Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived Neu-Lumen

as written by DerKrieger85

Merle Gordon made his way through the star-port, heavy duffel bag over his shoulder and a holo-pad in hand. His eyes flicked between the way ahead of him and the information on the handheld electronic device. Finally, some pay! Some ship, the Vorikos Arrow, was looking for crew to take part in what was highly implied to be dangerous and dubiously legal activities. The exact sort of thing Merle was experienced in. The burly mustachioed human took note of the location of the starship stated on his holo-pad and placed the device back in his pocket.

He always had a knack for making things go "boom" and getting in and out of tricky situations, whether it be opening up a tricky safe or managing to get out of trouble for blowing up an ammo dump. Well, Merle would have been completely hosed after blowing up said ammo dump if he wasn't so good with explosives and if a NCO wasn't willing to cover for him. Even then, it drastically shortened his military career. But hey, at least private contractor and pirate (if one would be so blunt) work paid better than the government. Plus no one could bitch at Merle for causing things to blow up. Hard for pirates to get legal counsel, after all.

Merle came up to the hangar holding the Vorikos Arrow. The mercenary took a moment to admire the ship. He did have a great interest in spaceships and aviation, ever since he hung out near the spaceport back home and watched the shuttles take off for the freighters in orbit. It looked to be a customized model, as far as he could tell. Most privateer ships were to some degree. Definitely made for speed. Good. Merle didn't like hanging around once the first explosions were over.

The mercenary adjusted the olive drab knit cap on his head before walking on to the young lady at the desk, dropping off a messy folder of resumes and pertinent information on her desk. It was more than a bit sloppy but it had everything you could want to know about Merle Gordon's pertinent skills. "I heard you were looking for crew? Name's Merle Gordon. I'm here to handle the explosions, breaking doors open, that sort of thing. Maybe even take a hand at flying that ship if you really need the help. Crazy plans are my specialty!" he said proudly, hanging the heavy duffel bag full of gear and supplies over his shoulder as he spoke.
 
as written by glmstr

"Alright, let's see what these papers are about," Melina briefly skimmed through each piece of paper that was handed to her, nodding slightly every now and then. "Doubt we'll need any more people to fly the ship itself, but your other skills would be much more useful."
After mulling over the last of the papers, she gave herself another nod and stacked up the pile of papers, handing them back to Gordon.

"Well Merle, I'd be happy to have you," the captain gestured towards the gangplank to enter the ship, "There's individual rooms for crew,just go pick one that isn't occupied and put your stuff in there. If you find things in there from whoever used to live there, do with them what you will," Areleous' words soured on that last sentence. After all, it was still so recent, and having to mention it multiple times today was not helping.

"Als, be careful around the cargo hold. Got a shipment I still need to deliver, but it's, erm, volatile."
 
as written by DerKrieger85

Merle kept his composure as Melina subtly mentioned the fate of the last crew. So that explains the big call for replacements. He raised an eyebrow as she mentioned the volatile shipment.

"What, does it react harshly to fire? Loud noises? We might just have a problem with me around," he joked as he took his papers back and walked through the airlock. "Just let me know when you're lifting off." Merle whistled in amazement as he took a closer gander at the ship as he passed through the entrance. Pretty fancy looking, in a utilitarian sort of way. But that was just how Merle liked it. Give him a rough old freighter over a cruise liner any day.

The mercenary directed his attention to who would be his fellow crew members for the foreseeable future. A young woman, an even younger woman, studious looking, a rough looking guy who appeared to be a techy sort, along with an AI assistant - always nice to have a handyman around, especially when Merle happened to break something, and - a robot. Looks like they're shaping up to be an exotic bunch.

"Greetings folks, name's Merle. You all smell very clean. Now I'm advising you...don't touch any of my stuff without letting me know. We'll be good then. Seriously, stuff's dangerous" He glanced over to the robot for a moment. "Didn't know we had a robot with us. Shiny!"

