Azereiah

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Quick question: Is Sombrero's char still a temp NPC or what?

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Ren

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No longer comfortable.

---

Renli and Rento were both idling obediently in the gunnery seats, waiting for the mission to arrive, when a spurt of gunfire from the deck immediately beneath the Tower caught its attention. The sound, though dampened by the flooring and machinery between the source and the Tower, immediately pulled its attention away from the two bodies. Rento went motionless as control left her body, and the Tower found itself excited, nervous, and very defensive. The ship's crew was rather violent, then, despite the relatively friendly view it had gotten from Stryker, Grayson, and SAL.

The six round doors around the base of the Tower opened and a bundle of ten cables per hole erupted in all directions within the storage room. The tips of the cables began their work, melting their way into the walls, the floor, and the ceiling in search of systems to hijack. The Tower saw through the tip of one cable the rough shape of the ship's interior, and remembering the rough floor layout of the ship, it quickly wormed its way around bundles of ship wiring, conduits, and insulation to the doors that sealed the bottom deck off from the rest of the ship. The jaws at the tip of the cable clamped onto the wire between the control systems and the door's motors, then neatly sliced it in half, giving complete control of the door to the Tower.

The other cables, meanwhile, continued worming their way throughout the ship slowly, searching for systems that would provide the Tower a survival advantage against the rest of the crew if so required. The door to the storage room the Tower inhabited fell almost immediately. The infecting cables no longer needed direct supervision to do their job and the Tower fell idle once again.

---

Renli snapped to attention, no longer running on an AI routine. It had been some time since the body had been actively used, but it felt good to be in his own head again. The good feelings passed quickly, though, when he remembered what he was doing. Neither he nor Rento had heard the gunfire through the ship, indicating that organic human ears may have also missed it. He stood and left his post to find Stryker or Grayson.

"Just heard gunfire on the bottom deck. Thought you might want to know -- didn't see a firing range down there at all."

Mentions

@Crossfire

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Edit: RPGuild is screwing up at the moment, ended up getting doubleposted

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Loving the "Juggling Grenades" bit.

And woo, combat! \o/

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

D'oh. I keep forgetting my @mentions everywhere I go.

Yeah, new IC post for @Crossfire. Let's get this thing rolling, eh?

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Ren

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Compliant. Mostly.

---

Rento nodded in acknowledgment of everything Stryker said, then waited for SAL's assistance in removing the larger crate. Pound for pound, she matched SAL's strength, and when the crate was free, a she didn't even bother putting in a password. The crate unlocked itself from inside and the second drone - a much larger male model construct, built similarly to Rento, sat up and climbed out. This machine, however, was much less animated and seemed to be running on a very simple AI routine, if its stilted motions were anything to go by. Both Rento and the new machine moved to follow Stryker wherever he lead them.

"I'm ready. Now... You're working for Alliance, hm?"

She leaned towards Stryker to examine his outfit. "Nice uniform. I didn't realize the Alliance offered so much wiggle room in their dress code these days. You sure you're not a pirate?"

Straightening up again, she continued. "Doesn't really matter, though. You've got an airlock and three people, and I don't even have a helmet on. What'll I be doing to earn my keep?"

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Ren

---

Apprehended by the Captain, five minutes too soon.

---

The female drone dropped the crate immediately upon request. Without the weapons unpacked and on hand, it wouldn't be the greatest idea to try to fight her way out of it no matter how strong her shields were and how few targets she would be against. Slowly, with no sudden motions, she stood upright and raised her hands as requested, then turned to face the Captain and the inferior machine. The smart move would be to answer the Captain's questions quickly and concisely.

"I am Rento. I boarded at Chronos Station, and the crates were loaded by some underpaid personnel looking to make a quick buck. I'm trying to exit Alliance territory, and I assume you are too, given that this ship wasn't on any official docking records. And 'AI Core'? If you're referring to my Tower, I take it everywhere with me."

