Expendable

Give me your characters!

@Dark Light Sorry, I missed the notice, things have been odd the last two days

Paradise Lost

@Dyelli Beybi

I've modified Nine's sheet a bit. I hope it's more in line with what you're looking for.

Paradise Lost

"I'm good with locks!" Billie said, putting down her beer. "I'm an avionics technician, I repair a lot of different equipment if you give me time to read the tech manual."

But who locks a spaceship? She wonders in the back of her head. Especially a colony spaceship? It's not like one person could steal anything that big. You'd need at least seven qualified people to make a go at it. Did some bureaucrat think that spaceship theft was something that happened up here?

"Anyone know if it's got supplies loaded?" Billie asked, looking around. "We're not going anywhere without supplies."

Give me your characters!

@Dark Light what a group 😭😭😭

@TideTypedWrong

It's just amazing what happens when you fall through a rift in space and time and land someplace else with a bunch of strange people.

Paradise Lost

"Mr. Jaggard..."
"'Oddfather'," the man stressed, climbing into the lifepod already crammed with Sabato the lying snake and a pile of old emergency batteries, worth good money to recycle - and unstable as hell.
"Don't go to the surface! It's not safe..."
"It's a lifepod, 'n't it?" the gangster snorted. "You know, Uncle Tony loved ya kid, but yer just adopted, ain't one intelligent brain cell in dat head of yours. But I'll take care of ya iffen you just get on board."

The bastard grinned, patting the seat next to him with a hopeful grin.

Billie stepped back, shaking her head.
"Sorry," she told him. "I have to stay here." Where it's safe. -Ish.
"Don't say I didn't offer," he shrugged, closing the hatch. Alarms blared into life, then moments later the pod dropped, its little rocket motor flaring to life as the pod's autopilot started its long path towards the surface.

"You idiot," she muttered, brushing a strand of her ginger hair out of her face as she turned away. "There's Metacer down there. They're not going to listen to your talk, even if you survive in that 'lifepod'."

It was a good thing nobody was around, this being the farthest spot from the main concourse. Seeing the directory sign ahead, she paused, then turned down another corridor, heading towards 'The Drink.'

Just another example why you shouldn't let an engineer name anything, must less a bar.

---

The heat in the bar was staggering, but she welcomed it, it was a nice change from the air-condition repair shop. Her manager kept it bitterly cold in there, claiming how heat was the bane of electronics.

Maybe cheap electronics, she scowled as she made her way to the bar. A man with a rifle was standing next to the bar by another man, introducing himself.

"Name’s Lopez by the way,” he added, “Engineering, Eden Defense Force. I don’t do pep talks. I fix things.”

People were muttering among themselves as Lopez sat down, talking to the guy next to him. EDF too?

For a change, everyone was still looking at him while she made her way towards the bar, leaving a seat open between Lopez and herself as she flagged the bartender over, who was already puffing up at the sight of her.

"Hey!" she told him, flashing her bank card. "Larry! Let's not go through this again! I'm legit, I work here, and who's left to complain to? Just get me a beer without the hassle. Honestly, you'd deny a burnt a drink, wouldn't you?"

It was a pity she never got to learn how to pilot something like that colony ship. She'd never taken a ride out before on a Skrim Drive, this station was the farthest she'd been from the planet below. What was the odds she'd get a chance now?

Paradise Lost

29th century is fine, Ill just need to know what was going on in that century.

Like, what sort of pre-war tech did Earth have in the 29th? Could they have created nanites or some sort of repair symbiote that the asset might have within her?

Give me your characters!

One of my things is that various humans have left Earth over the ages - sometimes as slave labor, sometimes as companions. This has also happened among other races whose planets have not made formal contact - collectively, people from uncontacted planets are called "wilders" in the interplanetary language known as Trade. It's also how many alien races know how to play poker - a human taught a bunch of aliens while they were waiting backstage for an appearance on a show about weird alien races.

Possibly my pilot has come to Earth as part of a commission, but they're also after an artifact of cultural importance among Human Wilders - they want to get case lots of the board game Monopoly, which has become an important cultural artifact among human wilders.

Or something else.

Paradise Lost

@Expendable

How far back do you want this character to be from? Also they aren't using nanites for healing in the setting (not that that essentially changes anything). The only ones they have are the translator ones and nobody knows how they work.

@Dyelli Beybi

Let's make the asset pre-contact. After they were recovered by their parent agency, it was decided to put them in storage with other frozen assets in a high security orbital lab - it wasn't adversely affected by power outages on the surface. When the refugee ships left, the lab got raided for fuel by the refugees and they wound up bringing a few of the assets with them, mistaking them for fuel containers. Or perhaps they brought them along as a hedge to ensure genetic diversity.

It's the same nanites, the translator nanites were build on top of an existing design - this happens a lot in electronics, being easier to modify than to start from scratch. But because they're labeled "translator nanites" nobody uses them for the treatment of brain trauma. The people doing the reanimation aren't aware what the nanites are doing, they're just injecting them so the revived can understand them.

As a suggestion - when people go into cryogenic suspension, it feels like they're being boiled alive because of paradoxical undressing - constriction of blood vessels on the surface, etc. Oddly enough, that memory is lost on revival, and they think they're sweating because of the rewarming process.

