The Dividing Line - Station

[Rule 34]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Vlado gave a short, barking laugh. "I shall place down some orange pylons momentarily, sir." Unsheathing the crossbow and taking the chance to stock back up on bolts, he checked the map on his HUD. "There's a safe room up ahead - that is, no crawlspaces for them to sneak up on us. Used to be - huh. A jail. Strange." He raised his hand and pointed at a nearby door. "This would radically increase our chances of survival. They are coming for us."
---
Talen and Reno arrived just in time to see a door blown off their hinges in front of them, revealing Forester and the rest of the group on the other side. Nadia grinned behind her mask and nodded at the cyborg. "Good. The more firepower the better. I think the Diversion Team is pulling them away, but they'll defend Command none the less." She shook her head. "I don't know what they're doing here in such massive numbers! The way things go we'll stumble over a few Scarabs before we're through." She sighed and checked her shotgun. "Alright. Good job with the door, Forester. Stay with me. Draven, take point. Talen, Reno, rear guard. We're going up to floor. . . 36,"
she said after checking her map.
---
Fletch grinned in his helmet as he walked over to the bulkhead and turned the heavy handle effortlessly. "Don't you worry, I was captain of our high school's Ultraball team. I know how to throw." As soon as Kars had prepared himself, Fletch stomped over to him and grabbed him with both hands. For a second, he debated whether to crack a one-liner or cite Lord Of The Rings, but neither seemed appropriate. Not with a load of roaches on their way to chew through their faces. Instead, he tensed for a moment and then jumped into the air, raising Kars above his head - and dunked the Kopek down the tunnel. The small alien found himself enveloped in darkness, his own flashlight barely enough to cast a dim light on the smooth, featureless tunnel around him. Ahead of him - far, far down the tunnel - he saw something glow, barely bigger than a pinhead and only very slowly coming closer.

Over his connection to Hiram and Fletch, Kars could hear a protesting bleat as the human dealt with the Xyr in kind, propelling the goatling down the tunnel with the slammest of dunks before throwing himself down the pipe, deactivating his mag boots on the apex of his jump and pushing himself off the rooms roof with all the power his HIT suit's legs can produce.

 

[Chibichibi]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Deelin nodded at Vlado. "Sounds good, lets get to it and get some sort of defenses set up. I don't want to be caught with my pants around my ankles again."

Taavan merely nodded in agreement.

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Kars frowns a little at being grabbed. He was the kind that was twitchy with personal space. But beyond the outwardly opaque visor, there was no apparent protest, and then he was hurtling off down the tunnel. An Ultraball captains throw, combined with the flight skills of a derelict racing champ. Kars didn't really have any actual reservations about hitting anything.

With the reflective surface not really worth illuminating, he opts to switch off his light, and switch to his other vision modes until he reached the end of the tunnel, or something worth looking at. Spotting the minute glow of something coming from far down the tunnel, he leans his head towards the scope of his rail gun and peers at it with one eye.

 

[SiphonTalvesh]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Hefting the rifle again, Draven took his position, pressing through with quick, but efficient sweeps of any corridors, or potential hiding places that something could lie in ambush. After the initial trick with the sensors, he wasn't relying on them to be accurate anymore.

 

[Caulder]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

"Well, there's a sight I'm all too familiar with. Just tell me I'm not actually going to be IN one of the cells and we're fine." Krell says as he stomps towards the door, forcing it open with his left hand and squeezing through, the fit just as tight as it was on the Brilliance. "Any ideas on just how we're supposed to defend this place from a swarm, aside from this chokepoint I may have just widened a little?"

 

[tomaito89]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Talen and Reno fell in line behind the rest of the group, weapons ready to blast anything that moved, and awaited further orders.

 

[Rule 34]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

LAST TIME ON TDL!

With Nadia and her group finding themselves badly outnumbered in the command center, the diversion team had to fight their way through to them. Little did they know the worst was yet to come! Out of nowhere came a creature with an all too familiar shilouette, clad in the Nnyarthalls' bio-steel suits! Easily overpowering the boarding crew, it beat the two Klarr into submission – with each other! Only the reactivation of the reactor, and with it the security systems, was able to drive it out. The creature jumped out of a gap in the hull, only to be picked up by the slender shilouette of an unknown Bug fighter spacecraft. On its escape it severely damaged Maria's ship, leaving her comatose! The Concordance, involved in a scrap for its own control with the Thrall, was unable to help in time!