Merle found an empty room and placed his bag on the bunk, taking a moment to get his clothes, toiletries, and a compact assault rifle with a grenade launcher out and stowed away. He poked his head out the door intermittently to continue speaking with the other crew as he unpacked. "Say, that AI's got a real sweet voice. Did you program her yourself?" he asked Sweets once he had finished getting his gear sorted out.
 
as written by Ottoman

Sweets, who had now moved to exploring what was left of his quarters - hunting the elusive hooch that Margrit had mentioned - took Merle's initial introduction in stride, nodding to the man as he walked past McGregor's open door, resuming his search not long thereafter. Already the man had cleared most of the shelves and had moved onto the various dressers and containers that the dorm contained, pilfering through any number of otherwise useless things, when Gordon's second question took him almost by surprise. "... not entirely, at least not the voice. I, uh, liberated her from one of my previous employers." Juliet, still resting where she had been when Margrit was present as she refused to help Allen in his quest, simply rolled her avatar's eyes at his choice of words.

"I did give her the chassis though."
 
as written by glmstr

Melina stood up from her folding chair, satisfied with the current crew for now. Five new faces, each one useful in a few different ways. The Vorik rolled her head to pop her neck and stretched after sitting for so long, and brushed the wrinkles out of her citrine cape. She picked up the chair and carried it up the gangplank and into the ship, popping it into a rack of identical chairs in the common room that often doubled as a dining room.

"This is your captain speaking," the captain spoke into a receiver that resembled an old-fashioned radio mounted on the wall, echoing her voice throughout the ship to get everyone's attention. "All crew members report to the common room, I will provide a quick briefing and we will head out promptly."

Instead of staying in the room, she made her way back out of the ship to retrieve the table. Yet, upon actually reaching the plastic and metal ensemble, the table was clearly disturbed. The flyers formerly laid out across its surface were all removed, and replaced with a lone pink bottle. Upon inspection, the lable read Valenti, Acqua di Parfumo.

"What the fuck? Probably some sick joke," Melina removed the bottle from the table, folding up the latter and carrying both objects inside.

She placed the bottle on the common room's table, and put up the table next to the rack of folding chairs. Now, she just needed to wait for all of the crew to filter into the room.
 
as written by Krysis

Margrit had scurried off to the engine room on Melina's orders, feeling somewhat like a kid set loose on the candy aisle. At first, she hadn't touched anything, just examining with her eyes and reading what was printed or stamped to confirm the exact identity of what she was looking at. Then, with no one to see her, she had danced around the somewhat grimy machinery in her joy. She only stopped when the sidearm that Sweets had lent her shifted in the holster on her hip and reminded her that it was time to be an adult.

After that, the teenager had gone to the computers to run the standard diagnostics, and read up more on that particular model of spaceship. She was still blushing at her own antics when the call to assemble meant that she had to tear herself away from what details she was learning.

There was more of a spring to her step as she returned to the common room, due to so many fascinating things to learn and do. It was almost enough to let her forget why she was there in the first place. Besides. It would look really good on her resume if she could put down some intern work alongside the degree she was intending to earn.
 
as written by DerKrieger85

"Not bad!" replied Merle to Sweet's reply, taking the time to make sure the explosive components he brought with him were properly stored. Always was handy to have someone with...alternative acquisition skills on the crew. Never knew when you would come across something of value. "I'll be keeping an eye out for new chassis just in case we come across another AI core," joked the demolitions expert, stepping back out into the main room.

Just in time too. The captain was about to make some grand speech about their great adventure, or something like that. Hopefully this one would be more entertaining and fruitful than the last. He went out to the table and took a seat in one of the folding chairs. A bit of an odd thing to have on a spaceship, but then again there were more worthwhile things spaceship related that you could spend your cash on. The folding chairs would have to do. "Good day, everyone," Merle said, doffing his knit cap.
 
as written by Ottoman

"Solid copy, Merle." Sweets mused as he laid out what clothes he kept with him from the duffel, organizing them into the vague piles of 'business' and 'pleasure', the former largely dominated by olive drab fatigues and the latter by Hawaiian shirts. The Terran was partway through hefting the combat armor from the duffel and onto the bunk when Melina made her announcement, setting down the dark crimson suit with a sigh. There was no rush to get everything squared away, he reminded himself, and looked over the mess he'd made for a moment or two before shooting a glance over to the drone he kept. "Jules?"

