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Major Rahbi Levay poised to strike, her marines close behind her. The captain was face to face with what looked like 300 lbs of muscle and pent up aggression, and here she was a full twenty paces behind him and around a corner. At any sign that the situation were to dissolve, Rahbi stood poised to rush the room and pack it with as many violent kicking marines as possible. She planned herself to focus on getting the captain out of the room, whatever good that was. If what she overheard from the plucky young ensign were true, then this man the captain was threatening was himself a threat sufficient to bring the whole bridge crashing down around him. Weapons. They needed weapons.

"On my command, but not before, rush the room."

*******

"Doctor! One of the nurses you sent out says he has found a way into the weapons arming bay! Here, listen."

Nurse Voyin passed the communicator over to her medical chief, holding it close to its head so it could hear without stopping what he was doing.

The communicator rattled off a quiet but continuing report.

"I was looking for more wounded and found this trail of blood. I followed it past several corners and into a ventilation duct. I still haven't found who it belongs to, but I'm looking into a large chamber in which what appear to be torpedoes, missiles, and...big energy things?...are attended by very large robotic arms. I've never seen such robotics! And there's several guys in here with fancy weapons. I think there's three of them, and they're patrolling the room. The room is large and dark, only illuminated by a few emergency lights, and there are a great many large orderly stacks of missiles or other weapony things in here. These three guys are patrolling the whole room in silence, well, I guess two of them are patrolling it, the other is over by the door and has as missile out. He's working on it. The room is huge! It must be over 200,000 square feet at least! But there's only one main door, and it's guarded right now. What do I do chief? They haven't found me yet. Should I slip out?"

A highly unusual situation for medical staff to deal with, Nurse Voyin and another aide watched Voracity carefully. There felt like an opportunity hanging in the air, but it would be up to Voracity to take it or leave it.

*********

Commander Faarhi Bri didn't care much for the slug of a pilot that she was grimacing at. He couldn't see her, but that didn't matter, she showed her contempt for idiots openly, whether they were watching or not.

"No. I said to hook up the simulation module to the emergency power. Of course you can't turn it on, it doesn't have power."

"Oh. Sorry boss!"

A few impatient eternities later, the simulation chamber was up and running, although sluggishly at best. Bri turned to the other team, expecting to be faced with more failure.

"Conning tower is up, Commander, and plugged into the simulation module."

This was a fairly acceptable success. Bri vaulted into the simulation chamber without waiting for further comments and ineptitudes. She started everything up in a rapid fire sequence, and became frustrated once more at the sluggish speed the simulator was operating at.

"Do you really think this will work, commander?"

Of course she thought it would work. She slammed the canopy down without acknowledging the sleight. Once the sim was standing by, she hacked into the conning tower interface, which drained more power from her connection and slowed things down further. It took far longer than she felt acceptable to hack into the conning tower, take over remote control of the autopilot guidance routines, slave them to her simulation pod outputs, and drive the autopilot guidance inputs to those in the sim pod. They would not be live video feeds, but rather an interpolated radar overlay in a reduction based wireframe rendering. This was all the docking, autopilot, and conning tower routines needed to do their job, and it would hopefully be all she required to do her.

The Fighters required a boost from ship itself to power up, they would be useless, and the Rangers were all facing the wrong direction. The transport however. Bri thought back to the glimpse she had gotten of the docking bay while Mars' goons were blasting at them. There was a transport on the near side of the bay...which one was it? Ahh, of course. T03 was painted in blocky white letters on the side of it's green and gray hull. She logged into Transport 3's autopilot. It had a reactor of it's own which had....about 1% reaction mass left. Sufficient. She made the connection and her simulation pod became immersed in a blocky wireframe world. She carefully activated only selected systems, so as to avoid flashing lights and other signals of what was going on.

"External view."

A small monitor lowered into her field of view and showed the view of several of the exterior monitors, also in blocky wireframe. She flipped through them until she found the one that looked onto nine goons with rainbow lasers. She knew that was what they were, though they looked basically like stick figures. She checked the camera's identity. EV10. She thought through the layout of the standard transport. This would be a starboard camera, in the forward quadrant, on the dorsal side. She opened the the simulation control interface, and programmed an incoming missile from the fore, starboard quadrant. Lock in. Engage simulation.

