[001] - A Spot of Gardening

[Marullus]

Damian Stavros (HP: 1/1, AC: 14)
Damian accepts the drone controller back and answers Silas in a matter-of-fact tone as he does another slow sweep of the hallways, pausing at the two robot-secured doors to visually inspect them most carefully through the drone's sensors.

"Kid is named Skunk. Tagalong with his now dead, but likely more competent, friends. They picked up a metal egg for resale and it turned into a killer robot once they got on board. Decompression alarms sounded, the stopped, so that's ominous. We should open doors carefully. If anyone is alive here, they're locked up and not walking around."

"Best let Agnar and Skunk take the lead, check these other doors, then find the robot in the rooms it has locked up."

[Faanku]

The Flowerbed, Deep Space, Ankanju Ratri System
Wednesday 19-01-3200
23:44

The young pirate smiles weakly at Agnahr's words, managing to pull himself up into an upright seating position. "Oh, I bet she'll have one... or two things to say about that..." He then tries to stand, sliding his back up the guardhouse wall, leaving a smeared trail of blood in his wake as he mutters under his breath. "C'mon, pussy... on your feet..." It takes a short while, the painkillers in the lazarus patch likely working overtime to counteract the days of dehydration and malnutrition, but eventually Skunk is swaying clumsily upright. His eyes linger on the corpse of his brother, before he nods to Agnahr with the same anaemic smile. "Welcome to the Flowerbed... my name's Skunk and... I'll be your tour guide..." Despite his scrawny frame and obvious distress, Agnahr's keen eye for talent sees a hidden strength in the boy.

In the mean time, the scout drone's sweep of the station reveals nothing new, just the same empty corridors and sealed metasteel doors as before. It returns to Damian just as the Sarokoulan and the wounded Skunk meet up with the group, and after a few words of explanation the exploration of the Flowerbed begins in earnest. First port of call, the secure storage room where Skunk believes the robotic killer originated from. Shaking his head at the sight of Vinny's body, the pirate confirms what you already assumed. "Anything valuable that weren't... for the labs on the top level... goes in here... Only the Captain and Larsik have the access keys... not that you'd get far nicking things here anyway..." He trails off and keep his eyes locked on an empty racking cage above the large row of safes. "The egg's gone... I knew it..."

Letting you take your time to investigate each area at your leisure, Skunk identifies the extra rooms in turn, each one opened easily by Benedict's unlock sequence. Next to the storeroom is the Captain's private bunk, the only place your guide seems apprehensive to enter, which contains a single bed, a locked securebox and very little else. Across the hall is the smaller of the two bunkhouses for the rest of the crew, in a much messier state than the former sleeping chambers; you get the sense that a lot of people left this room in a great hurry, which would make sense if a decompression alarm sounded during the night. The next two rooms are a supplies storage area and the mess hall that was already unlocked. "One good thing about working here..." Skunk informs you as he downs several large cups of much-needed water. "...is the food. No flavourless soypaste for her boys... Captain always said..." And he appears to be right; preserved fruits, freshly vaccsealed ingredients and an impressive range of spices are amongst the contents of the kitchen's storehouse.

The final unlocked room is the larger sleeping barracks, where Skunk states he and the newer, younger or otherwise less important members of the crew would sleep. Despite being the least impressive of the three sleeping areas, you would be hard-pressed to call it dirty. In fact, now that you have seen most of the Flowerbed, your impression of the station is one of cleanliness and neat organisation; not exactly what you'd imagine when you hear the words "pirate drug lab". Beyond here the corridor loops round again, but not before the two mysteriously locked rooms kept on the alarmed closed network. "Control room's in there, with the... maglift up to the labs and the crop beds... I ain't been up there much..." Skunk says with a nod to the southern door. "And in there is where we keep all the suits... and gear and shit..." The northern staging area is where a panicked team of pirates would rush to in case of an atmospheric breach, you assume, but there is no way to communicate through the sealed metasteel blast door. "And that's pretty much this whole floor..." Skunk finishes, though the unspoken second part of the sentence is clear from his tone. "...so where the fuck is everyone?"

[Marullus]

Damian Stavros (HP: 1/1, AC: 14)
Damian shifts his duffel bag on his shoulder and stays focused on his controller - he keeps the drone floating in the hallway between the group and the locked doors, watching to spot change or emerging robots from either one.

He leaves the lockers and storage units for the others to make decisions about. He does take interest in the kitchen and looks over Skunk with some pity. "We have time to let the kid eat and drink something, yeah?"