"Allen?"

"Keep an eye on the room for me?" With a brief glance at the door with her holographic eyes, Juliet nodded. There was no reason to suspect that anyone on board would try anything, but McGregor wasn't the sort of man who would give someone the chance to, given where he'd come from. "Much obliged - ah, you could probably see about interfacing with the ship, see what you can find out about our new home."

A light, digital huff, "Not on the first date, McGregor. I happened to like our old one." Naturally the man had expected the AI to fire right back at his jab - the years they'd spent together had rubbed enough of their habits and mannerisms off on the other - but she caught him off-guard with the words that followed. The Terran stopped mid-step, right by the chamber's door as he thought of some witty line to toss back at her.

"... I did too."

Fortunately the ship wasn't too large, and beyond that it wasn't too complex, so Allen was able to find the common room rather easily, ambling in and moving to take a seat for himself, paying a brief nod to Merle and Margrit, a small smile on his face as he looked now to the captain, curious.
 
as written by glmstr

When the entirety of the crew (sans the two more mechanical members) was gathered, Melina turned towards them and cleared her throat, holding a small tablet of sorts in her hand.

"I see that you've all made introductions with one another," she briefly made eye contact with each one of them, "and that's good to see. It's hard to work with strangers, after all."

"Our first order of business now that the meet-and-greet is over is to finish delivering a package I was tasked with carrying, before the incident that led to the hiring of all of you. It's a pretty simple job, just bring the stuff to the right guy, and don't break anything. However, there's one catch:"

Areleous tapped a few commands into her tablet. The common room's lights dimmed slightly, and a 3-Dimensional projector illuminated the room. A hologram of a missile appeared, with a squat cylindrical section towards the front highlighted.

"We are transporting warheads for VAW-22n micronuclear missiles, and we have a few hundred of them in the cargo bay. They cannot explode outright, at least in the form we are transporting them in, but they can still deliver their payload if they are damaged or burned, spewing molten radioactive material into our cabin and killing us within days. It's an old Draziri trick, fire one of these into an enemy's ship and let the radiation and heat cook the crew, then flush the ship's atmosphere and loot it for salvage. UA stopped producing this model years ago so I'm not really sure how or why these things are around, but there's some nice cash on the line if we bring them in."

She swiped her finger along the tablet, commanding the projector to flicker from the missile to a rendering of an arid planet.

"Here's where I was told to drop them off," a red dot appeared on the surface of the digital planet, "on Cronus II. The whole system is a bit of a stellar junkyard, and all the planets there are either like this or are filled with overcrowded slums. A rough place to live, for sure."

"The place is infested with raiders and pirates alike, but my contact insists that it will not be an issue. If all else fails, we can shoot our way out, it's not like it hasn't happened before."

The captain tapped a few more times on the tablet, killing the projector and bringing the lights back to their former brightness.

"We will be taking off in about an hour, so I'd recommend getting ready to go," She put the tablet down and eyed her crew again.

"Any questions?"
 
as written by Stellar

Warheads for VAW-22n micronuclear missiles. Lovely. In addition to putting her life in the hands of a child, a sentient tin-can, a merc that went wherever there was a mixture of money and trouble and everyone in the galaxy was a potential customer, and a guy who's personal assistance was an AI, there was now yet another elephant in the room -- several semi-stable radioactive missiles.

She had been in worse company before, but presently, she was having trouble remembering when.

What sort of job had she just signed herself up for?

"Raiders, and pirates, and thugs, oh my." Helena muttered under her breath, her frown omnipotent as she leaned her weight on her left leg. It was becoming increasingly clear to Helena that her whole 'ask questions later' was having some serious drawbacks.

She raised one finger up at the captain, "Yeah. One question. Do we get to know who your contact is or who we are doing this job for? In my experience, a VAW-22n micronuclear missile isn't the sort of thing that just goes missing. If there's a chance we're making some powerful enemies along the way, I'd at least like to know where to aim a gun when they do show up looking for their lost cargo."

