(M) The Black Star Privateers: Smugglers and Heroes IC

[Soulio]

The PA systems blared into Samuel's ears, scaring him awake and out of his bed.

"Son of a bitch!" He shouted, rubbing where his head slammed on the the ground. Well, at least he was woken up for a reason. He pulled a shirt on, and stumbled out of his room, the entire ship rocking from the hits. While the entire crew was running amok trying to fix the problems with the already torn apart ship, he and the other gunners were responsible for making sure the flying piece of shit stayed in it's best, shittiest state possible by defending the living hell out of the damn thing.

"Not like I mind it, or anything..." Sam mumbled to himself. He was more than happy to cause a little bit of destruction here and there, especially when it came to other ships. Especially ones that tried to destroy their lovely flying shit.

He made his way to one of the Heavy Cannon control rooms, and overrode the remote command.

"I've got it, Kat. Just... do the fancy shit you do," he said into the microphone next to his face. Next, he tapped into the comms unit of the captain, hoping that he had a better plan than just blowing it up.

"So Captain Shark Boy, you better have a plan that involves more than just wrecking shop with this ship." He swiveled the bubble like room, the gun below it glowing red hot and firing three quick bursts of energy that destroyed a few oncoming rockets. He could see the entire enemy ship from his view. And man were they fucked.

"Well... We've gotten out of worse..." He mumbled, firing at the hull of the superior ship. With any luck, they'd come out of it with a puttering ship and only a few dead crewmen.

"Yeah... that'd be nice..."

[Ryoku]

/// The PA system roared commands as the room shook

Maintaining balance, Vincent ran out of his quarters, and straight into one of the gunnery rooms. There, he quickly sat down on a fancy looking chair. Once settled, the chair rose up automatically, into the control room of one of the Heavy Cannons the ship carried.

Sirens blared and ringed through his ear as there were numerous CAUTION / WARNING / DANGER signs all flashing right in his face.

"Damn it, come on!"

He punched the control node hard, broke a few keys, but they weren't too important, given the current situation.

"COME ON. COME ON"

With a hint of desperation and panic, his fingers blazed through various command sequences in hopes of getting control of the near malfunction gun commands. As the situation grew worse, it was then that he managed to override the controls and assume command over the cannon.

"That's more like it"

Continuing to flip switches and press buttons, he enabled communications. His mic was lively with emergency chatter among the rest of the crew.

"Gunner 4 is all ready to go."

A UI booted up.

Loading -----

Gunnery Station -----

Success ------

The gunnery interface included a targeting reticule, and various degrees for aiming. RELOADING... flashed up on his screen as he set the targeting reticule on the enemy ship. A few beeping noises, and the main gun was locked on to the opposing vessel.

"Oh... Lovely."

Cmon, cmon, cmon, cmon.

His mind ran frantically as he waited for the cannon to load up with one of the gigantic shells it will soon fire. With the timer counting down, 3---2---1, it was the longest 3 seconds of his life.

With the press of a simple button,

The ship fired its cannon to the distance, hoping to hit the enemy ship, and seeing parts break off and fly away. Another shot followed the previous, both lined up and going laser straight right into the enemy ship's bridge and hull.

With some luck, one of two shots hit the lower broadside, taking out one of its guns that was firing back at the Black Star.

[Juicesir]

30499200 seconds since my birth!

I have decided to keep a journal! Exciting! It has almost been an entire year since my birth! As a present to myself, and possibly to any others who may be interested in my life, I have decided to boot up this moment to moment journal! It shall serve as a backup memory in case any harm should come to my main RAM, but it is mainly for aesthetic purposes. (^^)

Data sensors indicate that PA system has been activated. In approximately 7 centiseconds, whoever hit it will begin speaking. I bet it is the captain! I have a little time before he announces whatever it is. He is probably going to explain what those impacts on our hull were. I hope they were party poppers! But passive sensors indicate they were probably impacts from the vessel which as been following us. Unfortunate. (vv)

5 centiseconds left before I hear a voice, I believe. Give or take. I have found that, unlike sentient inorganics, organics have a tendency towards and equilibrium of entropy. You can always count on these models to be something you cannot predict! Pinpointing their exact behavioral reaction is typical of pinpointing the location of an electron. Science has such a silly way of mingling its rules. (^^)

My estimations were off, and the captain is now speaking. I will have to correct all further future estimations hence forth. Learning is a joy! Until next time, journal!

