The Curse Of Phoebe Station Pt2

Posted on Thu Nov 14th, 2019 @ 5:02pm by Commanding Officer Soto Nabaal & Commanding Officer Mickey Serendipity & Executive Officer Kenneth McTigue & Comm Tech Wulf Edevane

Mission: The Forgotten Arm
Location: Lowes Agro Combine Warehouse, Cobalt Ward, Eros Station
Timeline: Eros Incident T-minus 15 Hours.

A soil warehouse with a pair of bodies in the main aisle.

Unlike the Belter out in the wall way, these two were at least dressed to meet their demise. They wore jumpsuits and segmented body armour all coloured the same uniform grey tone. No badges, or rank, or even a corporate logo anywhere. Both were dead, one from a shot through the gut and the other from a neat single point headshot. Mickey still took the time to move their guns away, sleek oil black machines that somehow radiated a menace.

"Those do not look off the rack," the XO remarked.

"Gene coded triggers Ken," a new voice said off to one side. Soto Nabaal was leaning against one of the pallets of soil. His white ship's jacket was alternatively stained with black streaks of soil, which did a remarkable job of hiding the blood welling up from the wound in his arm. He put on a wane smile for his crew. "They're no more use to you than clubs. Get in, and close the doors behind you. We are all trouble."

"Shame, they look nice." Ken said as he stepped deeper into the building, sweeping his rifle around to verify their safety.

There was no doubt left that this feeling of Mickey's was just some passing feeling. This was a totally, epic fubar situation. Was this something triggered by the Cant? The Donnie? Eros of all places? And just why had the captain gotten shot? Allegra has to bite down on her inside of her lip to keep the questions from being voiced. She let her gaze wander over Nabaal, the way he was leaning, holding himself. He really didn't look good. But there were orders. Order that were followed by a word she really didn't like. Trouble. "Anyone else here?" She took a few cautious steps further inside so the door could shut.

"One other," Soto said. He raised a hand holding his pistol, its slide back and open on an empty chamber. "You are safe among these ones. They are my crew, my Kazoku."

From the back of the warehouse, behind more pallets of soil from Earth, a short woman with caramel-coloured skin, and dark hair pulled up into a tight particle bun. She was dressed in a well-worn jumpsuit, soiled here and there from excessive wear, with the orange and green flag of the Martian Congressional Republic on her shoulder. She also looked utterly terrified.

"This is Doctor Rashika Tekkaden. She is the reason we are here on Eros, the reason I took the Protogen contract," Soto grunted in pain. "She worked on Phoebe Station."

Ken stepped back to the group from behind the doctor. "Neat. Let's get you back to the 'Tross, and get the fuck out of here."

"Let me take a look at your wound first..." Kai said, stepping forward from behind the group.

Soto gave a shrug, used his free hand to bring the jacket down on his wounded arm. Beneath the arm of the coat, the soaked in blood glistened in the weak overhead lights. It didn't look like a traditional bullet wound, instead of a furrow across the skin, it looked like he'd taken a slashing from a knife. With a clatter, something dropped from the bloodied arm of the coat to the floor. A small asymmetrical disk of metal the size of an old Earth penny. As it sat there on the deck it began to twitch, chittering as it tried to spin and flick, the buzz of a tiny piezoelectric motor making it seem like the tiny dancing razor was keening for blood.

"Anti-personal flechette rounds," Soto explained as he presented the arm to the medic. "Had to dig a few out before they burrowed too deep."

Mickey appeared with a battered first aid kit, the green plastic case plastered with the red crescent star and cross. Within was the usual assortment of medical aid's you'd find in a space station. "One med kit, slightly used."

"Perfect," she said. "I thought I might have to give him my shirt..." she said, as she tore his sleeve some more and got to work patching up the Captain's arm.

"We are not without our manners, Miss." Soto said as he watched her work.

There were way more dead people about than he liked, but Wulf tagged along behind the rest of the crew, half his attention on the job he hadn't yet finished, the other on the world around him. It was quiet. He kept his gaze off the dead and followed the living.

Soto's voice was a relief that washed over the tech like a warm fuzzy feeling, that paternal connection brought closer by the use of that word. Family. Wulf briefly closed his eyes and exhaled. Soto was alive.

"(1)Daijōbu, kyaputen?" He asked, moving into the warehouse finally, decryption temporarily forgotten. Then, noticing the frightened Martian lady and trusting Soto's word that she was with them, Wulf wandered closer to her and gently, slowly, offered out his hand for her to take. "(2)Anata wa ima anzendesu. Anata o mamorimasu," he told her, gently in Japanese.

As soon as Wulf touched her Dr Rashika flinched. Though that hardly seemed to do the full-body shudder justice as she stepped suddenly back and away from Wulf, drawing her arms in close. This pulled the wrists of her jumpsuit up, revealing wrists rubbed raw and weeping from bonds now cut.

