Bang. Bang. Bang bang bang—

It had been two days since Captain Ray had vanished, and Commander Mason had been working on this damn machine for just as long. Half of her was deep into the guts of the main replicator, her legs sticking out into the air. Technically, this shouldn’t be her job—there were a few junior engineers who were passably skilled—but dammit, crawling around in machines was stress-relief, and the whole damn crew was stressed. Everything would be back to normal soon, though, right?

Bang bang bang bang bang crack.

With a satisfied shout, Maggie pulled out of the replicator, rolling up her tools and wielding her wrench like a trophy. The replicator started whirring again, all of the lights that had previously been red showing up green. Packing her things away with one hand, she input a command with the other, and by the time her tools were away, the makings of a truly glorious BLT sandwich were before her.

“Munch away, kiddies,” she called over her shoulder to the hungry assembled crewmembers, eyes alight with unholy glee as she started putting together a sandwich fit for a king. “But stay the fuck away from my sandwich or I’ll have your doorbells playing Space Jam at three in the morning.”

Yup. Things could go right back to normal.

Vas yawned loadly into his terminal, stretching his arms as far as the crampted clusterf**k formally known as "the bridge" would allow, and then some. The Warock cracked his neck, releasing a wet sweet crack that he'd replicated almost ten times just today. He was beyond bored. Months ago he was on the frontline of his home system beating alien birds to a bloodied pulp, and this is what he chose to do instead for the rest of his enlistment.

"Join up with the Union they said," Vas muttered as he scrolled through some news sites back home. Cost of living was going up and he had to prepare on moving back to the city after all of his. Small apartment down near Hygin Park in Dele City maybe. Shitty area but he'd lived in worse. "You'll get to relax they said. Work on your social skills they damn said. Too much field work they said! Workaholic with a license to kill!"

Vas could feel the person working next to him give him a confused look. Humans were easy to read. Fleshie bastards poured out pheromones and little noises like animals. Vas could literally hear the guy's heart changing beats better then some medical equipment.

"Sorry," the Warock muttered, "f**king getting, what do humans call it, 'cabin fever'."

New message from: Bridge
New message from: Cafeteria
Alert!: User found accessing unauthorized material
Warning!: Server nearing stress level maximum
New task from Maintenance: Reboot hangar door control
Reminder: Status report to Commander Mason to be sent
Alert!: Server stress level at 95%

"Zariana, please help." Amy mumbles, tapping quickly on her console. Ever since Captain Ray had gone missing, some sort of 'command council' had been erected, yet Amy still didn't really understand who was in true command. She just followed orders. Halfway through writing a reply message to the cafeteria, another alert popped up. Alert!: Server stress level at 99%! Resetting! Amy brang her fist down on her desk loudly, causing the Neural Networks assistant to look at her sadly. He, too, had been in the process of writing something when his screen had winked off. This happened for the two of them, however for the other computers, all of which would be connected to the network, would fail to access the database of the ship. The server was state-of-the-art, built to sustain a lot of load, however the massive rate of message influx had just decimated it.

After a few minutes, Amy went back to typing her message, before working on her report to Commander Mason. It simply was a mail with several attachments of files, and a note about the server crash.

Dear Commander Mason

On this file are attached files of reports from individual departments. I have to forward them to you, as the administrative head does not want any more reports. He got fed up again.

On a major side note, the server crash we just encountered a few minutes ago was not a fault on the neural networks department. We are receiving a massive message influx, of which ninety percent is not to be sent to us. Everyone is nuts.

Regards
Amy Skydawner
Neural Networks Administrator

With a deal of hesitation, Amy sent a copy to her department head as well, before she started to sort through other messages with her assistant.

Maggie had the sandwich halfway to her mouth when her datapad chimed. She paused, looking over slowly, when the chimes started to sound every few seconds. Snarling curses under her breath, she leaned out of the way of the flood of crewmen to the replicator and snagged the pad, bringing it over while she chowed down and made her way out of the caf.

Attached files...administrative head being a bitch as usual...server crash...blah, blah, blah, the ship was falling to shit because they lacked proper leadership, she KNEW, alright? Mason sighed, sending off a quick reply to Skydawner—heading to server room now, going to try and reroute power, meet there pls—before changing her course. The server overload was just one more thing on her list of shit to get done, and fast—a panicking crew was a crew that broke stuff. A lot of stuff.

