"Close... I got caught between a rock and a hard place. Except it was you know, a rock that could punch and that wall right there was the hard place. Just uh... Just fix it?" Malory clenched his teeth tightly and he was breathing slow but hard. He couldn't exactly focus on anything other than the pain in his shoulder. He heard the hissing of the commander and knew he was on her good side for now at least. He would probably talk about payment once the cap was back. For not though, he felt like giving her the tape roll free was the right thing to do.

"Is it broken? I swear if I see that rock again I'm gonna... I don't know yet. But something is gonna happen." Malory was in too much pain to think about the terrible things to do to a blind rock. Maybe get some googly eyes and put them on his face. Yeah. That'll show him. He heard the voice of the cartographer and gave the doctor a look of 'Get me out of here before I dislocate his shoulder.'

Annalynn could only smirk at Maggie's rant about procedure. However, the more solemn turn in the conversation quickly ended that. As Christian returned with the duct tape, Annalynn was pleased to see Maggie light up again - the way things were going, Annalynn might have to stock up on a stash of duct tape just to keep Maggie going. The ship needed her to keep it together, after all.

"You may be one of the smartest people I know besides myself, but you're a fucking animal, Nuts," Annalynn grinned, getting up from where she had been kneeling. "I still need our simulator fixed. My technological know-how only goes so far." She turned to exit as Lieutenant Conado came in, awkward as ever. He was a nice guy, however, and Annalynn had no problem with him.

She gave a nod in greeting, "Lieutenant. Good to see you, as well. Unfortunately, our nicknames were not planned, as I've been called Bolts since long before I even graduated. In any case, I should get going. Grab a bite before heading back to the lab." Annalynn excused herself from the server room to grab a sandwich from the cafeteria.

"Don't do anything irrational. The last thing we need is for something like this to happen again and for someone to suffer and even more serious injury," Possily death, but he left that part out as he continued to speak. "I say that not only as a doctor but as a fellow crewman, an incident like that could boil into something even worse. Set off a chain reaction."

"But, we'll head back to the medical bay, have a look at it. If it's just a dislocation then depending on the severity it could be nothing. A break is more complicated." The doctor said, trying to speak with words that weren't filled with too much medical mumbo jumbo. Then he motioned for Malory to follow him back to the medical bay, which wasn't far from where they were.

"So how exactly did you anger him so much?" Roy asked as they entered the bay through the front doors into a medium sized room, some tables on one side, various medical machinery all around as well. Two female nurses were around the room, speaking to each other as Roy entered the room, heading over to one of the tables, motioning for Malory to get onto it as he took a seat next to it.

Malory nodded at the nurses and took a seat on the table. He looked around the medical bay and all of a sudden his face went from as if he'd seen a ghost to that of a kid in a candy shop. He was taking note of every drug he could see. He was taking a mental inventory of what was there and how much it could go for and thinking about who he could sell it to. Hell, there were people on this ship right now who would pay a good price for this stuff. Prescription painkillers, stimulants, syringes and more. All kinds of drugs that he could sell or trade with. It's amazing how fast his mind was taken off of the pain when he entered this room. "So uh. what's wrong with it? It doesn't feel broken but it fuckin' hurts." he said, still staring at the painkillers he deemed to be the most valuable. His speech was slow and making it entirely obvious he was focusing on something else.

"We'll see, won't we?" Roy said as he hovered an electronic device over the injured area, an x-ray. Through it a in depth view of the bones could be seen. The doctor gave it a long look, just to make sure he was certain what he was looking at. Then he spoke in a reassuring tone, his eyes looking up to find Malory gazing off towards something.

"Well, the good news is that it is just a dislocation. Should be fine as long as you avoid any more fights and rest the arm enough." He added, then carefully grasped the shoulder bones and gentle maneuvered it, having done the same action many times before to previous patients of his.

"The pain should subside, though if you want I can prescribe you some relievers for the pain. Just take it easy, no more fights, doctor's orders." He said.

An unusually firm hand laid what felt like a bear's grip on Ensign Mallory's shoulder, squeezing the dislocated joint.

"Hey Christian. Stop acting like you're going to fucking case the joint and come help me with something."

Turning around, he would notice his superior officer was carrying an armful of protein and granola bars, Snickers, Babe Ruths, 3 Musketeers, and (most appropriately of all) Milky Ways. Behind her was a service cart loaded up with box after box of the same, hundreds if not thousands of energy-intensive candy bars packed with carbs and sugars. She chewed on a partially opened Snickers, handling it like one of her cigars. Presumably she wanted him to push the cart.

"What, are you deaf Mallory? I said now, ya big baby."

