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Post by Jack of Names on Jul 21, 2016 2:21:24 GMT
"I can try, captain."
Nakamura moved to the bulkhead, quickly setting to work on the bulkhead. He squinted at the metal as he holstered his pistol, using a sealed hand to wipe a bit of dust from it's structure. "Got marker's here, power's been rerouted behind the bulkhead. Still doable, but it's gonna slow me down a little." And he then set to work, retrieving his cutter activating his droid and taking every precaution he could to avoid whatever had been rerouted behind the bulkhead.
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coolyo294
Iconic
Slayer of Demons
Posts: 1,169
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Post by coolyo294 on Jul 28, 2016 7:32:11 GMT
Mordecai eyed the digital timer counting down in the upper right of his HUD with caution. It measured how much oxygen was left in his survival suit. Right now it read eight minutes and thirty four seconds. He and Sato had split up, given their limited oxygen supply they would be able to explore more that way. He kept his rifle up as he tromped on a floor that hadn't felt human feet in many years. He'd explored derelicts before, as a marine hunting pirates and as a security officer conducting salvage ops, but none as grandiose as this one. He could almost feel the weight of history pressing down on his back as he explored.
The first door he came across was labeled "Security Station". A keypad barred entry, but that was easily circumvented. Most older Alliance systems used a very simple code system, which was relatively easy to guess if you had the proper training and basic key phrases. After a few tries, the door slid open smoothly revealing another dimly lit room. It looked like a small windstorm had it. Papers and folders were scattered wildly. Almost no chairs remained upright and a few desks had been flipped, although most stood upright with terminals built into them. Amazingly, most of the terminals still glowed with power. He walked over to the nearest one and tapped a key. As he plugged his datapad into a jack on the side of the terminal, text flashed up on the screen.
WELCOME SGT. O'HALLOW followed by a series of files. They read Log, Project Icarus, Call to Action, and Overseer. Mordecai tapped a few buttons to download the files onto his datapad. While he waited, he tapped open the one titled Log.
Mordecai smirked. Soldiers would always be soldiers.
His datapad dinged. File transfer complete. He unplugged it and exited the room. With five minutes of oxygen left he would have enough time to explore one more room.
The next room was very different from the last. It was a monorail station. On ships as large as the Styx a monorail system was essential to get people to where they needed to go quickly, but unfortunately this one was unpowered. Theoretically though, if they could restore power, it would grant them access to virtually anywhere on the Styx. Mordecai made a note to mention it to the Captain.
Suddenly a flashing light on his HUD indicated that he had three minutes of oxygen left. Mordecai took one more glance around the station and decided he would come back later. As he left the room he clicked on the comm to Ensign Sato.
"Alright kid, I'm at bingo oxygen. We should head back to the Sanctuary and fill up, then tell the Captain what we found." He said. He hoped the pilot had found something important in her search.
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Post by Darko on Jul 29, 2016 19:49:47 GMT
From: Unknown [Sender Error]
To: [Error]
Subject: (blank)
I see you. Far away like visions through stained glass.
Another strange message from an unseen watcher. Jones ignored it for the time being and focused on the immediate path, more concerned about potential threats lurking ahead. Whoever was contacting him, he was determined to find them - whether it was in five minutes, an hour, or a week from now after they scoured every last deck of the behemoth.
The narrow, gloomy corridors seemed to stretch out in an endless grid pattern with no distinguishing features except for the stenciled numbers and letters on the walls at spaced intervals. Through logic it would be possible to map and navigate them thoroughly, however Jones had neither the time, patience nor oxygen for such an endeavour. Instead, he carefully memorised the path they took in his head - in reverse - just to be extra certain they would not get lost in the dark. He regularly practiced simple puzzles and memory exercises to improve his detail recollection, but that practice served him equally well in this situation.
He stopped dead in his tracks. The motion tracker from his datapad linked to the HUD in his helmet pinged once at the furthest extremes of its range, indicating movement somewhere far below. A shiver crept up his spine, and the hairs on his neck stood on end. His heartbeat increased in his chest. A mix of excitement and dread was hidden beneath the expressionless faceplate of his void helmet. He raised a fist to indicate to the Doctor that she should halt.
"What is it?" Her voice came over the comms.