Amy pressed enter, sending a reboot command to the hangar doors. A moment later, there was a beep and a green box appeared on the screen. Amy sighed out loud as she closed the box. At least that job was done. There was another chirp, a direct message to her. Amy's eyes fluttered tiredly. She swore, if it was someone else asking if someone could be sent to repair the coffee maker, Zariana have mercy...

Heading to server room now, going to try and reroute power, meet there pls

Amy smiled, and typed a reply of two words. Yes, ma'am. She let the assistant know where she was going, before she moved into the next room, taking her Admin Deck with her. Due to the link between the servers and the Neural Networkers that monitored them, they were literally seperated by a single door. She scanned her keycard on the door, which released a chime as she was granted access into the room. She stepped in, and stood, waiting for the arrival of the officer. She continually checked her uniform to ensure it was okay.

Vas grabbed the door leading into the server room and forced it fully open before it had a chance to close. The alien wasn't undeniably furious at the moment, but when all communications leading in and out of the ship, including internet, suddenly dropped dead many reported seeing steam funnel from Vas' pores.

"Is this the server room?," Vas asked as he 'looked' around. He could feel the Zenohunt girl clearly but the machinery was a little fuzzy. The Union tech wasn't Warock certified apparently.

"Look kid, get this crap working won't yah," Vas ordered. "It's bad enough that I have to deal with dozens of nobodies on the bridge pissing their uniforms without the Captain around. I'm a damn Navigator with nothing to do! Get it fixed!"

Sitting in one of the darker corners of the bridge with a few other crew members around him. He made sure he chose the spot that the cameras couldn't see. One of the few blind spots, maybe a foot or two wide. The ship had amazing surveillance capabilities but a few spots were safe for his area of expertise. He did one last check, probably not a good enough one for what he was about to do, but good enough to know that there was nobody who would care watching. He reached in his bag and pulled out a small metal sheet with some wires on it. It was a holographic disk made specifically for porn. Weird porn, inter-species porn and the like. He himself didn't enjoy it but he had a buyer who was paying a decent price for it. "Ok, which one of you is the dirty pervert who wanted this? Who's the bastard that wanted a quick jerk sesh before looking for our god damn captain?" He looked at the three low level crew members all blushing and spit next to their shoes. "Come on, this was hard to come by and I ain't holdin' on to this thing for more than another hour. I have actual important business to tend to." After a bit of staring an exchange was quickly made and he handed the holo-porn off to his dirty customer before stepping a mere inch to the right and entering the camera's view once more.

Maggie's head popped out from behind a block of servers, and her eyes narrowed. "Leave the kid alone, Rocky—sorry, Lieutenant Rocky," she growled (to be fair, growling was her default voice). "Ain't her fault that everyone's been using the Extranet nonstop for the last two days. Or the message app. Jesus, if you're one deck away from me, you can come talk to me, Krugers—"

Her rambling continued as she ducked back in, hissing as she burned her fingers on overheated boards. She stuck a hand out behind her, wiggling her fingers invitingly. "Hand me the coolant and some q-tips, will you? Can you get finger burns? No, of course you can't, come here and be useful."

Vas snarled back and motioned beside Maggie, grabbing the q-tips and coolant. With rocky hands, the Warock grabbed the scorching boards and ripped then out of their homes without any hesitation. Vas didn't even feel a thing as he plunged his arm back inside the server in search for more.

"I can barely make out anything in here," Vas complained as he grabbed what felt like another overheated board. "This shit feels like it was made half a millennia ago by my specie's standards."

Warock tech usually revolved around their senses when it came do to maintenance and full on restoration. Every bolt and screw had to stand out to them for anything to get done, and Union tech didn't seemed to follow that philosophy. Maybe with an echo-emitter, he could get a good idea.

She should probably complain about the rough treatment of such delicate things, but the boards were scorched to shit already. "Fuck, I'm going to have to go Mallory," she muttered. "I hate that guy." Maggie nudged Rockland's hands out of the way and got to work with the coolant, taking some of the heat off of the irreplaceable parts and checking what could be patched up quickly. Swinging a tool around her finger in a circle, she pulled the goggles down from on top of her head and got to work.

"Well, Jesus, sorry, I'll make sure everything on ship is covered in goddamn braille," she snapped back, wrenching a part out with a grunt. "Sorry, Lieutenant, that's basically our last priority right now. Just...yank what I tell you to yank, when I tell you, got it?"