When they reach the locked doors, he purses his lips, he and Skunk the only ones without vacc suits, and opines, "See, that outer hull staging area is my concern. Either there was an actual hull breach and there's hard vacuum on the other side of that door, or it was a ruse and we will find the crew locked in there, dead or alive. I think vacuum or alive, because the robot didn't bother securing any other rooms with only corpses in them. The other door we know has trouble and regardless it has the lifts up. What do you think, Captain?" He asks of Odo.

[Enoch]

Odo stares outward toward the supposed hull breach, his eyes unfocused. "I would think that if there was a hull breach there'd still be an alarm going off, wouldn't there? Either way, it seems to me that the control room is the logical next step. We don't know what's waiting for us in the staging room, and the control room is designed to, well, maintain control.
We might be able to get vidfeeds there, or unlock the door, or something."

He turns to the gravely-wounded pirate. "I don't mean to sound callous, but we're on a bit of a clock. We're supposed to be picking up a shipment. You wouldn't happen to know where that would be kept, would you?"

[Faanku]

The Flowerbed, Deep Space, Ankanju Ratri System
Wednesday 19-01-3200
23:46

The boy nods his head quickly in acknowledgement. "Yeah I figured. You ain't got the looks of... scavengers about you, so I thought... what else you'd come here for, and there's only one thing... it could be." He flashes what is becoming something of a trademark smile, the right side of his face screwed up in a sardonic grin. "Afraid you'll need the Captain to... get to the shipment though, unless you want to... take half the station with you. The lads finished ahead of schedule so... it was locked in the Captain's own storage in the... holding area. Same place as... the egg."

[eirei]

"I suggest the control room as our first destination, then. Odo's got a point, might be there's some surveillance system that could be accessed from there. You got one of those?", Silas asks Skunk, nodding towards the sealed door.

"Either way, if it's sealed, we'd best take precautions", he adds, putting his helmet back on. "Can't be too safe."

[Marullus]

Damian Stavros nods as the boy confirms the location of the shipment. "You want we should get the shipment boxes on the shuttle before we risk the alarms on the control room door, then?" he asks Odo. "The biometric locks are another hurdle for later... Either we find a way for Rose to help with that upstairs, or we are going to need to deal with them later either way. Don't want to risk leaving without them, in my opinion."

Damian also notes where the berths for the other ships are, including the sweet Free Trader. He uses his compad and checks the logs for their identifiers, owners, and last date-time stamps the berths dock doors were opened.

[Faanku]

The Flowerbed, Deep Space, Ankanju Ratri System
Wednesday 19-01-3200
23:47

Skunk nods in affirmation to Silas. "Yeah there cameras and shit... not my area of expertise, but the Captain likes to keep a... tight ship."

"...you'll need the Captain to... get to the shipment though, unless you want to... take half the station with you...

Just to be clear, the stims are in a safe that is effectively part of the station, like an integrated vault sort of thing. You'd need a day or two of heavy duty industrial welding and shipbreaking to remove the segment of the station with the stims in it. Apologies for any confusion.

Damian also notes where the berths for the other ships are, including the sweet Free Trader. He uses his compad and checks the logs for their identifiers, owners, and last date-time stamps the berths dock doors were opened.

The best you can tell without accessing the station's docking records is that the two shuttles and the up-gunned free trader are all flying the Free People's flag and are property of the Flowerbed, with your own shuttle making up 4 ships currently docked. It's safe to assume that there is no third (fourth?) party on board at this time.

[Enoch]

Odo chews on his bottom lip as he considers this. "Even if we can get the safe into our ship, I'm not sure we want to bring the captain on-board without a full scan, and I'd hate to have to drag it back out. It's a relatively straight shot from the lockup to our ship. I say we leave it here for now.

"Those other ships--well, I'm no pirate, no matter what the warrant said."

He suddenly looks alarmed and turns to Skunk in a rush."Not that there's anything wrong with being a pirate.
Well, there is, but--well. No offense intended; you certainly seem a nice enough boy.

"But it certainly sounds like the Flowerbed may not really exist as a legal entity anymore. Not that it ever really did, but I'm sure there are laws about capturing a pirate ship. Some court of admiralty or something we'd have to turn it in to.
But if Skunk here is the lone survivor, maybe we can claim that warship-looking ship."

