No Light

[RC 212]

[member="Olan Teff"] [member="Kiber Thaxton"]

The jump was a success. Vassara felt another lurch as she moved out of the hyperspace. Instantly she felt the force drop her gut. Something was wrong. She was moving way too fast. As she exited she sailed directly across the hull of the vessel. Teeth ground her hands began to work the holocontrols of the Void Runner. There was not time, she burned clear across the bow, shields arcing blue sparks as the two steel plated sections collided.

"Frak!"

Long jumps were dangerous, and she had come out with a few scrathes now. That was the worst of it though. The derelict ship would rock hard under the impact, as Vassara slowed the frigate, turning full burn. The emergency thrusters kicked in, exploding off the port side and whipping the ship parallel to the other.

A few more taps extended docking tubes to the air lock. She was up and moving then, scooping up her rucksack and backpack, heading for the airlocks....

 

[Reno Jendir]

Reno marveled at the inside of the ship, pointing to the various other ships in the hangar.

'Ooh look, there's the future Mrs Jendir!'

he said pointing at a particularly stunning vessel. It was amazing that no one had found this ship before and looted it. Anyone who did would've made a fortune selling the smaller ships alone.

He nodded at Olan, sitting on a nearby seat. He took his shoulder pad off, giving Olan access to the wound. He winced slightly as he bandaged it, but the pain subsided quickly.

 

[Olan Teff]

[member="Reno Jendir"] [member="Harli Hayes"] @D'vok Windroamer

As Reno took off his shoulder pad, Olan quickly began to wrap the wound and properly secure it. Not too tight, don't need it cutting off blood flow or restricting movement too much. With a little metal tooth claps, he holds the far end to the body of the wrap.

"You might want to try and get one of those old rigs going-we may be able to fly out of here with twice the loot." A bright grin on the Spacers face. "Especially since we won't be able to be in here long by ourselves..."

Stepping back he locked the medical pack up and tossed it into his room. Hopefully he had more medical supplies than that. Heading now into the bowels of his ship and towards the ramp. "I don't know what you guys want to do, but I know where I am going in this ship. The core room. Its where Tulst kept his most prized possessions. And I'm going to come clean-" Looking at the three. "-I'm here for several very specific things. And I won't ask any of you to come with me to where I am going, because...I have a feeling its going to get bad. Just stay in the light and keep one with you."

He smacked the big red button for the ramp to lower and it slowly began to go down-the air inside the hanger would filter in quickly, it was dry, old. Stuffy. Checking the bag on his back and the rifle in his hands, he turned the light attached to the CC-13 on and peered out past the ramp.

"I'm going to try and get the lights on in the hanger."

As soon as the ramp hit the floor of the hanger, Olan ran off into the darkness, the light on his rifle a literal spear in the darkness lighting his way...

Then the whole ship would shake with the sudden impact from something outside crashing against the derelict ship.

They could see the light topple over with Olan from the sudden hit, and several moments later it continued to move as he got up and continued running like no tomorrow. Stopping at what looked in the far distance was a console. Several moments passed.

It was like some galactic super entity said "let there be light!" as parts of the hanger began to light up. Though dim in some parts, and still pitch black in others, it was something!

In the distance they could hear Olan starting to cuss loudly. From here it looked like he punched the console. Beginning to run back at this point...

[member="Vassara Raxis"] [member="Kiber Thaxton"] @La'kuus Quelin

To Vass, she may have the exact same problem as Kiber did, the airlock was locked with that same alternating pattern. Also there was the more direct route of blowing the airlock open-or hacking the terminal.

But that did not seem the main issue for long! The ship seemed to come alive from the outside, lights began to turn on all over the outside. And best of all? The airlock unlocked and opened on its own, having recognized that a ship was docked too it.

She could only see as far as the light from her own ships lock-chamber reached into the ship-inside it was still dead black. It was like every single light inside the ship had been purposefully set to be off-or destroyed. There wasn't much else to see, other than what looked like large amount of brown splotches, the durasteel even looked pitted from the old looking substance.

On closer inspection, she would find its some sort of...blood.

 

[Harli Hayes]

Harli stood at the end of the ramp and watched Olan, or rather his light, run off into the dark. She braced herself as the entire ship shook from something hitting them. A cold shiver ran down her spine, leaving a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was force sensitive, she knew that and when she felt like something was wrong, things normally turned out to be.

 

[Olan Teff]

[member="Harli Hayes"] [member="Reno Jendir"] @D'vok Windroamer

Harli had no idea how much she was right! The only real evidence to it was Olans panicked run back to the ship. As he closed in he started to slow down and catch his breath. "Good news, bad news..."

He managed between huffs, trying to suck in air into his lungs.