She nodded towards the crates before continuing in acknowledgement of Grayson's query. "The small crate contains the remainder of my equipment, including some food and antique weaponry, and the large crate contains another functioning body."

@Crossfire

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Good to go here, too.

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Ren

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A short time after the stop at Phoebe Station.

---

Inside the cargo hold, the Machine stirred. Its sensors indicated that the ship had quickly docked to a station and departed just as quickly - last minute provisions, no doubt. That would have been the last time the ship stopped at a station before departing for wherever its destination was. The docking logs at Chronos Station hadn't mention its existence at all, and yet there it had been, which meant one of two things: either a it was black-ops, or it was a pirate vessel. Either way suited the Machine just fine, as it meant a quick escape from Alliance territory and less trouble than dealing with a military ship.

The Machine, a black sphere measuring one foot in diameter, popped into the air out of the back of the stack of crates. The relevant iris doors on its front end slid open to reveal two somewhat short mechanical "tentacles", each tipped with a manipulator, and the Machine began zipping about within the cargo hold, silently scanning each crate. It performed a celebratory flip in midair upon finding the crate it was searching for, entered in the relevant password on the crate's keypad, and hovered silently as the crate hissed and popped open. A university-age humanoid woman pulled herself out of the crate.

The woman, standing at 5'5", gave the Sphere a quick shove into her own box and went about her business inside the cargo hold. It didn't occur to her or the Sphere to bother locking the cargo bay doors.

Elsewhere in the ship, sounds of crates moving and a series of loud 'cracks' could be heard from the direction of the cargo and shuttle hold for only a very short time before silence came once more. Despite the noise, though, no signs of life could be detected inside.

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

Ren

Name: Ren

Age/Race/Gender: ? / Machine / ?

Appearance: A 1' black metal sphere resting in a recepticle on a dark grey, reflective tower, standing at 7' tall. Fifteen ball-mount cameras face outwards in all directions from the sphere, which has a silver-bordered seamline running around its middle and two small iris-doors towards what can be assumed to be the front. The tower is shaped as a hexagonal pyramid up to the spherical "head", with a bottom diameter of 3'. A seam comes down the very center of the front of the tower, with well-hidden hinges upon the corners nearest. There is one lens in a ball mount on each face of the tower, mounted dead center - including on the tower's centerline. Six circular holes with iris doors line the 6" black ceramic alloy border along the bottom of the tower.

When open, a spaghetti-like mass of motorized metal cables erupt from the six doors, each of which is rather thick, and is tipped with two jawlike clamps, a camera, and an arc welder.

Rento

Name: Rento

Age/Race/Gender: Appears 24, Humanoid Construct, Female

Appearance: Rento is humanlike in nearly all aspects, precisely manufactured and sitting on the very edge of the Uncanny Valley. Rento stands at 5'5" and weighs 110 lbs. Her round, softly-shaped face is framed neatly by short, black, bobbed hair, underneath which lay almond-shaped green cybernetic eyes.

Her body shape is similar to old sculptures and paintings of Venus, disturbingly free of imperfections of any sort.

Rento's outfit is dated -- old-style faded jeans, a black tee-shirt, and black leather hiking boots, as though lifted directly from the 21st Century.

Renli

Name: Renli

Age/Race/Gender: Appears 24, Humanoid Construct, Male

Appearance: Humanlike appearance in almost all aspects, clearly manufactured to exact specifications and sitting just barely on the edge of the Uncanny Valley. Renli stands at 6'2" and weighs in at roughly 180 lbs., with semi-short shaggy brown hair. A square jawline and sharp cheekbones stand out below two cybernetic eyes of glass, similar to the cheaper prosthetics available on the medical market and complete with dull green metallic irises.

His body shape is identical to old sculptures and paintings of Adonis - which is to say, he has the ancient "ideal Roman" build, disturbingly free of imperfections of any sort.

