna light that door up." Tecuma said in a closed channel to Raven. This whole situation just sucked so bad, a shitty planet, some shitty guy with daddy issues that made some weird cult on some shitty planet. This entire situation just sucked...

Exterior -> Airlock

"Golly... This is a bit like one of those lottery machines, isn't it?" Z-9 commented uselessly over Tecuma's shoulder, with just a bit too much chummy enthusiasm. Almost like they enjoyed the idea of being one of the little coloured balls themselves. "Maybe even better if it rotated around, though..."

Of course, it was suspicious that Z-9 also hadn't lead the approach, for a machine-person that had been suggested they should scout just a minute ago. It was probable that they detected the force field generators, but... Nobody had actually asked them to report such findings.

Following a distinct creak of their makeshift space suit, with all those rubberised tubes and extra limbs rubbing together, the spidery spacer hoisted themselves up to the ceiling by leaning on both sides of the airlock. A much more detailed examination of the room was obviously taking place, looking for power lines, as well as any other booby traps.

Airlock



"Huh? None of you look like my sister..." She said, standing up on her tip-toes to get closer to her screen. They could all see the display showing her eyes darting around, finally settling on the puffy suit that Quartz was in.



"OH HEY! HI!"



The little girl waved at Quartz, who gave a bit less enthusiastic wave back.



"They said your ship exploded! What happened!?"



Quartz nodded, "Our ship exploded..."



--



Greenhorn would shake off the impact, standing herself back up and giving a quick 'no' nod to Frank. She would open up the all hands chanel, making sure that only their group could hear.



"Take it easy everyone. Lets not force our way inside unless we have to. We can't track this atmosphere inside of their habitat either."



For the time being, she'd let Raven take the diplomatic lead.



---

"So then what happened?" the girl asked Quartz, who had been in the middle of telling her story of how she was rescued by Toshiro. She then overheard Raven speaking up.



"HI RAVEN!" The little girl said, waving, "I'M OPAL!"



Perhaps she didn't understand the gravity of the situation... or perhaps she was just a little girl who didn't really know to be on guard against people she just met who were carrying large weapons. Either way she seemed possitively bubbly,



"I uh... I don't know? He says outsiders are bad and they can make us dirty and stuff. Uh... I guess I can let Quartz in... but you would have to stay outside. No strangers allowed or Daddy will be mad!"



It was then that she caught sight of Z-9 who was just now on camera, wedged up towards the ceiling of the room. Opal was trying to look around on the screen to get a better view but Z-9 was just outside of the camera's viewpoint.



"WHAT'S THAT?!" She asked, "It's creepy!"



She paused for a moment, sounding far more excited than scared, "Does it have a name?!"



Z-9 would get a good view of how the room was setup. The technology was old, and clearly had been maintained for quite some time. There were force field projectors on the far wall along with power hookups to run them. On either sides of the room was some kind of circulation system for air. Z-9 was compotent enough with spacer-type-tech to know that it probably cleaned the air. Z-9 was also familiar enough with heaters to know that it could probably blow some very hot air to clean the particulate off of a space suit.

Spacecase would snap his fingers as he found the forcefield controls. He would then say back over the group channel. "Diplomacy is nice and all but I have some of the room controls here so I'll be disabling the forcefield for now." He would then go about doing just that.

Airlock

"Not really." The spidery thing responded to the young girl, milling over if that was a good thing or a bad thing. "They just call me Zero Nine... Opal is a pretty name, though! I had a brother they called Bauxite!... You're probably not related, but still!"

Z-9 then took a moment to look at the access feed that Spacecase was using, visually following it over to the junction box above the screen. They weren't normally a creature that cared about doing mechanical damage, but the longer this group was cooped up in this airlock, the more likely it was they were just going to blow the door off. That wasn't really good for anyone.

Monkeying along the hanging wires and vent covers until they reached closer to an appreciable interface section, it was then second nature to just hotwire their own neck's feeds directly into the system.

