Just a Trick of the Light... (INVITE)

[Solus]

I hate these things. Ira thought as she donned the hazmat. They were always so itchy. And heavy.

"Yes, sir," she said, wary of how the Nikto toted his gun. Was there going to be trouble? Hm.

At any rate, she was soon by his side, looking around for anything interesting.

 

[Viggy]

“Yep-yep sir, I’ll do both just to be certain, you bet!” the Squib quipped, snapping a salute to Spacey Pete. Grognak passed him a hazmat suit (in the smallest available size, which was still a bit loose) and Dmivo followed the Nikto into the airlock. Inside, he took his tensor gun out of its holster belt so his vacuum gear wouldn’t block him from accessing it. Putting the weapon on the floor, he got suited up, then picked the tensor gun up once more. Holding the Squibbish device in his hands, Dmivo simply waited for everyone else to get in the airlock and get ready. He hummed a little tune to himself inside his helmet.

 

[Dragon Fae]

I had never in my life donned one of the bulky...HAZMAT suits they called them?...before. Looking to the others as they all quickly began to pull them over their jumpsuits, I frowned. I was not a woman that exposed my goods before a contract was properly established. Still, as the others donned their suits and waited for me, I finally let out a sigh. I had been given a choice to come along or not.

With deft fingers, I reached behind me and began to undo the dress, careful to not put a wrinkle in the fine fabrics. Stepping out of the gown, wearing nothing but my black lacey lingerie and dagger sheath strapped to my right thigh, I drapped the dress over the chair and reached for the suit. Pulling my dagger from the sheath, I laid it to the side and quickly donned the suit. I refused to be walking in that ship without some form of protection. Once my dagger was in hand, my eyes turned to the others.

 

[Sir Dakar]

Pete himself was just climbing into the Hazmat suit when he saw Kaori taking off her dress right infront of them. Being as polite as possible he quickly turned around and stared in the other direction while he finished putting on the suit. Too bad there was a mirror on that wall. With a small groan as the ship defeated him, Pete resorted to just putting on the suit looking down at the floor.

“Alright!” Pete said over the intercom connecting all the suits. “Spread out and look for things that would be valuable or things that you simply need for yourself. The former you bring to us, and the latter you keep. Grognak and Ira, why don't you take the engine room, see if there is anything worthwhile in there, everybody else is going to the bridge.” Once finished he smashed the release button, opening the airlock to the mysterious ship.

The familiar hissing sound of escaping gas echoed around the room, as the air between the settled between them. Pete immediately flipped out his datapad and began scanning the room for levels of things that humans need, and levels of things that humans particularly do not want to breath. Of course he was kind enough to also check for his companions as well. Can't leave them high and dry and all.

“Seems like the power is out Grognak.” Pete commented on the lack of lights inside of the ship, with only the emergency lighting on inside. “Hopefully we can figure out why on the bridge.”

 

[Ser Yorick]

The expression that came upon Grognak's face was the Nikto equivalent of a frown; Pete had hit the release button when he himself had been waiting patiently to do it. Oh well.

'Copy that,' he said, accepting the duty of inspecting the engine room. Grognak then stepped through the opening and pulled out his portable scanner. Quickly, he executed a sweep, and figuring the engine room was off in direction to his left, motioned for Ira to follow and began walking.

The interior of the derelict ship was pretty plain, with the usual standard grey and black. A wall-mounted control panel lay against the wall by the airlock entrance, but its screen was darkened. It seemed that the emergency systems only powered a few of the lights in this section of the ship, and not the control or communications grids. 'This must be last decade's model,' the Nikto whispered to himself. Hopefully they would find a working panel farther into the ship and Ira could take a crack at it. Grognak then switched on his helmet light to make sure he could see where he was going, as the emergency lights were few and far between. As soon as he switched on his light, he saw something on the left wall.

'Carbon scoring.'

 

[Solus]

Ira followed the Nikto through the ship, heading for what they hoped was the engine room. She watched him, reach up and turn on a light on his hazmat.

"It can do that?" she said, excitedly trying to find the button for hers. For the moment she ignored what Grognak said until her lamp turned on.

Very cool.

"Hm?" she finally said, before recalling what he said. "Carbon scoring? You mean where the auxiliary type-B L4 wires of the automatic systems burned through the wall? Those kinds give off lots of carbon when they burn," she said, looking up around the ceiling for the burns he was talking about. "Gets very hot."