Paradise Lost

@Dyelli Beybi

Nine

Nine

Name: Jane Doe (0XU-45-ZQ39) "Nine"
Species: Human (Burnt)
Sex: Female
Age: Estimated 25 Terran
Role/Job: Custodian
Appearance: This lady puts you in mind of a deep ocean. She has wide yellow eyes that are like two chunks of aged ivory. Her hair is white, trimmed in a simple pageboy style. She is very short and has an athletic build. Her skin is pale. She has thick eyebrows. While corporate office environments will dress them up as maids and butlers, malls and starships typically assign them dark gray coveralls with black steel-toe chukka boots, a simple cloth cap, and a pair of white gloves.

headshot

Strengths and Weaknesses

Skills: Besides basic custodial duties, she practices kata and plays chess in her head. She thinks she was once security, or something like that. Encrypted burst communications implant - restricted frequencies (not compatible with existing tech).

Weaknesses: Burnts (short for freezer burnt) are semi-successful revivals of bodies frozen in the long-ago past that while alive, appear to be only barely conscious and of limited mental faculties from ice crystal damage, only capable of performing menial work. As robots are banned, they're generally assigned to government and corporate offices as custodians. Burnt-abuse, while illegal, still happens.

Doesn't talk. (Mute?)

Unexplained power dips (lights & displays flickering momentarily) and bursts of radio static around them.

Background:

Major Incident Imari Manufacturing - recovered fragment

"...What we know is that Agent ██████ went to the Imari Manufacturing Complex to investigate some sort of discrepancy in Building 29. We got ██████'s distress alarm and dispatched a Rapid Response team to ██████'s location, only to discover she had been flash-frozen despite numerous safety protocols that should have prevented it from ever happening."
"Industrial accident?"
"Or something hurriedly set up to look like an industrial accident."
"And the discrepancy?"
"...We can't find it."
"So it all died with ██████"
"Not quite. The doc says that recovery is possible, thanks to the ████████████ process. Medtechs have already shipped ██████ up to Tartarus."
"Excellent. How soon until ██████ is revived?"
"It'll be weeks or even months. Even with ████████████ it's delicate work."
"Do keep me apprised of your progress."

Communications Report DD-214A-2B-9A-FF-31-01-AA

"Jack, what's the meaning of these orders?"
"Orders? What orders?"
"About ██████! Got this order stating we're to suspend all treatment and place the body in stasis until further notice. We just got her thawed and began ████████████! It's not good for ██████ if we stop things midway."
"What?! No order like that passed through my office! Where is ██████ now?"
"They're about to put her in stasis. This didn't come from you?"
"No! I think our network has been compromised, send me a hardcopy, understood?"
"Underst...!"
"What's going on?"
"I don't know, the engines are firing, we're moving out of orbit...!"
<<<Communication Loss>>

Secure Channel DD-214A

"Priority override - Authorization:█████-███-██████ I don't know if you'll receive this, but I'm hoping this will be in your buffer when you wake up. We don't know what's going on, but someone is trying to remove you from our records and have overridden the controls for Tartarus. I can't be sure you'll even remember your own name once you read this. Your mission is to secure the ship from all external threats. Good luck, ██████."

Van Baalen Salvage - Comms log

"This ship's been through the grinder, but their reactor's still putting out some decent power. We're going to make a killing salvaging this!"
"Bram! Bram! Get down here, quick!"
"What is it, baby brother?"
"There's a woman down here!"
"A woman? A dried up corpse?"
"No! Alive, unconscious on the deck! She just fell out of a stasis pod! I think she needs help!"
"**** me, are you kidding me? If there's a live person on this hunk of junk, we can't claim it as salvage!"
"I think she needs medical help, right away Bram!"
"Listen, we can't afford to lose this salvage, Gregor! Drag her ass down to one of those cryopods we found in the second hold and stuff her in. We'll claim we found the pod in some other wreck when we turn it in."
"But...!"
"Don't give me no butts! We need the money Eden'll give us for this."
"But...!"
"Gregor, it's either she gets stuffed in a cryopod, or it's out the airlock. I'll let you make that choice."

Revival

She was still sweating as they strapped her down on a table, almost like she'd just come out of a hot bath. Falling...

"W.... this?" someone snapped. Masculine. A bit whiny.
"Uh, Jane Doe," a different voice said. Soprano, harried. "All we have is a number, 0XU-45-ZQ39."
"What? Not even a file for this one?"
"What can I say, Doc, they couldn't find one."

She subtly checked - her limbs and torso was bound. She could feel the hum of a motor for the platform she was lying on. For what?

"Another lost file! Why do I only get the lost ones? Fine. Inject 5 milliliters of Adrenaline, bring her upright and let's wake them up.
First the table moved, then there was the pinch of the needle. After a moment, she opened her eyes.

"BWHAAAAA!" A figure in an Oni mask and a lab coat lurched forward, hands spread like claws. She stared back, unflinching. He took the mask off and leaned in, staring hard at her, then scowled.

"Nothing! No response what so ever!" he said, turning to the woman working at a console behind him. "Another burnt! Get her off to the ward and find me another icicle with at least a spark!"

Two male attendants she hadn't seen before stepped up beside her, undoing the straps, then picking her up and placing her on a gurney, quickly strapping her in. She could hear others approaching with another gurney, but they were already in a hallway.

She could see the ceiling. Oh good. But at some point, they were going to unstrap her again, and then she could escape....

She frowned. Escape... to where? Where was she? Who was she? Was she this 'Jane Doe'? It didn't feel right.

"Okay, boys," a new voice asked, sounding bored. "Who is this?"
"No file," one of the attendants unbuckling her straps said.
"Great, another one. What's the number, then?" he asked, impatiently.
"0XU-45-ZQ39..."
"Nine, perfect. Put her in that bottom bunk. Broom school for you tomorrow, deary. Let's hope you can learn to mop."

No robots, I figure someone's gotta keep tidying up.

Note: make a few small changes to remove mention of nanites.

Paradise Lost

Rejected