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 Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 9:17 pm
__________Docks.
A slow smile, calculated to be professional rather than assuring, formed over Fáelán's face as she responded to Kal. "I'm sorry, but you aren't being payed to know details. In fact, part of the reason you are being paid was the agreement that my employer was also securing a distinct lack of curiosity on your part, so I can't help but wonder what your motives are in asking."
Casually, she stepped away from the ship and paced very slowly. There was nothing casual about the tense jaw or the activation of her own omni-tool, however, as she continued to watch Kal. "All you need to know is that whatever is on this ship is the property of my employer, and that employer is paying very well to keep it private." She didn't like being curt or threatening, and she did not meant to be the latter, but she didn't like questions either. Questions, at this point of the mission, suggested problems and she couldn't afford any problems.
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Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 4:40 pm
Docks
"My motives for asking are for the three of our well-being's," Kal said, taking Ms. Miller's hint in stride. "If you want to keep us in the dark, then you can keep us in the dark. Like you said, we're not being paid to snoop around. I was only..."
Kal's omni-tool beeped, and the small rectangular holo-screen displaying the progress of the security hack glowed green. Kal scrolled down on his tool's HUD and unlocked the door with the press of a finger. Kal looked up for verification. The airlock's door lock glowed green.
"We're in," Kal said, standing up and stepping back from the door. "After you, Ms. Miller..."
Kal glanced once at Drex before looking back to Miller.
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Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2011 12:02 pm
_________Docks.
Comment left lingering unfinished, Fáelán left it there without responding. It wasn't because she wanted to be short or frank with them, but because with the door open all of her priorities now shifted. Murmuring a distracted 'thank you' to Kal, she activated her own omni-tool to act as a flashlight as she entered the open door way cautiously.
There was no light, save for the dim glow from her omni-tool, and that she dimmed even further so that she could see more clearly. The second doors outside of the decontamination room were open, and no computer voice came on to announce working decontamination screening. From what she could see, the small ship was deserted, and not only was there no functioning communications from the outside, there didn't appear to be any online systems working on the inside either. That would explain why they needed to hikack the doors, at least, but it raised so many other questions.
The first questions was what had happened to the crew and, more specifically, the cargo. Risking the chance that someone may be lurking in the shadows, Fáelán hurried through the second doors and into the main cargo area only to stop just as suddenly as a sudden nausea hit her as suddenly as the smell did. First question answered: the crew had been burned alive. The entire cargo area was charred black, and what had once been bodies of three crewmen were now charred, blistered flesh that had melted so quickly only stains were left on exposed bone. The sag of the uniforms and the thin, emaciated torsos was enough to suggest that there was nothing left even under the unmarked uniforms they all wore.
Despite the lack of tissue on the bodies, the air was thick with the scent of burning flesh and Fáelán couldn't block it from her nostrils or her mouth even after covering it with both hands. It was as if the flesh had evaporated from their bodies and filled the air, as heavy as it felt, and she had to turn away and lean her head against the blackened exterior wall just to keep from doubling over and retching.
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Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 6:28 pm
Drex had listened to his fellow employee and employer ramble on about the details that were meant to be left out of the job. It was natural for a race like the Quarians to be curious, and at times even more so than the humans. However Drex chuckled a bit as Miller reminded the Quarian why they had been hired and before a retort could be uttered the door was opened.
Drex remained at his post for a short time while he watched Miller enter the ships main hold. He heard a string of gagged coughs and that perked his interest. Keeping himself still in a position to watch the outside he moved himself back and leaned the best he could to see into the ship. With only the light from Millers Omni-tool he could see little, but he could smell so much more. It was the smell of burned flesh but it was beyond the point of cooked, it was to the point of ash with the subtle hint of human.
"You have to get pretty blazing hot in order to reach temperatures that can do that to a human. Whoever did it had no plan on leaving any evidence of what happened," Drex pull the primer on his rifle to set it ready to fire, "With the smell being so strong there is a chance whoever did this is still here too."
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Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 1:26 am
Docks
Kal had entered the ship before Drex, but his suit filters blocked out most bad smells, including that of scorched flesh. While Kal scanned the entranceway for anything unusual with his omni-tool, Drex moved closer to the ship, but still stayed just outside the airlock, covering the docking tube from whence they'd come through.
"You have to get pretty blazing hot in order to reach temperatures that can do that to a human," Drex said. "Whoever did it had no plan on leaving any evidence of what happened. With the smell being so strong there is a chance whoever did this is still here, too."
