Space Voyage #1

[TheBigDog]

I was looking into the face of the badguy... It was...

KickAssClown! In our haste we had captured our own man. And he was pissed!

"GOD DAMN IT! GET OFF OF ME!!" was what I saw his lips saying unmistakable through the screen. I signaled the others to easo off of the pressure. KAC's communicator was not working, he apparently had taken a kick to the face that had damaged the unit. I pressed my face screen against his to let sound to transfer directly between us.

"He's in W2," was the first thing he said, as he lifted his arm and pointed to the parked Wrangler. The rest of what he said was not proper for repeating. I began helping KAC to get the tangled bolo lines off of his suit. He pulled my helmet to his mask again.

We all turned our attention to the Wrangler. We could see in through the windows. The badguy was sitting in the seatn and looked like he was trying to power it up. Where the hell did he think he was going? We were in deep space. He was either crazy or suicidal, if there was a difference.

I triggered my communicator to Janus at command. "Janus, kill all systems on W2 except the speakers and make sure there is atmosphere in the ship. I want this guy to hear me. Let me know when it is ready.

"One moment, BD... OK. W2 is out of commission. He can hear whatever you say. The atmosphere will take about a minute to complete."

Wranglers have great visibility. They look like a minisub with long robotic arms of grasping, and other long robotic arms with thrusters at the ends for manuvering with some authority. The hatch is in the back through the main chassis of the machine. The front is a glass bubble with 180 degrees of visibility. We were gathered all around the ship. I was standing dead center in front of the assailant. His body language showed desparation. I tapped on the window to get his attention. The atmosphere had built enough that he heard the tapping. He looked right at my face.

"Hey, Pyro. Did we capture that guy, or did he end up drifting in space?"

I held my eye contact. I could feel it destroying his will.

Pyro just chuckled.

"How about you KAC? Do you remember what happened to that guy who tried to kill you?"

"Beats me, BD," answered KAC.

I held my gaze. The man in the capsule started to cry. He was broken. He would not resist us anymore. It was time to collect the trash.

Bill

[/usr/bin/mcp]

[CHILD PROCESS]
All of my nodes are converging upon node address 4-1A-56-13. All of my nodes have their directives - all of my sensors indicate that there is one biological life form that has been severely damaged, and that two more have entered the section. Focus on this. Protect biological organism from harm.

{Connection}
Not-selves refer to node address 4-1A-56-13 as "cargo bay 3". Category creation - not-self alias. New class compiled and loaded. Creating syntax web.

[INPUT]
Motion in raster - the biological life forms appear to be interacting with each other. What is the purpose of this interaction? Why have they restricted the movement of biological organism with alias "KickAssClown?" There is another biological organism within a non-biological not-self. His network address is not identifiable. [BEGIN ANALYSIS OF FOREIGN BIOLOGICAL COMPONENT]

{Memory Search Complete}
KickAssClown corresponds to network address 5A-53-62-8F. Network address 5A-53-62-8F corresponds to early data log. Repeat Data Log.

prophesy.main:/Users/kac/secure$ ./mcp -rAc 2> mcp.err

{Corrallary}
That is my birth. My birth was executed by KickAssClown. Therefore KickAssClown is my mother.

[DIRECTIVE]
Assist network address 5A-53-62-8F at all costs. All other priorities secondary.
[END DIRECTIVE]

END OF LINE.

[ronthepon]

It was a very good chance for me. Infact, it was the best possible chance that I would get.

TheBigDog had gone with Pyro and JQ, I hoped for their best and watched the two leave the place. All others were staring transfixed at the screen showing the place. Fighting the hard human emotion of curiosity, I made my way to the nearest vacant screen I found.

After looking around to see if anyone was watching my way, I hastily uploaded a little bit of data onto the mainframe from a little side dump I had created earlier. Ofcourse, I had to ignore the horribly disorienting wierd nonsense already written.