Who was the mysterious attacker? What will be the brave crew's next step? Will Fletch spiral out of control? Find it all out IN THIS EPISODE OF TDL!

---

With a dying hiss, Fletch turned off his blow torch. A heavy, satisfied sigh escaped his lips as he raised the blind overlay on his suit and looked around one last time. All the doors that lead into open space were closed down tight. All gaps were closed with material he salvaged from the broken parts of the ship. If all went well, they would finally be able to stop living out of their ships and move into the station's living quarters without the constant threat of sudden depressurization. "Okay, here we go. Nadia, I'm ready for testing. Try turning on life support now. The corridors should hold."
"Are you sure this time, Fletch? The last time you almost blew up the mess hall."
"I told you it's not my fault! Who could've known that the last guy literally didn't turn off the stove?"
"You could have checked. Fletch... Are you sure you're okay? Even I could see there was something between you and-"
"I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. Hit the life support already and quit polluting the airwaves."

Fletch snarled behind his visor and turned off his comm. Whatever sharp reply Nadia had was lost on him. These last few days he had buried his worries in work. Both Maria and the two military Klarr had been injured when – something fled the station. They were in medical stasis on the med bay right now. He resisted the urge to punch a hole into the wall with the massive fist of his HIT suit. Instead he opened an open channel. "Alright, everybody. You know the drill by now – no open fire, no sparks, no shooting, Krell. Forester, activate the hangar shields. I'm sure you're all eager to finally walk around the station without your suits on. I know Lemmy is bloody eager to get out. The first couple of minutes the oxygen concentration is going to be pretty high before it spreads out, so try not to make it explode. Some rules: Most of the doors lead out into depressurized rooms right now. They're locked, sealed and their lights are red. Please refrain from trying to force them open and killing us all. I've installed some airlocks next to the hangar and around the stations in case we need to go for a walk. They're clearly marked as such, so don't complain if you get sucked out. Over the next weeks, I'll be busy organizing enough scrap metal to fix the station back up completely. If any of you happen to know where I could get a scrapped dreadnought for nil, now's the time to speak up."

"Also, once life support is up, I want everybody in ComCen. I've analyzed some security footage we managed to gather from that last firefight when everything went to shit. I'll have to brief you. Now – Initiating Life Support. 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1."

 

[tomaito89]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Talen and Reno were back on the Laughing Rogue. While Talen had switched back to his normal configuration, all of Reno's shells were in maintenance. Talen had decided to use this brief amount of downtime to run the promised diagnostics on Reno, meaning she was more or less "asleep" at this point.

"Everything seems to be in order..." Talen was on the maintenance deck, stifling a yawn as he watched lines and lines of code stream by on one of the computer screens. He looked up when he heard the announcement about life support coming back on. He waited a few minutes. "Looks like it worked. Don't hear any more explosions, at least." With that, Talen stood up from his seat and made his way to the Rogue's airlock, making sure to grab his jacket on the way out. Seeing as the diagnostic tests were still running, Reno wouldn't be accompanying him to the briefing.

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Whilst Fletch had been left to do most of the heavy lifting work regarding the hull salvaging and repairs, Kars, and to a slightly lesser extent Ko, had been likewise busying themselves with seeking out and patching up any holes and structural liabilities that they could find. Having grown up and spent time in Kopak migratory fleets, routine patch work of old and salvaged ships was something Kars was more than familiar with. It wasn't remotely a chore he enjoyed doing, but nonetheless he had went about his work quietly and showing an odd flair of Kopak craftsmanship in his patchwork. It was the kind of jury rigged repairs that somehow managed to look professional and precisely engineered, despite being made from a broken vending machine and some repurposed sheet metal. Ko had been helping out wherever he trusted her to. Whilst the two of them practically lived in their space suits 24/7 anyway, he wasn't going to be getting blamed for anyone else suffering depressurisation accidents on her account. Without letting it be seen, he'd been inspecting Fletch's handiwork when he passed it by also. Trust wasn't his preferred kind of gambling. He had no complaints however.

When the announcement was being made he had just finished doing his last checks over the relevant hull, and had came back to loiter around in the room behind Fletch. Standing back in the room with his arms rested casually behind his head as Nadia counted down.

"...5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1."

