The Tauro Incident (FT, IC Closed)

[Setulan]

Trade Hub Farway Places, Edge of Huerdaen Space


If space had a voice, it would have let out of a low groan as the Setulanite Merchant Vessel Tauro broke away from her moorings (leaving behind cold-welded plating in the process) and ignited her real space engines. Wallowing away from the space station like a heavily pregnant cow, hard white light rushed out of her exhaust ports along with globs and fragments from the struggling and wheezing plasma engines. Trailing radiation that caused the Huerdaen construct to briefly shutter its windows the Tauro began to gather speed as it burned for its transition point.

Though there was no rust on the two kilometers of hull, there was the appearance of streaking from spots where cosmic dust had impacted against the ship through its shielding and scoured away any semblance of paint. Bare ugly metal showed on most surfaces except for the sloppy hand painted name (with the faded old block letters of the first paint job still visible) and the quadruple M logo of Mari and Sons Inc., also clearly applied by an amateur.

On the bridge, Captain Jonas Mari stood tall and proud in his rumpled business suit, lanky prematurely gray hair actually combed for once. He had just unloaded bulk-purchased spices from Setulan under a Vipran company's name with a substantial markup, and in the process he had screwed a merchant who had insulted his father's company. Sure, it might be accurate to say that the gaggle of vessels that made up Mari and Sons was less a fleet than a collection of scrap metal, but damnit it was the principle that counted. Of course he had been unable to get anyone to buy the Vipran clothing, not here, and the Xiscapian firearms got him laughed at, though that might have been more the containers they were in...

Turning his dull brown eyes to his "helm" officer, he casually placed his hand on the podium in front of him while ensuring he didn't touch any exposed wires.

"Ms. Killa, please take us to transition."

The young Setulan woman nodded nervously as the Captain's eyes trawled up and down her body. Making a conscious effort to ignore it, she nodded an affirmative.

"Aye aye, Captain."

The words got her a strange look from her counterparts on the bridge and she blushed.

I need to get off this fucking ship.

Tentatively reaching forward, she gently pushed the thruster control forward and hoped it wouldn't spark into her face like it had to the last helmsman.


Engine Room


Any lack of rust on the outer hull was made up for in the engine room. Unchecked condensation and leakage over decades of use had turned the venerable vessel's entire engineering section into a rust red ruin, save the shiny new (used but recently installed) display and control areas. Wearing sunglasses to protect against any errant radiation from the plasma engines, a scrawny Sen looked around. He wiped his hand across his forehead, pulling away sweat and grime, and wished that someone would fix the damn air circulation in the engine room. Poking his head around blat doors that had rusted open, he went exploring for the Chief Engineer before sticking his noise in the air. Catching a wiff, he followed the smells till he found who he was looking for.

"Uh, chief. They want more juice for the engines so we can, uh, go into FTL. Right?"


Crew Quarters


Reclining on his thin mattress, Lyle was playing his handheld game device when the Crew Chief came in. Sitting up with a heavy squeak of springs, he jumped to his feet as the huge Setulan walked over to him before he was bowled over by the man's stomach. Flat on his back on the bed, he stared into the red face and vacant eyes of the Crew Chief with horror.

"Boy! What are you doing in here!"

"Uh....uh...I uh...I was done my duties-" the Chief smacked Lyle upside the head, cutting him off.

"No you damn well weren't! I don't care, get the fuck off your bed and get to your station."

"But Chief, I -"

The raised hand was enough. Lyle shut up and ran off, grabbing his toolkit and masking his tears. Behind him, Chief Hardo shook his head and stumped down the rest of the aisle, making sure nobody as laying around. The intercom crackled into life, an the heavily static filled voice of the Captain came through.

"All hands, prepare for transition. Prepare for transition. Next stop: Karaigian space."

Sighing heavily, Chief Hardo pulled out his flask and took a heavy swig. With clowns like he had to deal with, it was no wonder he needed to take the edge off.


Arms Room


The Arms Room of the Tauro was almost clean. No rust was on the bare metal walls, and the air conditioning even worked. The last Chief of Engineering had refused to fix anything in the arms room until the current Security Chief had visited his quarters. Nobody was entirely sure what had been said, but they suddenly had a clean room, and the Security Team was more than ok with that. Guns and armor lined the walls, even a few suits of powered armor, and all were in at least a mildly serviceable condition. The Chief wouldn't have it any other way.

Ko and Jax were playing cards and smoking when the call to prepare for transition came over the intercom. The two burly Setulans rose and stretched before grabbing truncheons and shock mauls, ready to go patrol the ship and make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. Looking at the door to her bedroom, the duo waited to see where Jorogumo wanted them.

[Xiscapia]

Engine Room...

Engine Room Leak #33 source identified: Thruster Coolant Valve jammed. Mild overheating will increase maintenance energy costs by approximately 25%. Attempting to repair. Estimated time: 10 minutes.

Hitting "Save" on her PDA Yoriko sent off yet another report to the officers of the Tauro as she attended to her own little section of the engine room. One would be sent to her direct superior, Chief Engineer Alinnan, one to First Mate Lahris, and one to Captain Mari himself. Her programs projected an excellent probability that the latter two would never read the report even if they saw it, based on past experience, but she knew that Alinnan probably would. It did not matter. Regulations dictated that a report be sent to each of those individuals to keep them updated on conditions in the engine room, and that was what she did.

The valve was jammed, and as a result it had begun to leak. A stream of coolant arced out from it onto the deck, where a small puddle of the grayish liquid had formed. Pulling a canister gun from her torso compartment, Yoriko used her other hand to plug the leak, placing the nozzle in the area around it and pulling the trigger. The foam that came out hardened instantly, leaving a whitish patch that spread over the hole when she took her hand away, sealing over the breach. From there she carefully chipped away at the stiff crust with a small thermal knife, catching the debris in a bucket until only a smooth sheen remained where the hole had been. From there it was a simple matter of selecting a can of paint identical to that of the pipe and applying three coats over the hard foam so it matched the rest. It was as if the hole had never been.