 

[Ser Yorick]

Grognak stopped to turn and look at his female companion. 'Um, yeah, something like that.' He had no idea what she had said and decided just to go along with it. Technical jargon, he thought to himself.

He thought he heard something down the corridor and spun, drew his blaster cannon, and dropped the scanner he had been holding, letting it clang to the floor. 'Kriffing hell!' he exclaimed. There was nothing down the hall, probably just an echo of movement from the behind them where the others were.

Grognak stowed his cannon and bent over to pick up the scanner. He then noticed that the little screen wasn't detecting any hull breaches, nor chemicals in the air. He waved for Ira to come take a look and asked, "The oxygen levels look fine on this thing, don't they?' If they were, then they could take their suits off, which would allow for much more freedom of movement; the damn things were so hot too.

 

[Viggy]

As Grognak and Ira moved off to the left, Dmivo took point on the exploration of the bridge, as he had been instructed to do by Pete. He held his tensor gun at the ready as he constantly turned his head from side to side, keeping an eye out for anything that looked suspicious, dangerous, valuable to CWD or useful to himself. This went on for a long time as he moved down the main hallway of the bridge, and he found nothing - inactive control panels along the wall to his left, windows looking out at the stars on his right.

Eventually he reached the end of the hallway and found himself at a ‘fork in the road’, with a door going straight forward and another door to the left. Dmivo turned on his comlink to contact the others.

“Zero life forms, zero dead forms. I’d say the crew evacuationized the ship… either that, or they were all butcherated in one spot somewhere, cause I don’t see no bodies here. I don’t see no good haggle-prizes, neitherways. Moving on, no less. Two doors here. I’ll take the forwardable path-route, someone else check out the leftway. Over and onward.”

Not waiting for a response, the Squib opened the door going straight forward and stepped into another room. There were no emergency lights in here, and while faint starlight was leaking in through a window, it was almost pitch black. Dmivo could just barely make out the silhouettes of some strange machines, this room might be some kind of a workshop but without light it was hard to tell. His fur stood on end inside his hazmat suit as he began to slowly explore the dark room, not knowing about the lamp on his helmet that he could have used to shed some light on this matter. He wished he could take his suit off and use his fur's strong senses, he felt blind with his body wrapped up in a bulky spacesuit.

 

[Dragon Fae]

I followed after Dmivo, my eyes looking around as much as I could in this damned suit. The ship was plain spooky with only the emergency lighting on. Ships were not mean to be so quiet and so...empty. It was like walking through a graveyard. Upon hearing Dmivo say he was taking the straightway, I turned to the door to the left.

Approaching the doorway as quietly as I could, I waited for them to hiss open and then stepped inside to the inky darkness. Fumbling with the light on the suit, I turned my head this way and that, filling the room with light before stepping further inside. It looked like some kind of equipment room or storage room. Some of the lockers were open with their contents spilled out while others were sealed tight. I wished I had brought my security tunnelers with me now. Bending down, picking through the items in the footlockers that I found, I tried looking for anything that these fellas might consider valuable.

Something did not feel right about this whole ordeal. "Looks like someone was in a hurry here."

 

[Solus]

CLANK.

Ira gasped and grabbed Grognak's arm in alarm, looking everywhich way, until she finally noticed that it had been the gun. "Don't do that!" she said, only mildly annoyed and majorly skittish.

When Grognak spoke, Ira immediately snapped her head in his direction to listen. "Oh, they are? Well...that's good..." she said, pensively. She didn't quite know what to say next - the oxygen levels might be perfectly fine, but if there was still stuff in the air - even something as inane as a lot of dust - she might still not be able to breathe without a rebreather - and that meant she couldn't talk.

Gah.

"That's cool," she finally said, looking around for something that might lighten the dim hallways of this place. She finally fixated on a little box on the wall. Seeing the marking that it was a power switch thing, she hurried over to it and yanked the door open, hoping that she could use it to turn on the main lights and get rid of some of the general air of creepiness. She immediately began examining it.

"Hm," she said, looking at all the switches. She finally decided that she was going to have to get behind it. Unless this specific powerline was over 15 years old, the best way to get it off was to move this lever over hidden in the corner of it. That done, she gave it a bit of a twist to the right. She then grabbed the metal frame of the box and yanked.

She ended up on her back, box still on the wall, and her confusedly looking at the ceiling.

"Uh..."

 

[Ser Yorick]

Grognak watched what she was doing with interest. When Ira fell, he had the strong urge to laugh but kept it in. He didn't want to get on her bad side; Grognak had heard about her run in with the forward drunk back on the Cosmos. The Nikto rarely got drunk, but he was always forward.