"Boom..." He murmurs into the coms in a flat voice. The atmosphere gradually filling the room he stood in, and his suit responding to adjust it's pressure accordingly. After a pause he replies to the briefing order. "And rodger that then. On way." said in a rather deadpan slightly bored manner. Too many hours repairing stuff that wasn't his had been grating on him. He begins walking off in the direction of the command centre without any further comment to Fletch as he left the room.

Ko meanwhile was elsewhere performing minor chores, but figures she should probably head for the command centre also.

 

[SiphonTalvesh]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Draven meanwhile had been taking stock in sections of the station that were safe for him to enter and not risk the safety of the others. While he could survive in the vacuum of space, he was well aware that a sudden loss of pressure and tossing someone else out into space on accident could prove fatal to them even with a suit. So he'd remained limited in what he could explore, studying what he could about the relay system of the station, ideas already forming in his mind. He'd spent the last day or so doing repairs to the section he was in, but frankly, they were getting shorter on materials than he'd like to see. He had no idea if anyone else had spare materials, and he hadn't asked.

He was still pissed about what had happened during the firefight Nadia mentioned briefing them about. He hadn't gotten a chance to tangle with the thing himself, and he wondered if it would have made a difference anyway. He was looking forward to seeing this footage, and maybe someday getting a chance at some payback.

He could feel and hear the systems for life support come back online in his section, yet the control panel indicated no change. Tapping it lightly, he let loose a long sigh before muttering, "item number four hundred of the day, section 3C indicator panel non-functional."

Deciding it could be fixed later, he activated his comm.

"Copy that, I'm on my way. ETA five minutes assuming nothing else tries to jettison me out of the wall again."

 

[Shrike7]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Caitlin had spent much of her time in the station's Medbay once they had cleared it out, organizing and restocking the place from her own supplies. The living suit she wore had grown up to cover her head, functioning as a suit while the atmospherics were being worked on, and she wore her usual lab coat overtop of it. Once again, she had been confined to her wheelchair once they had gotten the gravity working, but she didn't mind, scooting about the place and sorting drawers, running diagnostics on medical equipment that had sat stagnant in the station for far too long.

Her head perked up when Fletch's, then Nadia's transmissions came through, listening to the chatter that followed, but staying out of it herself. Since Maria's injury, she had taken some pains to stay out of Fletch's awareness, having spotted a few of the looks the man had given her. She felt somewhat responsible for being preoccupied with the yellow spore instead of defending the smaller ship, but the attack had been so fast, she doubted if she could have prevented it if she had her hand already on the controls. As it was, the Concordance and Hell Strafer had chased the ship off afterwards, or more likely, simply fired upon it as it left on it's own.

Once it was confirmed that life support was now working, the suit creeped back down to her neckline, and the scientist took a breath of the freshly pumping air, noting the dusty flavour of ducts long unused. They'd move the injured in her next, and as the most proficient doctor around, she'd have to spend time doing what she could for them. The medbay was ready to receive them after her work and the addition of atmosphere, so she tucked her datapad between her legs and entered the hall, headed for Central Command, and Nadia's briefing.

 

[Caulder]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Meanwhile, in the hangar........

Krell stumbles around the hangar, his hands clutching at his suit's hood, tugging and yanking at it. "Be there in a minute. Hood's stuck." he says, growling as he seems to stumble around, the hood seal stuck as he fumbles around, before finally a hiss is heard and it shoots off his head, flying across the hangar and hitting the wall with a thump, before the Pan-Kor mutters and makes his way for the command center, his signature grenade launcher not clutched in his hands for once.

 

[tomaito89]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Talen arrives at the ComCen and quickly scans the room to see who else has shown up. He turns to Nadia "Let's start the briefing. I'm curious to see what you've discovered."