Having cleaned the brush, replaced the paint, deposited the foam chips in the incinerator, put away the foam gun, mopped up the puddle of coolant and hung up a sign that warned of the wet paint, Yoriko brought up her PDA again. Thruster Coolant Valve repaired, she typed. Maintenance energy costs decreased by approximately 25%. Post-repair analysis indicates that the cause is a result of increasing acceleration past 50% of the recommended maximum, likely due to legacy compatibility issues between the ship's engines and coolant system. To save on repair costs, recommend that-

The valve rattled, screeched and vibrated so hard that it left a dent in the bulkhead behind it. With a sound like a gunshot two sprays of coolant sprang from the valve, one dripping down the front of Yoriko's jumpsuit while the other sprayed her full in the face. The kitroid didn't even blink as the fluid dribbled over her eyes and dripped off the end of her snout, still holding her PDA as she watched the twin leaks. -the thrusters not be pushed past 50% of the recommended maximum. Saving the report, she opened up a new one.

Engine Room Leaks #34 and #35 source identified: Thruster Coolant Valve jammed. Mild overheating will increase maintenance energy costs by approximately 25%. Attempting to repair. Estimated time: 20 minutes.

As she worked Yoriko thought about the station they had just visited. She had wanted to go aboard, as according to Chief Engineer Alinnan she had 336 hours of shore leave accumulated, but First Mate Lahris had warned her off. The Huerdaen didn't take well to "that kind" of being, and she would be better off staying aboard the Tauro and "just doing your job" according to her. Faraway Places wouldn't have been the first trade station she visited, but it could have been the last if what Lahris said was true. Yoriko had brought the matter up with Captain Maris, but upon learning that it was possible that he could lose her he'd forbidden her from setting foot on Faraway Places, and that had been that. Yoriko had gone back to the engine room to await the embarkment of the rest of the crew and castoff.

She didn't get along well with most of the rest of the engineers, Jan Sylver and Samuel Hidalgo and the others, or rather they didn't get along well with her, for one reason or another. Kevin Prince seemed to get along with almost everyone though, herself included, and she always liked seeing Trrkanikan. The Gruuk seemed to know a lot about people, or bipedal humanoids anyway, and she knew that if he had been allowed onto the station he'd have a lot of data to share with her upon returning. So she looked forward to that as she dutifully plugged away at the leaks and malfunctions of the Tauro, working with the endless patience of a machine. It wouldn't be too long before the three officers found yet another report in their inboxes.
Twenty minutes, to be exact.

Jorōgumo's Cabin...

“It is inglorious to die. Afterlife or not, there is far too much to be done to simply die. It is the shirking of duty. A desertion from your calling.”

A hooded man held a drakon's face down against hard stone, keeping it there as the crowd watched under twin blazing suns, good quality despite coming from a pirated feed. The drake's arms had been dislocated, feet bound and his snout shut by metal spikes nailed through his jaws to leave trickles of blood leaking down onto the hot sands below. The panhuman was saying more, but his words faded as Jorōgumo watched him grind the cleats of his boot into the prisoner's face, her lips parting slightly as tears fell to mix with blood and the condemned Federal squimed atop the crate he'd been braced against. A cheer penetrated her revere and she knew the time was close as the people all around raised weapons into the air, faces covered but eyes as hungry as hers as their leader raised his hands. A servitor-cyborg stood motionless and gleaming in the dusty desert light, a blade-tipped sjambok gripped tightly in a hydraulic arm, and when it struck it was almost too fast to follow. It laid open the scales from left to right across the drake's back, making a long slash across his spine that immediately spilled blood to wash over his bound feet, and she gave a little gasp as a second blow splattered blood from his side, ripping his hide apart to expose part of a kidney among all the pulsating, brilliantly red flesh.

The servitor was relentless, lashing out even as the hooded man leaned over to say something to the drake. Jorōgumo couldn't hear, but it didn't matter. On Faraway Places she had seen a woman stripped to the waist and whipped for some infraction, and while she had stared as the Huerdaen had screamed against the lash, with jiggling breasts and blood leaking down her back, that was nothing compared to this. The nameless drake's flesh tore and warped, hanging off of him in ribbons as the meat and bone of his back was exposed, making her shift in her seat. A wayward hand found its way under the waistband of her trousers, and she inhaled slowly as she watched the drake struggle as much as he could, a cocktail of drugs keeping him alive for the sjambok to land again and again with gleaming flurries as its blades flashed. She was so close-

"Ma'am?"

Jorōgumo's head shot up, pierced ears perking as her tail lashed. One of her security officers was standing there, looking at her. She was pretty sure his name was Ko, and that was Jax behind him. Or maybe it was Jax and Ko was the other one. She was more irritated that they'd taken her by surprise than by her inability to tell them apart, but she smiled all the same, a wide grin that showed off so many straight, white fangs between painted purple lips. "It must be time for patrol," she stood and closed her computer's lid, hands coming around to bind her shock of pinkish-violet hair in a tail that competed with her real one as she stepped over to her armor rack. "I'll just be a moment."

She made a long show of stripping, shirt lifted slowly first to be tossed aside, pants sliding down her long, silky legs to puddle on the floor and her bra and panties following all the slower just to keep all eyes on her. The patrol could wait and, judging by how they stared, so could these men. When she was fully naked she gave her hips a little shake and took her sweet time in pulling on her skinsuit, stepping into the legs and drawing the zipper up so every tooth clicked until it was done up and covering her from neck to feet. Not that it left anything to the imagination of her full breasts or lovely curves, clinging to her like the tightest of lovers, and she made a point of bending over to pull on the jackboots of her armor first. But all good things had to come to an end, and so did her silent dance as she armored up, covering herself in ExCom brand power armor until she was encased in the suit with a shotgun over one shoulder and a katana at her back.

"We'll do the cargo bay first," she told them. That couldn't be a surprise. Jorōgumo always patrolled the bay first, sometimes alone and sometimes with other officers, and she always made at least two or three sweeps even on the shortest of voyages. Occasionally she'd find a stowaway, but Captain Mari never said anything about it, even when said stowaways failed to turn up at the next port. Dealing with them was paperwork, after all, and she knew that the good captain despised paperwork.