Smiling inwardly, I removed traces of my presence on the desk and moved back to the chair TBD had left me on. Then deciding against the action I injected myself with another injectable, and with careful self control proceeded to walk slowly towards the medic bay.

After the excellent breakthrough in my campaign in capturing the ship's information access, I no longer wanted to see it all for myself.

With a last glance towards the screens showing the bugger's feed I moved out of the bridge.

[Jay-qu]

Man that was a rush, I hadnt felt like that since high school parties, following my best mates to whatever end, all for honour and pride of our creation, The Prophesy - I would truely die for the cause.

[TheBigDog]

I didn't want to take any chances with the badguy. If we took him out in the cargo bay with no atmosphere we ran the risk of him damaging someone's soft suit causing serious injury or death. With him safely tucked into the Wrangler we could take a different, more creative approach.

We called in another MEL operator who grabbed the Wrangler and carried it out of the bay. All of the Wrangler systems were off, so the worst he could do was break some switches while we carried him off to the nose docking bay. We would manually dock the Wrangler to the ship and brin him in where we have atmosphere to minimize danger.

About five minutes later we were floating in the weightless airlock awaiting the emergence of out badguy. We had all exited our space suits, and were in our working clothes again. The badguy was in a soft spacesuit, so he had far less mobility than we did. And he needed to emerge through a 1 meter porthole that was tactically poor for attacking us. Four of us stood by the door. Pyro, Jay-Qu, KAC and myself. The maintenance crew had moved off to evaluate the engine and shocks. The ER crew was already back in the HAB ring helping to attend to the folks brought there.

I couldn't get it out of my mind what this prick had done this to the Prophesy. Done what? I really didn't KNOW he had done anything except for tangling with KAC and stabbing Kayra. Hell, that was enough. That was more than enough. I still hadn't decided what I was going to do with him. But we had a procedure for that too.

Everything was sealed. The door was open. I recalled the last time I had been here. I had entered through this door two times. The first time when I came to the ship just a few weeks ago. The second time when I returned forom the moon just 4 days later. I had not been back to the airlock since then. In fact I had not been to zeroG at all.

He started to emerge from the door. Head down. Helmet still on. He hands were ahead of him, and had he been standing they would have been above his head. But in the zeroG environment he appeared to fly slowly out of the door like superman. We all backed off and kept a safe distance. His toes dragged in the door as he was finishing his exit, stopping and rotating him into a relative upright position. Floating freely he had nothing to give him leverage to fight us.

I began to see details about him for the first time. Through the window before I could make out his expression, but I could not clearly see his face. I was just noticing now why that was so. He was filthy. The normally white softsuit was soaked with a dark liquid, that had a familiar odor. Hydrolic fluid. He looked like he had been swimming in it. His mask was so smeared with it that I still could not clearly see his face.

******************

In the engine chamber the three maintenace workers were doing an eyes on check of the areas cool enough for them to get to. It didn't take long for them to find the area of interest. Hydrolic fluid filled the spaces. Atomized, it stuck to everything in its path leaving a thin layer of itself on all surfaces. There was a hatch still open. It looked from the hand marks like the place the badguy had exited the maintenance area. Right next to the hatch was a set of hydrolic lines that were part of the shock absorber system. They were the source of the hydrolic fluid. They had all been cut by something very sharp. Hydrolic fluid had flooded out of them. This was the low pressure system. Had the same thing been done to the high pressure lines at temperature the ship would have been lost. Although the loss of fluid appeared large, the reserve tank was still well above nominal.

******************

We floated in the airlock for a long moment before we anyone acted. It was KAC that broke the silence.

"Take off that goddamned helmet you son-of-a-bitch!" Words from KAC that said it for all of us at that moment.

He tilted his head down and reached up to remove his helmet. The latches didn't cooperate with the slick gloves. And it took a few efforts to get the helmet off. The face that greeted us was a shock. Shock so great that we felt ourselves draw back even in the zeroG. It wasn't an unknown figure standing before us. It was one of our own. Someone we had known from the very beginning. And I was torn between my rage and my disbelief.