Kal glanced over at Wrex while he was running his scan.
"Smell...? You'll have to forgive me, my suit protects me from most bad odors..."
Kal looked up in the direction that Ms. Miller had gone. She could see an open set of doors, and the dim silhouette of a figure seeming... Facing the wall? Kal activated his own light on his omni-tool and approached Miller. Shined the light past her, and saw why she looked like she was about to lose her stomach.
"Oh, Keelah!" Kal exclaimed. "What the hell happened here?!"
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Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 4:38 pm
______________Docks.
With extreme tests of her own willpower, Fáelán pulled herself back to the present as Kal's light cast on the wall before her. It was black as ash itself and, with another threat of nausea, she realized that she may very well be leaning on bits of the crew without even knowing it. Jerking away quickly, she put a hand on her stomach as if to settle it and then raised her omni-tool and scanned the ship herself. Wishing she had a suit to cut out the smell, she did her best with pushing it out of her mind while she approached the bodies.
Her hands shook as she reached down to fold back a flap on the chest of their nondescript uniforms and revealed a sequence of nine numbers. After checking both of them, she felt an almost immediate need to cry and she raised her hand back to cover her eyes for a moment while she regained her composure. When she was finally able to speak she did so without any shake in her voice, "It was an oxidizing agent, a strong one and a lot of it."
He's not here. She told herself while she spoke, looking away from the bodies and doing her best to pretend they weren't there while she looked to the closed doors that opened to the living quarters and cockpit. A beep from her omni-tool alerted her and she stood, entering in a clearance code as she did, and waited for the result. "We need to get that door open. The only functioning device on the ship is in the cockpit."
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Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:43 pm
Docks
Kal jerked his neck to look at Ms. Miller as he backed out of the room they were in.
"What... You can't be serious!" Kal exclaimed. "You heard Drex. If... If whoever did this is still on the ship, then we need to get out of here!"
Kal held his pistol in one hand by his side. He didn't want any trouble from Miller or Drex, but if it came down to it, Kal would defend his right to leave violently, if necessary.
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Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 6:13 pm
"Calm yourself Quarian, they might still be on board, key word might. If they are likely they are a cleanup team and not outfitted for a major engagement. Besides that what I'm here for, and I know you can use that nifty tool on your arm to scan for life signs or movement within the area. That said things are differently wrong here Boss. If you still wish to have whatever is in this ship I would get it quick and then let us get out."
Drex continued to hold his position in front of the main door as he spoke to his teammates behind him. He spoke up just a bit so they could hear him despite the opposite direction his voice was coming from. The Krogan was not about to let his eyes off the outside area now with the possibility of combat now so strong. Unless whoever did this had come prepared to fight a Krogan they would likely rather run from the fight than try and take them on. Krogan were not invincible but facing one likely meant you would lose a few of your own numbers before it went down.
"Not to blow my own horn here, but me just standing here will make people want to turn the other way. Unless someone either just wants to fight, or running will get them a quicker death all this talk of possible fighting will be all for not."
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Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 6:24 pm
____________Docks.
Fáelán turned to Kal quickly and shook her head even as the Krogan supplied what, for him, would have been comforting words. She knew that there was no one else on this ship, not anymore, but she couldn't tell them how she knew. She bit her tongue and grimaced, cursing all the secrets that were wound around this and what she'd stumbled into. Of all the things she had expected to find, this was not it. Even if she was beginning to conjecture the 'how' and 'why', it just complicated everything.
"We're alone now," She said to both of them, trying her best to show how sincere she was without looking desperate. The fact was, however, she was desperate now. "There were only two crewmen assigned to the ship, a skeleton crew, and here they are. Whatever went wrong..." She paused, realizing that she was already answering too many unasked questions, but continued anyways. Assume whatever they would, she needed their help. "It's the cargo that did this, and I have to find that cargo. That's the job."
"I have to find it before what happened here happens somewhere else on the Citadel!" A lie, but a convincing one. Surely it wouldn't matter to the Krogan or the Quarian, whom were both mercenaries and likely to resist the effects of an oxidized acid... but the same couldn't be said for humans and asari in the wards, or any of the other less resilient species that called the Citadel home.
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Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 7:52 pm
Docks
Somewhere else on the Citadel?! Keelah, what was Miller involved with?!