"Either of you see Yraffel?" she asked as they started to walk down the hall, playing with the end of her own stun baton where it hung from her belt. "I want to pick him up on the way."

[Huerdae]

Crew Quarters

It was all a big adventure, and Rhan'Shirren couldn't dream of being anywhere else. The showers were broken, the lights were out in half of his room, and the air smelled of dead insects from the vents, but it just made it all that much more authentic. He could barely believe he was finally getting out away from his family, away from the Star Empire, and away from the cruddy end of just another worker lost in the emptiness of the Empire. Out here, with so few people around, he was someone. Someone important. And that, he could tell from the looks the others gave him.

It was clear they were jealous, that he had gotten a job so early, so young. That he had already done as well as he had. He was on a ship, at the age of 16, and they were so far behind him. He was already on his way up. He knew it because several of the crew had warned him not to join up, some had gone near to outright threatening him, but he knew the real meaning of it. They were threatened by him, by his youth and his skill, and there was nothing they could do about it. So he endured the hardship, pissing in the bucket until someone from engineering could come by and fix the toilet, and hoping that he didn't have to take a shit again like last time before they got around to it. But no, it was all part of it. Part of the great beyond, and he would go out into that endlessness and come back a hero, he was sure of it.

"All hands, prepare for transition. Prepare for transition. Next stop: Karaigian space."

Rhan nearly jumped when he heard it, squeezing his muscles desperately as he aimed at the bucket, looking arount frantically. The others were getting ready for their duties, but he was simply trying to finish before-

The ship rattled, lurching, and the bucket of at least six crew members' piss rattled agianst the deck, sloshing with what he hoped wasn't a log in the bottom, as it rocked, precariously, and splashed its contents across his left leg. It was surprisingly cold, but his smile faltered as he realized it had probably been sitting there for at least a few hours, and the definate shape of a chunk of piss-soaked poop floated about in the bottom. He managed to avoid adding puke to the floor, as he awkwardly stumbled his way away from the bucket, trying to find a mop for the mess, and hoping that the shower would be fixed soon. Very, very soon.

But it was okay. It was part of toughening him up. He was sure it gave him a better chance at moving up toward a captain of his own ship some day. He dropped his hand to the banshee he carried, only then realizing as his arm brushed the strap that hung it from his shoulder that it, too was now covered in piss. He considered just cleaning up the mess in the nude, to avoid further issues.

With luck, he'd be at least partially clean before the ship actually began its transition. And far from the bucket of piss that served as several crewmen's toilet.

First Mate's Cabin

Yes, it was the life. Sae'Lahris lay, head on her pillow, stretched out in her shirt and underwear, with a dim, half aware smile on her face. It was her third hit of the day, and she was at least four hours late showing to the bridge, but she didn't care. As far as the captain knew, she was doing reports, taking care of the business of the ship, and he never looked or cared about whether it ever actually got-

Ping!

Sae sighed, knowing what that was. It was that annoying engineer, with her actual reports, and actual work. The ship would keep going if she didn't report everything that was going on, and everyone knew it, but there she was, just putting in her reports. Stupid machine. She had half a mind to shoot the thing up herself. Of course, that would get rid of a good worker. Maybe she'd use her precious magnetic fluid on it. That should give the thing a jolt, she was sure of that.

The idea of the thing high made her laugh, loudly, rolling back and forth on her bed. Sure, it probably wouldn't work, but it could be rather amusing to have it shot up and malfunctioning. Maybe it would act like any other kitsune at that point, and she could fuck it for some favors. It would be nice to get herself some proper care in the cabin, but then, she'd probably get caught with her contraband. With a sigh, she started to roll over, laughing again as her head started swimming, only for it to end as if she was struck by a knife as the computer pinged again.

Groaning, she glanced at the thing, as if about to berate it for its insolence, but before she could even do that, it pinged again, causing her to slap the thing haphazardly with her hand.

Finally, there seemed to be some peace, as the reports stopped. To celebrate, she shot up a fourth time for the day, pleased with the way things were proceeding, and glad to know that they were on yet another journey, the end of which she could pick up more juice, payment, and maybe a whore. The idea of it made her smile, and here eyes rolled back as her hands travelled down her body, reaching for-

Ping!

This time, she threw her boot at the thing on the wall, yelling at it in annoyance, though her aim was nowhere near on-target, and the boot hit the floor two feet before the wall, barely tumbling to a stop at its base. Not that she cared. As soon as she was done here, she'd go hurt that machine. She knew it was trying to job more difficult. It was already hard enough.

Cargo Bay

Kurz knew that the sadist fox would be here sooner rather than later, and he had no intention of letting his things be found. Just like every other time, he was already ready, waiting for her. Unlike the other times, he had no real intention of walking around the damn ship looking for people. Patrols were a pain in the ass, and he had no reason to join them on foot. No, there were so many better ways to do things, and he was sure he had just foudn the best. Waiting patiently, he kept the Akki slung over his shoulder, as he lounged on Freight's back while the thing stood, staring dumbly across the full bay from atop one of the stacks of crates. He had a half-eaten sandwich in one hand, with a bottle of something that wasn't quite alcohol in the other, waiting for the rest of the team. Geared up and ready to go, he was, of course, an impeccable worker, just like every other Red Eye. He could follow orders, and most often he enjoyed them. Especially his current boss's particular brand of 'justice'.

It wasn't the quick, decisive sort that ended up with a lot of bodies, no, it was a far more personal touch. A work of art, sometimes, with how she went. Sure, he wasn't really supposed to know, but he didn't care. He'd done his own once, without telling her. Little girl on her own, running from her family. She'd lasted a while, though apparently even Karkouah females aren't designed to be breeding targets for Ikittitl soldiers. It had taken him quite a while to get Freight to attempt the interaction, too, so he was rather disappointed by the result. Still, he could appreciate it. Things were different from how he remembered back in the Militocracy, not that he remembered much. He had been a kid, then, but they knew the rules. Here, now, you made your own rules. You decided your own fate, and it was as glorious as it was disgusting. Oh, yes, it was gloriously disgusting.