The box began to spark and shoot little pieces of fragmented metal everywhere. Grognak rushed to the befallen Ira, dragged her away and then up to her feet. The box then exploded and showered them with even more sparks, which Grognak slapped out as they hit his and Ira's suits. And then, probably because of her handiwork, the emergency lights in their area flickered and went out.

'Uh oh.'

Except for Grognak's helmet light, the two were now in complete darkness.

'Come here a sec,' said the Nikto. He pulled Ira close and flicked a switch on her helmet, turning its light on as well.

'OK, now, I'm going to test this out.' Grognak pressed in two doohickeys on either side of his helmet, and with a hiss, lifted it off his head. He could breathe! And so he leaned against the nearest wall and soon took off the rest of his suit, deciding that it was safe to do so. He wasn't so sure about Ira though, as she was from Alsakan, and her breathing wasn't so good. They were polar opposites in that respect, as the Nikto naturally had tubes protruding from either side of his face and neck that filtered the air, and she could get sick with a coughing fit from simple dust.

He then tossed the suit against the opposite wall, having unscrewed the light from his helmet to use as a flash light. Once again, he led the way through the ship. They should reach the engine room soon.

 

[Sir Dakar]

OOC: I am sorry about the delay, life has sucked these past few days.

Pete stood in the frame of the room that Kaori was in, lending his helmet's light to her search of the contents. “Some of those open containers look like boxes where bullet's come from. Perhaps whoever was here was looking for a gun of some sort.” On the thought Pete turned around and looked at the wall opposite of the room, checking for slag holes in the metal.

“No entry points here, if fighting did go on, it was not in this hallway.” he remarked, mostly too himself.

“Com'on, usually the lockers are near the bridge in a ship of this design.” He said to the lady before moving further down the hallway, now making sure to scan all of the walls as he walked along, looking for bullet marks. Sure enough, after passing a few more doors leading too what he imagined were the personal quarters of the former crew, was the bridge. Unfortunately he was not so excited to see it. As he stepped through the frame of the door, he noticed something odd.

“Look at this frame Miss S'gaat, do you see this? It looks as if somebody cut their way into the bridge. The door is sealed tight, but whatever was on this side needed to get in, or maybe this was a last ditch effort to lock somebody in.” This must have taken hours, he thought to himself, his finger tracing the perfectly straight cut of the door.

Mentally noting that particular oddity, Pete sat down in what he hoped was the pilot's chair, and began running the ship's diagnostics, trying to find out exactly what happened. The first thing he checked, however, was if the life support was still functioning, and thankfully it was. Standing up while the ship continued to collect data, he took off his suit, draping it over another nearby chair. If whatever happened to this ship is still there, he would greatly prefer to have that suit off.

 

[Dragon Fae]

Stopping my digging, I turned and watched Pete give the room a once over. He was more experienced than I had first believed from our initial meeting. Following him out of the room, I too was glancing around, but not at the walls. Years of training had taught me to look for the smallest signs, for those were the ones that spoke volumes.

As they went further down the halls, I began to see the bullet marks that he spoke of. Something had gone down in this ship. The only question was what? and why? There were no bodies.

Hearing him call me toward him, I quickly obeyed, my eyes too going to the door frame. "Lock in or keep out, it did not work," I said in a low voice, my eyes doing a quick sweep of the bridge. As he sat down at the console, I began to look for other tell tale signs of a struggle, not noticing how he had removed his suit. If someone wanted in, there should be signs of a scuffle somewhere.

 

[Solus]

Having seen the lights burst out and sparks fly, some sparks began to ignite in her eyes.

"Kriff it I hate old wiring!!!" She said, stamping over to the wall where the box had once been and kicking the wall. "Would it hurt you to update once in a while? Huh? Kriff it," she said with one last huff. She hated having to deal or fix botchy or old wiring jobs. It just irked her. She took a few deep breaths to help calm her down as she walked back over to the Nikto as he called her, bringing her close.

She couldn't help but worry as he took off his hazmat - she didn't want him to get hurt should there be something in the air. Though she knew the sensor was unlikely to be wrong, she couldn't help but worry. "Oh, be careful," she said, grabbing his arm as he began taking off the rest of the suit. It seemed to be okay. She pondered for a bit. While she hated having to wear the hazmat, if there was anything in the air that aggravated her, she would have to have the rebreather in her mouth the whole time, and she wouldn't be able to talk. Well...she also could put the hazmat back on if she had to...