The boot from charging to active mode took little time for the robot, its core processor allowing for an increased time than the factory default. Aidebot was alive and listening to the captain the moment his voice began speaking. Realizing that their situation was perhaps more dire than it had estimated, Aidebot disengaged its passive charging and began to hover.

Whisking through the ship and turning on passive thermal sensors in order to locate Zero, the tiny robot was now in full action mode. The insectoid gave off a particular heat signature much different than many of the other crewman on the ship, and Aidebot was thankful in times like these that it was such an easy thing to find.

Rushing up to beside Zero, Aidebot extended a gentle claw to tap Zero upon the shoulder. "Hey! Listen! The captain has requested our assistance keep and maintain the ship's comms and sensor arrays. Follow me~" And with that, Aidebot whizzed away.

Aidebot had always found the corridors of the Black Star lovely to navigate. Long corridors with pleasant little alcoves, it was always fun to see so many other organics charging about with theirs boots and legs. It was like blood in a vessel. And with so many capillaries! One of Aidebot's favorites had to be the little unused tube that it could take from deck two straight up to the bridge. It was located port side, right next to engineering and the reactor. It wasn't a spacious tunnel, but it was big enough for Aidebot's small frame to fit through and navigate with ease.

Popping out through the tubeworks in the bridge, Aidebot delivered the passive scanner readings to both the captain and over shortwave to the gunners. "Captain, passive scanners indicate that the vessel following us is likely to make a move to our port quarter. Officer Zero will likely have a more accurate reading once he arrives." In truth, Aidebot knew that its positioning of the other vessel's movements was within 97% accuracy and that to ask for Zero's input would be time wasting. Aidebot did not know why they had had a Sensors Officer assigned to the ship in the first place, seeing as Aidebot's own Miniaturized Quantum Entanglement Array allowed for natural integration into the ship's own sensor and comm arrays. The only reason for this arrangement that Aidebot could think of was that they preferred an organic to be in charge of the arrays, seeing as Aidebot had not been itself granted the title of officer.

While this had always hurt a little bit, Aidebot knew that to allow petty contrivances such as rank to be in the way of the ship's operations would be detrimental to them all. Thus, it often deferred to Zero, even when Aidebot did not need to. It was simply the order of command.

[Anti-Hero]

"All the noise....noise..noise....noise...noise! How do you expect a master to work correctly if you have nothing but noise blaring all throughout the damned ship!" Scyllia glared of at Korion the head of the med bay, there was a slight disdain for someone who was perceived as "better" than her, and though she might sit here and argue with the idea over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over even more, there was no competition as to which one of them had more compassion and some sort of want to save the rest of the people on the ship. Let's just go ahead and specify right now, it wasn't Scyllia that had those traits, her traits were more about learning the weaknesses of a person through live or dead autopsies, and extracting information from them through medical grade torture, she wasn't a kind soul.

"Korion, do you really need my help here? I mean, you look like you've got this..." That was completely contrary to what was actually going on in the med-bay, frankly it looked as if it was going to be a very busy day, even still of she could avoid it, and find some way, in which she would disappear without saving all the fleshing things.

"I mean if you do need my help, all you have to do is ask." She batted her eyes slightly and moved herself over to one of the bodies who was wrenching in pain from several obvious wounds, festering into something more fairly quickly. Have the wounds received were minor, sometimes someone would sever a leg, or burn off their face skin, and then occasionally you had someone come in with some kind of disease you'd rarely find, this way a ship after all, it did alot of traveling and according to the damn blaring noises of the P.A, alot of fighting.