And Kurz liked disgusting. Just a bit more of it and he could go back into business. He just had to wait for the Tauro to get a real ship near it, something that could use some capturing, and with a bit more speed to it. He had no doubt it would break down, he was counting on it. But a ship like this was so easy to find that it didn't matter, it would take a few days, maybe a week or two, and he'd be on a new ship, with a much better drive, and he'd finally have a chance to get started again. It was just a stepping stone. With luck, the new ship would have a full crew, too, so he could get rid of some of the more useless ones and have an initial investment. Even a shitty worker often made a profitable slave, and there were some that would sell for a reasonable price.

Of course, there were some he couldn't sell. Jorōgumo was at the top of that list, but she was also the best armed other than him. She'd be an issue if he couldn't get her on his side. Of course, there's always the chance he could simply bribe her with the flesh he was selling. Someone like her made an excellent hunter, so he'd like to keep her, but she'd have to learn that women follow orders, not give them. Stuffing food in his mouth, he glared at the door, waiting for his 'boss'. He really hoped the ship would fail soon. The damn thing made it hard to work for people who should be bending over, instead of standing tall and giving orders.

[Karaig]

MAINTENANCE

Hidalgo leaned back in the chair as far as it could go, the old frame groaning underneath the man. Held together by duct tape and an unsanctioned welding job from a week ago, the chair was Hidalgo's bunk away from bunk. The chair, while in poor repair and sanitation, was the most comfortable part of the entire freighter, which wasn't saying too terribly much. But it was a place to shut eyes in between his repair rounds, and with the bot out there doing the job, he could relax.

Well, relaxing was a little too far.

The Karaigan found himself leaning back in the chair, looking over a PDA with a list on all the department's, if maintenance could be called such an organization, supplies. Luckily for him, Samuel found himself on inventory duty, he least favourite job. It wasn't so much in terms of laziness or boredom, but a way of making new lies. Indeed every inventory cycle brought new questions, most directed at Samuel over missing equipment... as well as new equipment that suspiciously looked like old equipment. What could he say? He had a knack for improvements. In Samuel's mind he was doing good: to be frank, the Tauro was not the best kept ship int he quadrant, and with the funding it got... well between paychecks and engines the ship had little for else. So when the ship didn't purchase a new ion hammer, Samuel made one.

Or did the bot disassemble it? He shook his head. Clearly that bot's programmer didn't know anything about efficient engineering.

"I have half a mind to buy my own shit." the man mumbled to himself, debating spending his own hard earned wages on equipment for the ship. Of course this idea was quickly tossed aside as the man began thinking about his reasoning. Why should Samuel buy for the ship when Samuel can buy for Samuel.

Of course Samuel knew he'd have to submit a request for additional equipment next time the money came in, or else he knew he'd never get anything for maintenance, especially knowing his coworkers. Even more threatening was he knew of another who would petition for any and all extra funding, and to Samuel that man was a little shit.

MEDICAL

"Research Log. Subject Eight-Oh-Five has suffered severe organ failures and has subsequently expired. Test Ninety a failure, results show that irradiated morphine-steroid mixtures are not a suitable medication for rats. May need to conduct an experiment on humanoids for further conformation. Maybe of.... reptilian stock."

Doctor Garric Greaves tossed the recording device onto one of the tables, watching as the last muscle spasms of the irradiated rat ended. Such experiments were used to kill time when not needed by any of the crew mates, or when he had to defend his stock of chemicals from the crew. Medicinal acids are not a rust remover, well they are.... as in they would work, but Garric shook the thought out.

The man moved over to another counter, almost gliding as he swiped up a mug of piping hot caffeine from his coffee machine, another guarded treasure. At the counter over he took a look at a carcass. While in port transferring cargo, the good doctor had noticed that a lot of gutter critters had jumped ship, coming aboard the Tauro while everyone was busy going about their business. Such little....rats? Reptiles? Amphibian? He didn't know, but the dissected thing on the tray not only carried disease but also a slight amount radiation.

"Note to self." he said as he grabbed the recorder. "Waystation's lifeforms minor threat to crew health, inform captain that they should be exterminated. Also petition for high concentration tranquilizers. Current painkiller stock incompatible with certain crew mates. Also petition for locks to keep people out of my cabinets."

He put down the recorder as he took a sip of his mug, fiddling with it as he looked around.

Spotting a roach across the room, the doctor promptly removed a laser pointer from his pocket and proceeded to point it. The roach was sizzling in the blink of an eye, crispy a second later. He picked up the recorder again.

"Not to self, acquire insectide soon. Petition captain for- scratch that, I'll synthesize a better insecticide." Greaves said as his eyes fell upon his recent test subject. He briefly wondered the effects of irradiated morphine-steroid mixtures on roaches."

[Vipra]

Engine Room

The wild-haired Chief of Engineering Soph Alinnan sat atop a cushion, a ragged remnant from a couch long since departed, and leaned against a rusted wall in what amounted to his ‘office’. To call it that would have been a dire insult to every other professional workspace, the corners of the room littered with dust bunnies and what the red-skinned alien affectionately called ‘sludge kittens’. He didn’t have a desk, instead the center of the room home to a mat that was itself covered with numerous tools and disassembled machinery. There were the requisite tool boxes of course and paper schematics of the ship were pinned onto a cork board against the wall along with pictures of scantily clad women, the board and its contents hand-me-downs from his predecessor that Soph hadn’t bothered to get rid of. He had instead drawn funny faces on them and given one a raging permanent-marker hardon, it was funny seeing his ‘peers’ roll their eyes at that.