Red warning lights flashed in her simulation cockpit.

INCOMING MISSILE. INCOMING MISSILE. EVASIVE ACTION NOW.

Bri waited.

INCOMING MISSILE. FLAK? Y/N

"Yes."

She allowed herself a smile.

**********

Vincan Dorty waited at the mouth of the docking bay and flight deck. He and the other pilots had been run ragged by Bri while she barked orders and had them do something weird with emergency lighting, simulation pods, and autopilots. Dorty was a pilot first and foremost, and as it happened, little else. So all this hacking was giving him a headache. He hazarded a glance through the window at the remaining nine escapees. If only he had a weapon, he could obviously have taken them all down.

Without warning the flak system on the nearby transport, T03, engaged and hammered the hangar bay with exploding shrapnel and thunderous concussions.

Dorty blinked, long and hard.

Everything was ringing.

Everything was white.

Everything was yelling.

Bri was on him, he could see her ugly face, yelling something at him.

"Let's go, you little bitch, get to Ranger 3 and prep it for launch!"

Right, he worked for the most horrible person in the world. She dragged him to his feet and through the hangar bay. He slipped on something.

It was warm and wet on his back and face, but chunky. It was steaming, as it happened. He glanced down to see what it was, his senses clearing.

It was the nine escapees. All of them. Homogenized by the explosions and spread around the hangar bay somewhat. He felt things slipping out of his control and puked.

********

"Top, I'm not so sure about this. What happens if they switch to something other than stun?"

"Then you will die, security officer 33471, and so will the rest of us. On my mark, 3, 2, 1, mark."

The security door snapped open and the team of security officers forced their way into engineering. They were immediately greeted by an unrelenting stream of red beams from the two heavy rainbow cannon overlooking them. The line of five security officers, bound together by shreds of cryowear, were quickly stunned down, but held up by the group behind them, and used as a meat shield to protect the others from the stunning blasts. Chall'x took a breath and held it, as they made it 10 paces into the room. He slowly exhaled, aimed carefully, and let a blue beam rip out of his one weapon.

[http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4084856/ to hit] 5 sux
[http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4084859/ to dodge] 1 sux
[http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4084861/ to damage] 15L

The beam struck home, killing the gunner with a single shot through the eye, silencing his rainbow cannon for the moment. Challx turned and leapt up onto the wall behind him, running for all he was worth straight up the wall, blasting Red beams at the remaining battery.

The other cannon elevated it's fire and switched to green, chasing Challx up the wall with deadly blasts. He shifted to the right and led their fire across a catwalk, they followed fervently. They had reached the rightmost limit of their traverse and the upper limit of their elevation when the rest of the security team reached them, savagely beating them with pipes and chains. The lead Martian gunner realized, before a man in his underwear knocked him out with a wrench, that the insect man had drawn their fire away from the real threat, even though he had the only weapon in their group. Had they fired just a little better, they might have lanced him full of holes. Then the wrench connected.

Challx dropped to the floor and sized up the situation. Those security officers that had not been stunned down were beating the remaining goons to death. The senior officers were securing weapons. Challx picked up one of the heavy rainbow cannon. It would take a normal man a gyroscopic harness or a shoulder mount to wield this, and even then only with great difficulty. This weapon was designed to be pintle mounted or something similar, and fired from vehicles and armors. Challx hefted it with three hands, tossed his rainbow pistol to another security officer, and took the grip with his fourth hand. He experimentally swept it back and forth, and found that he, with four arms and a cybernetically enhanced build, could wield this weapon successfully.

"Gather weapons, and form up on me."

Challx carried his new weapon with one arm, over his shoulder, while checking his wounds and dropping down to the engineering floor. He had a couple, but he would live. He flipped on his cybernetic comms, and hailed Captain Stirling.

"Engineering secure, sir."

Somewhere distantly, a series of explosions could be heard, and a tremor felt.