"None of us are safe," she said quietly. "This entire station...they are going to do it again."

Wulf took a solid step back as the lady reacted badly to his presence and held his right hand up in front of him so she could see where it was. His left still held his working terminal, which buzzed quietly as it hit the next stage of its decryption and demanded his attention. Wulf ignored it, his focus on Dr Rashika.

"You're hurt," he said, with sincere concern colouring his words. "But it's okay. We're the good guys," Wulf added with an encouraging smile. "We'll get you out of here." He paused, tilted his head and looked from her to Soto and back again. "Do what again?"

"It began with Sheppard," she said, her voice taking on the distant tone of someone recounting a heard tale. "He was the one who found the vein of blue ice. It was in a core sample we took, we were testing the ice on Phoebe for purity. If the numbers were good enough we could have stripped the moon bare, brought all that water back home to Mars. Dissociated over the next fifty years it might have begun to thicken the atmosphere by as much as 2%, a major leap. But then Sheppard found the blue ice in that core sample. Complex silicate structures. Interesting qazi stable membranes. Not the science we were tasked for, but we had a corporate sponsor. Sheppard wanted to keep his own sample before the Protogen team took all the credit."

Her skin paled to light chocolate milk, her hands coming up to her mouth.

"My God...oh my God we could have brought it all back to Mars," she said, eyes wide and shaking.

His concern now, was for this distraught woman as all the colour drained from her face, so Wulf moved in closer again and reached out to risk giving her a hug. Or at least offer one. Hugs were good, right? They made people feel safe. And she sounded so scared. "Phoebe's a long way from here," Wulf said, not making the entirety of the connection right away. Then, slowly, the penny dropped. "Wait... he kept a sample? Of what? What did you bring here?"

"It was Sheppard. The damn idiot and his pet sample. When the Protogen team found out he'd kept one, they assaulted the station. I was on the surface, repairing a heat radiator. I wasn't exposed. I wasn't exposed," her voice became quiet. She seemed to fall from his outreached arms, legs folding under her as she kept repeating the phrase over, and over, and over again.

"And a good thing too."

The voice crackled up from one of the fallen grey armoured soldiers. A rugged military-grade terminal was illuminated from under the fabric cover of a belt pouch. It pulsed with the stead reassurance of an ongoing connection.

"Dr Tekkaden? I don't know how you've disabled the tracking on your terminal, but I want to assure you that we only have your best interests at heart. You are not well, and we want to look after you." The voice was calm, almost comforting. But like an AI there was just something stiff and informal about its tone, as though the speaker were reading a script with emotional prompts. "And if you are near anyone, I want to assure you that Protogen is more than willing to be generous in rewarding information to your safe return. Dr Tekkaden has undergone a severe mental break with reality following the tragic loss of life on Pheobe Station. She poses a risk to her self, and others."

"I know that voice," Soto said quietly, eyeing Mickey and Ken. "Commander Jensen, the Protogen liaison at the docks."

"And the skipper of the courier ship that wasn't keen on taking a very lucrative contract. We can negotiate now if you like. Dr Tekkaden is of primary importance to my employers, and they would see any price to assure her safe return. Of course, the same can be said to the lengths by which I have been granted to secure her as well, " now there was a hint of colour to the words, a predator's grin to them. "I can't tell you how liberating it is to get that sort of leeway from head office, 'by any means'. Makes things very simple, but I'm not opposed to simplifying them further by putting credits in your pockets. Just tell me where you are, and you'll be a million UN dollars richer. That goes for anyone who can hear this message. That's more than enough to buy your own private asteroid and retire as a Sultan of old."

The click the safety toggle made was only audible for Ken. He had flipped it to a burst fire mode, and aimed the barrel at the terminal. "No thanks." Ken replied, and three rounds penetrated the terminal, shattering the glass and breaking the connection.

"Aw man," said Wulf with a heartfelt sigh. Top level military terminals didn't come cheap, and with a little time... yeah there was no point in going down that verbal road with Ken and he knew it. "Guess we're not finding anything out from that," he muttered impotently, and he knelt down to encourage the nice doctor lady to get back up. "Can we get out of here now?" Wulf asked, casting his gaze to the triumvirate of power in the room.

"No."

Soto's voice was resolute, even as his arm was being patched up.

"Something is happening here, and from what I've been able to gather from the Doctor it is a vile thing. We are in a position to if not stop it, then hinder it. They are playing in a dark shadow, and if a light can be brought to bear on it then maybe something can be done," Soto continued. "Wulf if we were able to get to Station Operations, would you be able to access the main comm's array?"

