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

[Keiwanis]

Naleek poked his head down through the service panel in The Black Star's secondary emergency thruster. To his disappointment, the crew had stopped rushing by his little workspace. That meant nobody was near to hand him any tools from his bag that lay below him. The attack must have spurred everyone back to their positions. He had been working on the same stubborn power converter cluster for the past 37 and a half hours. The young Azurian loved himself a good challenge, but this was getting beyond the point of frustrating. He would much have rather used that time to get started on that special plasma round for Bailey's rail rifle. Nothing excited him more than designing weapons, especially if they were going to be used effectively by someone of such high notice (the head of the scouting party for example.)

Then again Syran had been the one who asked him to repair the secondary thruster. That in itself gave him the motivation to work on it nonstop for another 50 hours. She was counting on him, and he had promised to get it done.
With a sigh of admiration at the thought of the navigator, Naleek withdrew back inside the cramped maintenance hatch and continued calibrating the power converter cluster. He realigned his magnet-wrench and began to force the stray coupling back into position.
A sudden burst of steam caught him off guard, and he covered his face with his third and forth arms, keeping his main arms locked around the wrench. Once it subsided, he brushed off the excess sweat off his face, leaving a streak of grease across his cheek. While he began realigning the couplings, his extra arms went back to keeping the fuel cells in their place.
"Just a couple more," he muttered, arms quivering with the fatigue of a day and a half's work behind them.

With a sharp 'click', the power converter cluster snapped back into their proper alignment. And that was that. He had shut off the fuel line, removed and replaced every single converter, fine tuned the control grid overtop of the cluster, rewired the fried circuitry, relinked the fuel cells, and linked the converter cluster back into the thruster. Now all that was left was to switch the whole thing back on after getting himself out of the maintenance hatch.
With a relieved groan, Naleek pulled himself over the hatch and lowered himself down. He didn't bother sealing it back up. The thruster could use the ventilation anyways.

He snatched up his bag and jogged back towards the main engine control-room. Mid-stride, he tapped 'Syran' on his wrist communicator and raised it to his chin.
"Took longer than anticipated but I got that emergency thruster fixed. Just gotta turn it back on now," he said, turning a corner.

Inside the engine room, Naleek beelined straight for the central operations controls. Under 'emergency thrusters', he found the precise secondary thruster control and flipped it back on. A low hum echoed overtop of him. He paid no heed to it, having heard the same tone every time he reactivated a system.

Having finished that task, he swivelled on his heels, black eyes looking for his mentor.
"Choo-Choo," he spoke into his communicator. "I just finished that thruster. What's in need of fixing?"

[MarchingThunder]

"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 on the ship be trying not to kill and destroy everyone and everything. There is much money to be made."

"Understood sir," Bailey replied calmly before closing the comm line. Instantly, she opened another comm line, this time to all the members of the scouting group. "All scouts, get geared up, full kit. EVA thruster packs and full armor, everyone be ready in ten minutes. Once the Silver Quasar is fully disabled, we'll be going out the airlock for a boarding. Bring the breaching kits, we'll be making our own door. Acknowledge and meet me at the port airlock in five minutes," She ordered, using the command voice she had learned in the armed forces. As she waited for the replies of acknowledgement from her scouts, Gray grabbed a demolitions pack and locked it into place on her thigh before moving to one of the larger lockers and pulling out and EVA thruster pack and buckling that in place.

[Imperial1917]

Ellie spun in her chair wildly. It was too bad that her neural processors were so fast. She barely got dizzy. Still, it was fun.

"Boarding action! Boarding action!" she giggled delightedly as the Captain's voice came over the intercom. Keying in after him, she said, "Boarding parties, please remember to pick up your Hard Link Systems on the way out. Find a port in the other ship and plug them in. Thank you, and have a nice day." She shut off the intercom.

"Weee!" she spun in her chair again. Things were about to get fun.

[Angevin]

Kenny and his assistants left the kitchen area, headed to their individual locations, food in hand. As they made their way through the mess hall, the Captain came on the PA again yelling orders for everyone. Kenny kept moving listening for his name, but it was never mentioned. As the PA turned off the ship was a little more chaotic, with engines coming to life, and crew members running around. Luckily the platters were magnetic, meaning the drinks were only in danger of minor spilling, and the pastries were wedged in between the cups.