"Look, I'll get you into the cockpit, but if whatever did that," Kal jabbed his finger in the direction of the corpses "winds up being in there," Kal gestured behind him towards the cockpit "then you can count me out of this mission. I'm out of here. You can even keep the pay for me getting you in here. I'm hightailing it if we suddenly get attacked by your cargo."
Kal'Rem had already stuck around for more than he liked. The seemingly decent pay suddenly seemed like not enough pay. He really didn't want to be part of this job, anymore.
"I'm going to go unlock the cockpit," Kal said, moving quickly to a console next to the door. "Drex, do you mind moving over here?"
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Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:05 pm
"The cargo did this?"
Drex took another sniff of the air and almost looked like he was tasting it. He gave a snort and just looked at Miller for a time. These bodies did not smell right that was for sure but to say some chemical did this and not the business end of a few hundred incendiary rounds or a flamethrower seemed like a farce if ever he heard one. That being said he wasn't being paid to think on this mission just to do what his kind did best.
Looking to the Quarian as he spoke did put a bit of a chuckle back in the Krogan. Someone so decked out in protective gear was afraid of something chemical. He understood Quarians were actually fragile with their suits being the only barrier between life and death. One well placed shoot could simply wound them but that wound could turn into an infection and kill them slowly. Drex cracks his large neck as Kal spoke and then moved to stand closer to the Quarian.
"And here I thought you didn't like me Quarian. You tell me if my shadow gets in your light at all," Drex laughed a bit and did so in some small attempt to alleviate some of the tension in the air, soldiers fought on morale and if it was low enough they would turn and run.
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:35 am
___________Docks.
Leveling a disapproving look at the Krogan's disbelief, Fáelán dismissed the urge to confirm her previous statement. It felt too much like the edge of a knife, and if she pushed too hard the two mercenaries were likely to topple over and abandon the job, and that couldn't happen while she still needed them. While Kal worked at the console for the door she lowered her attention to her omni-tool and sent a discreet message confirming her location and an estimation of how much longer before she could get into the cockpit and then off the ship.
It took only a second, the message pre-scripted and ready to go even before they had stepped aboard, and she finally addressed Kal's not-so quiet concerns of what awaited beyond the doors. "Don't worry about what's inside of the cockpit.. I'll go in first."
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 7:52 pm
Docks
Kal finished rerouting auxillary power to the cockpit door and stepped back to give Miller a wide space to walk through.
"Please, by all means... What's your human expression?" Kal asked. "Ladies first?"
Kal tapped a command on his omni-tool and the door to the dark cockpit slid open slowly. He'd wait a minute or two before he followed Miller there.
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Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:46 am
____________Docks.
"Thank you." Fáelán said as she stepped forward, though be her tone it was clear that her thoughts were more grim than grateful. The cockpit was empty, just as she'd expected, and she moved forward with the confidence of one who was not expecting any further surprises. In truth, she'd believed that the ship would be found in similar conditions but hadn't been prepared for the exact gravity. It didn't matter though, not that she had access to what she needed.
She didn't sit at the console, merely leaned over it as she applied the necessary omni-gel to get the sole-remaining system running -- not necessary, but faster than cracking the correct codes -- and it wasn't long before she had what she needed: a tracking signal and coordinates to find the cargo. While she downloaded it, she opened the system's folders and frowned. The cargo listed here wasn't the chemical she was expecting it was..."Cato..?" she whispered, trying to understand. He wasn't 'cargo', he was with the project! Knowing that she didn't have time to understand it, she entered the delete command. 3:42 minutes remaining.read the display, so she sealed that behind a number of passwords that would hopefully give it time to finish deleting itself. If Kal was good enough, and motivated to, he could probably recover the information... but if things went according to plans she would be long gone by then, and C-sec would be here to impede the process.
As she straightened and turned to the door she saw Kal entering, and she moved to the side to give him access to the console. "I..can't get the system to respond to my passwords. Whoever did this to the crew must have sealed the information, care to give it a whirl?" To Drex, not far from the cockpit door she was moving to, "Mind checking the rest of the ship for any surprises, Drex?"
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Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 1:43 pm
Docks
Truthfully, Kal wasn't eager to do this job, anymore. There were too many unknown factors now. Certainly, Ms. Miller was involved far more illicit things that Kal had first suspected. For now, though, he wasn't ready to turn around and run.
Kal looked down on the console. It was system-locked alright. He was almost certain he could unseal the information and gain access to the little information that he hadn't already obtained... But it'd take a while.
"I'll get started now," Kal said, bringing his arm up in front of him and activating his omni-tool.
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