Kal said it sternly, meaning Mallory didn't have much of a choice in the matter. You see, the boss lady was more than aware of the illicit business he conducted at port and aboard the ship. It was hard to fool the eyes and ears of a super-soldier, but thankfully for the Ensign, anything that may have constituted a potential breach of protocol aboard the ship didn't seem to bother her if it didn't involve a smoking gun barrel or a bare-knuckles fist-fight. She let him do his business unmolested whether he realized it or not, and even kept a secret from the others, but such patience had its limits...

Amy watched silently as events escalated in the server room. She made sure to stay clear of everyone's way, but she felt like pulling her sidearm and bellowing for those fighting to leave. The thought of using her Deck to call the Administrative head down to get everyone out echoed in her head, but the thought disappeared as some of the worse of the idiots in the room left. The assistant N-N poked his head in to see what had happened, but quickly disappeared.

"Tawha eth kafuc didi yathe od ot eth raserve?" She mumbled to herself, before shaking her head. "While authority is here, I need to ask in the next staff meeting that the damn fucking keycard security be updated! Only the networkers and higher rankers are supposed to have access into here." Amy shook her head. "And by the way, the servers are still up. While the servers being down would help them cool, they need to be up or we'll have a mob at our door again." She tapped on her Deck, which was beeping with every message she got. "You know what, this is it." With a groan, she rapidly typed out a message and sent it out on the shipwide network.


All users, priority

Network usage is now on Restricted level. Only ranks Lieutenant+ and bridge crew (along with Neural Networks (standard protocol, nothing special)) are able to message. Thanks to the overflux, the server is overheated.

Thank you for your cooperation
Amy Skydawner
Neural Networks Manager

Amy sighed, looking back up and watching Mason along with the others, looking flustered.

Quickly being brought back to reality by a supersoldier grabbing his just put back in place shoulder as if he there was no problem with that. He hissed in pain a sharp breath as he clenched his teeth and eyes once more. "Fuck." he let out as an angry whisper. Kal began talking to him, she was one of the few people who knew his true job on the ship and DIDN'T buy anything off of him. It was surprising, but what could someone with one of the few things he couldn't get his hands on want from him? Nanomachines were not something the union let slip out of their hands and into people like his. He heard his orders and expected to go check some rooms but noticed a cart full of... Candy bars?

"Um. Why are there so many candy bars? Shit hurt before, I don't need the bone turning into dust." He put his hand on hers, not even trying to pull it away. "Am I pushing this cart?" He wanted to yell about her grabbing his freshly relocated and still very much in pain shoulder but he had to focus on playing off getting caught looking at the pain pills and various other drugs. "And doc, just give me the strongest stuff you got, put it infront of my door in a box DISCREETLY. There's a small panel at the bottom right, just needs a kick and it'll open. Hide it in there, if it's not empty, don't read any labels." Malory hopped off of the table. He couldn't remember if he had taken the few bottles of a paralyzing neurotoxin he was bringing to a buyer in union territory only produced by animals on the planet they just left. Shit paralyzed you for up to three days, very VERY illegal, but very valuable as well. Let's hope he put it somewhere safer.

"HA!" Maggie yelled, hitting the server block with a fist for good measure. She'd finally gotten the damn thing working again—the overheated or broken motherboards had been replaced with some questionable soldering, bits of wire, and duct tape, with enough coolant to drown a rhino thrown in for good measure. They'd have to actually make repairs and replacements soon, but not just yet.

Dusting her hands off and sticking her tools back in the bag on her hip, Mason glanced over at the Zenohunt who was...still here? For some reason?

"Good idea restricting access," she said absently, before blinking and looking around at the newcomers. "Wait, shit. Where's the StelCart guy—right here, okay, that's convenient. What's your name—Tornado? Conair? Conado, that's it—Conado, how close are we to Iorus II? I want to get a department meeting in before we have to go groundside." She looked back to Skydawner, raising her eyebrows. "You can get everybody together in the meeting room, yeah?"

Amy gave a salute to the commander, saying a simple "Yes ma'am. Can do," before tapping on her deck, selecting all of the department heads (including the commander before her). Normally, an administrator would send out a message like this, however, with the network set to be restricted, Amy could understand why the commander wanted her to type it. That, or it was just pure laziness, as she could type out a message herself if she wanted. Creating a new message and marking it as high priority, she began typing.


All department heads, priority

Commander Mason is calling a meeting in the meeting room, now. All department heads are to head to the meeting room as soon as possible.

Regards
Amy Skydawner
Neural Networks Manager

PS: You may wish to hurry. Commander Mason will probably not appreciate people being late, as she has been very busy today.