So yeah, it seemed like taking off the hazmat wasn't such a terrible choice. Cautiously, she reached up to the things at the side of the helmet that Grognak had pressed earlier. Closing her eyes and hoping for the best, she pressed the two little things. When the helmet popped open, she opened one eye and looked around, taking a ginger whiff.

There doesn't seem to be anything... she thought to herself. She should have known there wouldn't be dust - that requires live beings to have been in here a lot, and the place looked deserted. However, she couldn't be 100% sure of any other foreign stuff floating around. She opened the other eye and began breathing normally. For now it looked as if she could take off the suit.

She smiled happily as she stripped herself of the hazmat as quick as she could. Fortunately it wasn't hard, nor did it take long, as they hung loose about her slender body.

"Oh, it's good to have that off," she chirped.

 

[Viggy]

Dmivo moved slowly through the entire room dark room, inspecting each bulky machine carefully. He had a lot of experience with tech, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what these were. They were just big boxes of durasteel with a lot of wiring connecting them to the ceiling. He couldn’t even find any levers, buttons, control panels, monitors or any other way of working them.

“Gotta-gotta be stuff-goods inside of her Dmi, you bet… Let’s openize her,” he muttered to himself. Pointing his tensor gun at the side of the one of the boxes, he started pumping the trigger. A deafening BOOM echoed around the room as the first waves of tractor energy were released from the device, followed by a loud droning buzz as the waves of energy continuously destroyed the durasteel at the cellular level. Absolutely no dust or debris was created, just a lot of noise. Eventually Dmivo had created a perfectly circular opening in the machine. It was pitch black in there. Still not knowing that his helmet had a lamp on it, the Squib’s only way of figuring out what was in there was to reach inside.

At first he just felt a lot of wires and a few thin, metallic structures that he couldn’t identify. But he eventually he felt something large, cylinder shaped. He felt around, and as his HAZMAT-protected hand reached the top, he accidentally touched a button. Suddenly a bright red light flashed on inside the box and spilled out into Dmivo’s face through the hole, the mess of wires and little metal things (which he could now see were mechanized maintenance tools) moving aside quickly. The Squib squeaked and backed up, holding his tensor gun with trembling hands, hoping he hadn’t woken up some kind of death machine.

Climbing out from the hole in the machine was the droid. It had long bendy legs with saucer-like feet, and a barrel-shaped upper body with four bendy arms. The two upper arms both had a nozzle in place of a hand, while the lower arms had little brushes of durasteel wire. There was no head or ‘face’ on the droid, but a little strip of green light around the top of its barrel-like upper body seemed to be where it saw from.

“SANITIZER NINE-OH-FOUR, SYSTEMS GO. IDENTIFY MESS.”

Dmivo blinked, slowly lowering his weapon. A cleaner droid? That’s all he had discovered? Well, it was better then nothing. “Uhh… no mess, metal-man. This is just, uh, routinable check-up by regular staff-guys like me, you bet. Er… follow me!”

“CHECK-UP? SIR, WE ARE INSIDE MAINTENANCE CENTER. I ASSURE YOU, I AM AT OPTIMAL PERFORMING ABILITY. IDENTIFY MESS.”

The Squib raised his tensor gun and advanced on the droid, sticking the barrel of the weapon right up in this droid's… er… light. “Hey! I issuate orders, and you just follow em, you hunk of scrap-stuffs! Now come on, this way. Or face quick obliteration!”

“GOODNESS! YES, SIR.”

With a satisfied nod, Dmivo turned and started walking out, hearing the click-clack of metal feet following behind him. Leaving the maintenance center, he lead the Sanitizer 904 through the doorway that he had left for Spacey Pete and Miss S’gaat to explore. He found himself in what appeared to be some kind of a storage room. Dmivo longed to look through all the junk on the floors and in the lockers, but he could hear Pete’s voice from further down the hall. He exited the storage room, ignoring Sanitizer 904's complaints about disastrous uncleanliness in this room. After passing a few closed doors that didn’t interest him, Dmi found the CEO and the lovely young human woman in what appeared to be the main bridge of the ship. He ran up to Pete and snapped a salute.

“Pete, I found this metal-man in some kinda fixer-upper room,” the Squib said, pointing at the droid following him. The nozzles and brushes at the ends of the cleaner droid's arms whirred as it stepped forward a bit. “It’s just a janitatizer or somesuch, but maybe it knows who held the ship’s proprietized authoritations and ownerships, and... stuff. Plus even if it knows nothing, leastways it looks like a dece-fair scavenge-prize to me, you be-Hey! You’re not wearing your safety-suit.”