Wulf winced, but nodded in acceptance of Soto’s command. “Received and understood.” He heard ‘no’ a lot so the tech bounced back swiftly with enthusiasm to the direct request. “Yessir,” he said immediately. “I can do that. No problem.”

"You want to pull a James Holden?" Mickey asked, kneeling down and unbuttoning the other Protogen soldier's terminal before handing it to Wulf. Look over the locking screen as he did so, Mickey noticed a small blinking timer icon slowly crawl towards 15 hours and change until...something? Lunchtime? End of shift?

"In a manner of speaking," Soto said with a smile. "They will be waiting for us at the Albatross, it is the logical step in the hunt. If your prey runs to ground, give them no ground to run to. Our best strategy is thus to act counter to our self-preserving desire to live, and dive deeper into this briar we find ourselves in. I know this is not the job you signed up for, so if any of you wish to leave my employ know you do without dishonour in my eyes."

Allegra gave a quick shake of her head, unusually quiet, "Not goin' anywhere." Not even back to the 'Tross, as much as she would rather be heading there and getting the hell away from Eros. It was almost too much to wrap her head around.

"So you want us to head to the Protogen offices here, knock their door down, and make ourselves at home?" Ken asked with humour in his voice. "Or did you have something else in mind?"

His attention focused on the second terminal in his current possession, Wulf noticed the timer too. His gaze briefly met Mickey’s, then the comtech began the learning curve of getting to know this new bit of kit. He had the lockscreen code busted within a minute, but the rest looked super serious, so he took a seat on the ground nearby and descended into quiet murmurs to Zee via his comm link. They spoke back a forth while the others talked, Wulf’s fingers tapping away at speed as one pinging sound clashed with another chime and data flowed between human, minor AI and tech.

“Guys...” Wulf said, with a frown. “Mickey, I’m getting some troop chatter on that original data feed. Not normal grunt stuff. But… it’s kinda intertwined with… I dunno… a whole ton of station-specific environmental data.” He sighed softly, clearly frustrated at the time it was taking, though the military terminal was clearly helping him work through. “And that’s not all… there’s… some kinda trail leading... Wait... I’m getting more.” Wulf looked to Soto, and nodded emphatically at Ken’s questions. “Count me in on the digging deeper plan,” Wulf agreed. “All the way, boss. I’ll get there,” he promised, face lit up by a variety of symbols, numbers and lines of code. “C’mon you,” he told the second terminal. “Tell me all your secrets….”

"We go to the Eros Station Port Control. If there is going to be a command infrastructure guiding all of this to fruition, then it will be there. As well as a means of calling help." Soto grunted. "We can assume that station security is not on our side either. It would be too much of a coincidence that this event happens with the company of such fine upstanding law officers as the CPM."

"I hear you loud and clear Captain, but I'd be a bad XO if I don't point out we're a pair of PDW's and a collection of small arms against a large number of people with ill intent towards us. Plus Allegra here was a Navy flier, not Marine First Recon," Mickey said. "And who exactly would we be calling for help? As I am keen to remind everyone before shore leave, ain't no pension fund waiting for the self-employed souls of our profession."

"Anyone who will listen. It is our job to light the signal fire, and let the entire diaspora of the human race know what is coming." Soto said with steel in his voice.

"So...the UNN? MCRN? Whoever gets here first?" Mickey answered.

"It's their first apocalypse, it will be interesting to see which response first. Maybe it will be the OPA?" Soto said thoughtfully.

He listened to them speak, the Captain and the XO, and while he appreciated Soto's fervour for the good fight and a loud public noise, Wulf also understood the sense in Mickey's pragmatism. And he wanted to live. He wanted all of them to live. In the temporary silence that followed Mickey and Soto's apolcalpytic rescue discussion, Wulf's voice sounded loud in that shadowy soil warehouse.

"Mech tunnels," said Wulf, and he didn't look up as he spoke the words. "We can get to Port Control via the mech tunnels."

"That'll do for now," Kai said, to the captain. She took the kit and went over to the doctor, she'd caught a glimpse of her wrists. "Give me your wrists," she said with a commanding tone. When presented with them she got to work bandaging them quickly wanting to keep them infection-free. "See if we can't find another aid kit before we get moving," she announced to anyone.

As Doctor Tekkaden was tended to by Kai, she seemed to grow a little more lucid, a little more present in the moment.

"You'd be better off in EV suits," she said, frowning. "It seemed touch-based, but I was outside when it started. I only saw what happened once the complex replicator systems were hijacked. You see, that was the interesting thing. The blue ice wasn't an organic compound. At least not how we understand it. It had a silicon base, definitely anaerobic but it didn't seem to mind the oxygen-rich atmosphere. Maybe more like a virus, reprogramming cellular activity in complex organic replicators. Makes sense when you think about the orbit of Pheobe. Highly eccentric, almost polar. High probability of an extrasolar capture."