Server Room

Aside from the rustling and ripping noises coming from the Lieutenant's rough treatment of the servers, there had been a persistent shuffling and groaning noise in the background of the server room even since the crew had started to gather there, but it had went unnoticed due to the incredible load being placed on the Extranet and the servers going absolutely wild. Either someone was downloading twelve zettabytes of pornography or... no, it was probably just the pornography. Either way, it made things hard to hear, at least when you weren't actually trying to be annoying. But the white noise was broken when someone's neck made a really loud and obnoxious cricking sound.

"Hey Old Ironsides, mind keeping it down? I know you literally got rocks for brains, but some of us are trying to fucking sleep here."

The chief of security was an abnormally tall and well-built woman by human standards. It was a miracle she'd gone unnoticed, even with all the noise being made by the overclocked servers. Yet here she was, sleeping in the corner with a cable plugged into a port at the base of her neck, likely attempting to charge her nanomachine augs as much as possible. She yawned rather loudly, and cracked her neck in the opposite direction before sticking a finger in her ear to pick out the wax. She wiped it clean on her camo pants before looking around at the crew who'd assembled.

"Hey Mags," she said. "You got the replicator back up and running yet? I'm starving. Oh look, Bitchy is here too."

She cast a neutral eye on the canine Neural Networker, who she'd never particularly liked.

Walking down a corridor dragging his index finger along the walls, Christian winking at every passerby he knew personally and making a clicking noise with his mouth. He was heading for his bunk to put the credits he was just paid into his personal safe until he could get on planet and put it in a bank. His door was coming up when he heard some awful noises coming from the server room and chuckled knowing exactly why the servers were probably overloading. That little holo chip had so much weird and gross porn on it that it had to do at least some damage to the servers when added to the current already stressed out state they were in. He walked right passed, hoping all the noise muffled his cackle enough to sneak by unheard and drop off his cash. The heat coming from the door caught him off guard, as well did the fact he heard his name followed by the phrase 'I hate that guy.'

"Hey, I like me enough for the two of us." He shouted back not registering who was behind the voice saying that.

Vas gritted his teeth taking in deep breaths as not to explode. This woman could fight like some of the ladies back home. He was completely sure that the woman of Chernohaz would make her an honorary Warock if the chance arose.

"Well, don't mind me if I accidently rip out some important conponents," Vas threatened with fire in his breath. "Not like 'the dumb blind alien' could tell what he was grabbing at. I hope your commanding officers understand your lapse in judgement."

"No physical fights before 0900," Maggie threatened, but she didn't even bother to come all the way out of the server block. "Kal, lay off. Go eat a Snickers or something, fuck, I don't know, the replicator should be working again. If it's not, I'm going to punt someone out the airlock. Rockland, please don't break our ship more than it already is, this is going to be hard enough." At the yell from outside the server room, she jerked and swore when her head banged on the strut above her. She gingerly pulled her torso from the machine and shouted back over her shoulder, "GET YOUR ASS IN HERE, MALLORY, QUIT PRETENDING TO BE OFFENDED, I NEED YOU."

Kal shrugged. "Hey, I never said that. Sounds like someone is projecting."

She turned to Maggie. "Seriously? You better not be pulling my fucking leg here Mags, because I ran out of Snickers a day ago. I'm about ready to start chowing down on the crew here, and not in a sexy way."

She got up and stretched, bending back and forth. She was itching for the first real breakfast she'd had in days, and anyone else eating in the cafeteria had better pray they'd finished before she came in and broke the machine again.

The beeping was absolutely relentless. The console just didn't quit: message after message after message, all from various people both within her department and from members of other departments, primarily Security. Annalynn took a deep breath; she was glad she was blessed with the patience to deal with this. Many others on the ship weren't so lucky to be gifted with such composure under as much stress. That said, it didn't help that her personal console was linked up to her personal handheld communicator, so every beep from her computer terminal was matched with a vibration on the desk.

Not that Annalynn was busy. She was just trying to fill the latest work requests from the Security department - various weapon upgrades to implement, ideas they had that could be implemented, et cetera. On top of that, there was the standard workload that Annalynn was hired to do, which was improvements to the Audacia's weapons systems across the board. Nope, she wasn't busy at all. Her tech geeks were supposed to be cranking away at targeting software, trying to optimize and calibrate wherever necessary, but with the disappearance of Captain Ray, quite a few of her people were busy brainstorming possibilities for how the Captain disappeared and where she could have gone.