 

[Reno Jendir]

Reno pointed at Olan in agreement

'Gotchya, I'll see if I can get one of these old babies working again'

he said, walking towards the closest. Luckily the light from the ship was enough to illuminate his path to it, making sure there weren't any stumbles or accidents. When he was a few metres away from the dust covered ship a large bang resonated around the entire hangar, a rumble and shaking following for a few seconds after. He was now a lot more worried than before. He guessed it would most likely be a meteor, and, if so, as they were in a meteor belt then it was going to be a regular occurrence. Luckily the ramp to the ship had been left open, and turning on a personal chest light he walked up into the dark.

 

[Olan Teff]

[member="Reno Jendir"]

The ship itself looked immeasurably old, but was in amazing condition none the less. The ship in question appeared to be a HWK-290 from what this one looked like. Its wings were closed in and it looked like it had been modded from its original design. The paint was covered in a thick layer of dust, but he could clearly see with the aide of the dim lights above and his chest light; the HWK had a gold and blue paintjob. The gold was actually metallic of all things. From the inside, it looked like the ship had been owned by a aristrocrat of some kind. Everything was smooth, well taken care of by its age. Even the seats which should have been worn from just age and time-were in perfect order. Just dust everywhere.

One of the big changes to the internals was the need only for a single pilot. The original two-seater cockpit in the front was designed for one pilot to seat themselves in the middle of all the controls-and even those seemed to have been simplified.

If he looked in the cargo hold, he would see it was empty-and that it could hold quite a bit of cargo.

There were other ships as well here, if this one just did not seem to be the right one. Though he could see another HWK model in the dimlight off to the corner of the ship as well, with a very dark paintjob. The dust on the hull made it look lighter than it actually was.

 

[Reno Jendir]

'Mhm?'

Reno said to Olan quietly, peering around the interior of the ship. He felt a chill down his spine. For reasons from his past, Reno didn't like empty, dark ships. Not one bit. He checked the cargo hold, wondering if any loot was still left inside, but none remained. He journeyed back to the modified cockpit, eyeing the controls. Everything on the ship seemed to be in order. There was no damage and it seemed that there was nothing missing. The only thing left to check was the engine, which was the one thing Reno was concerned about.

 

[Harli Hayes]

Harli slowly reached down and rested her hand on her blaster pistol as Olan came running back to the ship. That wasn't a good sign. She raised an eyebrow slightly when he asked if she wanted to hear the good news or bad news first. "Let's...start with bad first. Then work our way to good."

[member="Olan Teff"]

 

[Olan Teff]

[member="Reno Jendir"]

The ship wouldn't respond right away when he dialed in the control key to start the guidance, engines and belly thrusters-meanwhile everything turned on like it should. The internals of the ship started to glow with life after a few moments. He had power! Just the engines weren't responding to prompts, a little screen on the main dash popped up with a message

--{DISENGAGE ENGINE LOCK}--- And would show a little diagram of the ship, underneath the belly to honest, a little glowing green circle showing the location of whatever it was that had been stopping the engines from responding.


[member="Reno Jendir"] [member="Harli Hayes"] @D'vok Windroamer

Hearing Reno, he tried to get some more air in his lungs to respond. The wound was obviously worse than he originally thought. Then he was further spurred on by Harli's response. "Bad news...all the doors an-an-entry points in the ship-are unlocked...Good news...I...I-I got the lights on in here. And the...and the doors unlocked..."

 

[Reno Jendir]

Reno 'hmpfed' in response, making his way off the ship into the now lit hangar.

Don't worry, I'm sure if anyone is gonna try and get in they won't use the front door'

he said to Olan, crouching down, ready to fix the ship. He began crawling under it, attempting to find where the point was that the diagram had shown him. After a minute he finally made it to roughly where he thought the problem was.

 

[Olan Teff]

[member="Reno Jendir"]

Underneath the ship he could see that there was some char marks where the general area of the problem was, and what looked like...a carapace? In the shadow it looked somewhat like the back of a bug, with several layers of metal on its outside like overlayed scales. It seemed to shift and move in the darkness, but as direct light hit it-the thing seized up and let go of whatever it was holding onto. Dropping right down towards Reno!

Thankfully it appeared dead when examining it in the light. It looked like a mechanical beetle of some type, on closer inspection-it was a drone of some kind. It had eight metal claws and its underbelly had what looked like a little cutting torch...also a long prong stuck out of what would be the mouth.

It appears the thing had melted a bit of the outer armoring on the ship to get at the powers lines-and the drive cabling to the ships engines. Maybe it was siphoning off the ship?