"I'll have you know stranger, your noises, spouting from your facehole are not nice to my ears, and I'm wondering if I rip out your tongue, with the intent to sow it back of course, if that woudl shut you up while I do whatever it is to fix you."

His eyes, were a wide with fear and now, his throat void of vibrations, she had a reputation on the ship, and not one for being the kindest medical officers in the world.

[Pheasant]

Akalina - Chowhall

The youngest woman of the crew sat on a beaten up old steel pew, drinking black coffee from a welded piece of scrap metal bent into the shape of a cup. She wore a bored expression, and even as the ship shook violently she didn't move from her seat. Akalina herself was clad in a robe with a bizarre menagerie of colors, most of the different hues masked to those who couldn't see the additional fourth primary color that her species had evolvedto see.

While she perhaps had the best pair of biological eyes, the cyborgs and half machines, distasteful as they were, were the better shots.

"Besides", Akalina murmured, flicking a finger across a small thin tablet computer, open onto a holobook, "I'm just getting to the best part"

A plate of halfcooked breakfast meat sat on a small plate beside the cup, with a few bite already taken out of it.

[GraftRaven]

The ship jostled slightly, and Zero stumbled off his right foot. There was a frenzied clicking from his mandibles as the Korsin continued to rush through the halls. He felt the disturbance of the ion levitator a second before the little Aidebot tapped him on the shoulder, informed him of the situation he was aware of, asked for him to follow and then zoomed off again. He knew very well where the bridge was from here, and muttered as much under his breath with contempt.

It wasn't that he disliked the little bot, Zero was just surly from re-calibrating sensors that had been knocked loose for the last who knew how long, but on top of over 48 hours of activity an attack was not something he needed on his plate. Within moments Zero stormed onto the bridge and shoved his chair aside, sending it to the side wall with a heavy thump, this was no time for a comfortable seat. And, as luck would have it, the terminals were already patched back into the weapons systems.

"Alright gun-heads, strap in. Targeting is still a bit shaky, but lead indicators should be coming in now." Zero's claws blazed across multiple keyboards, the end result being live targeting feeds that indicated the proper lead distance of the enemy ship, as well as other information that came through on the sensors. "Enemy is well armed and moving to the aft port quarter, shields up and guns blazing!" He glanced at a screen to his right, displaying the positions of the ships related to each other, then below it which displayed their positions related to the moon below and the miscellaneous rocks surrounding.

He moved to his right to work with those screens, the targeting should work mostly on its own for now, though he would want to check it again in a minute or so. Zero began working another set of controls plotting a possible course through the space in front of them, looking hard to find something syran could use to get the bounty hunters into the firing arc of more guns. "Aidebot, could you keep an eye on them? Make sure they don't pull anything funny." One of the Korsin's hands gestured at an interface far to his left, which was a readout of the targeted enemy. "And for fuck's sake if anything starts to bug out I want to know about it!"

[StormWolf]

Jarring violently and shuddering under the offensive volley of the bounty hunters, the battered Black Star took her hits like a champion, as she always had. Deep in the mechanical guts of the Star's main battery, the ship's token titanic cat-man, Sabor, was quite literally up to his junk in tools and machinery. Was weapon maintenance more of a job for the mechanics and engineers? Sure it was, but Sabor was an adamant believer that the ones actually using the guns should be the ones making the repairs and modifications. To memorize the way the weapon works, how it reacts under fire and duress. Such minute details were often overlooked, even by the more mechanical members of the crew, but that was because they were not Bayn'gül.

Sabor could feel the temperature start to rise by a handful of degrees as the Black Star returned fire on their aggressors. Being covered in head to toe in fur and with a metabolism that ran him hot regardless, the heat from the guns and their humming batteries was only magnified.

