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 Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 7:32 pm
This is where Non-docking ships lie in wait above the planet. These ships are either too large to dock, or do not meet the docking requirements regulated by the local guidelines. Passengers may disembark to and from the planet using small shuttlecraft as a ferry.
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Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 7:37 pm
 [Orane Nniprius]
A figure stood at the far end of the long and lofty bridge of the Sonata. Tall, thin, unyielding, her mere presence commanded awe and not a little Fear. Fear with a captial "F" thought Lt. Col. Nealaan Evert as he carefully approached her on the long cat-walk. He had been trying his best to keep his boots silent, his step steady, but his fear and apprehension betrayed his outward calm. He could feel her feeding on them, reveling in the effect her presence produced.
Evert knealt on the cold black metal, polished to a glossy shine which seemingly dissappeared into empty space - the bridge windows ran in a dome over their heads giving the effect of standing on a platform in the void. His light grey uniform reflected back at him from the floor and framed his pale sweating face. She was blackness. Nothing reflected from her but her aura of power - a force felt and not seen. He knew the protocol: never speak first, eyes always downcast, supplicant, supplicant, supplicant. It was a game of wills and she always won, that Jin'ha war princess Lady Orane
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Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 7:43 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
Orane made no indication she even knew he was there. She didn't have to. letting him wait in silence a few moments, reveling in the knowledge that when at last she did speak he would be grateful for her allowing him to stand and end the pain no doubt shooting through his knees. When she spoke, it was cold, deliberate. No breath was wasted and no sound insignificant. Hers was the voice of the Void, it was enough to evoke the deepest fears of becoming nothing. Her voice was full of Death.
"Speak" she said and with one word both offered Freedom to Evert and bound him tightly to her will. With a great swallow, Evert stood, the stiffness in his legs made him waver, but the looming presence of his mistress quickly called him to attention. He was always amazed that any woman could be so damned tall. The Jin'ha were not completely unlike humans, but Lady Orane easily towered over all of the officers on board. It was - no doubt - a purposeful effect engineered by the Jin'ha nobility in order to command a greater amount of fear for their leaders and lady Orane was high ranking.
"My lady, there seems to be a disturbance in one of the cargo-holds." Evert said nervously. He hoped she didn't ask...
"Which Hold?"
He took a shallow breath of apprehension. "Hold 315, My Lady."
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Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 8:03 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
Orane turned to face him. One thing that frightened most of the DAR officers sent to assist her was Orane's ability to hide any emotion, any thought, behind a cool mask. Her face was stone and nothing had changed in her demeanor except the fact that Evert was now staring dead into her eyes. He swallowed again - convulsively - and promptley removed any thoughts of her as a sexual object. If Orane had been born human, she would have been the epitome of beauty. She was not human, though. Orane was Jin'ha and the most deadly strain of Jin'ha Clanblood ran through her veins.
But just as suddenly as she'd turned to face him, she turned back. The swishing of her long black gown and robe far too gentle to belong to a woman so deadly. Evert was stunned. "What....what are your orders, My Lady?"
"Flood it"
"F-Flood it? With what, My Lady?"
"Hydrotoxis."
"B-but if we d-do that, a-all of the m-men we have p-posted there will....will..." Evert cut off his unthinking rebuttal as he saw her stoic face turn around once more. She approached him, this time, coming close enough for him to feel her breath and take in her scent - it was a cold crisp smell like midnight in Winter. He hardly noticed when one of her long, elegant arms wrapped around his shoulders and a razor fingernail cover slipped along his neck, drawing a fine line of blood. He hardly noticed when she used the same fingernail to trace his jawline delicately, almost lovingly. He hardly noticed anything except for the sound of Death pounding in his ears.
"Do as I say."
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 10:51 am
[Orane Nniprius]
Evert was relieved to have been let off so easily. Having questioned Lady Orane's orders and to still be alive? That was the stuff of Legend aboard the Sonata. Still shaking, he bowed. His head was so close to her he imagined that some of his hair had brushed the immaculate black material of her long gown. He started to retreat as he was bent over. When he finally did return to an upright position, he noticed that Orane had turned back to face the blackness of space and the faint glowing of the planet below them. He was shaking.
