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Coelus Iter: From Infinity to Dawn

"Shit!" Miranda snarled, curling her body away as the second transformer blew out in a shower of sparks. Despite her figure hugging coveralls flares of pain prickled on the back of her hands and across her neck. She let out a long sigh blowing a lock of hair out of her face as she grasped for the multitool she had dropped when the overload had cooked the transformer.

"Virrr?" a small electronic tone inquired. Miranda opened her eyes and looked up to the ceiling of the maintaince conduit eight inches above her. A small approximation of a lizard, made of metal and plastic with bright green led eyes hung from the ceiling secured by magnetic feet, which it activated and deactivated by rocking its feet forward, giving it a smooth motion that none the less appeared skittering.

"Yer Vir, shit," she explained to the robotic lizard, which cocked its head and slipped sideways to investigate a nest of jury rigged wiring. Vir wasn't alive in the strictest of sense but he had a small cerebral cortex made of trageminite, a notorious unstable quantum conglomerate which, coupled with some of the fittings of a standard AI allowed him to display something like learning and freewill. Like most of the rest of this bucket, he had been cobbled together by whatever Miranda had been able to find.

Belatedly Miranda realized that Tryansa had been talking to her. She blinked twice and then flicked through the menu of her engineer's visor, scrolling back with quick twitches of her eyes. The visor wasn't as good as a helmet for the job, but these maintenance shafts were bad enough without getting your head wedged in every tight corner. Finding the timestamp she played the message forward at twice speed.

"Well Trys, I'm afraid we have also cooked number two transformer in the power train," she reported glumly, pressing her feet against one of the indents to slide herself along the shaft towards the access point ten feet away.

"Which means no guns, or at least no guns while we have the drive running," she corrected. These ancient freighters usually used a trio of transformers to bring power from the fusactor to the various ancillary systems. Unfortunately they weren't very well buffered and tended to fail when put under alot of stress. Miranda found the access point and swung herself out head first, catching a ladder rung and tumbling herself neatly to land on both feet and booth hands on the engineering deck.

"I thought I saw a couple of crashed ships on the scope when you were looking for somewhere to land this tub, maybe we can salvage?"

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NSFW WIP - Thousand Crown Underwear

NSFW corrections

The Knight's Song

The steed burst out of the mist like a leviathan lurching from the deep. So great was the mounts enthusiasm to escape the nightmare from which it had willingly followed its master, but nonetheless wished to leave, that trails of fog clung to it like questing fingers attempting to drag its victim back into its shroud. Juliette clung to the big beasts neck for dear life, her arms flung around it, feeling the great warhorses pulse thundering beneath her slender limbs. Despite a terrible urge not to look back, she found she couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder. Even as she turned she felt the stirring of a chill ocean breeze and the fog behind them seemed to slide away like spider web before a hurricane. Juliet drew in her breath sharply. Instead of a dreadful castle or palace of evil aspect, there was nothing behind them but a promontory hill rising above the night darkened see. The moon, the normal moon under which she had been born, shone in the sky, illuminating a few lonely stones that were too square to have been natural, but had long since collapsed into vine choked ruin.

“Iiyada preserve us,” she breathed, though the prayer to the Goddess of Song was lost over the thundering of hooves on the overgrown slate path that lead from the ruins. Though it was doubtful the knight had heard her, the shift in her body obviously aroused his attention. Unable to look backward in his armored helmet he instead touched the reins expertly, the horse zagged to the side, with a shower of sparks from his iron shod hooves, permitting the armored man to glance backward at the impossibly empty path on which they had come. With a second tap the horse straightened and then with a gentle pressure on the bridle he slowed the big beast first to a clatter and then to a stop. They were nearly at the base of the hill that the ancient road ascended and the unrelieved darkness of a night time forest swept in front of them like a dark green ocean. Juliette slipped to the ground, conscious that wherever they were, it wasn’t anywhere near the inn in which she had gone to sleep… how long ago? Hours? Days? Longer?

“I thank you for rescuing me Sir Knight,” she said, feeling absurdly pompous as she did so. A moment later she warped her arms around her body as the chill of the evening began to overtake her adrenaline of moments before.

