Toxic

[SirSkully]

Terrins waited for the decontamination area to be set up so that they had a safe seal before he moved over to the airlock with Quartz still on his shoulders, putting his pistol up on a small alcove for now as he tried to thrust one foot and one hand into the airlock's tight entrance for more leverage.

"Guess we're going in dry then?" the Minkan asked the motley crew as he got ready to add a bit of opening force to the door along with everybody else, making sure his pistol never left his sight.

 

[Kitty]

Raven frowned. Surely there was a better way to open the door. The girl had completely ignored Raven for the most part, but she tried not to take it personally, instead focusing on the problem at hand.

 

[SpaceEye]

Thaddeaus was completely confused when he was asked to look at the girls inside as if he was some kind of doctor. Then he remembered that due to some paper work mix up he had been labeled a doctor. Being the type of guy he was, figured he would run with it and see what trouble he could get into.

"Roger, Doc Thad is on the case. I will be sure to give them a thorough looking over." He could not help but grin in the direction of pink suited fluff ball.

 

[SageShooter]

"I'm gonna fuckin make it fall apart if we don't get in there soon..."

Tecuma's spat of annoyance was meant to be in a dead channel, but unfortunately, she wasn't too good with the suit's systems and instead said it into the open channel after she had waved the spacer away. Her annoyance had started to climb further and further at the stupid conversations being held with some dumb little girl they probably could overpower now that she was gone and away from the airlock.

"Can we just tear this thing open and get inside? All this waiting around is fuckin stupid and getting super annoying." She half growled into the channels.

 

[SirSkully]

Doctor, of course - but to Terrins it seemed like Thad was the kind of doctor that'd write his own prescriptions and self medicate rather than help mend bones. It made him think though, what kind of vibe was he giving off other than just some random fucking Minkan among a sea of Neps and 'Spacers?

"Boss did say we could pry it open if we had to, wanna lend me some of that Nepleslian might?" The armoured redhead shot back with a small snicker at the feisty woman's off-handed threat toward the door.

 

[Esscast]

Frank walked over to the door sidearm drawn and suppressed as his plates on his back glowed red underneath he reached out and ripped the door off before shooting the power to the feild thing.

Putting away his sidearm and activating his gun arm he raised his voice as he announced "breeching!" And entered the room checking corners

 

[Primitive Polygon]

((JP with @Zack))

In the mist of the chaos that was the bustling mercenary crew flooding into the airlock, Z-9 accessed the colony airlock's internal systems manually by splicing their mindware directly into it. In all outward respects, this simply had the effect of putting their virtual avatar on screen... But, underneath that, subtle nodding and incessant turning of the head spoke of a deeper access...

The mind of every spacer was half computer. Establishing a stronger connection to the actual mainframe, their digital 'arms' and 'legs' felt like they were stretching out after an abusively long car ride.

-----

Tunnel vision in their mind's eye, a login screen was displayed.

> OPEN YAMBOX
> MODE MENTAL TACTILE EMULATION
> USER ADMIN
> PASS 12345

>>**LOGIN FAILED**

> HELP 'CANCEL'_PRINT TOPIC
> PROPERTIES
> HELP 'PROPERTIES'
> INDEX
> FIND
> CUSTOM PAPER DIALOG BOX
> OPEN AS

>> **DIRECTORIES**

> OPEN 'MY COMPUTER'

>> **BOOTING TO DESKTOP**

A chime would play as an interface booted up to provide more than just a command like for Z-9 to use. Though that black window waiting for text was always available as another floating option, Z-9 now had some blocky images and a faded teal/blue background which seemed to be 'quite advanced' for whatever ancient system was running this network.

The bottom lefthand corner had a small icon that read 'commands', which would expand into a menu that had a text editor, graphics editor, a camera monitoring program, and some home-made application while on the far right side was a clock. While on the desktop itself there seemed to be dozens of files available to choose from:

Opal.spg
Opal2.spg
Opalart.spg
OpalART.spg
artOPAL.spg
story.stf
story2.stf
OPALSTORY.stf
HOW2LOGIN.stf
screenshot.spg
strangers.spg
notherstrangerscreenshot.spg
thatoneisraven.spg
password.stf
moreopalart.spg
...

