To Boldly Go - Roleplay Thread

Kyle tried to think this one through. Okay. What they know is this: there's something going around, it's only infect- no, only the members of the first away team are showing symptoms, and it's entirely possible that they just got allergies from... something on the planet's surface. Not that there was much there beyond the ice and the caves, but there could've been something.

Kyle frowned. He couldn't do much right now anyways, beyond looking out for security risks. Weren't any right now. He trusted the doc to, y'know, do the job she got assigned to the ship for. Any luck, they'll have this all sorted out quick.

Analysis Room

Zuko peeked over Raz' shoulder, reading the datapad, his eyes widening. "Stop." He said, grabbing the datapad from Raz' hands. "No. It's related. There's a relation between these two facts. All planets in this system are frozen wastelands, just like the K'otahars left their planet. What if... what if this has happened before? What if the K'otahars have destroyed all those planets?..."

He looked at Vice, shaking his head. "Yeah, we do, but the partial lockdown won't let us get to them."

The Medbay

"We don't need hosts. We already found them." The third one said, grinning. "And we have legs! Haven't had legs for a few generations. Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Feels pretty damn good." The second one said, as she walked out of the room with the extremely sick officer holding onto her. Behind her, the other three officers stepped out, all of them patting their bodies, the yellow eyes confirming they were also infected.

"I don't know. Too... fleshy." The first one said, patting his chin. "I liked that last species we absorbed. Strong. And they could fly." He looked at the second one. "Is that all?"

"Yes. We can't infect any more, ran out of mites. That won't be a problem, though." The second one said, nodding to Nen. "If you get the Doctor here to adapt K'etar, he can absorb her. Just... look at her." She said, licking her lips. "That body looks so... fantastic."

All of the infected officers chuckled, as they grabbed their phasers. "Yeah, I like it too." The third one said. "But we need to infect a male and a female. And she's naturally resistant to us. Let's begin the plan..." She pointed his phaser at the back of Nen's head as the officers headed out of the medbay, leaving behind just her, the first one and the extremely sick one, who sat down on the corner, muttering something to himself. "Let's do it like this, Doctor. You tell your captain to bring down the lockdown... and we'll tell you all you want to hear about us. If you don't, we'll paint those walls with your insides."

"Can't we just get this over with?" The first one said, humming. "Why do we need her?"

"Medical expertise. Unfortunately, we got some very dumb hosts."

The Ship

Meanwhile, the other four officers divided themselves as they went into different areas of the ship: two headed towards Engineering, one towards Security and one towards the Bridge, hoping the partial lockdown wouldn't get in their way.

Shepard snaps his fingers as he starts to talk. "So we know the weapon destroyed one planet but they couldn't get into space, right? Are we sure it didn't cause a chain reaction in the solar system? The story is too old for us to examine the radiation in the system, I assume. Now as for the lockdown, I assume the doctor has found out how infectious the cold is and is trying to keep us safe."

Shepard turns on the comm and sets it to the bridge. "Captain, something seems to be up. The entire system is wrecked like the K'otahar planet, we're on lockdown, and things seem to be up at the med-bay. Do you think we should send a security team, Captain? Just as a way to double-check it's all OK?"

edited 29th Jun '13 6:38:16 PM by Fusionman

Analysis Room
"They're out to get us. They're out to get me. What if they get me?" Rizzrack replied to Zuko's comment. He shook around in his suit, casting glances in every possible direction at a speed most people would get dizzy at. "They ruined their solar system, now they want to ruin ours. Can't trust trees, can't trust bees, and can't trust a bee's disease. But we're safe in here, I'm safe in here. Safe, safe, safe. But they're not safe. They're out there. With them. We have to save them from them. Lockdown? Can't anyone open a door? We're cut off. Someone has to open the door. Or if the door cuts us off, I'll cut the door."

"The records indicate that the other planets were already frozen over long before the K'otahar civilization," Selvaria responded to Zuko and Shepard's assessments. She paid little attention to Rizzrack's mild breakdown for the time being; she would only move to talk him down - or restrain him if necessary - if he began to grow hostile. "In fact, it may not even have been the K'otahar who did this; they may have been just as much of a victim as the rest of the planets. I must reiterate: we should check on Chief Yim and the afflicted officers right away, sirs."

edited 29th Jun '13 4:15:58 PM by demovere

Pan pulled herself back out of the crate to roll her eyes at the panicking Rizzrack.

