Suno filed out of the room to the hangar along with all the other members of the squad. He spent most of the time in transit staring idly out the window, wondering what exactly he was about to be dealing with. Gazing upon the craft, he noted that his guesses were right: the kitty did have claws. He was about to crew what may have been a state of the art warship. After hooking his communications implant up to the ship's network, Suno pulled a schematic into his vision and gave himself a little tour. He wandered briefly through the bridge, looked over the escape pods and labs, saw what was being stored in the armory, and inspected his quarters and his personal craft, which was awaiting use in the hangar. Everything was top-notch. Suno returned to his quarters and considered what to do with the rest of his free time. According to the information he got from the ship's computer, there would be a good two hours in hyperspace. That seemed like the perfect time to take a nap, especially because there was no maintenance that would otherwise occupy the downtime. This thought was occurring to him as he repacked and stowed his belongings -- taking care to look over them for any damage -- in secure lockers and drawers. He finished just as the engines fired, and, though he rather liked feeling the roar of engines again, he lay on his bed to absorb the vibrations. Of course, he wanted to sleep too. The second jolt wasn't anything he expected. He stood up immediately and grabbed a wall fixture in case of another. A quick scan of alerts on the computer showed no losses of pressure on the ship. Lex's order over the loudspeaker stopped Suno while he listened. It was probably not an especially bad incident if the captain was only calling them to a meeting. Or so he thought, securing his boots and heading upstairs, until a glance at an outside camera showed him what had happened. He hurried to the conference room and took a seat by the door.

Drew chuckled as he returned the handshake, "Yep, that's me." He said as he walked into the lab, "I don't know what you plan on doing in here, but let's hope you don't end up seeing a lot of me. I imagine your equipment breaking isn't exactly convenient." He looked around the lab to survey what kind of tech he was going to be dealing with, and for the most part, there was nothing he hadn't seen in his university days. The medical lab was something he'd grown fairly used to. On the research side of things, if he had to admit to himself, he wasn't the best versed in maintenance. Nothing in the lab was something he couldn't eventually handle, but he was going to have to do some reading up if Jack planned on using the research lab often. Last thing he'd want is a containment malfunction happen that he couldn't fix during experiments on some kind of dangerous material. He wasn't sure what kind of material Jack planned on working with, anyway. He stopped by one of several terminals in the lab and turned to face Jack. "It all looks to be in tip top shape at the moment, which I guess is to be expected." The Chimera caught Drew's attention again, being a distinctly different color than the rest of the lab. "So, a geneticist, huh? That guy's clearly not just a dog," he nodded toward the quadruped as he kneeled down toward it offering his hand. "Was he an experiment? And, I guess, more importantly, what's the little guy's na--" Suddenly the ship lurched violently, and Drew went hurtling face first into the terminal he'd been kneeling by. He stood back up with a groan, holding his nose. He moved the cartilage around a bit to find that it wasn't broken, but as he pulled his hands away they were covered in blood. "Well damn." He said aloud as he moved toward the medical bay, which thankfully had a sink and some paper towels, "That's one way to start a flight. So much for our new pilot." He joked as he washed his hands and attempted to blow out the blood clot. He knew very well from his experience with starships that whatever that was wasn't a pilot error, nor was it a malfunction. Something had either hit them, or some kind of shockwave hit them - with no alarms going off, no warnings from the on-board AI and no call from the captain, he assumed the latter. But that would have had to have been a powerful shockwave. Just after mulling those thoughts, Lex's voice rang throughout the medical bay calling for a meeting and announcing that the space station they'd just left exploded. As he did so, Drew suddenly remembered he hadn't been alone as he looked over toward Jack, "Damn, I'm an idiot, are you all right?" He asked, ready to head to the conference room whenever Jack was.