Stemming the trickle of blood down his neck with his sleeve, Evert strode to one of the control panels, signaling an operator to flood the vents of hold 315 with the noxious Hydrotoxis as Orane had ordered. He paled as he could hear the questions coming over the comm system. Men were wondering what was going on, but Evert had ordered radio silence in an attempt to prevent the 'disturbance' - which everyone knew meant an intruder - from learning of their intentions. He heard their alarm as men dropped to the ground while standing at their posts. After about five minutes, he shut off the flow of Hydrotoxis.
Orane approached him as silently as a panther. "Assemble a team of five and follow me to the cargo-hold." She ordered.
Evert managed a minor miracle by gathering the requisite number of soldiers and being ready to escort his mistress in a record two minutes. Orane said nothing, to Evert's relief, and led the way through long and brightly lit corridors into the bowels of the ship.
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 10:55 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
The task-force was met by the sickening sound of their fellow soldiers scratching at the metal doors with their fingernails. Those that hadn't been knocked unconscious by the Hydrotoxis were now trying desperately to reach fresh air before the deadly gasses worked their way through their circulatory system rendering them, too, unconscious and on the brink of death. Here, Orane paused.
Evert cleared his throat and eased carefully forward, barely missing Orane's sleeve to tap on the command console that operated the door. "E-Excuse me My Lady, but...there may be some residual Hydrotoxis. It would be wise to stand back so you are not effected."
Orane turned her elegantly trimmed head in Evert's direction and favored him with a rare glance. "If you are truely worried about safety, Lieutenant Colonel, you should worry about your own."
Evert had to do the best he could not to stare as the emerald glint of her dangerous eyes belied the steel in her voice. Those were eyes he'd heard about in fairy tales. Eyes that he saw in his dreams. But the edge of her tongue slashed his fantasy to bits.
"Y-yes. Of course. A-Allow me."
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:07 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
Hytrotoxis was a gas with a distinctive smell. It was citrus like, and not altogether unpleasant. Chances were, whoever noticed the scent was not immediately thrown off guard. Chances were they thought it was one of the maintenance crew performing a routine cleaning. However, once their extremities began to tingle and then to loose feeling completely, they would have known that this wasn't routine at all.
Orane gazed down into the eyes of a crawling soldier with disgust. The man was gulping down the fresh air rushing into the cargo hold as though he was sucking his own soul back in. She stepped feather-lightly over his body, her slippered foot whispering amongst the material of her gown.
On the floor in front of her was a sight she had expected to see. Laying prone was a young man. He'd fallen from his perch inside the air vents where he had been hiding. His identity was easily confirmed, he still bore a laboratory identification tag. He was an experimental superhuman.
Orane padded over to where he lay, letting the task force she'd brought with her concern themselves with dragging out the bodies of their fallen comrades. Most were still alive - as was this superhuman - but they were all paralyzed and unconscious.
Evert, she could sense, had remembered his place and followed her silently. His readiness to receive her orders spoke well of his obedience...or fear.
"The cargo?" She asked, twisting the word to give it signifigance.
"Secure." Evert answered with more strength than he felt.
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:18 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
Orane was satisfied with his answer and approached a nearby control console. With light fingers and those same razor sharp fingernails that had recently left a distinctive slice in Evert's neck she tapped out a series of numbers and letters known only to herself.
There was the violent hiss of compressed air before several panels along the wall released and lifted, exposing a force field cage. Streaks of electric purple and blue energy ran from ceiling to floor caging in an area of around eight square feet.
A young woman blinked up from where she had been sitting on a cot. An antiquated paper novel lay hastily tossed down beside her.
"Am I...to be released?"
"No"
"Ah. Just visiting then. I didn't know you cared."
"Stand"
Mirdelle's mouth worked angrily, and the mental processes she went through could be seen clearly in her flickering eyes. Nevertheless, she struggled to her feet, revealing a well-advanced pregnancy.
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:25 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
"Have there been any complications?" Orane's question was directed at Evert.
"No, My Lady. She is progressing well." Evert answered, doing his best to avoid the vibrant young woman's eyes which had now fallen on him. Her silent accusation of betrayal made Evert lower his head in shame.
"Excellent."
"Whore! You don't care You just want me as bait! He'll not come...He won't. He's not stupid, he'll go into hiding forever, and you can't keep me here forever!"
Orane said nothing, but simply stepped to the side, revealing the body on the floor of the cargo hold. The alarm registering in Mirdelle's face told her that they had confirmed the identity of her intrepid stow-away.