Had she really expected this whole operation to be a cake-walk? There had been more than a few tell-tales signs that whatever mission the ship had been on before she had arrived had been the furthest thing from a trouble-free delivery.
 
as written by Krysis

The good mood was fleeting. Happiness over a neat job could not stand up to the briefing by the Captain.

Margrit looked horrified when she realized why Areleous had been so upset about heat sources on the ship. Transporting that sort of cargo-- It was incredible that she had managed to land, by herself, and not blown herself up in the process. Not to mention having gotten through security and whatnot, but that was less surprising with the crime that went on in the space port. Well. Rumored to go on.

The teenager made a strangled sound when the other woman had only one question for Melina, but then folded her arms tightly and tried to be quiet. After all, these folks were professionals. They knew what they were doing. Right?

She found herself staring at the thing (aside from herself) that didn't actually fit in the room. A pink bottle? It seemed too feminine and too flirty, for the captain. A quick glance at Helena confirmed that the warrior woman didn't seem to be the fancy scent type either. Though appearances could be deceiving, the question remained. What was it doing in the common room?

Young Page mumbled then with a frown of confusion, "What do warheads and perfume have to do with each other?"
 
as written by glmstr

"We're bringing this from an arms dealer back on Amasis to this guy that just goes by Roberto. He's the leader of one of the two big gangs on the planet, the Barracudas. They've been fighting the Choppers for generations, and I guess Mr. Roberto wants to step up his game. Don't worry, they probably don't even have any way to launch these damn things, and they'll only want to point them at each other. They don't care about hurting anyone else on that rock, at least as far as the rest of us know," Melina shrugged.

"If you ask me, we're simply profiting off of something that was inevitably going to happen anyway. Might as well make the bloodshed useful to somebody."

The captain raised an eyebrow at Margrit's question. At first such a question seemed a bit ridiculous, but she remembered that the girl in front of her was a university student with little experience in the more unscrupulous parts of life in the Union.

She picked up the bottle and shook it, proceeding to hold it up to her ear as if listening for something. She frowned slightly, but it slowly reversed into a mild grin.
"I'm glad I stuck with my gut on that decision", she mumbled to herself and quickly exited the room for less than a minute. Upon return she had a ragged t-shirt in one hand, and the bottle in the other.

"Someone clearly isn't happy to see us," Areleous held out the shirt at arms length, then sprayed a tiny amount of the perfume bottle's contents onto the shirt. With an audible hisssssss and tiny wisps of smoke, the liquid dissolved through the area sprayed within seconds. Before any liquid could drip or pieces of fabric fall down, she rushed towards a trash receptacle and threw it in.

"That Langaran fuck knows we're here, and thought he could slip this to my new crew. Have you never heard of that old wives tale, about how assassins would try to slip poisons or acids into perfume? If you didn't know before, that actually does happen. Anybody that knows me would know that I hate the smell of Valenti products, but Gervasio still insists on sending his own brand whenever he gives out laced goods."

The Vorik moved the perfume bottle to a nearby counter, making a mental note to put that in the 'hazardous materials' box later.

"Shit like this is exactly why I'm having us leave soon. If we leave on schedule, there's a good chance we won't get followed down to Cronus II."
 
as written by Ottoman

McGregor simply sat by and watched for most of the briefing, taking in all the information he could, considering it had been a minute since he had been anywhere near the ITU, much less in it. He'd settled down on Neu-Lumen for a while, as much as someone like him could settle down, but it was time for a change of scenery - the neon nightmare of the Inner Empire got a little dull at times and Allen, knowing what a jewel he'd stumbled across what with the place being the embodiment of all his passions and fascinations, figured that some time away, even some time abroad, might do him well. Absence making the heart grow fonder and all that. The only time he bothered to speak was when Melina announced their cargo, McGregor smiling as he mused aloud, "Nukes. Nice." After that he simply returned to his typical, quiet observation, nodding when appropriate and doing his best to memorize details and names.

At least until Areleous sprayed that scented death-musk inside the ship.