Simply basking for a moment in the antiquated flavour of the system, the spacer added their mindware as an extra drive, and copied all of the desktop files over. Performing the virtual equivalent of reading a magazine in one hand and using a tablet with another, they scooted through the young girl's adorable doodles and stories now nestled into their hard drive, whilst also mashing 'DIR' on the actual system to get a vague idea of how big and old the colony actually was...

Did they have space sweeper? Every computer has space sweeper...

The listing of directories was slow to print out... possibly because there were so many and possibly because the system just didn't have that much capability behind it. hundreds of directories were listed out recursively, many with utilitarian names such as 'var' or 'lib' though one did stand out as 'interior' with areas such as 'main' and 'courtyard' and 'hydroponics' and 'otherstuff' listed though further searching into these directories seemed to require a higher level of access.

Luckily an array of games were installed to help Z-9 pass the time while searching through the system. They could choose to sweep space, arrange playing cards, or take on a challenging maze that was rendered using 3 full dimensions!

"Aw man, they don't have pinball." Z-9 vocalised in the real world, oblivious. They copied over the rather amusing old screensaver options regardless, and then checked "HOW2LOGON.stf" and "password.stf" to see if they said anything about digging deeper into the more secure systems.

The files did seem to contain exactly what the titles indicated. The first indicating what steps to take to open up the secure control application for the facility which involved opening the icon in the command menu, putting in the login and password, then clicking on the various tabs to view different commands. There was a long user manual that indicated which systems did what, as well as what steps should be taken if they needed to troubleshoot anything. The second file contained two strings, the first was Opal4823 and the second was Changethis1.

Humming and hawing over the information, Z-9 kept the information in mind in case they got booted. Would the leader of the colony really give such a young untrained child access to things like environmental controls?... Weren't human-ish children supposed to age and get intelligence slower-ish?...

For now, they just opened up the 'commands' tab again and began feeding the search box a couple of different terms like 'registry', 'family' and 'people', just seeing if they could get some kind of crew manifest to turn up. How many people were even living down there?...

Oh, and while they were there, they also opened up the paint program for themselves and saved their own thing onto the desktop just for fun.

Opal's password would work when used to open up the 'people' directory. Inside there were a number of folders including one for Opal and one for Quartz. These folders also had more folders labelled 'Opal 1' through 'Opal 48' Each of which contained a number of .STF documents. One included her entire genetic code, another contained a list of lessons that she had completed, and yet another contained a 'birth' and 'decommission' date that were about 27 years apart.

Each 'Opal' had a similar birthdate to the 'decommission' date of the Opal before it.

Z-9 just observed the file structure blankly for a moment, running through the implications in their mind. Clearly they were clones. The spacer technically was too, but that didn't make them certain about how the others would react to this information. Did the colonists themselves know?... Did they know about the limited lifespan?...

Was that even by design, or due to some flaw?...

Well, they certainly had to talk to this 'daddy' now.

Inside the people directory, Z-9 searched if there were any members without a number. They also checked if there were any other computers on the local network that had names referring to cloning. Lastly, a quick visit to the hardware wizard would tell them if they could access any of the other cameras.

There appeared to be no members without a number, or at least no more members without a number. Their 'decommission' dates had already come and gone many years ago. Their cloning system may have held more answers, but it required a password to access that wasn't Opal's.

Opal DID have access to the camera system, which displayed a number of rooms. This included 'hanger', 'stuff', 'My Door', 'Cloning', 'life support', and a number of 'living' areas.

Z-9 accessed all of the cameras in sequence. How many vehicles did they have stowed away down here, and how old were they? What was 'stuff'? How big was their cloning apparatus? How many of them were even alive here and now?...

This had gone past simple curiosity now. The spacer still wasn't sure letting a bunch of armed mercenaries in was the greatest idea, especially not if this wasn't a Nep-typical culture, but handing over Quartz without finding out what was going on didn't really sit right either...

Screw it, their name was Sanctifier Zero Nine! Investigating and protecting ancient relics was their reason for being, right? If this computer system was anything to go by (not to mention a potential combined Opal clone lineage of more than a thousand years), the place was bound to be full of old stuff presumably sacred to somebody!