"They couldn't stay off our asses for just a few more minutes while I get this dak'n kinetic accelerator coil installed, could they? Pffft! No! An easy life isn't a life worth living!" Sabor muttered to himself, his hulking body half-in and half-out of one of the Black Star's heavy Rail Cannons. His feet dangled out of the maintenance hatch, his thick tail swishing about irritably. Naturally, the situation got hairy when Sabor was in the midst of what could best be described as ballistic heart surgery. If he fucked up, the kinetic accelerator coil could burst and form a pocket of newtonian carnage best left without a description unless absolutely necessary. Sabor's fur was matted and wet, perspiring from tension as well as the heat. Blinking his icy eyes free of bothersome bullets of sweat, the Bayn'gül steadied his breathing. Pulling the burned out coil and tossing it from the gun's innards, Sabor began to gingerly lower the fresh kinetic accelerator into place. He could feel the dense piece of hardware thrumming in his hands, making his very bones seem to vibrate.

With a muffled boom, the Star shook violently, nearly knocking the coil from Sabor's hands. Gritting his teeth and grasping frantically, he narrowly escaped a cruel and unusual death by physics, literally by the tips of his fingers. Readjusting his grip on the coil, Sabor set in in place. There was a shower of sparks and a lazy drizzle of smoke, followed why a low humming. The gun had accepted the kinetic accelerator. That was a good start.

Knitting his finger together, Sabor cracked his knuckles, then went to rearranging some of the wiring. There were so many components in the heavy Rail Cannons that made them "safer", but safe was a relative term set by the manufacturer, and therefore by the long arm of the law. Sabor was a pirate. He didn't give a shit about the law. What he did give a shit about was the most effective way of making the sorry son of a bitch on the other side of his gun dead. With his work done, Sabor hopped from the Heavy Railer's maintenance hatch with a feline grace that was rather unbecoming of his large stature. Bolting the panel over the hole in the side of the gun, Sabor packed up his tools and latched on his belt. Now came the fun part - shooting the guns!

After spending so much time on the ship, Sabor had learned to be selectively deaf when the Captain started shouting in situations like the one the crew currently found themselves in. A half-retarded primate with cerebral palsy cold figure out what to do in such a situation like this. Bad monkey throw poop, so throw poop back. If Sabor heard a key word that sounded out of place, then he would give his full attention, but now was not that time. Bypassing the lift, which would likely either be on the fritz from the oncoming fire or flooded with busybodies, Sabor bound up the stairs with that same unbecoming felinoid grace.

Not before long, Sabor trotted into the Combat Information Center. Special-K was already on his gun, firing away at the hostile ship with his rail gun, as was Sam and Vincent. Some of the lights blinked violently in the CIC, indicating some of the Star's lighter guns were in use as well. Diving into his artillery station, Sabor entered activated the displays only to see something that made his stomach twist.

Automated.... control?

"Who the fuck?!" Sabor exclaimed, lips pulling back to display some rather fierce-looking teeth. With more force than was necessary, Sabor slammed his override code into the keypad, granting him access to the Heavy Railer's controls. The holographic displays popped up, flickering in his face. Taking the controls in his hands, Sabor began his multi-tasked firing sequence. While the magazine loaded the high-density uranium round, Sabor guided the firing solutions, compensating for the modifications to his cannon. It was a good thing he got to the helm before the automated control started firing. With the shift in output, the gun could have been torn right out of the Star unless certain compensations were made. Sabor knew those compensations.

///Missile Lock Detected/// flashed spastically on screen, hand in hand with an ear-splitting alarm. Shifting a hand to a different, smaller console in his station, Sabor initiated the ship's defensive flak cannons. Some may consider them outdated, but some people were also complete idiots. Trying to shoot a missile going fuck-knows how many kilometers per second with a gattling laser was just complete folly and frankly, a waste of a laser battery. One shell of flak would detonate at optimized range for interception, peppering the void with a thick cloud of white-hot shrapnel, enough to confuse any missile. Hitting a button with a sticky note reading "heavy metal shitstorm" over it, Sabor let the flak cannons and their tracking lasers do the firing while Sabor did the forgetting.

///Loaded///, the main monitor read.