 

[Rule 34]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Vlado gave Caitlin a curt nod as she left. The Garik had just shown up for work in the med bay the day after the fight, cataloging items and making a list of required materials (which was most of them). Though never speaking out, he made no move to hide the fact he disliked Caitlin's episodes of drifting off into thought whenever something extremely interesting came along. Every now and then he would mutter something in Garik, Caitlin's translator only ever picking up the word "undisciplined." Out of his mouth it had an almost... filthy tone to it.
---
With an audible clang, Hiram dropped off a crate he had been sitting on and followed Krell, his shorter legs and the Pan Kor's lumbering gait about evening themselves out. Krell constantly had the impression that Hiram would love nothing more than to butt heads with him, if only for sport. The fact that the Xyr's head was roughly on knee height for the mercenary made that rather difficult.
---
After a minute filled with the complete and utter lack of explosions, Fletch nodded within his suit. "Alright then. Oxygen levels normal, no toxins. No leaks." The large man raised his suits wrist up to his face and flipped open a panel. Flicking a switch, another hiss filled the room. Compressed air shot out of the back of the suit as massive locks undid themselves, turning slowly until suddenly the entire back of the suit snapped open, allowing Fletch to climb out, dressed in his usual attire of denim jeans and blue plaid. After a moment of enjoying the fresh air he turned back to his suit - and grimaced. "Not to self: Hose down with bleach," he murmured as he walked towards ComCen.
---
"Everybody here? Good. Let's make this brief." Nadia had switched back into her more formal robes as soon as life support came back online. Her green optics shimmered underneath her hood. In the back, Fletch coughed. "If you need some UV filters installed, you could've-" "Not now." Nadia silenced him with a gesture of her hand, the other hitting a switch on the desk before her. One of the Command Center's giant screens came online, flickering after years of disuse. "The cameras around the station came online together with the rest of the electronics. This allowed me to grab some footage from the last moments of the fight." Again, Fletch interrupted. "Does it show the part with the Klarr? Because nobody here wants to see that again. Like... Ever. Not in a lifetime."
Nadia sighed and shook her head. "No, the cameras turned on after that. Thankfully. I had to rewatch the footage again and again, I don't know if I could've handled... that." She shook in disgust. "But I did manage to clean the footage up enough to run recognition algorithms on it. I fed it with data from previous encounters with different races." With a few quick swipes and taps, Nadia brought up the footage.

Seeing it again made Fletch uncomfortable. Anxious. Filled with hate. It showed a behemoth, larger than any Nnyarthall could ever be and rivaling even the most glorious Pan Kor in pure size. Its suit was nearly identical in making to the organic-looking bug suits, but the head was far more pointed and its posture was all wrong - hunched over, yes, but not displaying the typical hump of a Pan Kor. It had a foot placed on the broken bodies of Deelin and Taavan and struck a challenging pose towards the crew. In one of its hands was a massive Shredder Rifle, somewhere between the infantry model and the anti-ship versions of a Mantis. As far as Fletch remembered, it hadn't needed to use it. A mass of Bugs struggled on the left edge of the screen - they had dogpiled on Draven at that point, keeping him from the leviathan.

"It has the wrong body for a Pan Kor," Nadia confirmed his suspicions a moment later. "What it did to the Klarr suggest enormous physical strength even beyond the capabilities of the Nnyarthall's suit, ruling a freak mutation - or a controlled one for that matter - of their form out as well. Furthermore, if the Nnyarthall could mutate into THAT, they would've flooded into the Juris Sector much more decisively. It moves too smoothly, too needlessly aggressive for a robot." Nadia sighed and straightened her back further. She knew fully well that nobody, not one person in the entire galaxy, would want to hear what she was going to say next. She definitely didn't look forward to inform the Alliance brass. Finster would probably have a stroke.

"What we fought..." She swallowed, and a nagging voice formed inside Fletch's head. You know it. You know what she's going to say. You always knew. There was no way they'd succed. You always knew- "The Ashotur aren't wiped out. NOVA failed.

They are back."

 

[Caulder]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Krell scowls at the screen when the massive creature is displayed, his hands clenching as he growls his low growl that typically warned to stay out of his way. "A worthy foe." is all he says, growling afterwards as he listens to Nadia, the tendrils on his chin slowly turning red when he hears mention of the Ashotur. "An ancient enemy, and most folks say they're more powerful than my people. Though don't tell Warlord Wyr I said that. He's liable to headbutt me into next week." the Pan Kor says, a serious look crossing his face, as if he were studying everything about the behemoth on screen.

 

[SiphonTalvesh]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

At the mention of the Ashotur, there was a loud thump as Draven's fist impacted against the wall in a brief flash of emotion. He was clearly not happy to hear this, and only just containing his rage. His eyes had almost started glowing red, though that came back under control a moment later.

"So the bugs were working with it then, just like before. Son of a bitch. The bastard is lucky those bugs kept me busy, I've still got a major bone to pick with both species."