"I-Is he...."
"Dead?"
Silence
"He is not. Not yet."
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:38 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
Mirdell slid back down to the cot with her hand cradling her belly. Orane coolly deactivated the force bars surrounding the make-shift cell.
"What do you want from us?" Her voice was pathetic, full of pleading and fatigue. "What can you do with him? Kill him? Why go through the trouble of hunting us down when you could have obliterated the entire planet?"
It was probably as close to a sigh as Evert had ever - or would ever - hear from Orane. In what appeared to be a frightening act of compassion, the War Princess knelt in front of Mirdell, putting their heads on the same level.
"I want....this." Orane's voice hissed into a whisper as she slid one delicate long-nailed hand over Mirdell's gracefully round belly.
The other woman looked up in alarm, tears flowing from her eyes and her mouth forming the downward turn of revulsion. "You...can't possibly."
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:45 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
"The child of a superhuman and a human has never before been studied."
"So my baby is to be an...experiment?
"Your husband was."
The meeting of skin and skin produces a sound that under certain circumstances can become more defining than a lightning strike. Mirdell's calloused hand struck Orane's supple pale skin so quickly that none of the officers present really registered what happened.
"b***h."
Orane stood. Her expression betrayed neither anger, nor surprise. The quiet calm of her demeanor was more alarming than if she would have strangled Mirdell forthright.
"I said nothing of the future for yourself, your child, and your husband. You would do well to remember this."
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:49 pm
[Orane Nniprius]
Mirdell's head sunk down into her hands. Having not gotten any kind of reaction to her violence, she was slightly confused and frightened. But as the force-bars reactivated along the walls of her cell, she knew that she would probably get plenty of time to consider it before she would see Lady Orane again.
Orane, having completed her business, sent orders to Evert to have the superhuman - confirmed now as Berrek Halsinger - transported to a highly cell where his health would be monitored. There would be no escaping this cell for him, everything had been engineered with the special abilities of the superhumans in mind.
Leaving the men to their task was a simple matter of leaving the cargo hold and making her way down the corridor to where her quarters were kept.
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:59 pm
 [Sadria Kermani]
The physical layout of Lady Orane's rooms compromised almost one side of an entire floor of the Sonata. Though the Jin'Ha noble classes were often cold and unattached to anything in the physical world, most were rather materialistic and felt that the accumulation of goods and the size of one's ship showed the level of power that they held. Also, since the Jin'Ha had no homeworld, their ships acted as their perminant residences. Lady Orane was precisely such a Jin'Ha. The Sonata was her only home.
Sadria was there to ensure that the private quarters Lady Orane stayed in were immaculate at all times and that any needs she had would be fulfilled. As a Jin'Ha herself, she was already considered higher ranking than Lady Orane's slaves - called servants for propriety's sake - but her status as lower-being allowed her a position no higher than that of a handmaiden.
When Lady Orane finally returned home from her time on the bridge, Sadria already had a full tea service set up, a warm bath drawn, and Lady Orane's lighter - in weight, not color - residential gown ready for her to wear.
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Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:03 am
[Orane Nniprius]
"Bring me a holodisk." Orane ordered bruskly, shucking off the heavy outer cloak attached to her dress and dropping it on the floor.
She needed to contact the council as soon as possible and relate to them that she had managed to capture one of the supers. This one was not a particularly powerful specimen, nor was he obviously very intelligent, but he was a super nonetheless and the credit for re-capturing him would be hers alone.
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Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:10 am
[Sadria Kermani]
"Right away, My Lady."
Sadria dipped low as Orane brushed past her. Before she retrieved the holodisk from the rooms that acted as Orane's office, she knelt and recovered the discarded cloak. If it wrinkled, it would take hours to flatten even in one of the rare water-steam-presses that her Lady had been able to acquire.
She placed the heavy cloak on a hanger in one of the nearby outerwear wardrobes before finding the place in the neatly and efficiently arranged office that Orane stored her valuable holodisk. This particular one created a direct link between the Sonata and Orane's father's ship the Harbinger.
Sadria returned it to the main room, where Lady Orane already sat waiting in one of the large chairs. She curtsied her way back to an inconspicuous corner, silently motioning to a nearby servant to make herself scarce.
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