A wicked grin spread across Sabor's face, a dark and sadistic purr vibrating in his throat. "You motherfuckers picked the wrong prey..." Sabor chuckling, pulling the trigger. In the vastness of space, there was no god, no devil, no ancestor spirits, and no demons to fear. There was only one name, one figure who could mean salvation or termination in the bleak vastness of the universe.

Sir Isaac Newton.

With a shuddering that could be felt from even where Sabor was sitting, his modified Heavy Railer vomited out its payload with a spiteful vengeance, the high-density uranium slug's mass was multiplied exponentially by the crushing force that propelled it from the barrel. In space, there was no friction. There was no opposing force for the shell until it hit something. That was why there were firing solutions, because if Sabor or any of the other gunners missed their mark, their shots would keep going until they hit something. So it was rather simple. When Sabor, Special-K, or any of the other pulled their triggers, they were ruining someone's day... eventually. For Sabor, he was hoping to ruing the day of the Silver Quasars by tearing a hole through their engines. If he was lucky, the force of the impact may cause part of the ship's core to short-circuit, possibly cutting power. A ship without power was like prey without legs.

[Sinderella]

Alert.

The petite navigator was hunched over in her chair, elbows perched on the surface of the panel as her hands supported her head. She was snoring. It wasn't an overly wheezy and throaty snore, but it had been loud enough to annoy the female that was seated to her right.

“Sy..” The girl said, finger extending to poke the sleeping woman before her. “Syran..” Talia trailed, having been attempting to wake her for the past five minutes. Sy could seriously sleep through almost anything. After finally giving up being gentle, Talia grabbed Sy’s shoulders and shook her roughly. “SYRAN BAXTER, WAKE UP.”

Syran jerked awake. The combination of her sudden movements, the chair turning, and the ship shaking forced Sy into high alert. Her heart sped, thundering against her chest as she managed to collect herself and assess the situation.

Beep.

Her head snapped to the right and tilted, emerald optics narrowing beneath tinted specs on the screen that obnoxiously flashed with warning. A tongue lashed out and across a thinly parted mouth and was soon followed by an ivory set of canines that began viciously worrying on the bottom lip. Teeth bit and tugged at the sudden swollen flesh until it bled and the taste of cool, coppery liquid flooded her palate.

“Well that’s not-“

Bang.

“SYRAN TRY TO BE MOVING THE SHIP!” Togga demanded through the speakers.

“Movin’. Right,” she clipped, glancing up as the overhead lights continued to flicker, before completely halting and leaving the flight deck in near darkness. What light there was had been faint and emitted from the holography’s and beneath controls. She smiled.

Syran adjusted the elastic band around her head and pressed the lenses of the goggles up to rest on her forehead. Lack of bright lighting meant there wouldn’t be a need for goggles and that was good, she could see much clearer now without the protection shielding her. Strategies started forming as she calculated each risk involved and ditched the few with the highest amount of damage and casualties.

Flick.

Syran turned her attention to Talia, whose eyes frantically bore into her. The girl had been with the crew long enough to know of the dangers that came with their chosen profession. That knowledge alone should have kept the twenty year old from panicking every time she was put in a position with live ammunition, but unfortunately it hadn’t.


Talia’s fear was contagious and forced Sy to look away before she noticed. Feeding the flame wouldn’t help and Syran needed to focus. She took a deep breath and exhaled, mentally extinguishing the fire that threatened to grow and burn everything in its wake. She needed to concentrate.

“T, pull up the ECAM display. Inform me if the fuel temperature changes any further.” Shrugging off the remnants of the feeling, she flashed a megawatt smile in T’s direction and reached out, flicking the PA system on.

Ahem.

“Ladies and gents,” she began in a playful tone, “please keep all arms, legs, mechanical bodies and general squishiness inside the ship at all times. Should we crash and burn, well... I didn’t do it.”

Click.