Relaxing, the engine component in front of him reduced to its basic parts, Soph pulled deeply on the cigarette in his mouth, alien herbs burning and ash dropping down to his loose orange jumpsuit as he contemplated how to fix the piece of shit ‘technology’. A blueprint formed in his mind, every part pulling apart and moving back together as he mentally identified what the problem was and the solution through quick mental exercises. Breathing out a hazy white cloud, acrid against his tongue, the chief engineer leaned forward and began picking up the pieces, soldering here and there and apply epoxy where necessary as he put everything back together. Everything hardened and slotted back together just fine, better than fine really. At least now the ‘spare’ regulator would work when needed.

Smirking below half-lidded eyes, Soph gave himself a literal pat on his own shoulder before his PDA began to bleep and bloop like the annoyance it was. Angrily, the balu engineer searched around his pockets before finding the palm-sized device and tapping the screen. Yoriko’s report immediately came up and he scanned it quickly. Girl had some serious work ethic, that came with being cybernetic though, but credit was due given the shitcan she kept from falling apart. Chuckling as he tapped the PDA’s touchscreen to close it again, Soph also had to give himself proper praise. Wasn’t everyone could deal with the level of bullshit that got thrown around here regularly and also manage on less than a shoestring budget.

The door to his office creaked open to break his revere, a smoggy cloud billowing out as a wiry Sen looked in. Soph stared up at him with a glazed expression, almost looking through the man as he spoke about juicing engines for FTL. Continuing to stare blankly for a minute Soph stood up slowly once the Sen had gotten good and uncomfortable. Brushing his arms free of stray blue hairs and sniffing loudly, Soph grabbed one of his heavy toolboxes and lugged it out past the Sen. He just gave the young man a slap on the shoulder and passed him his still burning roach before wandering down the halls to the fuel injectors. It was a long, slow, sauntering walk, one that was undoubtedly causing a gnashing of teeth elsewhere on the ship, but Soph was not going to rush on this. Taking an annoying amount of time was his subtle rebellion.

Once he finally did reach the injectors he found them as he had last left them, dangerously exposed and held from shivering out of place by spot welding layered over with industrial tape. The valves were what he was interested in, his own addition after the automatic system had clapped out. Now he had to come down here and twist them himself so there was enough power to get this bucket moving. Nobody else could do it of course, a touch of inadvertent job security ensured by the precision required. Too open, things get overheated and the ship ends up bathed in radiation if they’re lucky. Too closed, and the engine could cut out entirely. Yep, the ad-hoc system he’d made with whatever he could scrounge from lockers and other parts of engineering was just perfect. Twisting the knobs to the correct positions, Soph listened to the groan and rumble of the engine before leaning against a wall and fiddling with his PDA again. Yoriko had sent another couple messages, and he rubbed his nose as he read between the lines and realized that she was probably dealing with mounting leaks.

Shrugging, he reached into a deeper pocket and pulled out another joint and his lighter while waiting for the Captain to throw a message his way to turn down the fuel. Bloke wouldn’t want to waste any more than necessary and Soph couldn’t be asked to go back and forth when he could listen to the thrum of the engines.

Elsewhere

Thirty six legs tapped against the floor as Trrkanikan made his way through hallways, the centipedal gruuk staying to the open despite preferring to travel through the ducts, grating, and around plumbing rather than risk getting kicked. Indeed, he often was due to his small size at only four feet long, eight inches wide, and a healthy four inches thick. Given most of his body was parallel to the ground though, his ‘upper’ body held upright in a lazy S that barely reached a foot and a half off of the floor. Sixteen pincher arms and the eight inch long curved mandibles that he could extend from his gummy mouth when threatened tended to make repeat kicks rare however, especially after he had accidentally removed that one running guy’s foot. Trrkanikan felt really bad about that, but on the plus side he’d gotten a free foot!

The sanitation engineer still had it, he’d put it in his lumpy toolbelt and skittered away into the ducting before anybody could say anything to put it on ice. When Trrkanikan had looked for the running man to return his foot he couldn’t find him, and in fact Trrkanikan had never seen him on the ship before or after that, so he pretty obviously wasn’t all that attached to it. After that he’d read up on how to embalm and kept the appendage with his other trophies in a special locker, sometimes taking it out and admiring it with his seventeen beady black eyes. It was such a joy! Not the centerpiece of his collection of course, because of the smell, but still cherished. He smiled, as much as a gruuk could, as he skittered up a wall, pulled open a grate, and slinked into the ship’s plumbing. Trrkanikan had to jostle himself a couple times, the backpack for his required weapon catching on a rivet, but after that it was smooth going.

Clinking along pipes, the gruuk made his way through the ship outside of sight as he found his way to his secret cubby. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to bunk with the others, but rather that nobody seemed to appreciate it when he snuggled with them. After he’d gotten thrown out for the fifth time he’d found a little nook in the ship, an area where the piping had been removed and left enclosed. Twisting and turning, following little chalk marks he’d left upon the ragged and rusting piping of the Tauro, Trrkanikan arrived at his den quickly and took off his backpack, the sonic-cannon was rather bulky after all, and set it in the bed of woven hair he’d made. Petting his hand-made mattress, the gruuk chattered happily to himself in the dull red light of his private room, “Humanoids flush away the strangest things,” he spoke in a voice that would not have been out of place on a slight human man, parroting the voice of a customs agent he had met, “hair is such a lovely knitting material.”

“Why yes Trrkanikan, but they have a lot of it so they don’t care if it gets all caught up in the pipes,” the gruuk sanitation engineer threw his voice so it came from one of his pincher hands, clacking it to match his words as he spoke to himself with a whimsical feminine voice, “all the more for us. Why, we should thank them for chucking all their neat stuff away! We found such lovelies on that station.”

“Yes yes,” the centipedal man skittered over to a trunk and pulled open the lid, dragging out a pale blue dress that he rubbed against his face and sniffed deeply through his mouth before wrapping it around his head like a shawl, “I just wish I could talk to them without someone screaming ‘giant horror bug’ or ‘oh god what are you doing why are you licking me get away’.” This time he made no response from his ventriloquist act, instead looking at his hand and clicking the pincher back and forth before shrugging his topmost set of arms and pulling the dress of his head to throw it back in the trunk atop stacks of pictures he’d taken of all the crew past and present, some replacement parts for his gun, and a dogeared book detailing human anatomy. Clonking the lid shut and humming to himself, he put his backpack on again and left his sanctuary to tend to clogged plumbing and faulty pipes that were doubtlessly filling as he reminisced.