*******

"You men have a choice before you. You have refused to fall in and join your marine comrades in this, a valorous and important battle, and are engaging in outright mutiny! You have voiced dissent at being placed on a ship so far from your homes, and you claim to be reservists, un-obligated to serve full time in this mission. Very well. You may enlist full time, or you may walk home."

With that, Colonel Adar slammed his combat vac-suit helmet home, and placed a relaxed hand on the airlock control panel. It had taken far too long to come to this point, where all the issues were made clear. He glanced at the men in formation before him. Some of them were good men, and they composed most of the marines he had aboard, about 60% of them. Reservists, called up to test cryopods, sent on a suicide mission against their will and without their knowledge. Even given their circumstances, Adar could not abide a coward. He waited for a response, standing by to blow the airlock and vent all of them into space.

The urgency of the situation was driven home as a series of explosions could be heard, and felt, from some distant place in the vessel.

*******

The slab was cold to the touch but warming in its presence. Jezial relaxed into it, feeling it's multidimensional vastness as though she lay on a vast endless plain, nearby trees and rocks being nothing more than realities of the past and future. She was technically aware of a growing ruckus in another part of the cargo hold. Some men were building things out of smaller things. It didn't matter though.

In contact with the timeless slab, Jezial found it somewhat easier to notice not only the ship leaving the Endeavor, and the superwarp stage drifting uselessly nearby, but another vessel, a huge vessel, approaching from an oblique angle, hidden in the clouds of nega-debris, watching them hungrily. A couple engineers ran through the cargo bay at full tilt, their racial fitness evident in their casual conversation while doing so. In spite of their motion and noise, Jezial was undisturbed by their interruption.

"So the XO just yanked me away, right before the bulkhead blew into flames. He stood over me, his face actually on fire, and he just said 'not today, son, not today.' I've never seen anything like it. I think he's dead or something now, some of the other guys dragged him off to sick bay after that, haven't heard anything else about him yet."

"Well, I don't want to alarm you, but it looks like a...fairly attractive blue lady is making out with Sign."

"Huh. So there is. It's been one of those days."

Somewhere in the ship, a series of explosions sent tremors rocking through to Jezial, nearly asleep on the mysterious slab.

********

Jaxon Mars slowly rose from the command chair. The man before him was slight in figure, by comparison to his, and a tiny fraction of his age. Mars, whose name once struck fear into the hearts of an empire, was not accustomed to being told 'no' by anyone. This was a human, however, and as his chosen name might indicate, Jaxon Mars felt a kinship with humans, and their violent tendencies. While Mars could and had crushed a mans skull with one hand, the humans were known to have done...worse things. Mars descended from the chair and met Stirling eye to eye, though a head taller than him. He flexed and glowered at him for a minute. He took a deep breath as though to respond, but a series of reports in the radio in his ear, and the distantly audible explosions from the docking bay, caused him to exhale slowly, biding his time as the tension in the room reached peaked.

Stirling's cybernetic communicator relayed a series of reports almost at the same time as Mars' if not a moment before.

"Engineering secure, sir."

"Hangar bay is secure, we're prepping Ranger 3 to go after Ranger 2 now, sir."

"We have a small cache of weapons assembled from spare parts in the cargo hold sir, where do we need to bring them?"

"Captain, this is Nurse Voyin in the medical bay. Commander Keen has been incapacitated for the time being, but he will survive."

"Fire extinguished sir, the XO did a great job and saved our lives, I hope he makes it."

"Captain, I'm pleased to report that the last hull breach has been sealed, sir."

Stirling and Mars each processed the incoming information simultaneously, glowering at one another as the situation changed moment to moment.

Mars may have had initiative and the upper hand, but he had underestimated his opponent. After all, Stirling had picked the best and brightest the universe had to offer, while Mars had picked the worst.

Beginnings Post 8

Listening to the communicator, Voracity twitched slightly. Were these creatures devoid of common sense? What had happened to the nurse’s security detail? Why was a lone member of its medical team crawling through ducts? These questions and others raced through the Matriarchs not insignificant mind.