Just then, the door to her office slid open, one of Annalynn's ensigns standing at the doorway with a look of shock on his face. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am. We, uh... overloaded the simulation again, ma'am. The good news is that the signs from the simulations were positive while they lasted."

Annalynn sighed. This had been a common problem recently - the ensigns got a little overzealous, overtasked the computer running their simulations, and blew the whole damn thing up. "It's alright. I'll see if someone from engineering can send someone up. Dismissed."

The ensign saluted, "Yes, ma'am," and left the room.

Annalynn turned to her console, ignoring the onslaught of messages before her to open two new drafts.

The first was as follows:

"Maggie,

The kids did it again. Overloaded the computer and it burned itself out. Can you get someone to take a look when you can? Not a priority, as it's good practice for them to run their own calculations to support the simulations, but it'd be nice to have a working simulation computer again.

Thanks,
Bolts

PS Can somebody please remind Security that Sciences is not limitless in its operating capacity and that we do, in fact, have better things to do than entertain their endless requests for sidearm improvements?

PPS I think the kids figured out a more effective targeting solution for the Audacia's guns. Hopefully, this will lead to less incidents in which we fire on our own people. Take a look when you're free so we can figure out how we can implement it properly and in coordination with Engineering."

Annalynn couldn't help but release a small smile as she hit send, both at her affectionate usage of "the kids" to refer to her people and at the rare expression of stress she just let out in her message.

The second message went to Security, and was notably less casual:

"Commander Kal Rama,

I understand your people's needs for personal firearm improvements, and they are being addressed by the Science team. However, relentlessly messaging me with demands to speed up your upgrade requests is, unfortunately, not going to change the reality that my people have more pressing tasks to deal with, such as the disappearance of our Captain. If you would be so kind as to alert your people to this fact, I would be very appreciative.

Many thanks,
Dr. Annalynn O'Neil"

Hopefully that would stop the barrage of messages Annalynn's computer was still suffering. Annalynn nodded to herself and sat back in her chair, taking a moment to relax.

Peering into the server room he noticed everyone tearing out parts from the server that any human would easily burn themselves on. Only some rock monster would be able to.. oh that's right there was a rock monster doing it. "Jesus christ what is going on in here? Who downloaded all the porn?" he chuckled. "What's the sitch boss?" He said, looking up to Kal and then to the commander. He rested his hand on what he thought was just some metal next to him but quickly felt his hand burning. He quickly retracted his hand smacked his elbow on the door frame behind him in quick succession "Fuck ow shit god damn" He blew on his hand and started shaking it.

"Yes, it's replicating Snickers again," Maggie said, rolling her eyes, but there was the slightest upward motion of the corner of her mouth. The slightest. She didn't give a shit about these people, shut up, you know nothing. "Go and chow to your heart's content." She was ready to dive back into the block when Christian waltzed in and promptly injured himself, and she couldn't hold in the (frankly disturbing) cackle. "Problem, Ensign?" she said gleefully. "And it was probably you who downloaded the porn, you cretin, but first things first, how long will it take you to get new server boards delivered?" Her datapad was buzzing again. Twice. Three times. Six times. Fuck it, she'd get to it in a second, she just had to solder one last connection for this patch job—

"Well if you ever decide to chew on someone the good way, keep me in mind," Vas told Kal as he felt and heard the scummiest guy on board make a fool of himself. The Warock sighed and turned to Maggie, unamused.

"Can we just get this over with so I can leave. Immediately."

All of Vas' reserved patience was completely tattered and worthless now. All he wanted was to do now as find an empty space and just soak in some silence and loneliness for a while.

"Fuck, uh, not until I know where we land. Not much space delivery going on in this system but I have ground contacts that could get them in say, three or four hours after landing?" He was still shaking and blowing on his burnt hand. "Where are we headed next anyways? I could set up the deal as soon as that's sorted out." He spit on the ground again. It was a bad habit he picked up but he just couldn't stop. The poor janitors had to mop it up but he had bigger things to deal with.

He turned to Vas who was obviously annoyed and smirked. He didn't say anything since he was technically superior to him. Guy looked as angry as a rock could possibly look. "Jesus christ what did you do to these boards? Rip them out bare handed?" He observed them for quality, maybe he could resell them but from the looks of it they were simply ripped away with very little delicacy.