Almost immediately he rose to his feet and took a step or two back, putting some distance between himself and that satanic spritzer, not knowing what kind of range that toxin had on it and knowing well-enough that there was likely some back-blast to that spray - an otherwise useless tidbit, gleaned from one too many Neu-Lumen nights, that just might save his life. Though he didn't say it aloud, what confidence he had in this voyage took a serious blow, his eyes moving from the bottle to Melina, to the shirt and back again. "Well then," He mused, standing now by the door were it that he didn't bump into anyone on his quick withdrawal from Melina's proximity, the man regained a hint of his composure as he asked in jest, "... is there one that works just on clothes?"
 
as written by DerKrieger85

Merle did his best to hide his apprehension about the reveal of the ship's cargo. And she was hiring us from advertisements? Maybe he'd have to keep a close eye on the cargo in case any of his fellow crew members might have other ideas for it. At least it was the sort of cargo he had an idea of how to handle. Not that Merle had ever really dealt with a thermonuclear device before (much less several hundred of the damn things) but hey, simulators were good for something. Warlords paid big for these things so there was a near certain chance they'd make out like kings if things went well. With luck this Roberto guy wouldn't want to cover his tracks... Merle just hoped that the ship's pilot could get them out of trouble (when, not if, things went bad) posthaste. He knew he wasn't the only person who had made sure to bring enough weapons to deal with attackers but it didn't mean a thing if they ran into a battlecruiser with a bone to pick with them.

Melina Areleous' little display of the cleverly concealed caustic chemicals earned a look of shock and a low whistle from the mercenary, in addition to an involuntary two steps backwards. "That just means folks will make sure to do their laundry here from here on out. No cheating," was Merle's pithy reply. "Who brought that aboard, anyways?" Never hurt to ask that question, right now at least. Better to throw that stuff out immediately. "I concur on getting the hell out of Dodge. And when I say that, I mean yesterday."
 
as written by glmstr

"That's not a question for me, that's a question for a kink shop," Areleous smirked in response to Sweets' question. She extended her arm and pointed towards one of the halls leading into the common room, grabbing the neck of the bottle with her other hand.

"I brought it aboard, though one of Valenti's shills must've planted it at my table when I was inside. Instead of throwing this out and possibly endangering someone else, I've got a better idea."

"There's a closet of sorts in that hall, its got an unmarked door. You'll want to memorize where that is. Inside it is a false safe and various nasty chemicals like the one in my hand. Most of them are caustic or irritants, one or two are poisons. In the event that we somehow get boarded and they ask you to hand over some sort of loot, lead them in there. The next step should be pretty obvious."

"On that note, I don't think I need to be holding all of you up any longer. You are dismissed, prepare for takeoff."

The captain strolled arguably too casually towards the aforementioned closet, finding a good spot for the newest addition to the collection. Once accomplished she headed for the bridge and hopped into the pilot's seat and began moving through the ship's pre-launch diagnostics.
 
as written by Krysis

Page stared in horror at Melina actually being stupidly reckless enough to spray an unknown chemical. Without protective gear even on her hands. When she suspected it was an acid and that the nozzle was already compromised. Which meant that pushing the button had a very good chance of making the whole sprayer assembly fall apart, and a certainty that the sprayed chemical would not be uniformly directed away from the user.

While the ruined cloth was being thrown away, the young woman just turned without a word and walked away. She wanted to get home in one piece, and that obviously wasn't going to happen under Areleous' command.

First she had to collect her suitcase though, and in route to the room that was so briefly her's, it occurred to Margrit that she also needed to return the borrowed sidearm. Which meant either going into Allen's room and leaving it where he would find it, or returning to the common room.

Neither of those options were particularly palatable, since either way she'd likely end up having to explain herself. Which would take time. Time she might not have, if Melina was as impulsive about take-off as she seemed to be about everything else.

In the end, Margrit did step into Sweets' room, her suitcase sitting in the passage just outside.

"Juliet? Sorry to intrude, but since I am not sticking around, I wanted to return this." she held up the borrowed weapon to be sure the AI knew what she was talking about.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top