"Motion signal," he answered matter-of-factly, looking around slowly to allow his helmet torch to illuminate the immediate area. To his left and right were even more ubiquitous corridors, but one corridor over he spotted an indent in the wall and upon approaching discovered a hatch concealing a ladder. Someone or something was alive down there, and he was going to find out what it was. Pressing a button embedded button in the wall, the hatch opened silently in the vacuum, a thick layer of dust seeming to evaporate before his eyes. Carbine in one hand he ensured the small descending tube was clear, and then began to climb down.
"Come on, Doc. Exploration is our MO, so let's do precisely that." He spoke less formally now that it was just the two of them, hoping to maintain a sense of calm. Part of him wondered whether he was doing that for her benefit, or for his. Several subsequent hatches opened automatically as he continued to descend, Mitchell clambering down after him. Half way down he felt the familiar tug of gravity reasserting itself - good. At least some systems are functional further into the belly of the beast, he thought. After what seemed like a very long minute, he reached the bottom of the shaft. Turning, he saw a smaller hatch leading into some unknown location. Carbine at the ready, he spared a glance back up the ladder as Doc Mitchell neared the bottom, before crawling through the hatch. It was a slightly tight squeeze but not uncomfortably claustrophobic, probably designed with maintenance drones in mind and human engineers as an afterthought. Then again, what did he know about the structural design of ancient starships? That's where Nakamura's specialty came in. He wondered how he was progressing with that bulkhead several levels above.
After escaping the crawlspace and getting back on his feet, before he was even able to look around his motion tracker pinged twice as two unidentified signals seemingly passed outside the very room he was standing in. Instinctively he raised his weapon in the direction of the closed doorway, yet kept his index finger straight rather than around the trigger. After a moment he relaxed, as the unknown signals moved away. He began to look around even as he heard Mitchell traversing the crawlspace behind him. It seemed they were in the engineering storeroom for this section. However, all of the equipment, shelves and storage lockers appeared to have been disassembled and stacked against the wall separating where he stood and a small office to the right, presumably for the work chief of this section of the ship.
He shone his light across the floor and walls of the room, eyes widening in horror at what he saw. Thousands upon thousands of names had been inscribed - no, burned into the metal... almost printed into the very surface of the ship somehow. What madness possessed the crew to do such a thing? He wondered. The Doc appeared behind him, standing up and looking around, taking in the same unsettling sight that he had moments before. A sudden motion ping inside the room caused Jones to snap his carbine back up, finger around the trigger this time, aimed at the furthest corner from them. Near the ceiling, quite clearly hiding, was an active repair drone. Its camera lens visibly unfocused and refocused to get a better look at them both. Jones held his aim high for several seconds to assure it was not a threat in any way - at least for the time being - before lowering his carbine slightly.
"Doc, see what you can find in that office," he ordered. "And get your sidearm ready, we're not alone - and I'm not talking about the repair drone in here with us. There are things out there," he gestured to the doorway, "And I think they're on patrol. So whatever you do... do it very, very quietly. I don't want to engage the unknown signals until we know what we're dealing with."
Order given, he turned his attention back to the drone, approaching it cautiously. It kept watching, remaining focused on him even as he moved around the room. He stopped a short distance from the drone, and looked directly into its tiny camera eyes, and simply stared for a moment. He wasn't really looking at the drone, at least not in his mind. He was willing to bet his commission that someone was remotely controlling the drone, otherwise he doubted it would be demonstrating so much fascination with them. Too much, in fact, for an ancient drone on a defunct and seemingly dead starship. Whoever or whatever, perhaps an AI of some form, was controlling that drone, had directed it to hide in the furthest, darkest corner of this room. Yet whatever was outside the room was making no effort to conceal its movements, and hadn't come to investigate their intrusion despite the repair drone spotting them. He decided a simple test was in order.
He made a simple gesture, a follow command - to see if the drone would respond. It was possible it would not comprehend the gesture due to its age but he was willing to wager its subroutines would include some basic non-verbal recognition for operating in void-exposed areas. If not, well, there was certainly no harm in trying. It would be useful to have a repair drone with them, especially if Nakamura got a chance to take a look at its memory stores.
He took a few steps backward, hands tense and ready to raise his weapon yet again at the slightest sign of danger, yet beneath his helmet his face was one of intense curiosity. Was the same person sending him vague messages controlling this drone? Would they accommodate the simple sort of command that such a drone was designed to accept, and play along... or would they simply continue to watch? He was about to find out.