Sum up your week in roleplaying in just 3 words

Like pulling teeth

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The carousing was in full swing as Sayeeda was shoved none to gently out the front gate of the old cannery. With deliberate ostentation she shot the cuffs of her jacket and then began to walk north east towards the spaceport. The road was littered with drunks and junkies so she cut cross country through the cactus festooned scrub land. This place was not entirely free of the human ruin of Teosinte but such desperados and burn outs as populated the place gave her a wide berth. Pussy was cheap in the city and an obviously armed woman with a clear goal in mind apparently didn’t tempt anyone overmuch.

Out away from the town itself the landscape took on a more pleasant air. Sayeeda wondered if more normal people might have enjoyed the warm night breeze and the subtle perfume of cactus flowers rather than calculating 290 degree sightline out to 15 clicks, noting several small gullies in which a half squad might be concealed, and mapping a line of retreat back to town and a break out towards the spaceport as possible options if attacked. Well she was who she was.

The spaceport lights, never entirely shut off grew brighter as she hiked across the increasingly barren landscape. Not many of these burned but several ancient flood lights provided a significant beacon. Not for the first time Sayeeda considered how shabby Teosinte was. There was plenty of money in the drugs that were produced here and it should have been enough to give the place at least a twadry splendor. Both gangs were clearly squeezing the people as hard as they could to hire gunmen and import the weapons and arms needed to keep them in the field, to the extent that term had any meaning to such bands of armed thugs, and the result was that what might be a tolerable place to do business was dying slowly on the vine. Not for the first time Sayeeda considered whether it might be better just to blast off now they had the charts the needed, find some other place and… and what? Find some other less risky more rewarding fight? The thought sobered her enough that for a moment she wished she had stopped at one of the bars for a bottle.

“Get your head in the game,” she whispered harshly to herself as she reached the chainlink fence which served as the outer perimeter of the spaceport. She had notice on her initial landing that not only did it lack electricity or sensors, but it was so rusted that its use as a security screen was laughable. She parted it by the simple expedient of driving her boot into the ancient corroded links close to one of the support poles, close enough that the tension tore the metal appart with a musical twang. Slipping through she began to trace the blast wall, walking counter clockwise till she reached the back gate within thirty seconds of her mental projected arrival. It wasn’t locked but their was a bar with several empty cans tied to it which would make noise if hastily removed. She pulled it aside with a clatter, cycled the door open and then slipped through, locking the door behind her. Passing through the underground access way, recessed into the dirt to prevent blast damage from obliterating the all she emerged onto the cracked concrete of the landing field. She could see the light of a jeep across beside the bulk of the Highlander and saw the familiar shapes of Saxon and Neil as well as Taya’s golden hair. Saxon appeared to be holding a gun on several locals who seemed to be very sensibly avoiding any sudden movements.

“I’m coming in from the west,” she broadcast over the comm after twigging the transmitter with a rewired nerve impulse. Saxon probably wouldn’t shoot her by accident, but startling a team member in a tight situation wasn’t a good move. Taya and Neil glanced her way and she jogged across the tarmac to join them.

“It is getting to be nearly time,” she informed them, ignoring the locals, both of whom had their hands up. She squeezed Neil’s shoulder briefly, glad that the Stinger hadn’t decided t have him killed out of stupid spite.

“Just got to get some gear.”

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Kind of gave up on this one :(

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

"It is not rising," Yarue stated flatly. The rain had finally abated but the wind sweeping the hillside was now chilling the Syshin to his bones, he didn't complain, but his discomfort was obvious. Syshin weren't cold blooded, despite their reptilian appearance but their evolutionary environment was warmer than many of those early humans had colonized. According to Mia the raft was now only a meter beneath the increasingly unstable hillside. Rene hadn't considered the fact that floating the trio of women the way he had would create what was effectively a huge sinkhole filled with quicksand. Bouradine and Yarue had partially solved the problem by hauling sheets of structural plastic from the Bonaventure to spread the weight of the rescue team as evenly as they could across the increasingly soupy soil. Why the pod wouldn't ascend any further Rene didn't know but a meter was close enough.