Rose watched the stars fleck past him until the slip space blurred them to the point where they were but white paint streaked across a black canvas. He was almost mesmerized by the speed that they were travelling, it was something that always amazed him every time he entered hyperspace no matter how many times he had done it. "Coming?" asked Amelia. Her voice pierced through his dreamy state, quickly bringing him back to reality. "Sure," Rose replied casually, as he cracked his knuckles. As he casually got up from the chair, the reality of what had happened fully hit him. It looked awfully suspicious that the space station had blown sky high just after they left. There was no way in hell that they wouldn't pay for this. As him and Amelia walked down a long white corridor with screaming fluorescent lights, he glanced at Amelia who was staring straight ahead and his thoughts wandered there. He was starting to notice that she was not all that bad looking; as he liked to say, he wished he could put his boots under her bed. "Y'know, you're really crazy about your ships," started Rose with a teasing grin on his face, "I'm actually surprised you haven't tried to make love to one yet." Rose grinned the grin that only he made as they reached the conference room.

Jack had always felt calm in his lab. The machines whirled around doing what they were suppose to do. It was a great feeling for the machines to be working like they were suppose to. "It is usually so quiet in my lab. Mendel, my AI, isn't the most talkative guy on the Earth. It isn't that bad when they break. The system locks down anything from getting out. So unless there is a catastrophic malfunction it should be okay. Hopefully.." He said as Ernie walked over towards Drew. The Chimera sniffed his hand and started to lick it, his tail wagging quickly. "Canis Lupus Alienus. A modified dog based Chimera with..." He said as the ship rocked forward. He managed to catch one of consoles and that kept him upright. Ernie looked around confused before checking on Drew. "Good boy Ernie. Oh that's his name." He said standing up and running into the med bay. He did have a bit of training in that regard. He grabbed a syringe gun and quickly injected the blue liquid in Drew's arm. "That should stop the bleeding or repair some of the damage. "He said as he put it to the side. "No real side effects so you should be okay. "Jack said as he walked towards the door. "Let's find out what the plan is. "Ernie walked on his heels out of the room. "So where you from, Drew?"

They walked in silence for a bit, which Amelia loved. The awkward pauses were basically what motivated her to start conversations in the first place. It was the slight coloring their cheeks put on and the very specific body language clusters which Amelia looked for and got excited about. Unfortunately, Rose didn't seem awkward, he had rather an absent minded look which Amelia attributed to what had just happened. She knew she should be concerned. The Roosevelt, the station they were going to be docked at in between missions, had just been utterly destroyed. In the back of her mind Amelia knew they were in trouble but somehow she wasn't feeling it. The bright chrome walls of the Vigilance were already working their magic on her, she felt safer inside the bowels of a star ship that she had done for over a year, back on earth. Anything was better than prison, even a glorious death. They were headed to their first objective now, Amelia reasoned ONI and the ESA would put 2+2 together and assume they knew nothing about it. However, the jobsworths back in Sol looooooved to make a fuss out of this kind of thing. Although even if they did now want to capture them, they'd have a hell of a time catching up now that they had a state of the art cutter. There was the possibility that the ESA had put some kind of remote kill switch which enabled them to override the Vigilance's systems and put them on whatever course they chose. She'd flag it up at this meeting. Rose started talking. His voice was gruff and at odds with the clean hallway in front of them. "Who says i haven't?" Amelia shot a cheeky glance over to him. After a few more seconds of silence she spoke up again. "I've always loved machines. My father owns an industrial complex back on Earth so i had a pretty free run of things. I eventually started going around with the pilots that tested out all the new spaceships, you know? By the time i joined the Academy i could practically fly every Alliance ship out at that time, and some that weren't even on sale yet." Amelia could hear her accent slipping out so she stopped talking. She could remember one of the pilots she'd befriended being present at the trial. He had tried so hard to remain on her side but pressure from his superiors had meant he stopped turning up to the court house. They reached the conference room; a few people were already there. Rose sat near the captain but all of a sudden Amelia felt too on edge to sit. She grasped the back of a chair with both hands and leaned very slightly on it from behind. A couple more of the crew filed in, some of the Aliens, a few new faces. There were more to come but Amelia couldn't keep quiet. "So what's the plan, keep calm and carry on?"