Squeezing out of the corner of the screen like a stream of blue toothpaste, a virtual construct appeared on both in and output displays. The virtual construct was basically taking the spacer to the logical extent, a cartoony blob of randomly arranged googly eyes and noodle-like tentacle-arms.

"...Ah, there we are, now you can see me properly..." The voice got even higher pitched and nasally, regarding the innocent colonist girl with a rather oblivious mass of bugged eyes. It was kind of like an LSD enthusiast had designed a stuffed animal. "Opal honey, would you mind getting somebody in charge? Maybe this daddy person? My friends are trying to do a nice thing, but they aren't very patient... You know that kinda person who just has drills for arms, so all they wanna do is go around drilling holes in stuff, right?..."

She waved back to the girl with a smile. "Nice to meet you Opal." She watched and listened to Z-9, a bit less creeped out now that she knew they, er it, er whatever, was on her side. She tilted her head at the analogy, not sure the girl would understand what they/it was trying to say. "Yes, if you could get someone in charge that would be great sweet-pea. The people who helped us rescue your sissy told us we had to make sure she was safe before we leave, so if you only let her in, we wouldn't know whether she was safe and couldn't be sure whether or not she was ok after she left our care. Does that make any sense?" She wanted to make sure the girl understood, so that she knew that the girl, even if she didn't agree, at least was comprehending what they were telling her. "And I promise, we aren't too dirty. It's a little dirty outside, but we won't touch you, so you don't have to worry about getting any dirt on yourself."

Maybe it was an overreaction on his part, yeah it was probably a wee bit much caution - the girls seemed like they were happy enough and healthy enough but the cult vibe was still lingering at the back of his mind, Terrins decided to keep it there for now and maybe try to be a bit more hospitable like the others were trying to be.

Raven - cool bird, pretty cool name, he'd put that in the vault for later as the Minkan went to speak, "What our lovely Raven said, I'm Terrins and we just want to make sure your sister is as safe in there as she has been on our ship."

Of course Terrins hadn't actually had anything to do with Raven nor had he known her name before now but she was probably one of the people he sent that Fuckbook link to, oh well. The armoured redhead began moving Quartz up into a better position on his shoulders - she hadn't been trying to wriggle free or complain but surely having a pauldron poking her in the belly was getting a bit annoying by now.

"Not related at all! I don't know a Box-light!" Opal called out cheerfully in response to Z-9, the girl seemingly mesmerized by the googley-eye-thing that was overflowing her screen. She was able to break the trance long enough to say a few more things.



"Nice to meet you too Raven!"



Though the good times would soon end. It seemed everyone wanted to meet daddy.



This would make the young girl pout,



"Ok... you gotta stay there though and don't come in! OK?! Good."



There was a soft 'Thump' as she jumped down off of whatever she was standing on so she could reach the controls, followed by a "THUMP thump thmp tp....." As she ran off. There didn't seem to be anyone else there to operate the door or to watch over the entrance.



---

Ace would find plenty of things to mess with now that Opal was gone, though mostly all he would be able to do is disable the power going to the force field generator and the airlock doors. He could also send MORE power to the forcefield generator but that would likely just turn it on again.



Z-9 would start to get a view of more video feeds. There were indeed more entrances to the facility below, and it looked like they were not really being watched. Occasionally another blue eye'd blonde hair'd woman was lazily sitting in front of a console to keep an eye on other airlocks including one large bay that held a few small starships.



Beyond the airlock door itself seemed like a small paradise. The hallway opened out into a large room that was filled with various green plants. The ceiling was painted blue and white to look like a sky, and the lighting made the whole thing look like a sun-drenched tropical area with bushes and hammocks spread out over the place along with more of the young women. This internal area was easily as large as a football field, and on the far side there was another door that branched out into several other hallways...



But first there was still the door in their way,



"ALRIGHT!" Green-Thumb said over the all hands chanel, "Lets not waste any more time here. Pry the door open if you have to.



Green-Horn, Setup a decontamination area and airlock so we don't vent their atmosphere!



THAD, Can you evaluate the health of the individuals we find inside?



Anyone with engineering experience I want you to size up the place. If it is about to fall apart I want to know!"