[Sennai]

Medical

While The other Members of Medical staff experimented on the insects with lasers and the small short irradiated Rat lizards that scuttled about, Yoko had to admit, it was a horrible scummy little ship. just one look had made her itch for a tetanus jab at the rust, Let alone whatever horrible little Pathogens lurked in the dripping rusted filth encrusted corners.

She swore she saw an pile of oil residue move under it's own power. things skittered in the walls, her bed was full of flea's and she'd started to run out of hand sanitizer. The Frakking thing had hardly taken off yet!
Combing herself for the hundreth time, she looked over at the facilities she had at her disposal. People would get better in Butchershops than they would here. but it was cheap, no questions asked and most of all temporary. either she would get to huerdaen or Xenohumanity spece, Maybe Even xiscapian space and sell two of the three vials for a ludicrous amount of money to some company, Criminal scyndicate or supervillan. But right now, Kagain space or not, as long as she was out of the Sen alliance.

Gettign out what disinfectant she could, and pulling on big red gloves, she took the scrubbing brush to the Medical bay parts that wernt full of dead roaches or dissected ratbeasts. If she was gonna be a doctor she might aswell be a damm efficent doctor with a clean workspace.

Engineering

"Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah Some call me the gangster of love Some people call me Maurice, Cause I speak of the pompitous of love,
People talk about me, baby Say I'm doin' you wrong, doin' you wrong
Well, don't you worry baby,Don't worry,Cause I'm right here, right here, right here, right here at home, Cause I'm a picker, I'm a grinner I'm a lover and I'm a sinner, I play my music in the sun...."

Lying on his back, Battered CD player running his Mixtape, Kevin Prince shifted on his wheelboard tending to the rusted plumbing of the ship. clogged with rust, Leaky pipes. With how water was in space it couldent afford to be wasted.

He hated wasted things.

Picking up some tape, he weapped the end of a piping joint to make it watertight and screwed it in, Singing along with his favorite song. He reached into his toolbox feeling around for the right tool by touch. a hammer, A screwdriver, A knife...

He paused mid tune and then shook his head, It wasent time for that yet....yet.

he feld the edge and grinned before moving on to his shifter spanner, Pulling it out he whistled along using it to tighten the knot. a few trips with this crew then he'd shift ships. Admitantly this was the worst piece of frakkign garbage he;d seen but there was probably worse out there. He was aware that the head of engineering, A scrawny fellow who'd spent too long starving himself no doubt, was muttering about something. It didnt matter to him, Long as he did his jobs he and the man would get on fine and he wouldent have to introduce him to his freind.
With the CD switching tracks, he got to work on the next spider webs worth of pipes.

"Well I've been lookin' real hard And I'm tryin' to find a job But it just keeps gettin' tougher every day But I got to do my part cause I know in my heart I got to please my sweet baby, yeah Well, I ain't superstitious And I don't get suspicious But my woman is a friend of mine And I know that it's true that all the things that I do Will come back to me in my sweet time.."

[Xenohumanity]

Engine Room

A starship was like a submarine – its engineering was the result of a constant battle between internal pressure and the void without. The economy of space versus structure and durability against inertia was a constant struggle from blueprint to spaceway. Q-bit AGI collectives pored over the mathematical problems involved for the simulation-equivalent of millions of years, and engineers became doctorate-level academics in order to understand the intricate, intertwining systems of a ship. Even the man with the toolbox on a small family-owned in-quadrant freighter had to become the smartest man on the ship if the upkeep was going to match pace with the wear and tear of travel.

But the Tauro?

Don’t make me laugh. If I did, I’d need to catch my breath every now and then, and the smog in the engine room would probably cause prompt and lasting brain damage.

At least the ‘underwater’ part of submarining had caught on with the Tauro’s engies. The salty, chemical-laden condensation of over-cold pipes and over-hot air had turned most surfaces an ugly poo-colored brown-red that’d give you tetatnus at a moment’s notice if you weren’t wearing gloves. Radiation leaks, improperly sealed plasma canisters, and ‘projects’ made by the engineers to keep from going mad with boredom and self-loathing littered the deck. The rumors that many crewmen were taking lessons from the infamous ‘Xeno13’ disaster made these projects the stuff of poorly kept secrets, where such ‘projects’ had resulted in disaster in one of the funniest tragic industrial accidents of the modern age. Never let it be said that ‘back-up’ zero-point generators are a wise investment of time and mania.

These horrific working conditions and the horrific workers within them were just up Jan’s alley. Hell, she’d worked in places as rusty as this with even more dangerous companions back in the day. With her hammock slung between two tree-thick vertical pipes, sitting around at roughly head-level as she read the latest update to the Anarchist’s Cookbook on her PDA, she figured this was the life. It was free money to pretend to work, all while being fed and housed by someone who would have applauded her gambling problems if he could be assed to know who actually worked on his ship day-to-day. She was ready to go at a moment’s notice – toolbelt on, bag of supplies at hand, her R.I.G. suit a few minutes of walking and suit-up away for serious problems – but until duty called, she was going to sit right here reading up on how to make cyclonite on the cheap. Because if there was ever anything an ex-pirate would call a ‘neat trick’, it was cooking unrefined plastic explosives in a bucket of ice cubes with nothing on but underpants and rubber gloves.