Renli's clothing is simple - faded, old-style jeans and a black tee shirt, with black hiking boots. He wears no armor of any sort.

Equipment:

Weapons

Combat Knife: A simple and very heavy vibro-blade, eight inches long, designed to smash through armor with ease. Runs on external electrical power. Unpowered, it's merely a simple blade cast of an unknown ceramic alloy. A second one is in a sheath mounted to the inside of the left Tower door, as an emergency replacement.

PXR-12 Xaser Emitter:
A barebones, vintage laser system. The upper receiver of the PXR-12 consists of a narrow, long laser housing surrounded by 40 oblong stainless steel laser pump housings, with coated copper wiring wrapping around and between the spaces between the laser pumps. The sides of the PXR-12 are lined with high energy capacitors, and a reflex sight is welded to the top of the entire assembly, with a small LED display showing the charge percentage in the weapon. Each trigger pull completely discharges the capacitor arrays into the laser pumps and housing, creating an extremely short lived but also extremely high energy 0.05nm laser pulse, only 0.5mm wide. The effective firerate depends more on the power supply than the system itself.

A knob at the front end of the assembly adjusts the output lens assembly's focal point, and ranges from 1 meter to 1km. Ranges beyond that are, unfortunately, completely nonviable due to diffraction problems, and the power of the beam drops steadily with distance.

The PXR-12 is mounted on a short rifle-grip assembly with a bipod that serves double-duty as a vertical foregrip. A battery pack may be mounted in the stock, or a wire may be inserted to run it off of external power. On the top of the lower receiver is etched "UNITED STATES PROPERTY, NO. 000001 || PXR-12 U.S. ARMY", and a star-shaped emblem, nearly faded away from age and use. Where the metal used to be blackened, it's now fading to a shade of dull steel, flecked with rust.

A second rifle, serial number 000002, is stored inside the tower closet, with its output clearly feeding into a complex mirror system which, in turn, outputs to the ball-mount lenses on the exterior of the tower.

M1911A1: Five antique M1911A1s are stored inside the tower closet on the right side door, each with a magazine inserted and a round in the chamber for 8 shots. Two spare magazines are clipped in alongside each pistol. Ballistic, but very old, powder-driven, and ineffective against armor and shields. Still good enough on soft targets, though. These have been collected over a long period of time, and are in various states of wear. Only one is in pristine condition, as though stolen directly from a museum.

Hardware:

Renli and Rento

"Hacking" Cables: This is not computer hacking. This is literally breaking into a wall or conduit and forcibly taking control of an electrical system, completely bypassing whatever original control circuit was in place. Renli and Rento each have twelve bundles of prehensile cables within its abdomen, each of which is tipped with a camera, two claw clamps, and a miniscule arc welder for severing cables and melting through walls and hulls. While not as good as a good, old-fashioned knife or fist, the cables are able to serve as a self defense mechanism in a pinch. Rento's are narrower and capable of finer motions, while Renli's carry a much higher voltage and strike harder.

Tower

"Hacking" Cables: This is not computer hacking. This is literally breaking into a wall or conduit and forcibly taking control of an electrical system, completely bypassing whatever original control circuit was in place. The Tower has sixty bundles of durable prehensile cables within its base, each of which is tipped with a camera, two claw clamps, and an arc welder for severing cables and melting through walls and hulls. The Tower's cables are much thicker and stronger than either Renli or Rento's are, and can serve as effective melee weapons. The Tower's cables can each extend to roughly fifty meters.

Internal Communications Array: The Sphere atop the Tower contains a comprehensive communications array. It is compatible with most other systems, to some degree, though the distance it can transmit a signal is tied to the Tower's power system. Without the Tower, the Sphere cannot transmit beyond the immediate vicinity and, in fact, has trouble with anything outside 20th century walkie-talkie radio range. With the Tower, however, the range is extended significantly, to roughly 50,000 kilometers in a vacuum with no interference.