Ro'Essel's mind was open now and the errant thoughts of the crew filtered through her like some chaotic storm. She was slightly off center lost in their fears, excitement and anger the noise of their undisciplined minds almost staggering. But all this was better than the emptiness of solo thought of feeling so alone. She could sense in the humans a primary need to band together as their was among hers and even though they were unaware of it they all possessed a rudimentary gestalt. Desperate Ro'Essel allowed their gestalt to touch her so that she might be included in their company. As the human gestalt joined with her she was shocked by their hyper aggressive nature, humans it seemed were very warlike. As warborn Ro'Essel wasn't as intimidated as the softer castes of her people would have been; she was only surprised to find they were keyed to fight even in the absense of an enemy. As she walked into the conference room Ro caught from some there an innate distrust and even hatred directed towards herself and the other non-humans. So as she took her seat she pondered the meaning of their paranoia.

Once the crew was all in the room, Lex rose out of his seat, his arms folded as Eve's avatar popped up in the middle of the table, the same blue orb from before. She stayed silent as the captain began to speak. "Yes, Amelia, that is what we will have to do to. I have not received any messages from anyone since the incident, if they wanted us to drop the mission and go somewhere else then they would've alerted me by now. It is very sad that it happened, but we can't afford to divert from our mission. Though, I do believe that we may get questioned about it, word does spread quickly and our vessel was departing right as the station went down." "Speaking of the mission, we should discuss that in more detail." Lex said, then looked up Eve as her avatar disappeared and was replaced by a hologram of a large planet, it was similar to Earth, the land covered in lush green forests, the oceans filled with deep blue water which was clear enough to see all the way to bottom when enough light was present. "That is the planet Aur'axe I, the homeworld of the seclusive Aur'axe people, a humanoid race which typically stays out of inter galactic affairs. They very rarely allow visitors to their world and are a very secretive race. It was very odd when they requested assistance on a terrorist related problem, so we get to visit a world few outside of the native species have been on." "But please, keep to your best manners and do not ask too many questions or snoop around. The last thing we need is to piss them off." He said with a smile, then took his seat at the front of the table. "Any further questions?" He asked.

Well, things would just go exactly as planned, despite whatever the hell had just happened. Obviously, Suno was just as in the dark as everyone else, but he was running through some possible culprits in his head: these terrorists might have more interstellar reach than he knew about; someone aboard the ship might actually have done it; or, perhaps most likely, it was some other agent that he didn't know about yet. Still, the timing of the explosion freaked him out. He didn't want to come this far just to be framed for something he hadn't even done. He'd very much prefer to hang by his own noose, thank you very much. With that thought, his attention turned to the planet displayed on the table in front of him. It was really of borderline comical uselessness, so he assumed most of the others had optical augmentations running just like he did. His were giving him overlays from the ship's databases; they displayed information about the atmosphere, landmass percentage, locals' physiques, relations with humans and other species. Except for the last item, they might as well be headed for a planet on any system in the human domain. He'd run some checks in biological databases soon, just to make sure his weapons were properly suited. He hoped there would be enough information. Even with such a reclusive species, there should be some basic medical information somewhere, and if there had been, it had probably been gathered by the humans putting this mission together, cached into the ship's library. If not, he'd do some more searching. He'd collected some petabytes himself over the years, but none of it was very well-catalogued. He could automate something for the search, but... He started running some searches in the ship's library, hoping something would come up quickly. If not, he'd have some work ahead of him. Suno didn't really have any questions. He was pretty focused on making sure he knew his enemy. Once he'd gotten that down, he expected to be able to avoid offending them. He'd had plenty of experience both keeping his mouth shut and shooting the shit.