Amy hit send, before looking back at the mail, her eyes resting on the words 'Amy Skydawner'. She always felt a little funny using the human translation of her name. Back in Yasanctuar's navy, she would usually write:


Daregars
Yam Yaskradawne
Laneura Kanetwors Ramanage

Looking up at commander Mason, she spoke. "Ma'am, the message has been sent. Orders?"

"Uh," Maggie said intelligently. Few people asked her for orders. Even the babies down in Engineering usually just had commands yelled at them, they didn't ask for more. "Don't you have work to do? If you really wanted to, I guess you could go through the Captain's missed messages, sort them by priority—" Mason sighed, running a hand through her short, chopped hair as she headed out of the server room and toward the lift. "Ask somebody else, kid, I have no clue what the Admin staff is supposed to be doing right now."

"I can't even ask the head since he's probably heading to the meeting!" Amy calls out as Mason walked off. "Tadamni, she thinks to herself, shaking her head. She begins to stroll to the door between the servers and the neural networks room. As soon as the keycard reader beeped, she walked in. "Crewman Jimmy, break out the chess board." She says, sitting down. If she wasn't getting orders, she was going to enjoy her time with her Networks assistant. A smile broke out on her face as she moved her first piece.

The message caught Annalynn as she was about to enter the science labs. Sandwich in one hand, datapad in the other, she did a quick 180 and headed towards the meeting room. If Maggie was calling a department head meeting, she was likely even more concerned than she had already implied in their previous conversation. Not like her concern would be without reason - two days without the captain and the Audacia was already closer to resembling a pirate ship than a Union Fleet ship.

In any case, Annalynn would have to keep things moving. She wrote a quick message addressed to the Science department:

"To all Science personnel:

Until order is restored, continue to work on your assigned tasks until further notice. That said, given that our resources are now split in three ways between upgrades to our ship's weapons, the search for our Captain, and the requests from Security (which, may I remind you, is not a priority, but must still be fulfilled in due order) I understand that the stress of the workload is a bit much to handle. But this department is more than capable of handling it and I expect our research and development to maintain a similar time frame.

Remember, my door is always open.

Commander Annalynn O'Neil

PS And to the people working on Audacia's weapons, please remember that manual calculations are always required to support your findings in simulation. I think we all remember what happened to the USS Dudacek."

Annalynn mentally shook her head at that incident. They had completely forgotten to tell the targeting computers to recognize Union ships younger than ten years and the Audacia almost fired on the Dudacek. That had only added yet another reprimand on the ship's long list...

By the time the message was written and sent, Annalynn found herself at the meeting room. She allowed herself in, nodding at the security guard posting outside as she entered.

Unlike the other crewmembers, Kal received the update directly from her nanocomm, the message appearing in her field of view like a GUI. She blinked and rolled her eyes strangely as she moved the message through her field of view. Scrolling through the VR interface was a complicated task requiring many precise, controlled movements only made easier by the fact that Kal had years of practice doing it literally since birth.

"Tch," she sighed as she closed the message. "Bitchy's really going at it today, isn't she?"

She slapped Christian on the back, probably taking the wind out of him.

"Okay, you worthless sack of shit! Let's get this hauled back to my quarters ASAP! Looks like I've got some meeting to attend or whatever the fuck..."

The hit from Kal was a lot more gentle than anticipated. As gentle as a supersoldier could make it, Malory though to himself. "Who's bitchy in this case? With you that could mean anybody." He inquired his superior. Something was up, and if Kal was the person that got the message it was something important since very few have the ability to send her somewhere and one of those people were missing.

He laid into the cart with all his weight and barely got it moving with just his one good arm. "Jesus christ, how much does this weigh?" He had to use a lot more strength than he thought, but once it was moving it was fine. And here was Kal wheeling it in like it was a wagon of girl scout cookies. "Man, I need to get some of those nanomachines. I'd love to be 6'5, 6'6. Make someone who's not me pull around candy bars. Maybe even hold some of the guns I've seen without having to prop them up on anything." He began to drift off of from pushing the cart, slowing a bit despite being told to do the job ASAP. "How much do you think your body is worth with all those nanomachines running through it? I bet you're the most expensive person I know. No lie." He looked up at her with a chuckle and a smile. She stood a good half foot taller than him and could probably kill him in a second, but to him these were words of compliment. The average person's body didn't come close to being as valuable as her's.

Kiera was aware of the events unfolding on board ship, however she was simply in no position to do anything about them and therefore elected to maintain an aura of general ignorance. Something that she was especially good at. People had a habit of seeing her as some slow, almost dim-witted creature that was oblivious to what was going on around her. The majority of the time she was happy to maintain this image. It helped immeasurably in her line of work. At the moment she had secluded herself to the ship canteen, much to the consternation of the ships cook and was mixing a bowl of what looked like cake dough. On the other side of the serving window a few crewmen looked on in horror, fearful that she was going to make them taste it. Kiera for her part was happy that some of the crew seemed so eager to try her latest creation, humming a beautiful tune as she stirred the sweet tasting doughy mixture.