Despite not having access to any of the cloning equipment, Opal did have access to those security cameras. There appeared to be a large array of cloning gear including large tubes, centrifuges, and childcare facilities. The facility itself seemed quite large, too large in fact. The room stretched on and on as if it were built for something else entirely while the cloning gear was all situated near the main door, easily providing enough 'vats' to grow nearly 1000 people at once though it looked as if only 20 or so were active at the moment. A humanoid robot silently stood watch over the equipment, its metallic form easily 7 feet tall.

Life Support also seemed fairly straight forward... there was gear there that purified the air, the waste, the water. The bacteria pool also seemed plenty strong for disposing and recycling of any kind of organic material.

The hanger area was a large, open, tube that seemed to extend for miles with a set of train tracks running down the centre. There were two ships here, sleek rockets laying long-wise on a small sled with weapon turrets on either side. They looked well maintained, nearly new, and seemed to be of a different construction than both the facility and the systems that Z-9 and Opal were using.

'Stuff' seemed to be some kind of storage area. Here there were large stockpiles of boxes. Much of it seemed to be a kind of survival ration though it also looked like they had not been touched in years. There were weapons, lots of spare hardware that looked like it had been salvaged for parts. There were even disassembled pieces of equipment that certainly didn't have the same aesthetic as this facility. Another one of the 7 foot tall, skeletal looking robots was silently standing by the door to this room. One thing that did stand out was a large ball, nearly 6 feet in diameter. It looked like it had puffy bags around ever surface that had long sense deflated. Around the mid-section were what looked like LED strips, and while many of the strips were already burned-out it did look like some of them were flashing various messages in a variety of languages. Though once the language cycled through to Trade, it was clearly indicating "SOS".

Finally, there was 'My Door' The camera was looking right at a door. Two more of the robots were silently standing watch on either side of it... followed by Opal appearing in the corner of the screen a few seconds later. The cameras didn't have sound, but it was clear that some exchange of words was happening.

Z-9 took a deep gulp. They would bet any salvage that last pair of robots were just waiting on the other side of the airlock to blow the group to pieces.

The other evidence was something else. The first thought was that the random components could have been independently gathered over the years, but that didn't explain why there was quite clearly an escape pod in there too.

How long had it been there? Was the occupant even still alive?

The spacer reflexively reached out with their networking antennas, but immediately felt like an idiot when no response came back. Of course it wouldn't get through. You'd have to be a real defective-brained moron to build a facility like this without super thick radiation shielding.

A map. Did they have an internal map anywhere on the hard drive? That was the best thing they could think of doing for the group now.

Failing that, maybe one of the internal cameras had a good shot of a 'you are here' type of deal printed on one of the walls...

While the facility didn't have a map, it did appear to be of fairly straightforward construction. Someone had dug out a bunch of tunnels that all ran parallel to one another, with a few-cross connections. Just by looking at the living areas and the doorways that connected to them Z-9 could generally figure out where everything was.

There were also decals on some of the walls, though the paint was chipped and faded. There also didn't appear to be any correlation between the arrows on the wall and any specific room. If they were guide-arrows to something, whatever they were pointing too was long since gone...

-----

~BANG-SHKREEEKKK!~

Z-9's gun camera jolted. Observing the man, this Frank fellow, tearing the door off it's hinges... Looks like their network browsing time was up.

"HOSTILES!" The spacer immediately yelled downward out of the blue, still physically above the group on the ceiling. "I saw two large metal fellas on the cameras, looking at some door! They look like they mean baddy business!~"

The spacer's own gun was armed and loaded with armour penetrating rounds before their mouth even opened. They still didn't quite know who was the good guy here, but they weren't going to be a bystander when the shit hit the fan...

 

[SirSkully]

Terrins grabbed his bronze-coloured sidearm off the small alcove it had been resting on and ducked into cover next to the airlock as it was torn open with a mention of hostiles, pressing his back into the ex-hermetic seal's sturdy frame as he tried to make sure the girl on his shoulder wasn't being knocked about too much.

He gave Quartz one final look and remained otherwise silent, gripping the pistol and flicking the safety off in anticipation of what was most likely coming but he wouldn't fire unless fired upon - there was a little girl in a big, pink, puffy hazmat suit on his shoulder so avoiding combat if possible sounded like a good plan in general.