Realizing the ship must have a safe atmosphere, Dmivo happily stripped out of the uncomfortable HAZMAT suit.

 

[Sir Dakar]

Pete usually was all fun and games, but when it came down to actual business and when his (non-expendable) crew's lives were in danger, he became a very serious man. Something just did not sit right with him and this ship, and when he kept adding up the facts that they have uncovered so far, he still kept getting zero. Zero answers to the mysteries that the ship held. Nothing in the place added up, there were bullet marks in the hallways, lockers thrown about looking for weapons, or perhaps somebody looking for an item. The only problem is that with a ship this size a crew of perhaps 25 people would easily inhabit it, and they have yet to find even a single body.

That is when Dmivo came in pointing a gun at what appeared to be a cleaning robot, and confirmed by the fuzzball himself. And the day just got stranger. “Well, let's see if she knows anything useful. Who owns you?”

“Why the jedi sir.” Came the electronic response, the droid cocking it's head in confusion.

“Jedi? So this is a Jedi ship?”

“Incorrect sir, this is a Republic ship however I am the property of the Jedi ambassador.”

“What Jedi Ambassador?” Pete said, feeling like he has to forcibly remove every piece of information from the robot.

“Jedi Ambassador Akakios, liaison to The Republic. This is all the information that I have been given. After all, I am a simple cleaning robot.”

Before Pete could ask more of the droid, the console beeped, letting everybody in the room know that the diagnostics were finished. Quickly, he moved over to the console and looked for a few specific things before moving on. Where a main storage area would be, and if the Escape pods had been launched.

“Well, I have good news and stranger news. The good news is that there is a high security cargo hold down by the engine bay. The strange news is that no Escape pods have been jettisoned. That means whoever was on this ship is still here.” Pete grimly added in that last sentence, letting it sink into his companions.

Bending down and scooping the headset from the helmet, he attached it to his ear, linking himself to Grognak and everybody that had the radio on. “Grognak, come in Grognak.” Pete said into it, hoping to reach his friend in the engine room. “Blast, that man better have not gotten himself killed. Ira, are you there!” He then tried calling the other member of his party, hoping that she would still have her suit on at least.

 

[Solus]

Ira's head snapped over towards her recently discarded hazmat, out of which she could hear an obnoxiously loud voice. Why would somebody want to talk to me? she shrugged, looking over at the motionless Grognak. Was he just staring at the wall? Hm. Maybe it was a Nikto thing.

She knelt down and picked up the helmet to kind of speak into it, though it was very awkward.

"Uh...Hi? Who is this?"

 

[Dragon Fae]

I stopped my searching and turned back to Pete, pulling off my helmet and my gloves, keeping the rest of my suit on. The fact that we were aboard a Republic ship so far from the Core with a Jedi Ambassador aboard made my stomach reel. Some things were better left alone. I had a sinking feeling that whatever happened aboard the ship had to do with the high security cargo aboard.

I moved closer to Pete, wandering if he had checked any history in the ships activity logs that might have indicated any visitors aboard the vessel. The door cut away could very well have been Jedi...or worse.

 

[Sir Dakar]

“Report in Ira, have you found anything?” Pete said once the girl picked up the radio. Listening to everything she said, he waited until she finished before giving her their information.

“Okay, there appears to be a high security vault down the hallway from the engine room. We are going to check that out, and then get off this ship as soon as we can. Meet us there if you wish, if not, stay in the engine room and see if you find anything useful.”

And with that Pete grabbed the helmet's flashlight and headed down to the vault, hoping to finish this mission quick, this way they could get the hell of this creepy vessel.

 

[Ser Yorick]

Grognak had been standing off to the side violently shaking his comm link. The damn thing was just spewing out static. The Nikto heard Ira's going off and stepped over closer to her as she picked it up and returned the call.

Pete was on the other end relaying a bit of what was happening with his group. Apparently the crew that had once worked and lived on this ship had either mysteriously disappeared (without the use of escape pods) or were still hiding somewhere aboard, perhaps locked in some hold or even the engine room itself.

Grognak had heard many tales of derelict ships during his time out in space, but never had he ever encountered one like this before. Most of the stories he heard were myths or legends; exaggerated tales told to scare off traders or nosy patrols from certain, shadier, areas of the galaxy.

'Let's get to the engine room, Ira.'