The young Queen was going to have to rest soon, the trauma of its own wounds was really starting to take its toll. If the other beings around it could have seen what was happening under the encounter suit, even the most hardened medical officers would have bulked. Voracity had slowly been trying to purge itself of the frozen icor through out its small form. The seepage was not, pleasant.

It had also slowly been cataloging the damage to its form, and the news wasn’t promising. Its nervous system, and cerebral tissue were the most troubling. Nothing had gone unaffected though. This kind of trauma was going to take a long while to heal, and some of its systems might never work the same again. A twinge of anger ran through the Queen. This was outrageous what had been done to it.

Voracity was a highly evolved organism, the product of millions of years of specific natural, and scientific development. It had dreams, and expectations of birthing the perfect society. Its purpose, and directive to continue to evolve an even greater species filled the most animal part of its mind. All of this, however, had been adversely, and maybe irreparably altered by the blunderings of lesser life forms.

The Queen pushed these emotions down, and focused on the tasks before it. Once more the alien doctor would be forced to use the archaic communicator to send a message. Its species had refined the art of communication so long ago. It galled Voracity that its own faculties were so poor. With a wheezing moan it inhaled, then purged the airways and vocal organs of the host, in preparation. Voyin stood by continuing to the hold the communications device, though at several points her face showed an mixture of emotions over the whole process.

“This is… Doctor Voracity. Do not… go further. Turn back. Find escort.” To nurse Voyin, the doctor simply sent a mental message. “Get me the Chief of Security.”

As the nurse fiddled with the communicator, Voracity finished the procedure it had been working on, one of the last critical cases. Finished, the Matriarch turned its attention to the nurse and the communicator.

“Got it doctor.” Voyin said, pleased with herself.

“Chief Challix, this is Doctor Voracity. One of my team… has found… something of concern. Men, in a weapons hold… lots of explosives… some sort of robotics. Found, way in… undetected. You might… want to look. Will get… position for you. Hold.”

Nurse Voyin was already on the job. She quickly switched back over to the nurses channel. Before Voracity could speak she said in a motherly tone, “Don’t worry Doctor I can handle this. You take a break.”

“Tom, this is Voyin, are you still with us?”

“Yeah, Miss Voyin, I’m tryin’ to crawl out of these tunnels, but its slow goin’. What’s up? He didn’t sound very happy. My escort is waiting back at the start of these ducts by the way. Not really a lot of room in here. We don’t really have any weapons or anything though.”

“Don’t worry about it Tom. Listen, the Doctor is trying to relay your coordinates to Security, can you tell us where you are?”

The nurse relayed his coordinates in hushed tones, and the occasion grunt, presumably because he was still navigating the tunnels he was in. Once finished Voyin switched back over to the security channel, and relayed the coordinates to Chief Challix.

The Doctor and nurse both waited, one with alien patience, the other with not a little anxiety, for a reply. Once relayed Doctor Voracity could only hope that security would be able to deal with whatever was happening in that room. Voracity also pondered how unfortunate it would be should something happen to one of its medical team. Trained specialists would be hard to replace on this mission. They would all have to be more careful.

"This is Chief of Security Chall'x, a ventilation shaft that leads there? Thank you for passing this along to me, I will resolve the issue."

Once the coordinates finished uploading Chall'x turned to the team that was with him. "Officers, we have another target. There are 3 hostiles that have barricaded themselves in the munitions hold. I will engage the hostiles, you will wait by the blaster door and be prepared to arrest the survivors. Here are the coordinates to the location. Convene there and await my orders."

With that he headed to the ventilation shaft that the medical staffer spoke of. Carefully so as to not make any noise he began the trek through the shaft that would lead him to the room in question, while walking on the ceiling so as to limit the effects of gravity on his footfalls. Knowing that time was on his side, he went with his newly acquired rainbow cannon, carrying it in front of him, setting it down gently when he needed to. When he finally made it to the vent, he removed the grate into the shaft with extremely great care.

Starcrusher guide my hand...