[explosiveghast]

Agnahr Roulos (HP: 8/8, AC: 15)

Grabbing Skunk beneath an arm, Agnahr addresses the party, "It is a pirate's life for us! Why shouldn't we take another operable vessel from this compromised station back to our mutual employer, along with the shipment that Ninah was tasked with delivering? Why wouldn't we want a nice gunboat to help ensure a safe delivery? Let's bring all able bodies back to Mejo and sort this out with Kal. This includes that captain and we still have a few other folks that are unaccounted for."

He pulls the kid from his armpit and asks, "Does that sound about right, Skunk? Who else might still be alive that needs rescuing from this eggbot?"

[Enoch]

Odo's eyes widen a bit at the word "pirate".

[Marullus]

Damian Stavros (HP: 1/1, AC: 14)
Damian quietly ponders the more pragmatic side of Aghnar's proposal.
What is the social norm on body disposal? Space them, leave them, return them to Mijo? Body bags, freezer units, wrapped in space-linen?

He prompts Pilfer. "So, everyone agrees we need to open this control room door, anyway. How about it?" He examines the physical infrastructure and relays to see if he can aid in disarming the alarms and manual door overrides as the hacker hacks the system.

Help roll:
Int+Fix (Best two +2) [1d6] = 2[1d6] = 1[1d6] = 3
7.

[Faanku]

The Flowerbed, Deep Space, Ankanju Ratri System
Wednesday 19-01-3200
23:49

The young lad's eyes widen as Odo mentions commandeering the docked warship, and he objects animatedly despite his wounds. "You can't steal the Heartbreaker! That's Larsik's boat, he'd kill you! And anyway..."

He is interrupted by a sudden immense pressure as Agnahr pulls the boy into him, delivering a rousing speech that Skunk listens to avidly before attempting a response. "Well... if the Heartbreaker's still docked then that probably means..." he pauses to hack up a small amount of blood, possibly from being manhandled so strongly, but his face doesn't show any sign of grievance towards the Sarokoulan. "...that probably means that Larsik and the Captain... ain't gone nowhere, and we ain't found their bodies neither... so might be they're on the upper floor in... the labs... or maybe..." He looks towards the locked control room door. "If we can get in there... we could have a look on the vid feeds..."

In the meantime, Damian inspects the twin metasteel doors that bar entry to the control room and confirms that their closed system alarm runs much too deep for a simple current reroute to disable; this will take some deft electronic programming to open, and even then whatever is keeping the two remaining rooms locked may be alerted to your presence.

[Enoch]

Odo awkwardly pats Skunk's shoulder as the young man argues. "Certainly, boy, certainly. No one wants to steal the ship from your friend. If he's still alive--" the merchant looks at his companions with a grim expression that discounts this possibility-- "why, we'd be happy to help restore him to his ship.

"But we have to face the possibility that he's not. In that case--"

The merchant begins to mumble somewhat to himself. "In that case, it would fall under the laws of salvage, wouldn't it? I mean, it is a pirate vessel, so his friend likely has no legal claim to it, but on the other hand we don't have a letter of marque, and I'm sure the courts would just impound it, and who knows when we'd see the first credit from them, even if they didn't simply impound it and repaint it and claim it was a totally different vessel..."

Odo wanders around the room, still muttering to himself about the complexities of salvage law and bureaucracy.

If necessary, a Bureaucracy test (using Int) to see if he knows whether we'd be allowed to legally claim a dead pirate's vessel (or know a loophole that would allow them to claim it):

Bureaucracy (Int): [2d6+0] = 9+0 = 9

[ybn1197]

Benedict "P1LF3R" Alder (HP: 3/3, AC: 14)

Pilfer smirks to himself listening to Odo's discussion of property laws. That was exactly why Pilfer preferred information. In and of itself, information was free. Its the lengths and methods one goes about in order to obtain it that skirts the boundaries of the law. And information, in the right hands about the right person, was just as powerful as that gun-ship.

Shaking his head to clear himself of his own thoughts, Pilfer gets back to work trying to hack the doors.

Program (1) + INT (0) [2d6+1] = 9+1 = 10

[Faanku]

The Flowerbed, Deep Space, Ankanju Ratri System
Wednesday 19-01-3200
23:51

Connecting his dataslab to the control room's access port, Benedict executes a probe on the closed system which meets immediate resistance from myriad shutdown protocols. In less than a few seconds, the hacker finds himself deploying everything he has to avoid being kicked off the node, his comm warm on his forearm as it works overtime to keep running P1LF3R's ice-breakers against the station's powerful security system. As this furious digital battle rages, the Flowerbed's warm white lightning is replaced with an ominous red and station-wide klaxons blare intermittently, interspersed with repeated warnings of "HULL BREACH" and "INTRUDER ALERT", expelling any doubts that whoever is locking the control room knows you are here. Despite all this, Benedict maintains his composure and manages to find an opening just large enough to achieve his goal, elegantly a replicating copy of his transient command sprite into the exposed data centre that survives just long enough to force open the control room's doors.