She reached up, scratching under the collar of her jumpsuit. Under her chewed fingernails were the raised welts of hypo shots. Lots of them, some fading and bruised, some relatively fresh.

"Mech tunnels it is," Mickey said. "Wulf direct Ken towards our nearest entry to the system. He goes first. Allegra pulls up the rear, Kai if our friendly mad woman becomes a little too talkative we might all get shot."

The XO ran a hand through his stubble.

"Next med kit we get we'll see if someone's stashed their stash in it, might calm her down some," he admitted as he got a soured look from Soto. "Wouldn't be the first time we've mellowed a client out of making a mistake."

Wulf secured his gear quickly and quietly, hiding the two terminals under his jacket and buttoning them to ensure they were secure. He offered the Beretta to Soto. Then he moved to stand behind Ken, placed a flat palm on the engineer's broad back and spoke quietly. "Ready when you are." But that wasn't quite enough. "There's two sets of armour going spare..." Wulf pointed out.

Ken considered the words for a moment before nodding, "Not the worst idea you've had." and turned to the bodies. With surprising efficiency he stripped one of the men from their chestplate and helmet and tossed it to Allegra, he then quickly removed the other, noting the scorch marks on that plate and donned it. The straps felt rather uncomfortably tight on him, be they fit.

As her green gaze slid over towards the armor, Allegra couldn’t help but wonder if it was something they needed. Sure there were two sets but there was way more than two of them standing here. Hell, the captain was already injured. And that doc? Allegra struggled to believe everything she’d heard, forehead knotting in both confusion and concentration as she watched Ken and the first set of armor was tossed in her direction. Where as Ken’s looked like they barely fit, she felt like she was swallowed whole. But that would be better than getting shot, right?

As Allegra connected the fasteners on the body armour vest, it seemed to shiver against her. It shifted slightly, expanding here, contracting there. Even the bullet hole in it's front puckered closed until only a tiny blemish remained. Ken's armour did the same, tailoring itself to best serve the needs of its wearer. This was top of the line body armour.

"Okay people, stay with the group, don't shout out when you see station security or those Protogen wonks, I'll deal with them if they become a problem. We're moving." Ken called after he had replaced the magazine in his PDW.

Wulf once again lightly placed his palm to Ken’s back so the older man could be sure he was keeping pace with him, then remained immediately in the engineer’s wake.

Ken opened the door they came through and stepped through it. His rifle sweeped left through the opening, then around the door. "Okay Wulf, which way?"

“Left,” said Wulf, giving quiet, but precise directions as they moved. “Head towards the orange boarding,” he continued, giving Ken waymarkers by which to proceed. “Past the slot machines and right. Duck into the lefthand side by the rubbish bin, look down and right. There’s a big metal panel in the floor. Cover me and I’ll get us in.” He ducked down, unscrewed the four corners and lightly kicked the floor panel out of alignment, then Wulf stood to the side to allow Ken to drop down into the tunnels first.

"Why did it have to be small dark spaces," Mickey grumbled. "Could have been snakes. Snakes are cool. Dark places are bottomless expanses of thought and irrational convictions."

Kai kept her eyes peeled and her mouth shut as she watched behind the group as Wulf was working on getting them into the tunnels. She'd remember this day and the lack of a weapon and the armor going to people who could actually defend themselves in a fight. She knew they wouldn't have a second thought about her if something went wrong. She realized though that she hadn't much choice but to go along with them at this point. Whatever this thing was that was on the station that the doctor was afraid of if they came into contact with it they were probably better off with them.

"I prefer small dark spaces, that's why I celebrate Saint Patrick's Day." Ken said off-handidly before clicking on the intergrated light on his rifle and shone down. It looked like a solid two meter fall. It would hurt like a son of a bitch on Earth, but with Eros' light gravity it would be a sinch. With a step forward Ken tumbled into a crouch. Training automatically pulled his rifle up and swept the tunnel. "Clear!" he called down and stepped foward so there would be space.

While he had no idea of her internal dialogue, Wulf definitely spared a second thought for Kai. As he waited for his turn to descend into the tunnels, the tech spared the new girl a third thought as well. Then, as Ken rolled down into the darkness, Wulf shot Allegra a confident smile - an 'it'll be okay' kinda expression - and immediately dropped down after the engineer. It was semi-dark, smelled musty and funky, and the metal walls, floor and ceiling to this clandestine route were black with filth. Wulf followed as close to Ken as he possibly could without impeding his motion, checking his own way with a red-light torch he produced from a pocket.

"Left at the first junction," Wulf told Ken, and he checked over his shoulder to determine the others' progress.

OOC:
(1) Japanese: You okay, Captain?
(2) Japanese: You're safe now. We'll protect you.