He fell silent, eyes still smoldering as he tried, probably not quite successfully to cool down.

 

[Aust_Nailo]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

-A small aside (Delayed on account of me being stupid.)-
Hanger shields? Relatively simple work for Forester. She broke her back repairing ship engines and shield modules in her early days of work, so how much worse could an entire space stations system be? Rifle firmly gripped, she'd continue pushing her way through the station, falling back to the hanger. Upon arrival, seemed nothing was worse for ware. Ships were still in one piece and as far as she could tell, no nasty bugs making this difficult. "Lord, I've got to get a safe job after this. Freaking risking my life finding a damn shield." She grumbled and mumbled, but it was still a job. And a well paying one to boot.

Assuming she encountered no resistance, she activated the shield with little effort and held her position in the hanger, knowing she was hardly a fighter.

-Present-

Forester, now attired in her jumpsuit and with her regular hand reattached, couldn't help but comment on the situation. Leave it to a grease jockey to have an opinion."So we have a powerful and ancient enemy still kicking around. That's bad enough. But to make matters worse we have to potentially deal with it and in larger potential numbers. What do they expect a force like ours to do against them?! Unless they give us a damn armada, we're gonna be doing shit against them. Just look what one did to those Klarr. That Meera girl is going to be a wreck. So what's the plan then? Just sit here and wait?!

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

"You guys have too many enemies." Kars comments, standing amongst the group though still in his space suit unlike most of the others. Of course, the same could be said for Kars, regarding too many enemies. But unlike him, the Alliance didn't have the luxury of picking it's fights and flying off to a safe hideout if things turned bad. He watches the footage as casually as ever, arms resting lazily behind his head and not showing any obvious reaction from either his stance or blacked out visor.

"The other question of course, is why was he here and what was he doing. Members of a secretly rebuilding race don't hang around in dusty old stations just for the fun of it." He adds to the conversation, a little more seriously. "They also now know, that we know, that they aren't gone. That will change their game a little."

Kars doesn't say any more, with room to speak being contested for right now. But continues to consider the new threat, what it meant to the mission, and what that meant to him. A big fish with big "guns" and a big gun. Was essentially no different to any armoured Pan-Kor he ever shot, but this mission wasn't likely to give him the time and a place to hunker down with his big rifle when it mattered. Also a well stealthed ship that wrecked an Axe-Class on a passing run. Ko had failed to hurt it, but Ko was Ko, and the ship hadn't exactly stuck around long. That particular Axe-Class had also been under repair even before the mission begun, if he recalled correctly. Nonetheless, he knew plenty well enough that this Ashotur tech was serious stuff. Even the few broken or self destructed bits of crap he'd seen on the black market occasionally had always sold for a mint.

He had two thoughts for how to respond to the most obvious threats of big fish and scary spacecraft, though lets others say their piece for the moment, whilst he pokes at something on his wrist interface.

Ko meanwhile had filtered in quietly somewhere behind the Kopak. Also still in her modified Kopak spacer suit. Watching the footage with everyone else, there was one part that hit her. She had seen the Klarr duo on their way to receive medical attention, but seeing the huge form of their nemisis standing cruelly with it's foot atop them, was different. It made her feel like her legs were going weak, though the artificial replacements stood firmly and unmoving. She hugs at her chest in a defensive position for a brief moment, before adjusting it into a more subtle crossed arms as she works to hide any sign of being unsettled by the image. Luckily it wasn't too hard when no one could see your face and everyone was looking the other way.

 

[Shrike7]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Caitlin jumped in her seat when Draven bashed the wall. She whipped her head around to give the large alien a glare before settling back in. In the mass of conversation back and forth, everything she had wanted to ask more or less had been.

A race long thought dead, back and on the station just earlier. Maybe it had left something behind... No, it had been in a suit, the chances of her finding some material of it were remote at best. Though that did bring up a worry worth mentioning. "Do we know it hasn't left any traps or such behind for us? Anything less dangerous, perhaps? If it was working with the Nnyarthal, then it might have been here for some time."

 

[tomaito89]

Re: The Dividing Line - Station

Talen stared at the monitor unblinkingly. He was recording a copy of the footage for Reno to review later; perhaps she would find something that they missed.

"Traps we can handle. I'm more concerned about our 'friend' returning with reinforcements. We should prioritize building up our defenses, starting with setting up some sort of early warning system."