 

[Reno Jendir]

Reno nearly screamed as the large metallic creature dropped, nearly on top of him. Massive bugs were definitely not one of his favourite things, but he took in a deep breath a collected himself. He removed his blaster pistol from its holster, he wasn't taking any chances with this horrific looking thing. When peering at the scorched hole he could see that some wires had cabling had been cut loose, but as long as Olan had some kind of repair kit, the damage seemed relatively easy to fix.

'I think I can get the old thing working!..... Oh and I also found a giant metal bug thing!..... Yeah!...'

He shouted, trailing off. He was still on edge, he just had a bad feeling about the whole situation.

 

[La'kuus Quelin]

La'kuus had a small talk with another one of her employers. She had the map, she was getting a transfer of credits, but it seemed they wanted the physical piece more than anything. She promised to be there as soon as she could. After loading into the ship, the found herself to be a liar as the ship beamed to life, from what it looked to be from it's previous state. With one of the bays open just enough for her to wiggle her ship in, she took the shot.

The room didn't have much light, and it looked to be for something a lot, lot bigger. She turned on her lights to see clearly, doing a full circular spin to settle into the darkness. She had a bad feeling about this place, but it still had a lot of secrets and treasures from what she heard. If she could get a few of them smuggled back to her own home, she could probably be slightly richer!

[member="Olan Teff"] [member="Reno Jendir"] [member="Harli Hayes"]

 

[Olan Teff]

[member="Reno Jendir"]

Oh, Reno could get it working alright. Cutting the damaged wire out and replacing it would not be too hard. He may remember those packs Olan had ready for crew on the ship, they most likely had the things he needed. If not, there was always the mechanics box near each ramp exit on the Avalon.

Reno may notice that the mechanical bug-droid appeared to start to move if it was in darkness for a bit. Its claws slowly beginning to shift and try to grab hold of something. If he kept it in the light, it wouldn't do anything, just look dead.

[member="Harli Hayes"] [member="Reno Jendir"] @D'vok Windroamer

Kneeling down, Olan faced where Reno was under the older HWK ship. "Alright, that's some good news. And what? What kinda thing?"


@La'kuus Quelin


As La's ship got into the Harlequins through the portal of entry she chose-she would find she is in a munitions storage. The lights from her ship illuminated what they could, but it was still pitch black in most of the room. Now and then she could probably swear she saw something moving in the darkness, but couldn't quite tell or catch it. Whatever it was. On the tail end of her full turn, she could see several little black spots on the wall, completely at odds with the ships neutrel steel internal colors.

Looking at them for any length of time would cause the little black spots to just...drop...into the inky depths below. She could see where they were, was a lot of holes, like they had chewed through the metal...or melted it at least. Whatever those things were.

 

[D'vok Windroamer]

"Ummm... Anything I can do? You know, to help?"

 

[La'kuus Quelin]

La'kuus began to tremble gently. She slowly moved to a cargo box and pulled it closer to her ship. "R, I need you to do a turn on the ship." She said quietly as she peeled open the box. Hearing nothing, she turned around to see... Her R unit was gone! "R? R!" She squeaked, grippling onto her blaster. She quickly ran forward to the door where she saw the light flash, and ran through it, into the deeper areas while half hanging to a wall to keep from falling in any holes.

Poor girl forgot she burned R into a smokey haze.

 

[Olan Teff]

@D'vok Windroamer [member="Harli Hayes"] [member="Reno Jendir"]

Olan looked at D'vok and nodded his head. "Yeah, we got a lot to do and not a lot of time. Ever have any time behind the stick on a ship? Mechanic? Any specific skillset?" Nodding his head as he stood up and began to look around the somewhat illuminated hanger.

@La'kuus Quelin

Due to her shotty memory, she probably was causing even more panic for herself than she already had coming to her. The box though she opened had a bunch of old looking blasters in them, and a bunch of...destroyed power cells? As she began to search about, using the wall was a guide, she would find the further she got from her ship-that some of lights looked to be winking out on her ship. Soon going black the further she got away into the bowels of the Harlequin.

It was freaking dark inside there. She could now and then hear a slight 'ding' sound off the hull from bits of asteroid impacting with the far larger ship. But something else, she could start to hear. Metallic clicks. And it came from different directions at times. Sometimes from the side, sometimes from the floor...sometimes from the ceiling. Depending on how good of a light she had, she may have caught a few glimpses of something dark moving around, it was long, whatever it was.

 

[D'vok Windroamer]

"Well, I'm a damn good mechanic, but I'm an even better pilot."

 

[La'kuus Quelin]

La La fished her pockets for a moment, then pressed a small button on her anti-electronic grenade. It wasn't like she would damage the ship. She gently dropped it at her feet, and just moments later, the small pulse of electro magnetic should pulse through the five meter area. Then she could get a better look at things. She should have brought more light.