In the corner of the kitchen the ships cook sighed and shook his head, unable to do anything to save the next crewman that caught Kiera’s attention. Luckily the number of victims would be limited, with word of Kiera cooking spreading through the ship like wild fire that resulted in hungry crewmen and officers alike to gain superhuman endurance in an effort to avoid the kitchen. Though at least it kept costs down. After all, when Kiera was cooking men realized just how tasty military rations truly were. She stopped stirring for a moment and put her finger into the dough and sampled the mixture. She nodded in satisfaction and continued starring. This alarmed the cook as the better it seemed to taste to Kiera the worse it always seemed to be for everyone else.

Luckily for all concerned a buzzing noise inside of Kiera’s coat caught her attention, causing her to put down the bowl and pull out a device that with a flick of her finger lit up the air in front of her with all kinds of data, displayed as an interactive holographic matrix. In the top corner of the screen a notification in the shape of a letter was bouncing up and down urgently. From Amy Skydawner, courtesy of Commander Mason. Sounded important. She should probably attend. It was a shame that the cake would not be ready in time. Everyone would be so disappointed.

Vas stretched out when he awoke, nearly losing his balance from his chair. The sudden loss of footing woke him quickly, forcing him to smell around in panic for anyone nearby. No one was in the cafeteria, thankfully, but whomever was watching the security cameras was probably laughing their damn asses off.

The Warock left the cafeteria quickly, betting that some nagging dick was probably wondering where the useless navigator was. As he made his way, he noticed Kal and Mallory down the hall with a cart full of some strange things wrapped in shiny wrappers. Vas walked up to them, in blind interest, and grabbed one of the shiny things.

"Hell are these things," Vas asked as he put one up to his neck and started sniffing. "Smells like a bloody shit."

Maggie slouched into the meeting room just after Annalynn, and immediately flopped into a chair, kicking her greasy boots up onto the formerly pristine table. She was flicking through a datapad, organizing requests to engineering into 'shit for later', 'time wasting shit', and 'actually look at this shit.'

"Mission briefing," she grunted, before realizing that was...sort of out of nowhere. "Iorus II mission is coming up, we need to decide who's going and who's cooling their heels on the ship."

Roy nodded at Malory as he made his request for the meds. He thought it was kind of odd that he wanted them delivered in such an anonymous fashion but the doctor didn't inquire about it, probably something Malory wouldn't have told him anyway. He barely even noticed that Kal had entered the room despite being such a hulking figure.

The doctor had moved over towards his desk, making a note on the datapad on it with the instructions Malory had given him for the delivery as well as what meds he felt he should give to the man. As he looked up he noticed the cart full of candy which almost made him vomit, all of the sugar and calories nearly making him sick.

Part of him wanted to say something about Malory moving the cart with a shoulder in weak condition, but by the time he was about to say something the two were out of medical bay, right as the doctor received a message on his datapad. He gave it a quick read, then looked towards the two nurses in the room.

"I have to attend a meeting with the other department heads. Keep everything in order here. Alert me if anything urgent occurs." He said to them as he adjusted his outfit, rolling down his sleeves, tightening his tie, even running a comb through his hair. Then with a nod towards both of his subordinates as he left the medical bay, heading straight for the meeting room.

He entered right as Maggie was speaking, something about a mission on a planet and who would be going down planetside. He quietly took a seat, trying not to make too much of a noise as he did it.

"What exactly is the mission, ma'am? Search and rescue? Routine patrol or reconnaissance?" He asked the acting captain.

Kiera stood in the corner of the meeting room, dressed in the attire that came with the job. Not that she minded that of course since the Diplomatic Core actually got some pretty good threads compared to other branches of the government. Her shoulder length strawberry blonde hair was tied up into large ponytail as it always was when she was on duty. She stood there in silence, her eyes closed and a gentle smile on her face as if she was having a most pleasant dream, her head tilted ever so slightly onto its side. Of course that was just how Kiera was when the matter at hand did not require her direct and immediate attention.

“If you don’t mind me saying so ma’am I hardly the see the need for my services down on the planet. If this were an official diplomatic mission I would have been informed already,” she said in a neutral tone as a matter of fact. As a diplomatic attaché aboard the ship her orders came not only from the Captain of said ship but also directly from the Diplomatic Core, the latter of which often overrode the former. “With that said if you have need of my linguistic skills you have only to ask,” she offered after only the slightest of pauses.