With that silent prayer his relic implant ran the targetting program. The familiar conciousness settled over his mind utilized all of his senses, and helped guide his aim to perfection. With a deep sense of calm, Chall'x switched his cannon to Indigo while pointing it inconspicuously at the person messing with the missile and casually squeezed the trigger in a clean kill shot.

(OOC: Ok, so my dice pool for this roll is 13, plus 7 dice for my targetting software, and I have the Trick-shot knack, so I half all penalties due to the difficulty rating of the shot and I get bonus dice equal to the original penalty to the shot equal to my firearms rating which is 5. So I don't know if there is a penalty or not, but without that I have 21 dice to kill the fucker dead (+1 accuracy for Indigo))

OOC: Link
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4091187/

21d10 → [10,7,7,2,9,1,2,6,8,2,2,9,10,2,9,3,5,5,8,9,9] I don't remember if 10's count twice or if 1's subtract, but assuming that neither of those is the case that is 11 successes to snipe him.

Chall'x quietly retreated back into the vent, and hacked the comm's of the bay.
"Attention hostile personnel, this is the Chief of Security. You will calmly and quietly lay down all arms, raise all of your hands, and await your arrest. If you do not comply, I will detonate the payload of this bay. There will be no compromise."

With that he waited to see the ants scurry, very closely, anyone that acted as though they were preparing to resist will get an Indigo beam to the head.


GM Edit and Addendum: Heavy Rainbow Cannon don't get the +1 Accuracy that pistols do, I'm assuming that's from taking a turn of aiming. The target is unaware of your presence, so you spend one success to hit him. Indigo beams do 14L[10], so your damage roll is:

24d10 → [6,9,8,1,1,3,8,2,3,4,2,7,5,5,4,2,6,5,3,8,3,7,1,6] = (109)
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4091481/
So that's 6 successes from your 10 sux to hit and 14 dice to damage, plus the 10 autosux, for a total of 16L. He dies.

End addendum

The gags and splutters of the rapidly dying Martian echoed throughout the weapons hangar, giving the moments of relative silence after Challx's announcement a gut wrenching and haunting ambience. The remaining two Martians' silence indicated their stout defiance of the security cheif's order. Their quiet use of their comm channel was readily available to Challx after Starcrusher trivially compromised what apparently passed for information security these days.

"Joss, do you have eyes on him?"

"No way Maru. That was a heavy beam cannon blast, and this guy's using indigo beams. I'm not sticking my head out there, no way."

"Are you a coward? Mars will kill you for..."

"Yes. I'm a coward. That's why I'm trying to get into this battlesuit in the back of the hangar, and you're hiding under a torpedo trying to get sniped."

"Fuck it. I'm gonna try to flush him out."

"Maru, before you die, I just wanted you to know something."

"What's that Joss?"

"I always...I always hated you the most Maru. I hated you the most."

"Fuck you Joss."

"Just buy me 30 seconds while this thing powers up."

"Pfft. That's a long time. I'm gonna kill this guy while you don't have your pants on. I'm gonna go get vengeance for Gorr, someone has to."

With that, Maru started suppressing the upper catwalks of the weapons hangar with Violet beams, destroying many of them and potentially killing anyone hiding in the rafters.

[cover fire maneuver: 3 sux (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4092311/)]

[Note: Cover fire establishes a willpower roll difficulty to act normally. If you fail to beat the 3 successes you cannot act, diving for cover. IF you match the difficulty, you may act at +1 difficulty. If you succeed, you may act normally albeit surrounded with tales of heroism. If you botch, you get hit.]

The captain's eye briefly flickered left and right as he accessed his in-built comm systems and went over the contents of incoming transmissions. "It seems the tables are turning," he said, noting that Mars was similarly receiving reports. "My people are very good at what they do. Now, are you ready to negotiate?"

He fought the urge the begin issuing new orders and sending replies to the incoming transmissions. This was not, unfortunately, the time for that. His crew was resourceful, though, as they'd just proven, he was sure they could find something to do to make themselves useful on a gigantic ship full of intruders.

The tension on the bridge was taught to a razor's edge. The attempts at bypassing the security of the bridge consoles stopped, and the Martians on the bridge slowly rose.