"Calm down, Chief. Unlike you, the rest of us don't have apocalypse suits to protect us. Or at least I don't. The lockdown seems to be keeping anyone else in this room from catching whatever is going around." She paused, thinking about the lack of response from the Medical Bay. "I can check the energy signatures of everyone nearby the Analysis Room if you want me to. I think I can at least sense across the hall from here..."

Jim raised an eyebrow at the sudden report that came in from his second officer. It'd been a little while since Nen reported, and she was usually so prompt; that was a bit strange. Still, she could have just been too busy working, but...

"I don't know if sending a whole team into a quarantine situation is a good idea. If they also get sick it could just get worse. But if you've got any security down there already, you might as well have them on guard and check it out" Jim responded. Just what is going on around here? Jim thought to himself as he went to sit in his command chair.

Raz listened to the others in the room, unsure whether to be irritated or relieved when Zuko forced the datapad out of his hand. "I'd say you're still drawing far too many conclusions from too little evidence, but that the chief medical officer is suddenly unable to be contacted is too suspicious" Raz said as he stood from his sitting position. "I know you're wrong about one thing though" he added, and stepped over to the door to the hall. Possibly to the surprise of everyone else, it opened.

"I said I locked down this room, sick bay, and the path in between from the rest of the ship, remember? I did not lock them down from each other" Raz informed them. "I knew we might already be infected and have to get to sick bay ourselves, and at the time the away team was still being taken to sick bay. It would have been quite rude to lock sick people out of sick bay" he explained to them as he lowered his goggles over his eyes.

"Considering the captain's orders, Zuko, I would like you and some of your men to accompany me. Stay a bit behind me; I will scout it out first. Might be good to bring along Pan as well" Raz told the chief of security, then looked at Selvaria and Bladewolf. "Selvaria, Bladewolf, inform the captain of everything we know that seems possibly related" he ordered his subordinates, then headed into the hall towards sick bay. Between bulkhead doors and security force fields, it was currently impossible for Raz to go anywhere but sick bay; vice-versa was also true for those in sick bay. Raz's plan was to turn invisible once he was nearing sick bay and quickly look inside.

edited 29th Jun '13 6:49:47 PM by FirockFinion

Analysis Room

"Please, Chief Rizzrack, control yourself." Zuko said, handing the datapad back to Selvaria, reaching for his phaser. "Security Officers, on me. Set your phasers to stun, and only fire at my command." He pointed at Pan. "Assistant, you stay behind the group. If you sense anyone coming our way, warn us." He nodded to his officers and ran out of the room.

The Bridge

A message came over the comm to the Captain. "Sir," The voice said. It belonged to one of the officers. "Chief Yim has declared me healthy and free of the cold virus. May I request a partial removal of the lockdown so I can return to my post?"

Kyle still wasn't entirely sure this was a problem. Maybe she was busy. He didn't really feel it was a situation warranting going in guns blazing. Oh, well. He pulled out his phaser, set it to stun, and holstered it again. He didn't bother checking his Bryar pistol or his lightsaber. They didn't have a stun setting. Time for some... hypothetical action. He followed Zuko out of the Analysis Room.

"Understood." Selvaria moved away from the Analysis Room doorway as the others exited, before tapping her commlink badge. "Captain, this is the Analysis Room. We have reason to believe that the members of the away team may have been compromised during their trip." With another few taps on her datapad, the information she had gathered and isolated was transmitted to the bridge and displayed to those that were there; she immediately followed that data transfer with a concise explanation of her hypothesis. "With the desolate state of the other planets in this star system, and the information on K'otaharian history that we gathered from these crates, we suspect that our away team may have been... infected by something that will cause them to attempt to recreate those conditions."

"Yes, Sirs!" Pan said excitedly. She grinned and landed on her feet to charge after Zuko, his security officers, and Raz, mentally scanning ahead to their destination. The next room's energy signatures grew clearer and clearer as they approached. "I can tell that everyone who entered the Medical Bay is still inside, but some of the humans feel...off." She frowned and focused more on the affected ones. "That could just be the sickness affecting the officers, but their energy isn't weaker or anything, just different than before." Pan hadn't been on the ship long enough to identify each member of the crew by their energy signal, but the aliens were easier to tell apart though, as their Ki stood out more. "Other than that, I don't think our Medical Chief is injured. Her energy signature is normal."