The silver tip of Jan’s tail swished languidly, like a feather-duster in a light breeze. The xenan scratched behind her ears and let them flatten and relax as she nestled into her hammock, adjusting her eye-patch a little before tapping on her device to get to step 2. Once the nitric acid and the ice cubes in the bucket got cold, you had to add the fuel capsules and keep it cold or else it’d cook off prematurely. Wonderful. Hell of a project while they were underway to Karaig-space. Jan smirked. She really was the smartest person in this department, which was pathetic, but of course, Jan was the one advancing this line of propaganda. The stupid robot fox could do the job well when she wasn’t bugging everyone to help out with the terminally damaged ship, but the thing was as boring as could be. Couldn’t do drugs, wouldn’t fuck (no holes, duh), and wouldn’t help Jan in her off-grid enterprises. Last time she’d tried to get some help with cooking some low-grade mélange to sell in port, Yoriko had been too naïve to even know they were talking about spice and not ‘engineering surplus’ or whatever Jan had called it. The vixnoid didn’t even know to report Jan to security for conspiracy to steal a cut from the captain’s cargo shipment of similarly low-grade mélange.

“R.D.X. detonates at a rate of 8,550 meters per second when compressed to 1.55 grams per cubic cm.”

Jan licked her chops. What delicious explosive power, and from such humble beginnings, cooked in a bucket and mixed with some sodium to keep from blowing up if you sneezed while sticking the det-charge in place. She imagined ‘testing’ by sticking a block of the stuff under someone’s bunk. Just a little bit, enough to put them in the med-bay for a while but not enough to kill them. No hard feelings. Probably Torrkanion or Trrkanak or whatever his name was (Jan just called him Torque and was done with the matter). He seemed like the kind of guy who’d appreciate the sentiment. Hidalgo would hold a grudge, and Kevin wouldn’t understand the sort of humor that appreciated bombing someone in their sleep ‘a smidge’.

A distant, quickly approaching thudududududud stirred Jan from her reading.

“Ah, shite.”

She rolled over and out of her hammock in a flash, xenan reflexes landing her on her feet and one hand (wouldn’t want to squish her PDA, after all). As if choreographed ahead of time, a section of pipe broke at a junction. The rusted rivets sheared as the weight of the coagulated ball of coolant pulled it down and sliced into Sylver’s hammock. That would have been another cybernetic replacement if she hadn’t gotten out of the way, probably administered without anesthetic knowing the Tauro. The grey sergal brushed herself off, stretching now that she was up, yawning like an alumina and scratching an itch near the ‘ware-socket on her leg.

Should she call it in? Yes, but then she’d have to do it herself – she was right there, she had the tools, two plus two equals an hour of ass-busting on a pipe that’d probably break in another week for all that trouble. It wasn’t worth the trouble. It’d been jammed already, so whoever or wasn’t getting coolant at the end of it wouldn’t notice. She started taking down her hammock, muttering curses to herself as she worked out a plan to slip back to her bunk and act none the wiser. Her boss was probably blown out of his mind, and it’d be a while before he’d have the brain-space to give her orders. Might as well finish that nap of hers while she could…

---

Security Brig…

“Look, I told you… I don’t know… There’s something strange going on, you know what I mean? Can you see that? Look, right there. Can you see it? What is that? Someone must have slipped me something. I mean, this can’t be happening.”

Blue-white pills and cocaine scattered across the floor, nestling into the thick shag carpet. Broken lights flickering, broken glass crunching under shoes, and the smell of marrow-blood wafting in from the rest of the nightclub. The lounge music still played on from those speakers that hadn’t been smashed or shot, and the Wyrms were nowhere in sight – not their problem at this hour, not in this neighborhood. The VIP room had been the last, best hope for anyone not wanting the trouble that’d driven the mil-surp Slumbuster through the front. That hope had been kicked down, but the xenan sitting on the couch had offered no resistance. Eyes glassy, slumped uncomfortably across the furniture with his feet kicked up on a coffee table, and a karaoke machine awaiting another selection – the man was high out of his mind. The five masked intruders didn’t need to say a word to each-other as they filed in, staring at the xenan as they surrounded him, armed to the teeth and splattered with blood on their jeans and jackets.

The xenan looked around at the group, confused but curious: “It’s like… Wow. Are those masks? Are we in the jungle? I want to go to the jungle. I quit, you know. Did I tell you that? No more, I tell you. I’m out… Done. Finished.”

None of the five said a word in answer. They didn’t want any context, and they didn’t care for anything a damn zeener had to say. With the chemicals in his system, the xenan had no idea what to make of the masked strangers. A drakon loong with whiskers and bulging eyes, a xenohuman as a snarling alumina, another two as a stone-faced tod-and-vixen pair, and a huerdaen disguised as an atoran, fake headstalks tied into a single ponytail. Even sober, the sergal would be confused by the weapons they carried so nonchalantly – machine guns, a chainsaw, a shot-pistol, a pipe, all clearly used only moments ago. There wasn’t enough left of the Syndi’s in the rest of the place to make a death rattle. These five had made sure of that.

The tod-mask grabbed the xenan’s ankles and hauled him onto the coffee table, sending more pills scattering into the shag. Before he’d even been slid into place, the fake atoran raised his pipe and swung it down into his temple. The bone snapped, his eye split, blood splattered across his furry forehead.

“What… Are you hitting me? I… I just wanna go home.”

The xenan’s good eye rolled, jaw starting to hang slack, a moan on the verge of crying oozing from his mouth.

“Can you call Mary? She’ll… She’ll come get me.”

The masks were unmoved.

“Is that blood? Am I bleeding? Do I need to go to the hospital? Guys… Look, I just want to go home, okay?”

The Syndi must have said something wrong. All at once, the thugs leapt upon him; the long stomped on his gut so hard he smashed the coffee table, driving the mobster to the floor and slicing his back on glass. One of the fake-foxes raised their shot-pistol and fired it point-blank at the xenan’s crotch, splattering the group with blood and scraps of fabric. The huerdaen had started swinging away at the sergal’s head and didn’t stop until long after the blood stopped spurting from the mobster’s wounds for lack of a pulse.

One last blow to the face to make it unrecognizable, and the fake-atoran began to lead the group out, tossing aside his pipe like so much litter.

Fade to black.

KILLS: 18820
COMBO: 72200
FLEXIBILITY: 340
MOBILITY: 3000
BOLDNESS: 3200
TIME BONUS: 18560
SPECIAL: 4000
LEVEL SCORE: 120120

A-

An A minus?!