The Martian with an itchy trigger finger slowly slung his rifle and glowered at Exemplar, popping a few knuckles quietly and smiling slowly.

Stirling's words hung in the air, the quiet breathing of Mars audible to him, calm and even.

Mars starting laughing. Quietly at first, but then rising to a crescendo. His men seemed uneasy at this.

"Ha ha, ahh. Your men have proven their commitment, captain. Today, you are victorious. Rejoice, captain. You have won this round. My men are being slaughtered, in spite of their superior firepower. I imagine there are weapons on their way to the marines outside this bridge, and my fate is being carefully planned out. Know this: this mission is suicide. We will find nothing out here, save our graves. With all your courage and nobility, you have brought your men here to die. Nonetheless, rejoice today, for you are victorious, Captain. The ship is yours. I, however, am not."

With that, Mars clapped his leg triggering a flashbang type explosive.

Stirling found everything to be ringing, bright blinding white, also smoke and yelling. Exemplar was knocked back by the blast, but retained her senses, and so was witness to the unexpected disappearance of Jaxon Mars down a concealed chute in front of the captain's chair, followed by several of his men, including the one with an itchy trigger finger and a large scar on his face. Several of Mars' goons were incapacitated by the blast and lay crumpled on the floor, at least momentarily.

Stirling found soft but firm hands scrambling over him rapidly.

"Captain, you with us? I have his vitals, he's good. Captain?"

The fine features of Major Levay were the first that Stirling's eyes focused on. As he focused in on her, and how many fingers she was holding up, she smiled back at him.

"He's with us. C'mon captain, back on your feet."

With an athletic heft, she pulled Stirling back onto his feet, albeit wobly at first.

"You men, secure those belligerents!"

As the smoke cleared Stirling and Exemplar took in the scene, revealing a half dozen captured martians, and a group of three cryo-wear clad marines carefully examining the escape chute.

"The bridge is secure, sir."

Major Levay snapped out a perfect salute to punctuate her statement. The dark and yawning escape chute suggested otherwise; perhaps the situation had more nuance left to be revealed.

Exemplar was moving before the others even recovered from the blast. Sweeping up a fallen weapon and a makeshift shield, she ran to hole and leaped in feat first. The enemy wasn't going to get lost in the bowels of the ship where they could do untold damage, not on her watch.

Of course, she apparently didn't realize it wasn't HER watch, given that she was just an ensign. That was a detail for lesser beings though; responsibility fell on those with power regardless of petty titles.

As Exemplar fell down the hole wearing only her underwear and wielding her stolen weapons, she idly contemplated how happy she was to be away from home... Aterna was never this engaging.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," said Stirling coughing and waving his hand in front of his face to clear the air around his head. He returned the major's salute. "We need to make sure there's a safe route to here for the bridge crew."

He made his way over to the captain's chair and hit the control on the armrest that controlled the ship-wide comm. "Captain Stirling to all hands: We have secured the bridge. All escapees are directed to surrender to the nearest crewmen and stand down. All personnel are advised that Jaxon Mars is still at large and should be considered both armed and extremely dangerous. If spotted, report his position immediately. Bridge crew report to your stations," he paused for a moment. "Good job people, keep it up. Stirling out."

Abandoning the chair for the moment, as the marines continued to examine the chute, he instead moved over to one of the bridge consoles and brought up an interior schematic of the ship. He tapped the console for the comm again, "Stirling to engineering, your priority is to get main power online and stable, then find and install Sign, the museum computer says its aboard - it may be able to tell you where."

Cha'llx experienced no emotion as the two men decided their fate. They may have thought that his threat was a bluff, but it was not. The same lack of emotion was present as Maru began laying suppression fire into the rafters. He didn't understand these people. The bay was poorly lit, they didn't know where he was, yet they insisted on shooting Violet beams blindly.

[8d10 → [9,9,6,1,9,4,9,9] http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4096022/ . 5 successes on Willpower roll to ignore cover fire. Cha'llx doesn't give a shit.]

The Afterswarm viewed nearly all frequencies, so it was with utmost confidence that Cha'llx, using his superior position, calmly flipped the rainbow cannon to Violet...