"Alright, help me unhook it," he told the Syshin as he closed the feed line by throwing the knife switch. Even through his gloves his hands ached with the effort of so much manual labor. Adrenaline and other stress hormones were beginning to wind down and he suspected that he wouldn't still be standing if it weren't for his genetic enhancements.

"Mia, reverse the flow," Rene told the AI as the hose came away from the remaining section of guide pipe. The pipe had been dissasembled section by section as they drew the raft upwards and then cast aside to be swallowed up by the muddy soil. The telltale flicked from green to red, and the hose sucked and gurgled as it drew water and mud back along its length. Awkwardly Rene thrust the end against the soil and it began to slurp up mud like a child's straw. Dashin and Yarue began to shovel away mud with their own entrenching tools, though that was orders of magnitude less efficient.

"I see it!" Bouradine called as the bright yellow high visibility skin of the raft came into view. Another thirty seconds of work head cleared two square meters of the rounded top of the raft and Rosaria's excited shouts could be heard both over the comms and as a muffled report from inside.

"How are we going to get in?" the merchant demanded, trailing off as Rene pulled a powered cutting bar from his belt and sliced through the top of the raft in a long wide circle. The vacuum sealant that had protected the passengers inside the raft was tough, but it gave beneath the counter cutting diamond blades like wood beneath a jigsaw.

"Thank the stars!" Rosaria squeaked, blinking and rubbing with irriation at her eyes at grit which the cut had drifted down over the three passengers. Rene felt a surge of relief as he caught sight of Solae, her chest still rising and falling despite her obvious injuries.

"Bel'sian are you ok?" Bouradine demanded, rushing forward and crumbling the wall of mud which protected the hole. Several gallons of filthy water sloshed down into the pod and the merchant lost his footing and slipped forward. He would have tumbled head first into the raft if Dashin hadn't grabbed him by the ankle and yanked him backward, saving Rene from having to shove the merchant back out of the way.

"I am safe beloved," Bel'sian called and then the alien leaped upwards and out of the raft. It was an extremely uncomfortable action for a human to watch, like a caterpillar hauling itself out of its cocoon with all four of her limbs and legs involved. She seemed to pause halfway out and then pivot, reaching down to take the unconcious Solae's arms as Rosaria sat her mistress up. Bel'sian lifted and then Rene and Yarue got a hold of the noblewoman and hauled her out, depositing her as carefully as they could upon the plastic. Rosaria was last to come out, all but sobbing with relief as Rene and Yarue hauled her up. By now a considerable volume of muck had sloshed into the raft and it was beginning to sink once more.

"Get clear," Rene instructed them all as Yarue and Dashin lifted Solae on a make shift litter.

"I think we have all had enough mud for one day."

___________

Within ten minutes they were back aboard the Bonaventure, Bel'sian and Rosaria swathed in blankets. Rene and Dashin carried Solae to the medical computer where the injured Savachev lay connected to the machine by several tubes. A red hologram showed the spacers injuries along with the word 'critical' in red text. In the confusion of the rescue operation Rene had forgotten about the spacer and hadn't considered the fact she was still connected to the computer. A military model would have a crisis module which would allow the computer to treat multiple patients at once but the Bonaventure could only handle a single patient.

"Patients condition is critical, disconnection not advisable," the computer reported as Rene keyed the disconnection sequence. He hesitated for the barest of moments. If Solae were awake she would certainly object to risking Savachev's life for her own sake. Rene punched the sequence and began the disconnect. Solae wasn't awake, and even if she had been, it was his duty, both to her and to the Stellar Empire, to safeguard her. Savachev had taken the same oath he had when she had enlisted in the Fleet. By any definition, Solae had to take priority. With a hiss of compressed air the spacer slid out of the computer, kept unconscious by the analgesic that had been pumped into her. The suppurations on the burns was gone, covered with a spray of synthetic skin. A sheen of sweat still coated her, showing that the infection still hadn't been purged, but Rene was going to have to hope that between what the computer had already done for her and whatever antibiotics they could administer, that she could be kept alive. With Yarue's help he lifted the spacer off the cot and onto a stretcher, and then carefully laid Solae on the cot. With a hum the computer drew her inside and began its work with a series of whirs and clicks. Rene slumped back, feeling all of his remaining energy leave him. Thank the Stars. Thank the Bloody Stars.

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