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Post by Lord Harrab on Jul 30, 2016 10:57:36 GMT
Ensign Sato had trained extensively in void environments, been taught to not rely too much on conventional senses when the O2 timer was ticking, and had even started to learn what Marine Veterans called, "Void Hearing."
She had just restored power to the the survival chamber when she felt a heavy vibration through her feet that made her pause and hurry back to look back down the corridor she had just exited.
there was a ceiling panel, heavy and reinforced, lying in the middle of the wide walkway in the direction she had just come from. it hadn't been there before
The Pilot panned her gaze upwards just as something else large and metallic dropped to the floor from the roof opening, and she threw herself backwards into the life-raft as a large armored head swung a bright torch around in her direction.
It was a security mech, one of the heavy ones designed for bording actions, unlike the destroyed one they had already found which was an interior defense model, This one was bulkier in the body and its Armour sharply angled and painted a dark black, compartments for equipment accompanying marines could use marked out on its surface with numbers, and one arm dedicated to containing a weapon system on par with Mordecai's rifle.
her Void Hearing registered a few heavy footsteps. then a pause.
It was standing right outside the door.
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Post by Draxy on Jul 30, 2016 11:32:27 GMT
Sato was questioning the wisdom of their decision to split up. The eeriness of the place was bad even with someone watching your back, and now it seemed to be increased tenfold. It kinda reminded her of one of those 'haunted houses' she visited back on Earth with her academy friends, she just hoped there wasn't some man waiting to jump out on her here as well, especially since said man would likely then be filled with lead. It was worse here, as she found herself cursing the void and its blasted silence. It would be entirely possible for a hostile to sneak up on her. Such was her paranoia she kept checking over her shoulder every few minutes, whilst trying to watch out for any tell tale vibrations through her feet.
The first few rooms where just your standard offices that would of been used by the navigation personnel, she was thankful that they were all easy to search, although she found little of use. The rooms were personalised to their previous owner, children drawings, photos of family and friends, and the compulsory cat pictures and motivational posters. It reminded her of home, of the desert sands of Collis, as she ran the fabric of her desert shawl through her fingers.
The terminals here were also destroyed, much to her mounting irritation and left her wishing that the crew could of been just slightly less thorough in their scuttling. Finding more papers on the aforementioned project citadel certainly didn't help matters, they were encoded of course and useless she could find a scanner to decode them, and she just knew that such a piece of equipment would also be conventionally destroyed. Apart from that there was also an ID card belonging to a Navigation second officer Rachel Witman, which she pocketed in hope of possibly using her clearance later.
The next room that she came across seemed to be an improvement to her fortunes. It was the survival chamber, that would be used as a life boat by the non-critical staff in the event of the abandonment of the Styx. It was strange that it was strange that it was still here, especially with the scuttling that seemed to have occurred in the previous rooms. Even stranger was the ransacking that seemed to have occurred, the cupboards and draws where thrown open, with several of their contents strewn across the floor and even worse was that she could see no sign of the medical supplies or the the emergency rations. It was violating so many unsaid rules that had been around since seafaring, she didn't know where to start and didn't know what could cause the crew to do such a thing. There where various air tank refill stations, which lined the full length of both sides, although the absence of any lights indicated they were all de-powered unfortunately...although. There was a console at the far end of the room, and with the quick entering of the standard start procedure she could feel the vibration of the floor as the various machinery whirred to life, a glance at the refill stations showed that several lights had blinked to life there as well.
It was then she felt the heavier vibrations that seemed to entirely shake the room. Her heart was pounding and felt like it was ready to burst from her chest. She couldn't help but wince at her stupidity knowing full well she'd just activated a security response and if it wasn't quite so serious she'd congratulate their response times.
"Alright kid, I'm at bingo oxygen. We should head back to the Sanctuary and fill up, then tell the Captain what we found." The voice of the marine coming through the comm made her jump, glancing again at her counter showed that she also was running on next to no O2 and with the security mech parked right out side the refill stations suddenly looked a lot less inviting, she didn't dare move fearing the mech was based on motion sensors.