(ooc: still using the room's PA system)"Maru Tundra and Joss Barley, you have been found guilty of failure to comply to surrender. Punishment is execution pending immediately"

...and assassinated Joss, shooting through a tiny gap in the cover he had found.

[so this is going to be where trick shot is going to come in handy, 20d10 → [8,6,6,1,1,7,2,10,5,8,7,3,4,2,1,7,10,5,3,1] http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4096038/ So...that is 7 sux if there is nothing special with 10's and 1's, 3 sux if 1's subtract and 10's do nothing, or 6 if 10's double and 1's subtract...again I don't remember the rules sorry. Also, of note, I am making a trick shot, but I don't know what the diff of it is, whatever it is I don't take the penalty but instead get half of that as bonus dice. I am going to tag my aspect: Uncompromising Battle-Priest.]

Before the aftereffect of the Violet beam could clear from Maru's eyes, Cha'llx had his cannon locked onto him and with the same cold resolve squeezed the trigger.

Maru vanished into a cloud of fine white powder.

Joss, enclosed in a battlesuit and behind full cover relative to Challx, cursed repeatedly as he watched the remains of his long time companion swirl and vanish into the air conditioning systems. He felt his hands begin to tremble. That was a single shot. Granted, Joss had escalated to Violet, but seeing the power of the effect on a friend was...surreal.

The diagnostics on his suit weren't complete, but he frantically tried to bypass them nonetheless.

WORK you cursed thing!

He knew the bug priest was out there somewhere, with that cursed heavy rainbow beam cannon. It wouldn't be long before he figured out where Joss was hiding, and which battlesuit he was in. He only hoped that his systems would be up before then, so he could at least put up a fair fight.

***********

Exemplar heard the chute door snap shut after she passed a few feet deeper into it. The folly in her action may or may not have been completely lost on her, but the chute was quite exciting just the same. She fell for a substantial distance before the chute evened out and deposited her with substantial force into a dark but heavily reinforced and spacious bunker. A quick glance around the bunker brought Exemplar the realization that this was a functional bridge designed to be used in the event that the actual bridge was taken over by hostiles of some kind. Large reinforced doors stood open in two directions.

Slow movement caught her eye. Scar. He emerged from shadow into the center of the room, on a wide dais illuminated from above. Wickedly razored chains hung from either arm. Exemplar's highly tuned reflexes led her to notice his Primary Beam Rifle leaning against a console, about ten paces behind him. The quiet jangling of his chain weapons punctuated his slow, rhythmic speech, which he seemed to make with some effort.

"I had been hoping that you would be coming. I am not disappointed that you did not disappoint. My master and your master would prefer that we both live. I think you should know then that I do not follow orders all that well."

He stretched his neck and gave one of his chains a menacing swing.

"You might be thinking that Jaxx kept only the most loyal with him on the bridge. For the others this would be true, but I am not one of the others. Jaxx knew that he had to keep an eye on me, or I might get hungry for some eyes, again. Right now he is probably thinking, where did old Scar get off to? HE doesn't know what you and I know, that the bond we now have is one that must be finished with blood."

He began swinging both chains in an interweaving pattern, and approached her slowly.

"Come now, you promised me the loss of a finger. It is time to make good on that promise."

Exemplar was doubly excited. Not only an adventure, but a talking extra that thought he mattered... and he thought SHE mattered too, which made her feel a spark of kindness for the clearly deranged man. This was just too good, and as a bonus she had even found an important area of the ship. In her excitement she began to glow slightly, lighting up the dark room as she got into character once more, scowl crawling back across her face.

Exemplar looked the man in the eye as she walked forward. "I'm pretty sure we talked about you losing your trigger finger, but the whole gun thing isn't an issue anymore. So I guess we'll have to figure out something else for you to lose... or you could just make this easy and come along quietly." Banter was necessary in situations like these, all the vids were very clear on it, and it was only fair to give him a chance to surrender.

<prepared>

Stirling glanced around the bridge after issuing this round of orders. His brow creased. "Where did Exemplar go? The ensign that entered the bridge with me," he explained, in case those within earshot did not know who he meant.