Kenny stopped at the Infirmary, opening the door using his foot, and approached Korion and Scyllia. "May I offer you, or any of your patients, a caffeinated beverage." He said, holding both platters in one hand offering two cups and two of the appropriate pastries.

[Juicesir]

Aidebot hovered by the Korsin for a moment. "Officer Zero, I do not believe that any profanities were necessitated in your order giving," the small bot happily chirped, flashing eyes positioned in a friendly manner, "however, I will be more than willing to comply with your request."

Aidebot had often taken note that, for the majority of the crew and those other sentients which they encountered, profanity was less an expression of frustration or anger and simply an ingrained memetic punctuation which the predominant amount of galactic species seemed to partake in. Obviously, Aidebot was programmed with the knowledge and ability to speak colloquially and even imitate such speech derivations as those which the crew exhibited; it just chose not to. Aidebot had always taken a comfort in the neutral user-friendly default speech which it had been uploaded with. It just sounded nice to Aidebot for some reason.

With Zero's blessing, Aidebot fully integrated into the Black Star's systems arrays. Comms, spatial detection, long range monitoring; all were now of as a secondary nature to the little droid as breathing was to an organic. Aidebot could feel the heated hull, the reverberation of the main guns coming online like a tingle down the ship's spine. Within the corridors, Aidebot could feel the rush of the people within the vessel going about their work, their sweat permeating the air filters, their breath punctuating the oxygen scrubbers like bubbles in a sea. The touch of Syran at the helm could be felt by Aidebot, and it responded, running through space away from the Silver Quasar.

The feeling was amazingly exhilarating, and Aidebot doubted that any organic could ever know how such a feeling could be interpreted.

Aidebot could sense the scuttle surrounding their boarding party's preparations. Now fully linked in with the ship's systems, Aidebot was able to spot things others might not be able to. Patching through to the Bailey, Akilina, Robert, Shikah, and the other boarders, Aidebot spoke. "Boarding party: there are several points of entrance upon the currently engaged starship which may be of interest. Located on the port and starboard sides can be found two airlocks. This may present your best opportunity for entrance. A standard device with a 7,700 detonation velocity should do the trick."

"Additionally, thermal readings suggest that there is a weakened section of hull located just forward of the aft engineering compartment. A high powered explosive may be able to breach this section, however it is inadvisable as further imaging suggests that portion is situated around several exhaust ports connected to engineering. Any ill-placed ordinance would have the potential to cause a catastrophic system malfunction; any breach would run the risk of venting the ship's oxygen through the ports. Thus, it is my suggestion you seek entrance through one of the ship's two airlocks."

With that, Aidebot kept the comm-line to the scouts open just in case. Getting back to monitoring the Silver Quasar's positioning, it decided to patch a quick suggestion through to their navigator. "Syran, this low-end merc ship does not contain nearly the vast maneuverability which the Black Star is so capable of, nor are their weapons systems nearly as sophisticated. If I may be so bold to suggest, it may behoove us to utilize a more serpentine approach in our evasion techniques." Not wanting to seem overbearing, Aidebot quickly added, "Any systems boosts I can provide you with would be more than my pleasure."

[Arthera]

Blinking lights and flashing menus reflected against Ekaterina's features as she worked on stabilizing the ship's power flows and re-routing what was required to maintain those systems until the mechs could plug two and two together. The wall of monitors around her each asked for her full focus, like a litter of baby animals vying for attention. No wonder there wasn't a chief engineer when 'Kat came on board, the previous one likely quit, this aged bucket of bolts a tad too demanding for most. She never really considered taking up a "leader" role anywhere, but a quick glance to her right would show who was second up for the job, and traveling on a ship with chief swivel on top...

She was finishing up the latest batch of error canceling, load-balancing the aft thrusters and taking note of which gun stations were still on auto-pilot when Master Splinter came knocking. He was worried about gun emplacements and something about...

"Xan..." 'Kat said, taking a new meat jerky in her right hand from the half-empty jar on a desk, still typing with her left, her attention wavering everywhere but in her speaker's direction. "Both know nothing's left. And yes, the last of frozen goods are edible and in the kitchen. As for your first question, all of them. Kinda."