Engineering

"Why, you're not satisfied with these beauties that surround you?" Dell said, chuckling. "Yeah. Sounds fun. I can imagine myself adapting these new technologies to our engines, although we'll need to analyse it first..."

He tapped his feet, looking at the ceiling. "... I think I should go up there. I mean, we haven't heard anything from them in a while. No Captain telling us to go smooth, no Security Chief glaring at us... think something bad just happened."

edited 29th Jun '13 7:20:52 PM by Stratofarius

Well, that was a relief. Clearly, Nen must've been not messaging because she was just busy clearing up who was really sick and who wasn't. "Hold on crewman, I can't remove the lock down until I know everyone in there is healthy, but we'll get you back to duty" Jim responded over the comm, then switched to another channel. "This is Captain Raynor to transporter room two, could you get a lock on-" he was interrupted by Selvaria's transmission, which he listened to with growing concern. Come to think of it, why hadn't Nen reported the crewman healthy herself? Better yet, why hadn't she just contacted one of the transporter rooms to get them out directly?

"Hold that transporter room. This is the Captaim to all transporter rooms; there are to be no intership transports until further notice" Jim sent out, then switched to Selvaria again. "Roger that miss Bles, I'll see what I can do from here" he told her, then thought heavily as he switched off the comm. First, an insurance policy.

Jim then switched the comm over to engineering. "Radigan, this is Raynor. I know this is gonna sound odd, but I want you to lock the environmental controls so that nobody can change the internal temperature on board" Jim said. Then, to double check with the doctor. "This is Raynor calling Chief Medical Officer Nen, come in please... Nen, respond immediately... This is Captain Raynor to sick bay; why has the Chief Medical Officer turned off her comm?" he asked into the comm, first trying Nen's, then the sick bay itself.

"Good work Pan. Now, Stay here and wait for my signal; if I don't come out or message back in two minutes, move in" Raz told Zuko and the others, then turned back towards sick bay. He concentrated for a moment, and turned invisible to the eyes of everyone there who wasn't a powerful psychic or had some other means to detect him. Then he ran forward to the sick bay, to take a look inside...

edited 29th Jun '13 7:35:02 PM by FirockFinion

Engineering

“Oh, please,” Robotnik scoffed with a derisive wave of his hand. “They’re probably just taking their sweet time cataloguing whatever’s in the crates…”

It was at that point that the voice of what was unmistakably the ship’s captain—Raynor, the Doctor thought his name was—came over the intercom. Ivo listened in silence, blinking in surprise as the captain ordered them to lock down the Einstein’s environmental controls; he stared at the intercom for a few seconds, then turned to look at the chief.

“Or maybe something’s gone wrong.” The Professor grimaced; he hated it when others were right about things and he was wrong. Despite that, his tone was all business when he next spoke. “Which way to the environmental controls, again?”

Engineering

Dell looked at the ceiling, raising an eyebrow as the Captain delivered his orders. "On the back, Ivo, behind the auxiliary power sources. Console next to the green and red valves." He walked over to the communication console. "Sorry, Captain, what's going on? Did something happen with the stuff we got from that frozen planet?"

Engineering

As the Chief went to speak with the captain, Robotnik made his way to the back wall, edging past the auxiliary power couplings sucking in his gut in order to squeeze past the red and green valves. Some parts of this place just hadn’t been made with the hefty in mind, he thought with a grimace…

As soon as he found the console in question, the Doctor adjusted his gloves with a loud snap and went to work, his fingers dancing across the keys as he navigated through the environmental control system. He quickly found the settings that would allow him to control the environmental conditions of various sections of the ship, and typed in two simple commands: ‘lock all settings at current values’, and ‘lock down all non-administrator control panels’.

“It’ll take a minute for these programs to finish executing,” he called over his shoulder. “Once that’s done, nobody will be able to so much as tinker with a thermostat without administrator permission.”