With a smooth motion inaudible above the piercing clarions, the control room door slides open and...

Code: Select all

...a bolt of blue-white laser fire slams into Silas, the sharp snap of its bolts punctuating the background din as the pilot falls to the ground dead, the source of the attack a roughly humanoid robot around 5ft tall, its smooth design marking it as highly advanced, blood-spatters marring its sleek and elegant design, the source of which most definitely the corpse of the former bridge officer that lays at its feet...

...Odo blinks, then hastily pulls Silas away from the door just as it opens and a hail of bolts hammer into the station wall opposite, the far trader's sixth sense granting him a brief glimpse of a possible future he thought best avoided. As various warnings about your precarious situation continue to sound from the alarm system, it seems that a fight is unavoidable.

It's combat time. Please roll your initiatives, then state your intended movement/actions for the round. If you have any questions or wish to change your declared action depending on how combat progresses, please post in the OOC thread. Good luck!

Odo, your bureaucracy knowledge tells you that although self-defence against attacking vessels is warranted in Mejoan space, the establishment of the League of Free Peoples has made it much harder for the entrepreneurial space captain to engage in unsanctioned pirate hunting. The best you can hope for is that either the Heartbreaker or her captain have an outstanding Exchange bounty, in which case she would be fair game to assault but will likely be seized by the Mejoan government should you return to known space with her; claiming the Heartbreaker for yourself after that is not impossible, but would not be an easy or inexpensive process.

And in case it wasn't obvious, Odo's terminal reflection just fired; do you wish to commit effort to keep it active or let it go numb for the rest of the day?

Code: Select all

?: Damian
?: Angahr
?: Benedict
?: Silas
?: Odo
6: Robot

[/ooc]

[Marullus]

Damian Stavros (HP: 1/1, AC: 14)
Initiative (+Dex) [1d8+1] = 8+1 = 9

Damian drops the Droid controller, letting it dangle from a carabineer on his belt, the hovering surveillance drone floating idle at the hallway corner. Guess we found the egg bot, he thinks as Odo pulls Silas out of the blaster fire.

His hand holds the sidearm laser pistol for a moment as he watches all those nearer the door acting first against the threat within, waiting for his opening.

At the rear, holding action for opportunity. Trigger: act to interrupt robot's Action, but let's others closer shoot first.

If the robot is not already dropped and is going to hurt his companions, and he has a clear shot, he will fire:
Laser pistol (+0) [1d20] = 18 [1d6] = 5

[eirei]

HP 8/8, AC 14

As the doors prepare to open, Silas keeps his hand on the holster, ready to draw. Just as the hiss of the doors parting can be heard, a hand grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him back. Before he has a chance to turn around and ask the old man what the HELL he thought he was doing, he sees a flurry of laser bolts light up the corridor and scorch the wall in front of which he'd been standing mere moments before.

He turns to Odo, his eyes wide, and nods in appreciation, managing to mutter a short "Much obliged!"
There's no time for pleasantries, though, and he reaches into his coat and unholsters his pistol (gunslinger on-turn) as he turns back.

[1d8+1] = 5+1 = 6 Initiative

He sees the target clearly now, now, closes one eye and takes aim.

Laser Pistol: Attack [1d20+3] = 18+3 = 21, damage on hit [1d6+2] = 3+2 = 5, damage on miss [1d4] = 3

[explosiveghast]

Agnahr Roulos (HP: 8/8, AC: 15)
[1d8+1] = 5+1 = 6 Initiative

Cautiously ushering the kid behind him and away from dangerous doorway, Agnahr recommends, "Watch that other door, Skunk, and be careful. Maybe just sit this next play out."

Readying his sword, he edges against the wall toward the control room entrance. He does push past P1LF3R into the line of fire but he is clearly eager to see what is around the corner.

[Enoch]

Sorry for the late reply! Yes, I'll commit my second action for this.

"Look out!" Odo drags Silas hastily out of the doorway, then crouches down and yanks his hand-cannon clumsily from his belt. He peeks around the doorframe and blindly returns fire.

Mag pistol [1d20+1] = 7+1 = 8, damage [2d6+2] = 8+2 = 10

Gah, I rolled so much better when I tested the macro!
You would have been so impressed with him...