"5.6 billion credits for each year in development, 500 million per individual unit." She looked at Ensign Christian. "That means me. Also, I don't know if you're trying to appraise me or hit on me, but stop it. It's really fucking weird. Flattering in that 'being worshipped by the little furry men on Endor' kinda way, but weird."

Kal turned around and snatched the candy bar out of Vas' hand without looking.

"They're called candy bars, Rock-Biter. Little cookies and nuts covered in caramel and chocolate. I'd say you have a sense of humor for comparing them to turds, but that would mean you could actually see what you're fucking looking at, and we'd all look like shit-for-brains instead of just one of us then, now wouldn't we?"

The super-soldier ripped the candy bar in half and shoved a piece in her mouth, wrapper and all, making exaggerated chewing noises.

"By the way, they're fucking delicious."

She swallowed, and went out of her way to burp as close to Vas' gills as possible. Let him get a wiff of that.

Malory chuckled at her assuming he was hitting on her. "Sorry, but you're not my type. I prefer a woman who, you know, isn't a supersoldier. A nice girl, not made of machines. Oh, and not that tall." He continued pushing the cart with one arm, noticing that as he was walking everyone got very busy very fast after seeing Kal. Having that effect on people would be nice, maybe if they knew that he wasn't really security and actually had some of the more powerful guns in his room they'd dodge him too. Of course he didn't have Kal level powerful weapons, but he had some good ones.
And as this annoying cart pushing quest carried on, some fool of a rock monster had to question what a candy bar was. And he called it disgusting! That was unacceptable. "So gross yeah, says the guy who I saw drink a bowl of fake slugs yesterday." he looked to the Warock, unlike Kal he wasn't able to just know what was around him without looking, and unlike Vas, he could look around. "And she's right, you should try one unless you're like a dog and this sort of thing kills you. Either way, try one." He let out a manly giggle, if that was possible. He was afraid to reach onto the cart and grab one because his superior could easily turn his wrist into dust. He spit on the ground next to him.

"I'm not sure if you are just an asshole or too stupid to realize your doing that," Vas commented after Mallory spat on the ground for maybe the hundredth time. "And nice try with the burp, kid. I give you an A for effort."

Vas reached his hand in the cart again and brought another candy bar to his gills. This one smelt even worse, maybe the harshest smelling of them all. The Warock rubbed his hands all over the wrapping of this mystery food, getting a blurry idea of what this abomination was called.

"'Snickers'?," Vas questioned, "the fuck is a snicker? Sounds like a derogatory term or some shit. Next guy I get in a fight with, I'll call him one of these."

Vas unwrapped the candy bar and smelt at it hesitantly. It smelt terrible. Every sense Vas had told him not to take a bite and keep his mouth as far away from the Snickers as he could.

"Yeah, no. This is probably actual shit. No judging, but damn this does not smell healthy at all. Just, no."

Maggie narrowed her eyes at the datapad before her before setting it down on the table. She'd like to wait for Kal to show up, but dammit, the woman could read and if she was spending her time bashing in Mallory's head somewhere...well, that was probably more productive.



"Should be a simple pickup," she said cheerfully. "Down to the mining colony, grab the goods, pass 'em over to some station a few star systems away, then piss off again. Captain ain't here, so it'll be a breeze as long as we stick to the story—Ray's off on some diplomatic shindig with Union officers, classified, blah blah blah. Questions?"

“The Captain left on a diplomatic mission, yet her senior diplomatic advisor remained behind?” Kiera said in reference to herself, shifting her position so that she was now standing upright with her striking purple eyes meeting those of the chief engineer. She shook her head and made a sound of disagreement while maintaining her friendly demeanour. As talented an engineer as Maggie was she was no liar and it showed in her attempt at explaining away the Captains disappearance. Kiera on the other hand was an old hand at this kind of thing, with several lifetimes of experience under her belt. Experience that she felt that she should offer now.

“That will not do, such a story is too easy to disprove by anyone with a mind to do so. I understand your concern but you’re going about this all wrong. May I?” Kiera said as she took a seat opposite the chief engineer. She offered the chief engineer an award winning smile before she continued. “Lies are not going to help in this situation, not like you think they will. Trust me on this. May I make a recommendation, as you senior diplomatic advisor? Rather than lie, simply avoid the truth. For example I see nothing in this mission briefing that would require the Captains direct intervention. Is it so unreasonable to assume that she might have more pressing concerns aboard her ship? Isn't that why she has people under her command?”

Maggie stared at Keira for a moment before shrugging. "Sure," she agreed. "You're the...talk-y one, anyway." She'd always found the...host...body...thing a little unnerving, but she was more than willing to let the social stuff slide. Within her own department, Mason could get a little feral, sure, but outside of it? She never wanted captaincy, and was more than willing to let someone else take the job. "Let's just, uh—avoid it, then. Be all aloof and shit. Sure, works for me," Maggie continued, shrugging again and folding her arms. She glanced around the room, raising her eyebrows. "I'm headin' down there, anyway. Need to check out their markets, see if there's any replacements for the server boards. Any other suggestions for the ground team?"

Annalynn nodded slowly as Maggie and Kiera discussed the most diplomatic solution to talking away the captain's disappearance. "Commander Mason," Annalynn kept it formal, as always, "the most challenging part will be convincing Station Yankee III that Captain Ray is too busy for them. It is likely that their current station head will at least want to briefly discuss the package we are delivering with the Captain. Diverting attention away from our lack of a Captain isn't too hard, but it will be more challenging than convincing the miners on Iorus II that Captain Ray cannot be bothered with them."