"Well Radigan, it's a little complicated to explain" Jim said, thinking of where to start. "Somehow the away team all came down with some kind of cold, so there's a partial lock down going on on the deck they were on. You might have seen the lock down notification. The doctor took them to sick bay, but now something even weirder might be going on, and the doc' isn't responding on her comm. Intelligence just told me they think this might be connected to the fact that all the planets in this system are frozen wastelands; basically I think they're guessing we brought something besides just records on board, and that someone or something might try to do to our ship what they did to all the planets here" he explained at length.

"So, I'd rather play it safe than be a popsicle, if it's all the same to you Radigan. Keep an eye on the internal temperatures; if they start dropping unexpectedly, I'll need you to come up with a solution against us all freezing to death" Jim told his Chief Engineer over the comm.

edited 30th Jun '13 4:21:22 AM by FirockFinion

Meta Knight considered the situation as the Captain handled the back and forth. Nem hasn't reported in, and turned off her com badge, and she was last looking at the sick officers. Something was going on and security definitely needed to be there. They needed to know what was going on down there. "Captain, request permission to enter the quarantine zone. What we do know is that the disease has affected only humans, and couldn't affect Nem. She's become incommunicado and we don't know why. I have a strong constitution, I might not succumb to whatever affliction it is, its rare that a disease manages to attack creatures from other planets to begin with. So I am the ideal choice to investigate."

Atton — Still on the Bridge

" Ah, wonderful, " muttured Atton upon hearing that things would have really gone south if the disease was more serious than it had been previously thought (which seemed a pretty distinct possibility at this stage). The last thing he wanted was to begin (and end) his journey into deep space by succumbing to some horrific alien illness.

He listened with growing concern as Captain Raynor issued orders to help secure the ship further. The Chief Helmsman felt uncomfortably powerless, unable to do anything but hold on tight while everyone else did their thing. When Meta Knight suggested letting himself enter the quarantine zone, Atton twisted back in his chair to look at him. "Steady on there bucko, we're still not sure about who this thing can or can't affect."

Bladewolf — Analysis Room, then with Selvaria

" I am pleased that you think highly of my performance," replied Bladewolf, trying to maintain eye contact with the Chief Security Officer (he had heard that humans appreciated such gestures). "My designation is indeed LQ-84i - I am a variant of the LQ-84 "Fenrir" line of security robots, though I also possess a prototype verbal interface. I took care to gather as much data as I could about the crew prior to being accepted aboard this vessel, though it was somewhat inconclusive. It is good to be introduced properly."

Raz's snarky comment elicited a lowering of the robot's posture, as though Bladewolf was trying to emphasise his subordinate nature. "My projection is only 68% due to the high number of variables and unknown qualities inherent in the analysis; if I were to receive more data, especially that of a high quality, then I would be more confident."

" Yes sir." He trotted up to Selvaria, his claws still making a muted clicking sound as he walked. Though she had already taken care of the majority of the task at hand - he should have been quicker, he scolded himself - he still opened a line of communication regardless. "I can corroborate her data, if you wish. If there is anything I can do to assist, I will be happy to do so."

Analysis Room
"Hey don't tell me to calm down. I am calm!" Rizzrack said. Which was technically true, as the speech patterns were how he normally spoke. "Calm, calm, calm. But no one's going to be calm when a vine's growing from their nose. If that even happens - I think it will, everything bad has plants involved. We need to stop this cold before the ship looks like that planet. Lucky for us, we have an entire planet's worth of data, which potentially means a planet's worth of research data and outbreak analyses."

He began to search the database for any mention of airborne illness, fever, cold, or trees, that were relevant - if they even existed.

The Medbay

"Captain," The first one said, speaking into his communications device. "This is a Medical Officer speaking. I don't know my name, and I really don't care. Listen to me: if you don't remove your partial lockdown, you'll have one dead Chief Medical Officer on your hand. And if any of my brothers and sisters feel that they are being transported, they have orders to shoot themselves, which means you'll be losing some officers on the third day of your trip."

"So remove the partial lockdown, and let us proceed with our plan, unless you want to end up with nine dead bodies under your name."

