The Curse Of Phoebe Station

Posted on Wed Nov 13th, 2019 @ 9:46pm by Commanding Officer Soto Nabaal & Commanding Officer Mickey Serendipity & Pilot Allegra Jennings & Executive Officer Kenneth McTigue & Comm Tech Wulf Edevane

Mission: The Forgotten Arm
Location: Enroute To Cobalt Ward, Eros Station Pt1
Timeline: Eros Incident T-minus 16 Hours.

If there was a blessing to any of this, it was people wanted into the Platinum Ward, not out of it. The travel pods heading out of the station were scattered with a few passengers and the crew of the Albatross lucked out and got a car all to themselves. The walls of the pod were holo screen projections, most of them trying to sell the designer pleasure houses of the Platinum Ward. But a few were also listing medical facilities, as well as a looping anime-inspired ad for a sport's drink.

"Amphet-I-Cola! Supercharge your day!

"Wulf," Mickey slapped a hand against the travel pod's side as it began to hum on its magnetic rails, accelerating them up to speed within the vacuum tube. "Hack this thing's brain. No stops until we reach the Warehouse district. And if you can, try to get into the station feed. Captain's get shot at, pretty sure that'll raise alarms with the security forces. I'd love to have an ear on their comm link."

He flinched as Mickey’s hand hit metal, but Wulf recovered quickly. He nodded, hands a little shaky at first - he was worried about Soto - and rapidly fell into old habits as the XO’s voice calmly gave him instructions. Hack the pod.

“On it, Mickey!” Nimble fingers flickered over that private screened terminal, Wulf’s body huddled in this seat, knees drawn up in front of him as he concentrated on getting the job done. Code, persuasion and a little finesse, the others never wanted the details, but the tech worked silently and fast. In the forefront of his mind the whole time, Wulf saw Captain Soto in trouble. Soto was alone right now and that scared him. Straight to the Warehouse, squeeze as much speed as the safety limits allowed. Done. Well, it would be in a minute or two.

"Everyone else, gather around Ken and be grateful for his giving nature," Mickey said slowly. "I'll be happy if we walk away from this without a shot being fired, but people shoot at the CO I have every intention of firing back with prejudice. We move in, find Nabaal, and then we take it from there. Any questions?"

Ken slung the duffle on the ground. A quiet sound of metal clattering against metal came from it. When he opened it he revealed two sets of cleaning clothing on top. He pushed the neatly folded clothing aside to reveal some well-maintained weapons. Ken pulled out the first two pistols. One was a sleek-looking FN pistol in matte black, which he handed to Allegra with its accompanying magazines. A chunkier S&W pistol was in his other hand, "For Mick." Ken explained as he handed it to Allegra too.

"Nice." Her appreciation for the gun evident even in the way her accent drew out the single word as she took both. The second of which Allegra handed off to Mickey. It did bring to mind a question, "What sorta leave were you plannin' here, Ken?"

"The type of shore lean Ken always plans," Mickey said as he inspected the pistol and pocketed the fast reload cartridges.

Following it was a HK pistol, surprisingly similar to the one he had lost earlier, but in far better condition. Ken slipped that in his belt before pulling out two short barrel bull-pup rifles produced by HK as well. These were in matte black and came with a sling. He handed it to Allegra as well. Then Ken zipped the bag closed again, checked weapons and magazines and nodded.

Mickey nodded, flicked the pistol to one side as the revolving barrel came free revealing the white caps of the S&W's plastic cartridges. He trusted Ken to know that on then "Tross" the only flying metal allowed was the ship, or by special invitation Long Tom. If the Security was mostly Belter, as it seemed to be on Eros, then finding a crew of Inner's with metal slugs in their illegal weapons would go a few long strides towards an open airlock.

"You got a Belgium waffle iron in there?" Mickey asked.

"Didn't you know, Mick? He was gonna make us all a five star breakfast buffet in the morn. This sexy beast," Allegra tapped a slim finger on the black pistol, "almost makes up for it." She had no idea what was going on, or why anyone would be shooting at the captain, but she did know that it affected her shore leave. Mix that all together and she was a rather perturbed Martian.

"Just remember your trigger discipline, we put holes in the folks doing wrong to the captain, everyone else is a ticket to an airlock sans suit."

Chatter sounded from Wulf’s terminal as the tech pulled the single headphone from his ear and let the others listen in on speaker. Finally he’d broken the first level security encryption and the feed brought them very messy vocals. That wasn’t anything to do with Wulf’s patched connection, the confusion and noise seemed more related to whatever they were all headed towards.

“Can I get a gun too?” The comm tech asked, noting as he finally looked up from his work, that the rest of the crew all seemed to have one.

Ken was checking his rifle and cycled the plastic round into the chamber. "After the last time I gave you a gun?"

"That wasn't all my fault," muttered Wulf. "It was pitch dark."

Mickey thought about that for a second. In that time the travel car swerved a little as it took a corner faster than regulation speed. He gave Ken a little nod. He then reached up and tapped his earpiece, cycling the channels until he was in on the station feed Wulf had hacked. A lot of it was just chatter for the sake of hearing a voice on the other end, lewd jokes and reports of street crime being permitted instead of policed. He clicked his earpiece again, to cycle back to the crew channel when a squeal of high pitched chatter and warbling noise assaulted his ear.