Ekaterina dismissively slapped at one of the data slates in the pile on the desk, bringing it to life. Her hand hovered over the tactile screen briefly, tapping a dizzying amount of inputs in, before resuming her typing on her main keyboards. The slate displayed all the stations currently in use, with bio signatures tagging who was where and what emplacements were still chugging away on their lonesome.

"Which reminds me, I added a box of pocky to the shopping list. Thanks for remind-" More would have been said had the captain not spoken through the coms right then, diverting her attention away from chatting at the usually very understanding ship's quartermaster.

Although 'Kat had handled the lighting issue, there still seemed to be fluctuations in the output routing through that area. Initial diagnostics showed a generalized loss of power in that area, meaning something was wrong with nodes 12, 37 or 49. Tappity, tap. Not 37 as it was supplying gun emplacement 3 and 4 and those were running just fine. Tap, tappity. 12 was activity guzzling juice and routing it to the bridge, and the captain would have shouted something or other to that effect a while ago, which left 49.

"Choo." Ekaterina voiced into her mic, linking it to the head mechanic's. "Section 4, access F, Node 49. Output's down, makes Med Bay blink. All yours.

[StormyNyte]

"All scouts, get geared up, full kit. EVA thruster packs and full armor, everyone be ready in ten minutes. Once the Silver Quasar is fully disabled, we'll be going out the airlock for a boarding. Bring the breaching kits, we'll be making our own door. Acknowledge and meet me at the port airlock in five minutes."

Bailey's voice rang out over the com, prompting Shikah to abandon the smaller gun, "Roger that, Demi-boss!" With her acknowledgement given, the small, scaly woman scurried down the hall to make ready. She slipped into her gear with the fluid grace of practiced motion. Her long tail whipped and flicked behind her with exited anticipation of their task. She was already en route to the airlock when the ship's lovable little aide bot patched into the com link to give spot-on advice about the best way to go about breaking into the enemy ship. With a big, goofy smile on her face, she laughed as she replied, "Thanks, little buddy! I'll find you something nifty while we're there!"

[Cfavano]

Robert sighed as the order was given. He disengaged his ling to the gun, and it ceased it's roar. His spike retracted, and went to his locker for his thruster pack and breaching charges. He did not need an environment suit, for he did not require oxygen to live anymore. However, his helmet closed over his face, the red 'eye' in the center glowing.

He reached the Airlock on the Black Star shortly afterward with everyone else, and there he remained, standing eerily quiet.

[GraftRaven]

A thick cigar was lit and rolling around Zero's mandibles in the time between checking displays and sweeping scanners. He listened to Togga give orders for the gunners over the radio and quickly began scans on the prescribed areas, looking for anything. A downed shield slice there, an exposed heatsink there, a loose manifold on the starboard engines. "Looks like the Quasar's defenses are full of holes, lets burn them down!" The targeting systems were flooded with manual overrides in the next minute in order to mark the weak spots more precisely than the computer.

Zero's thoughts turned toward the boarding party and he checked the internal scans of the Quasar ship, which weren't very clear and did not show the entire ship. "Bailey, Internal scans of the enemy ship are basically useless. Either their hull is shielded or we've taken more damage to the array than I thought-" His sentence was cut short as the ship lurched under Syran's control and Zero lost a bit of balance. "Agh... well, bottom line is I'm blind until you get over there, so be ready for anything." Zero began working to see if he could clear up the imaging, leaving the gunners to their work with the help he provided and keeping one eye on the space around them. It was eating him up inside that he couldn't provide the quality of service the crew had come to expect.

[Soulio]

Sam grinned, glad to know that Togga was this pissed at the enemy. It made for fun times.

"Roger that, Shark Boy. I'll get the guns out of our way." Sam focused his fire on one of the bigger guns that was firing on the Black Star. It was surprisingly big. But the bigger the gun, the bigger the boom.

Firing at the gun, Sam fist pumped when there was an explosion, but very quickly his face was one of surprise when the gun simply let out a small spark of electricity, and then kept firing.

"Uh... I think the guns have force fields around them. Just a hunch. Or at least the bigger ones do. So this may take longer than expected, Captain."

Sam let out a sigh of annoyance. He hated Force Fields. Made for poor sportsmanship.