Once the group led by Zuko got closer to the medbay, a phaser blast would hit the wall next to them. "Stop right there!" The third one said, pointing her phaser at the head of the extremely sick officer. "Make one move, and I'll kill him!" She said, one hand already closing down the doors between the sickbay and the corridor."

Analysis Room

Rizzrack would find something filed under airborne illness: mites. ''Developed by K'otaharian scientists, the mites are nanomachines that can store the conciousness of one being. They can be stored anywhere, as they are smaller than a speck of sand. They can then invade the bodies of other beings and analyse it to see if they can use it as their new host- if the body doesn't fit, the owner of this body will try to expell the mites, at which point they'll be free to search for a new host. If the body does fit, the mite will have taken over the entire brain and melded the conciousness with the body in two hours."

Pan forced herself to stay at the back of Zuko's group, clenching her hands into fists in frustration. Her first instinct was to charge in and knock the enemy out, but it would be impossible for her to get to the compromised officer before they fired, not without a distraction.

"Chief Zuko, the one threatening us has the weird energy. I think something is forcing them to do this, maybe the illness... Whatever it is, they aren't thinking straight. The hostage is affected too, but not as much," she said quietly.

"Atton's right; just because Nen was resisting whatever it was, doesn't necessarily mean you will too. There's a lot of difference between your species" Jim said as he listened to the report from Bladewolf. "Besides, we just got an ace in the hole" he added, and was about to open the comm to Bladewolf when suddenly the transmission came in from the medical officer.

Jim's eyes widened, how could this have happened?! he thought to himself. Are these people spies that managed to come aboard, or is something controlling them? He shook his head to clear it; first he had to deal with the situation, then he could figure out why it happened later. It took him a moment to think of how to respond. "Nine dead crewmen? There are two hundred crewmen on board this ship, and you think I'll care about nine?" Jim started with a bluff, putting on his best 'rough boss who doesn't care about his underlings' impression and hoping they would fall for it. He had met a few crime bosses in his time, so he figured he had a good experience to draw upon. "You tell me what you're planning to do if I release the lock down, and I'll think about it" he continued, then cut the comm link.

With an angry frown, Jim looked over at Cloud. "I need a secure comm link to Intelligence Officer Bladewolf; I need nobody listening in on it, and I need it in the next half minute" Jim ordered, his mood having gone quite no-nonsense after dealing with the brainwashed crewman. While he waited for that secure channel, he went ahead with something spies or brainwashed people would probably be expecting anyway, so he didn't bother with a secure channel. "This is Raynor to Radigan; cancel that order for the internal temperature, we've got a new problem. Do you have any way of remotely disabling all the hand phasers in any given section of the ship?" he sent to Engineering.

Raz just barely stopped himself short when he saw the woman with the phaser aim into the hallway, the shot itself going in front of his face by a few inches. A quick glance at her eyes not seeing him told Raz that his invisibility was working, but now she was closing the door. Raz surged forward, hoping none of the security team behind him would try shooting through the door, as he was going right through it. A quick cartwheel with his acrobatics should get him through before the door closed, he figured.

If he did get through, then it was a matter of quickly finding a place to hide before his invisibility ran out. Which was going to be in, oh, five seconds or so.

Rizzrack opened up comms to the bridge, "B-b-b-b-bodysnatchers, Captain. Good news, though: From what I found in the database, the source is nanomachines, son. Not biological. Assuming the K'otaharian records refer to what we are dealing with. If not, then square one. Suggest engineering attempt to detect them, develop electromagnetic pulse weapon to use against invasive machines. Most important detail, K'otaharian notes say mites will not meld with a body that does not fit, but if they do - two hour meld time. Check time since exposure for everyone, don't trust anyone two hours after first symptoms."

Rizzrack's new data was the clincher - they were dealing with microscopic invaders. A new question sprung to mind, however: the connection between that and the freezing death that befell this system's worlds. Two possibilities came to Selvaria's mind, and she immediately opted to voice them to the others in the Analysis Room for a second opinion.

"Officer Rizzrack, does that database say anything about how to disable these nanomachines?" she began, tapping her datapad for emphasis. "If they were the ones responsible for the drastic climate changes on the K'otaharian home planet, they may thrive in extreme cold climates... but on the other hand, said cold climate may have been trapping them all this time."

edited 30th Jun '13 9:37:49 PM by demovere