Outside Engineering (Aphrodi & Kage)
It took a lot of jury-rigging to bodge Aphrodi's PDA into the automatic system lines that were meant for the AI, meaning they should have been able to open it even without Shi's help... But somebody had already tripped it into emergency/manual mode, likely from the other side. It was a mode meant for virus attacks on the megami system, and generally meant that one person on both sides had to mutually pull the lever at the same time to open it...
Michiru seemed perfectly content to just stand there and watch this, saying nothing... Or, at least, that was how they were acting on the outside. Their undivided attention was strong enough that they didn't notice the silver haired phantom sneaking up behind them.
No outgoing communications that they could detect. But something was off...
To their touch, it was like a pulse. Not a human pulse. Maybe a very minor EM field?...
Their AMES suit
was on, though. They could audibly hear it cycling.
...This 'Michiru Ise' did say that they weren't a Neko, didn't they?...
Inside Engineering (Fumetsu)
What met doctor death on the other side was not quiet and patient, but rather noisily brooding. The metal grating had barely moved an inch before they heard heavy, booming footsteps and the click of a rifle being loaded. Darkness wasn't the problem; Two spotlights were shining right on the doorway, which actually made it way too
bright.
"Aight. Get y'all hiney down from there, 'ear?" The voice was calm, but effortlessly low and powerful. The way the voice slurred suggested a very large pair of fangs, and they could see a huge pair of glossy black boots. "Ships' going tits up, so you best have a good reason fur' breakin' in 'ere..."
Trolley wheels?... Ah. Two work benches with Mindy PA Aether/Scalar submachineguns, set up to fire directly into the currently closed doorway...
Starboard Crew Cabin Corridor (Sacre)
The red-skinned Neko passed the smoking medbay quickly, using their sleeve to avoid breathing in any more of the overpowering burnt plastic and chemical smell. There was a bit more of a bustle of other crew members moving back and forth now, with more people shipping firefighting gear directly to the two valiant souls who had sprung into action. The main lighting also pinged back to life, suggesting somebody was also doing something about that... Though stains of soot gave the entire crowd a bit of a 'wavy' underwater look that was kind of disconcerting to look at...
There was a darker skinned minkan sitting slumped in the first laundry room they came across, inadvertently staining a basket of neatly folded linen into a dark, macabre red color. Blood was streaming down from a deep line on their forehead, and they seemed to be just stumbling around, blank-faced and unable to grasp their current situation in the slightest.
Medbay (Carthage)
It was all a grey, nostril-stinging mess. The fire in the room itself had apparently been dealt with, both of the fire fighters leaning through the broken wall panels in order to spray the flaming room beyond; But the medbay was still barely what one could call inhabitable, lit only by orange flashes and the glare of the corridor lights just barely making it's way in. Every surface was painful to the touch and she could feel her boots becoming tacky upon prolonged contact with the floor.
Fortunately, it was apparently laid out exactly as an the Origin standard issue medical bay model, and thus a seasoned SAINT member could find their way to the back medicine cabinets without even being able to see. Before they knew it, Carthage had a hefty metal cylinder the right color to be oxygen under one arm, though the label had blistered beyond legibility...
Then- SHKREEE-PUUPPPP!~
Something... just... burst?
The air was clear. It was
fresh.
A pair of dull thuds, the sound of transparent durandium visors cracking on the deck floor, followed by the ominous rumbling of them rolling away.
Now it smelled like blood.
Cargo Bay (Ria)
The short black-haired Neko could hear a sudden loud shriek of metal-on-metal, as somebody with blue skin pried one of the large containers open. It was just around the corner near one of the spotlights, thankfully granting the pizza girl the cover of darkness... But with nobody else down here, it would only take one footstep to give the whole game away.
It was only safe to move during the lesser scraping noises of what was presumably cargo objects being moved around, just out of sight...
Cargo Bay (Jinako)
Moving things around covertly inside the container was basically impossible, since the metal box was basically the perfect echo chamber. It was also totally unlit, though Tabako's
nekova- cat mutant eyes adjusted to it quite rapidly. They hadn't noticed it the first time, but there was actually a giant red stamped steel sign on the wall behind the slumped defective Mindy, with the
first new regulation of the Star Army written on it in bright reflective white letters.
No armour plates missing on the main exoskeleton, all of that looked fine... No power unit and half of the CFS inertia drive cells were missing, but rooting around provided them with at least enough decent-looking bits to get the thing physically booting up... Not many guns in an assembled condition, but at least three countermeasure pods, a compatible forearm pulse cannon, and a Daisy plasma blade.... Maybe there was something bigger, if less conventionally a 'power armor' weapon, in one of the other containers?...
Main problem was that the control board was totally missing from the back of the PA, as was the Star Army standard order for sensitive military technological systems in transit. As strewn with junk, dangerous and badly lit as the small compartment was, apparently
that was the one order the rear-line chief engineer took seriously. There was nothing of this sort anywhere in this container, not even a broken or defective model.
The closest they could find was a little durandium cradle that looked like it was designed to plug a Mindy 4 AIES into an upgraded Daisy... Maybe they could turn it upside down and plug something else in?...
Only other alternative was finding the captain or chief engineer, and asking really really nicely.