"Alright, good." Lex said as he looked over the crew, no questions raised which surprised him but it made his job easier. To be honest, he didn't know very much about the world anyway, just the basic information that had been transmitted to the ship. Just as he was about to speak again Eve peeped up, stating that the ship had just exited hyperspace and the autopilot was drifting it towards the world. He was again surprised, this time at how quick the jump had been. "Captain, several small vessels are approaching the Vigilance, they appear to Aur'axean starfighters, they are attempting to communicate with us" Eve said, her voice speaking into the conference room along with the rest of the ship as Lex jogged out of the room, heading towards the cockpit. The automatic doors came open as he bounded in, pressing a button on his captain's chair which displayed a hologram of someone. It was a head, but it was covered in a red and white hood which covered all of the face except for its shimmering yellow eyes, and top of the nose. The skin was a blueish grey, the eyes seemingly staring right at Lex who looked curiously as the displayed figure spoke, their voice deep and rich. "Attention crew of the S.S. Vigilance, this is Kos'Zor Voha Iafal'Hara, representative of the Aur'axean people. We were alerted of your impending arrival ahead of time but that you must have a full military escort towards the planet's surface as we have discovered that you vessel most recently departed from the Roosevelt Space Station, which since your departure has been utterly annihilated. We find this most peculiar and will take the necessary actions. Follow our instructions and no harm shall come to you." The alien said, as its hologram fizzled away, right as two fighters veered right over the Vigilance, seemingly leading it towards the planet. "Captain, the Aur'axean are requesting that once we land that all crew exit the vessel, they want to give it thorough search. They also request to question and scan each crewman." "I don't think they need to do that, maybe we can talk them out of that, but for now, do as they say, I don't want to start an interspecies war today." Lex said as he spoke to the A.I., then turned towards his crew which had followed him to the bridge. "Amelia, take the helm, bring her down gently right where they want you to. Rose, keep your eyes out, I don't think they'll try anything, but it doesn't hurt to be careful," He said to the pilots then turned to the rest of the crew. "Ro'Essel, we should take care of that mind linking right now, before we get dragged into something. Everyone else, suit up and prepare to exit the ship. We are still on mission, so take weapons, armor and any equipment you need. And last of all, stay calm, I had a feeling we'd get knotted up with that mysterious explosion..." He said, sighing as he walked out of the room, signaling for Ro'Essel to follow him.

Ro listens to the Captain then hears the announcement of the Aur'axean fighters and followed the Captain into the cockpit area telepathically where she observed the Aur'axean introduce themselves as being Kos'Zor Voha Iafal'Hara and how even though they'd requested the Vigilance help them they displayed distrust by demanding that they surrender the ship for what they say is a search.

She was curious about their motives and though she was unaware of the old terra adage "Distrust breeds Distrust" it was how she felt. She now hoped to get close to one of the Aur'axeans so that she might scan their thoughts and learn their truths..

The Captain then mentioned needing to link and at first she was going to do so but his demeanor told her that he wished it to occur elsewhere so she followed him.

Suno was not exactly pleased by these developments. They were walking into a situation of sure military inferiority without any guarantee from the ESA that they were still being backed. For all they knew, the planet's defense forces could be planning to destroy the Vigilance as it came down, maybe as a favor to the ESA. And then, think of all the fuel that was about to be wasted in this de-orbiting maneuver. Whatever, Suno wasn't paying, but still.

As for starting a war, Suno was pretty sure they wouldn't be much of an issue, for him at least. He rarely was the first one to start things. And even if something did go badly, Suno was pretty sure he'd be dead. The consequences really didn't matter to him at all.

Accordingly, Suno's line of thinking was not exactly positive as he walked down to his room and then the hangar. He inspected all of his weapons and equipped himself as best he could, ran a diagnostic test on his ship, and checked the results over manually. He walked back up to the ship's exit near the bridge, nervously tapping his fingers on his pistol. He stared at the airlock door, occasionally checking the readings of the altimeter in his hud.

"I have a bad feeling about this," he announced to no one in particular.