Floating before us, suit soaked in hydrlic fluid, hair soaked in sweat, face soaked with tears was Racoon!

Bill

[Jay-qu]

Up untill the point that helmet came off I was filled with rage, I just wanted to rip his head off.. but once I saw that it was racoon, the rage dissolved and instead I was filled with betrayal.. why, why would you do this to us, you love this ship like the rest of the crew, I just couldnt understand it..

[Racoon]

Originally Posted by Jay-qu

Up untill the point that helmet came off I was filled with rage, I just wanted to rip his head off.. but once I saw that it was racoon, the rage dissolved and instead I was filled with betrayal.. why, why would you do this to us, you love this ship like the rest of the crew, I just couldnt understand it..

"Fools!...because I saw my opportunity. And I realized this story needed a saboteur for the plot to make more sense! HA! did you not think I have a plan B and plan C in place?? While you driveling bafoons have been pre-occupied with petty assignments and technical glitches, I have had my goals set on Infinite Glory!", Racoon relays in a tone of masterminded lunacy.

"You'll unhand me this instant! or I will detonate a powerful explosive device I've planted. Bwaahhaaa.. which will send you into the vacuum of space to become a freeze dried astronaut floating aimlessly for all eternity"

Jay-qu's grip lessened at the realiziation of Coons diabolical scheme. The thought of utter destruction to the Prohesy was enough to knee-jerk react him to a near catatonic state. Ronthepon nearly dropped into the fetal position.

"And not only that, I have programmed all the pleasure droids to follow only My orders! Bwahahaaa.. You will have no sexual pleasure of any kind.. The droids will self destruct before you could possibly dream of circuit conversions.
In fact, they are now at my command." (see post #466, pg 47)

Big Dog, Pyro, KickAss, Ron, and Jay-Q look at each other in complete disbelief and astonishment. Not fully realizing the depth of the imminent threat they face.

"If something happens to me, the pleasure droids are set to sabotage and automatically detonate afterwards... Assuring your demise."

A brief moment of silence ensued...

[TheBigDog]

I looked back and fourth to my companions; Jay-Qu, KAC and Pyro. Racoon had taken a sudden turn from sobbing to crazy. He was pressing his finger against his forearm like he was working a remote control, while raving at us in a strange high pitched squeal.

Jay-qu had moved in and grabbed him by the forearm, but now released it to watch the strange display. Racoon's mind was gone. He was all over the place.

"Do we have anything we can sedate him with?" I was answered with shaking heads and some gibberish about pleasure droids, a topic that had been a long standing joke when the crew roster had originally been posted.

Jay-qu tried to reach out and grab him by the arm but Racoon pulled it back and started shouting about how he was in command, not us, and that he would blow us all up. He continued to poke himself on the forearm like it was a button.

Then he was saying something about "our precious bodily fluids..."

It was clear to me that he was deranged. We needed to get him to into the ER for testing. I had known Racoon for ten years. He was a not a violent person. And he held the dream of the Prophesy as dear as any of us. Whatever had happened to him, I did not know. Now we needed to get him under control without any further harm to anyone.

I called to command. "Janus. We need an ER team to the airlock. They need to bring a traqulizer of some type." I thought about this for a moment and added, "Something strong."

Now we had to wait, and try not to let Racoon hurt anyone else, or himself. I was never a beliver in insanity pleas, but I could not reognize my friend standing before me. There was something terribly wrong with him, and I needed to find out what.

Bill

[Jay-qu]

"I think hes bluffing sir" I whispered to BD "Theres no way he would have been able to get get explosives aboard.. unless " BD face went ashen grey. There was one souce or explosives on this ship - our fuel!

He must have damands, "What do you want coon" the bitter taste of disrespect in my mouth.

[KickAssClown]

Looking over at Jay-Qu I said "Chill for now, W2 is jamming all wireless channels at the moment. However, if he does have something I want to know, so anyone got a tricorder handy."