Yraffel scowled at his dataslate. He knew exactly where he’d gone wrong. No excuses or apologies for failure. He’d flubbed a little bit, hadn’t kept the combo going between the first and the second. He’d gone balls to the wall, but he hadn’t done the extra half-second of planning to keep it all together where it mattered. He even started growling a little bit. He wouldn’t even have time to try again before he was on shift. Probably wouldn’t touch it for a few days, just to cool off. It wasn’t that he didn’t like XenoHotline, it’s just that the damn thing was so hard. Many had decried the gore and violence as excessive, but for Yraffel, it was just enough to keep him entertained. Still, the line between difficulty and nonsense grew thin sometimes. His his fellow security guards had cringed when they caught a glance of his avatar pouring a pot of boiling oil over a man’s face in high definition, but he’d heard that Jorogumo only laughed when his peers mentioned it. Good woman, that one. Good taste in media. Knew how to spend her time well. She and Yraffel were of a mind more often than not, and for that she had his unfailing respect and loyalty. It was not debasing for a drake to serve so readily under a leader so worthy of servitude.

The high score table could wait. Patrols had to be made and the corridors had to be cleaned of scum and freighter-tramps. Knees broken, louts space, the usual forms of justice aboard the Tauro. Yraffel quit his game and stowed his data-slate into its sleeve in his under-armor, then rose from his seat in the arms room and readied himself. His armor was in the usual spot in his special section of the gear-wall, and he’d suited up in a few minutes, everything pressurized and sealed from boots to helmet, with his gun in its holster and his machete at his hip. He’d probably get a reprimand-in-person-only if he didn’t make an effort at less-than-lethality, so he also made sure to grab a tazer and a shock-baton on the way out. Besides, even if it wasn’t particularly ‘effective’ in Yraffel’s eyes, making someone ride the lightning for a half-hour on an over-charged tazer battery sure beat television.

The trip from the security center down to Jorogumo’s quarters was noisy as always, the ship creaking and hissing and clanging. The only way anyone onboard would know if they’d been attacked was the stench of grease thinning as the air left the corridors through combat wounds. As he strode through, head barely shy of the ceiling at points, Hanss drew his machete from its sheath and twirled it every now and then, the balanced weight of the blade giving him something to fiddle with. As he neared his commander’s quarters, he began to rap the tip of his blade against the wall every few steps. Menace came unbidden to Yraffel, so automatic that he didn’t even know he was doing it until he heard conversation from around the corner of a T-intersection. He stopped, leaned against the wall, and heard Joro talking to other security guards, already on the way to their rounds.

"Either of you see Yraffel? I want to pick him up on the way."

As Joro, Ko, and Jax passed by, about to miss Yraffel completely, the drake squeezed the trigger on his machete. The HeatBlade burst to life, whirring its chain-blade and flashing with a brilliant plas-flame before he let go and the flesh-melting shroud dissipated. The three heads that turned to him were met with the barest of smiles, just enough to show teeth. He stowed his machete as he leaned off the wall and joined ranks with the rest, saying nothing for nothing needed to be said.

“Let’s clean up this ship.”

---

Cargo Hold…

On a space station, a quartermaster’s work was never done. Paperwork to file, shipments to load and offload, ‘special acquisitions’ to tuck away for a rainy day, an entire orbital underworld to rule as the sole source of contraband for parsecs around, the usual business. On the Tauro, though, once it left port, everything slid to a halt. With Dyck Jossen’s crew, everything was ready to go before the ship left port, a marked improvement from the previous master of cargo’s performance. The rare requests for additional supplies for engineering from cargo’s storage weren’t enough to keep the two-dozen cargo ‘technicians’ occupied. Between strictly observed meal-time schedules, routine huddles to meet the daily quota of being-screamed-at-by-the-old-man, and regular inspections of the cargo that conveniently missed all the illegal cargo both captain-sanctioned and otherwise, there were still hours that went unfilled after the ship launched.

This was one of those hours, and the men and women knew better than to look bored. No card-games, no smoking, no sin of any kind that couldn’t be stowed in four seconds flat. The old man tended to leave a mark when he disciplined his crew, that old Federal love of sjambok-flogging joining with Setulan styles of wall-to-wall counseling and unintelligible mumbling that felt like a bony hand gripping the heart in a strangling grip inside one’s chest. For the moment, they were spared his presence, free to lay about and be thankful for their wages. The coot was doing his rounds, walking slowly on old joints, keeping himself comfortable as he breathed in the poorly filtered, oily air and looked over the corrosion tinting the corners of the freight. Nobody knew what a smile would look like on that deep, dark face on that granite chin and that head of wizened grey hair, but it might have looked appropriate as he walked his grounds. If he didn’t regard such ‘pride’ as a sin, he would have been quite happy with his realm. For what it was, he was doing the best with it that he could, and that was better than most men could say about their lot in life.

“What in blue blazes…”

Jossen had a great eye for things out of the ordinary. As he pulled his overcoat tighter around himself, he looked up where he had caught a glint of abnormality. Anything a man with as much surreal occultism in his life as Dyck Jossen found ‘abnormal’ was quite queer indeed. On top of one of the unsecured, poorly stacked cargo piles, the Rethast boy and the big bugger sat minding their own business. This would be all well and good if they were cargo techs, those whom Jossen could drag down and cane to tears and bleeding for lollygagging. However, the panhuman was out of his jurisdiction, and the presence of foreigners made the bile rise in the back of the Merch-Master’s throat. The ikittitl was a great help for moving freight when the crane-rig jammed, and the thing’s stupidity excused his quicks. The other one, though? Such stupidity would be met with no mercy.

“OY, YOU LOT! And same for you, Freight!”

That got their attention. The old man had more shout in him than a man a third his age, and he had the eyes of the two before he lay a hand on the pommel of his sword and scowled at them.

“What in the gods’ names are you lot doin’ on my freight, lady? Freight, you come down here, and bring that other one with if ye’have ta’. He’s got no business on my deck. Security isn’t patrolling ‘ere for another half-hour, so make yerself scarce ‘till then, aye?”