After being informed that she wasn't present when the smoke had cleared, he made the logical leap that she'd gone down the rabbit hole after Mars and his goons. "See if you can track her down, if she's going to try to face Mars and his men, she's probably going to want backup," he ordered.

Sign? She couldn't recall meeting any such named being or object before. She hoped it didn't have a set purpose on the ship though, as she would have it replace her bed at the earliest opportunity if it wasn't otherwise occupied.

As Captain Stirling's voice echoed through the cargo bay, Jezial remembered that, as fascinated as she was by the nega-space, there had been something of a ruckus inside the ship. Perhaps now that it had calmed down she could inquire as to her position on the ship. Languidly she rolled to a seated position and attempted to find, and care about, a comm panel.

Getting off the slab caused a wave of vertigo, but she was far more in control of her spacial perceptions now, and was able to correct for it. She kept most of her awareness on the object that, she suspected, would soon be problematic for the Captain and it's crew as she made her way to the panel, which was inconveniently in a main hallway.

She took a deep breath and tried to remember to sound urgent, and direct, as she had learned that the humans responded much better when she didn't, as they put it, get distracted.

"Captain Stirling?...This is...oh fascinating, that nebula seems to be a semi-liquid cloud of dust, how does it maintain...oh yes, Captain, this is Jezial, reporting from the cargo bay." There was a few seconds of pause. "Oh yes, I am pleased that the...incursion was it?...is over, and wondered if the large ship that is approaching our location will be problematic as well...also I have a reallocation request regarding my furnishings...but that can probably wait."

There, direct. Her mind was called away again as she focused on the shifting clouds around the approaching ship, fascinating really.

"I can report to the bridge if I would be of use on navigation..." She looked through the wall longingly at the slab, "or simply remain in the cargo hold."

"Large ship?" he looked up from his panel, "Can we get some sensors online? No? Someone go look out a damned window. If there's another ship out there, I want someone tracking it."

He pressed a button to reply to Jezial, "Furnishings will have to wait until we've secured the ship, restored power, and have Sign properly installed so we can operate this boat." She made her offer to come to the bridge to aid in navigation, and he remembered her knack for that sort of thing. He wondered if that's how she was detecting the ship she mentioned. "We can't really navigate without power - we're dead in space, but if you can sense another ship out there, I want you on the bridge."

"Captain Stirling to all hands: We have secured the bridge."

The desire of these men to continue their futile resistance stunned Cha'llx. He was the General Commander of her Queen's forces on his planet. Countless battles and a staggering number of kills had been imprinted on him through thousands of past lives. Yet they assume that they may deny orders to lay down arms and survive???

He scanned the area looking for a clean shot for the faint heat signature in his vision, and upon realizing that none existed from the ceiling, he quietly but quickly exited and scaled the wall against which the convict was hiding.

"All escapees are directed to surrender to the nearest crewmen and stand down."

Cha'llx's footsteps could barely be heard over the battlesuit running through it's powering up and diagnostics tests.

"All personnel are advised that Jaxon Mars is still at large and should be considered both armed and extremely dangerous. If spotted, report his position immediately. Bridge crew report to your stations."

Cha'llx was able to walk along Joss' cover and flip so that he was hanging from the underside of the platform, and subtly crawled until Joss was within spitting distance.

The battlesuit chimed cheerfully that it was online and operational, and Maru's face was dimly illuminated by it's HUD near the end of the Captain's announcement. He glanced up preparing to come out from hiding to crush the bug, only to see the barrel of a rainbow cannon filling most of his field of vision...time seemed to stand still as the barrel began to emit the most beautiful light that Joss had ever seen. Maybe in a future life his favorite color would be violet.

[20d10 → [7,6,9,9,9,3,9,4,9,9,7,1,3,8,8,6,10,10,7,1] http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4097379/ ooc: Ummmmm....fuck!]


"Good job people, keep it up. Stirling out."

"Captain Stirling, this is Chief of Security Cha'llx. The Ammunitions Bay is now secured sir."