Ken sighed, pulled the bag off his back and pulled out a heavy, old Beretta pistol to Wulf. "If you shoot at anything before I tell you to I'll kick your ass. Understood?" Ken warned.

With a wide-eyed look followed swiftly by a smile/nod combo, Wulf took the archaic weapon and quietly checked the slide and mag. "Understood, extra boss," he answered, with a silent eye roll.

"What about me?" Kai asked, speaking up for the first time. She'd followed the group closely but kept her mouth shut and observed them. "And maybe a first aid kit?" she asked, expecting that their Captain would actually need her.

"They teached first aid in your fancy doctor school right?" Mickey said. "Bound to be a first aid station around here for corporately appropriate accidents. We'll liberate it after we find the CO."

"They did... and what about a weapon?" she asked, figuring she already knew the answer.

"Patchamama's tits!" Mickey growled, tapping the control again as he skipped the channel. "Wulf you've either tapped into a machine language channel for the Eros's Station drone feed, or you've hooked into a very encrypted private network."

They'd used to do this for fun, speed up the travel pods. Wulf had drawn the line when they'd wanted him to break all the rules and talked about explosives being in the mix. That had been a difficult, painful conversation.... But here and now, he listened in with the others as they tried to make sense of this channel.

"Sorry Mickey!" Wulf reacted, taking the edge of the volume and high end frequencies for their audio pleasure. He let Zee delve a little deeper while he keyed fully into what the XO had heard. What he was now hearing. "Uh... not the drones," the tech said with a weight of foreboding to his tone. Fingertips sped across his terminal - the larger screen gifting Wulf more opportunity to look into the blood and guts of this code. "This is top end stuff," the tech said, breathing out his surprise and knuckling down mentally. "Weird." He added. "This is like blackops level 'crpytion... but mostly right now they seem to be talking about the weather?"

"Weather? Why would they encrypt a solar flare warning?" Mickey asked aloud as the travel pod began to decelerate. After a few seconds, the pod came to a halt, and the reassuring hiss of the station docking collar attaching to the outside rang through the pod. "Keep an eye on it, but stay back when you do. No point getting shot because you were looking at your terminal."

Wulf shrugged and flared his palms in physical demonstration of a mutual confusion. "Dunno. But, I'll find out," he promised. "Yes, boss," the tech added with a nod. "Don't die. Gotcha." Wulf understood his part in this team dynamic, and he trusted the others' combat skills without any need for questions. Didn't mean he couldn't crave some of the action, but he kept his mouth shut on that score and simply thought it. Soto mattered more.

The pod doors opened, revealing the Cobalt Ward station. Tail end of the third shift there should have been people here, from commuters finishing shifts to the buskers and cart vendors selling cut-rate algae noodles and bootleg entertainment feeds. Instead, there was nothing, save a circular cleaning drone that was bouncing around the floor of the station polishing the plastic tiles with happy enthusiasm.

And across the back wall was a blinking red and black holo print: TRAM STATION LOCK DOWN>>ALL CITIZENS DEPART TO NEXT STATION>>CPM SECURITY MANDATE.

"That wasn't on the security feed," Mickey said as he stepped out onto the platform, looking around the empty space. "I'm getting that feeling again, Allegra."

Allegra tossed a cautious filled green glance towards the XO. She'd poked at and tucked his first mention of a funny feeling away to jitters or something. But now? Now she thought he just might be right. "Gotta say, that feelin' is rubbin' off on me."

Ken stood looked out through the open door. His rifle was cradled comfortably in his hands, attached to him by the sling across his shoulder. "Do we get out here?"

"Yeah," Mickey said, leading the way. It was eerie stepping through what should have been a bustling tube station. Whilst not a residential district, enough of the rules got bent that turned a few of the warehouses into low rent and no questions asked coffin apartments. People should be coming, going, or just trying to hock something. With a hand gesture, Mickey directed the crew and their tag-along medic towards the exit. Signs overhead directed people towards the various offices that rented space, and the warehouses themselves.

Stepping out of the tram station was like stepping into a cavern filled to the roof with metal cubes. Where their flat front's met the smooth plastic coated rock, they just kept going. Two blocks ahead and one to the right was Warehouse 14. It was also where they found the body. Long limbs, tall, and the slightly larger than usual cranium of a full-blooded Belter. The man's drab olive jumpsuit was riddled with neat holes that stitched up his chest and took a good chunk from his neck. He still had a faintly surprised look on his pale face.

Mickey said something under his breath and took out his terminal.

"Captain, cavalries here," he said quietly into the terminal. "We're coming in from the station side."

Silence answered him.

At the back of the group, as they exited, Wulf didn't say a word. The sheer magnitude of the station's emptiness had him beat, lost for words. But as Mickey called up the Captain and there was no response, the tech flicked a thumb across his screen, punched a winged logo with his index finger and instigated a scan on his terminal, for the one belonging to Soto. He had to be here. He had to be.

Standing ahead of the crew, Ken's eyes swept the hallway, the ceiling, the other side of the hallway. "I'm not liking this Mick..." The Irishman said. "If the captain isn't answering we could be walking into a meatgrinder inside."

"I'm getting a bad feeling about this," Mickey said. He then stepped forward and tapped the door control for Warehouse 14. The door opened silently, revealing a dark interior space lined with pallets of sacks. A deep, earthy fungal smell rolled out from the interior. It was the sort of odour only a backed up ships recycler could produce. They were in a soil warehouse.