"Ummm, that may be an issue." She winced as she was unable to fully keep the tremor from her voice. "I've reactivated a survival room" Another wince that name was totally inappropriate! "But seem to have gotten a security response as there's now a mech parked right outside the door"
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Post by Lord Harrab on Aug 6, 2016 20:43:40 GMT
Navigation Section Maintenance Command Hub
The Doc moved to do as ordered, but the drone shot across the space between them to hover in front of the door access pad, the medic's attempts to move the drone resulted in a gentle game of tug of war, woman and drone pushing against each other in silence until Jones strode over and pulled the machine away
it struggled for a few seconds then relented as the door it had been guarding slid open.
the office was cramped, untidy and filled with various monitors built into a few desks, a large map of the navigation section dominated the wall to the right of the door, marked with a number of red and blue magnets and hand written notes. A large section on the outer hull was untidily crossed out with the words "Workers Needed. Ask +Sarah+" Scrawled next to it, presumably it was the damaged section they had seen during their fly by.
as Mitchell moved further in, a camera mounted in the corner of the room turned to regard her, after several seconds, lights around the room flicked on, as did a couple of monitors, one flickering badly, the other displaying a simple message.
"Please close the Door. This section is not Secure."
Survival Chamber 2-6
Mordecai had responded quickly to his crewmate's broadcast for help, using the pilots own route to close on where she was pinned by an active and dangerous sounding security mech, ignoring the HUD displays that warned him of his rapidly diminishing air supply and using his many years of void combat to stealthily approach were the mech was apparently standing, his suit lights dimmed, skull looming menacingly out of the gloom as he crept through the semi-light corridors.
The mech was right where the pilot had indicated, it was staring at the survival chamber hatch with occasional, almost clockwork glances down the corridor in both directions, hugging the wall, the Marine was almost right onto of the machine when its head mounted light found him.
Mordecai fired, he couldn't miss at this range and he felt he had a good idea what such a mech would do in this situation, stand and take the hit, and return fire, best to get his shots in first, try and get through the Armour before it could bring that weapon into play.
Instead, it leaped backwards, away from the door and its attacker, reached down with its one hand to the deck, and pulled up a panel and crouched behind it, with weapon resting on the metal shield and both door and marine in front of it.
It fired, bright flashes of light flashing past Mordecai's visor as he threw himself backwards as well. cursing the lack of cover, as the mech's headlight flashed suddenly on and off in a pattern.
"Blue on blue."
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Post by Darko on Aug 12, 2016 14:51:21 GMT
Jones was about to enter the office, the drone's struggles subsiding, when the Doctor held up a hand. He stopped and turned to face her. She began to scan the room with her medi-tool. After a few minutes, she gave the all clear and they entered.
What caught his attention almost immediately was the large map on the right wall. Finally, they could get a bearing on their location relative to anywhere else in the area. He began to examine it, although it was mostly notes written in an engineer's shorthand and he couldn't make heads or tails of it. He made a mental note to have Nakamura take a look at it later on. Sarah... I wonder who that is. Perhaps one of the AI or crew members? He thought. Furthermore, the map clearly marked several survival chambers. One was in the damaged section they'd flown by in the Sanctuary. Perhaps that would allow them to explore that area despite limited air reserves, if it was intact. Another survival station was back the way they'd come, although using the map he traced a path to it from their location. They needed to refill their O2 tanks sooner rather than later, and they'd save time going through the corridors rather than back the way they came. And if those unknown contacts came back and turned out to be hostile... well, he was glad they weren't an unarmed civilian salvage operation.
Something caught his eye. One of the functional monitors was displaying a message. As he approached he spared a glance to the camera on the wall as it watched them. Power had activated when they entered... when it saw them.
"Maybe this ship isn't unpowered... maybe the power is just switched off by whoever's still alive and in control," he said to Mitchell over the comms. He stood in front of the monitor. The message did not bode well, and could have numerous meanings. He began to look for a way to interact with the computer, perhaps there would be more information available - leftover files, logs, security footage... anything that might give them an idea of what was going on. He kept one hand wrapped around the grip of his carbine like a child would clutch a teddy bear in an unfamiliar place, just in case something unexpected happened. Every few seconds he looked over his shoulder nervously, and realised that the thought of exploring a ghost ship that was obviously haunted was starting to get the best of him.
He sighed, frustrated by his own lack of calm. Keep it together, god dammit. You're an officer! You're making history! He told himself. Somehow it didn't really help. Then he had an idea. His feelings of anxiousness were replaced by curiosity and excitement once again.
"I wonder if..." The message wanted the door closed. Maybe it would reveal more information if they complied. The Doc had joined him in the office and was looking around. He walked over to the door, tapped the control panel on the wall and a moment later they were sealed inside the office. He returned to the monitor to see if anything changed.
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