Sy clicked off the intercom and swung in her chair to face the navigation display, pulling up the logistics of their current route. She twisted around, hitting the switch to disengage the auto pilot and began pressing, pounding and flinging a handful of switches, knobs and dials on the mode control panel. She now had complete control over the ships navigation. She adjusted the speed and altitude, both the vertical and lateral navigation and opened the primary flight holographic display. She was presented with the vertical speed and deviation indicators and after imputing the path, she boosted the throttles and activated the emergency thrusters.

The ship sighed with life before violently lurching upwards and shuttering into a wide turn to the right. Basically, Tokyo driftin' it so those sonz'uh bitch gunna's can shoot deir assez off. It was time to get them the hell out of this sticky situation, or die trying.

[SikstaSlathalin]

Togga marked a list off in his head as to where everyone was and what they were doing. The only two he hadn't heard from were Kalita and Naleek. He wasn't too worried though, they knew their jobs and he didn't have to hold their hands. The ship shuttered with both shots being taken and shots being dished out. They wouldn't last much longer in this state, something had to be done. With the shields up he could help out Med-Bay.
"Ekaterina and Choo-Choo, with the shields being up. See if you can be helping Med-Bay with their power issues."

Now Bailey, the Scout leader was good at her job and luckily he would be needing a Boarding team, if the plan he had was going to work.
"Da, Bailey, gather the other Scouts and be getting them suited up in their Mag booted space suits. The Boarding ship being too damaged means you'll have to be dropping out the Black Star yourselves from the airlock. Once we are disabling the Silver Quasar of course. Once you are n the ship be trying not to kill and destroy everyone and everything. There is much money to be made."

As Sam ran his mouth with that stupid nickname he likes to call Togga the shark man growled but left it alone for now. They needed to get out of this mess first.
"I am having a plan Sam. Killbot and Sabor, be focusing your heavy guns on the taking out of the Quasar's engines, disable them do not be destroying them. Sam and Vincent be taking over the Medium and Small guns and be disabling the enemy guns. If we are not destroying most of the ship, we can be reselling it."

As Sy began wheeling the ship around to the broadside of the Quasar, the Shaterran shouted into the mic.
"Go now!"


*Killbot*

As Togga gave the orders to disable the engines Killbot locked onto the right engine as they faced it. He wasn't used to disabling things so much as destroying them. But after some scanning he found a spot near the ship he could shoot and kill the engine. Taking careful aim he pulled the trigger once and a shot rang out he missed the spot he was aiming for, but it put a nice dent in the ship. He tried twice more and lined everything up perfectly.

The right engine sparked and he laughed into his mic.
"Ha done!"

[Pheasant]

Akalina - Midship

Akalina was already halfway down the connecting hallway to the storage lockers when she got her orders, followed by the hammer of another shell impacting against the hull of the Black Star.

The bird girl hadn’t been expecting them to stay and fight this long, let alone get a boarding order.

It didn’t matter, however.

Akalina, a warrior of the Karura had pledged an oath to her Captain. Come hell or high water she would follow his orders to the letter.

Folding her wings into her space suit was the most difficult part of putting her equipment together. Karura wings were meant to be full and brandished for all to see, not hidden away behind a nanofiber mesh.

Fortunately, having them tucked away meant the girl didn’t have any qualms about bringing along her boarding rifle. There wouldn’t be any powder residue or blood to scrape off of her normally pristine white wings.

With Akalina’s rifle cocked and locked, she threw a slash bandolier over her shoulder with a few extra mags at the top near her slender shoulder, the lower half dominated with breaching and high yield charges.

More importantly however, a long curved blade hung along the back of the slash bandolier, its slim polymer sheath adorned with emblems of a burning hawk. A symbol of Akalina’s people, and an important one at that.

The girl didn’t have time to polish her favored weapon to a sheen before battle as was one of her strange customs, but she didn’t seem to mind as she pulled a headset over her ear, followed by a thick helmet that would block out the background radiation from her space walk.

Now she was just waiting on orders.

There wouldn’t be any scouting or secondary objectives for her to take care of, like taking out radar or communication arrays. This drop would be all talons.