Slightly adjusting her position in her seat, Annalynn continued, "In any case, I suggest that I or a qualified member of the Science department go ashore, as well. After all, someone has to verify that we aren't being ripped off. And despite my better judgment, I also nominate both Ensign Mallory and Lieutenant Rama. The ensign will need to restock his... wares... and someone will need to keep him in check. Our chief of security does an excellent job of that, I believe."

“The talk-y one? I’m glad that I’ve made such a strong impression on you Maggie,” Kiera said in a cheerful manner. She was not so highly strung that such a harmless comment would cause her any insult. Kiera turned toward Annalynn and nodded in partial agreement with what the scientist had to say. “Somewhat true, however unless the station head is a personal friend of the Captain they are not going to want more than an authentication code and a copy of our orders. Both of which do not require a face to face. Station heads are very busy individuals even on a quiet day, it is unlikely he will push the issue if it saves him time and the explanation is reasonable.”

Kiera thought a moment. “The truth is that no matter what we do there is always going to be the risk of discovery. It cannot be eliminated entirely. So for now we should act as if nothing was wrong, do the best we can and hope that providence provides. You never know, we might actually find the Captain,” she said cheerfully.

"It's not supposed to be fucking healthy, it's supposed to taste good and be full of sugar and other things that are really, really shitty for you," Kal responded sardonically. "Why do you think I'm packing so many of these fucking things? Eating healthy and shitting regularly isn't the best way to build the kind of calories I need to power my nanomachines in an emergency situation. Say, like, when we're getting fucking shot at. It pays to have a little baby fat, alright?"

She snatched the candy bar away from Vas before he could waste it or do something else stupid with it and tossed it back on the cart.

"Hop fucking to it, Mallory. Let's get this shit back to my room before the meeting starts. I mean, it's not like we'd want to miss that, right? Fuckin' assholes..."

Kal mumbled curse words angrily to herself.

Christian heard the order to speed up in fear of missing a meeting. The amount of sarcasm building up in his body was almost measurable by medical instruments. "Oh no, missing the meeting I'm not even invited to. End of he god damn world scenario." He layed into the cart with his one arm still resting without pushing it. He ignored the Warock because of this, the wound was still fresh and he didn't want anything to do with it, seeing as hurting it's feelings wasn't happening. The cart sped up a little but not too much, and the eta probably didn't change. He had no idea why he was even pushing this cart, Kal knew he wasn't really a security officer right? She wasn't actually his boss, that was well... Captain Ray. Hh thought to himself abuout how at least Kal was better than some of the other choices on the ship. Could always be worse.

"Where even are we, I can't see past all theses god damn candy bars. Are they even real? I haven't had a non replicated candy bar in forever" He lied. He had a few back in his room, along with real fresh fruit. He had hid some on other parts of the ship but only the captain and a few others knew of their locations. They were kept in vacuum sealed bags so nobody could sniff them out. Those little bits of food were too precious to just give away.

"Fucking humans and their shit-food," Vas muttered as Kal and Malory made their way to the security chief's quarters. "Different strokes I guess."

The Warock simply shrugged and made his way back into the bridge, finding little resistance making it back. Everyone who was no one was still there, seemingly paralyzed into medial nothingness without their captain. Vas had little time to know the human woman named Ray, but she definitely left an mark. She was maybe the only human he could think of that garnered his respect.

With no captain and no real plan other then sit idle in space, Vas reattempted to access his terminal and get back online. Luck had it that Internet access was restored, allowing the Warock to boredly browse news sites and try and look busy.

"Checkmate!" Amy declares, a big grin on her face. "I win. Two to one." She says, smiling. With a stretch, she rose from the table, moving to the server-room door. "We should get back to work. Start monitoring the server, I'm going to see how it's doing internally before figuring out if I should change the network usage restriction." Crewman Jimmy nodded, then began to follow Amy's orders before catching a glance of her tail as she moved into the server room.

Once in the server room, Amy began looking at the server's components. The damn thing looked poorely, but she was going to have to change the level lest she have a riot at her door. Having the captain missing did not help anything. She would've known how to keep control. After a few minutes of examining the servers, Amy moves back to the Neural Networks room, sitting down. "How's it look from your end?" Amy asks her assistant. "Dagoo," he replies, which makes her eyebrows raise. "Have you been learning Zenospeak?" She asks. "Well, I'm trying to work out what you say when you curse." He replies

With that, they got to work, trying to turn on safety on the servers and make sure everything was okay. Finally, servers managed to struggle online, however they were suffering a lot of load. Amy sent out a global message letting everyone on the ship know that the servers were now back to being unrestricted. Almost instantly the server load jumped to 80%, and she held her breath. Luckily, it stayed there, however it was touching the danger level.

Meeting Room

Finally the candy bars were delivered to Kal's personal quarters, a rather spartan room filled with exercise equipment and empty boxes full of candy bar wrappers, and Ensign Mallory was dismissed to continue his work or attend the meeting with his superior at his leisure.

The doors to the meeting room slid open, or they would have had the Audacia not been the old bird it was. Instead, they got stuck halfway through opening. Kal forced the pneumatic steel doors open the rest of the way and stepped into the meeting room.

"Okay, let's get this shit over with," she said, sitting back in her chair and resting her feet on the table. "Who fucked up and how, and were they any of mine? Was it Christian again? Or are we just going to shoot the shit about the captain for the millionth time and hope Aladdin'll to rub his magic dick and make everything better if we just keep talking about it without doing anything?"

Kal had advocated a full search and rescue mission (with Union requisitions) for the captain numerous times, in true "Never leave a marine behind" fashion. However, she'd been denied each time.

"Nice of you to show up, Kal," Maggie said dryly, folding her arms across her chest. On her end, she didn't think a standard search-and-rescue for the Captain would do much good at this stage—there were a handful of planets they'd visited around the time of her disappearance, and even more space stations and other ships; she could be anywhere. They needed to do this smart.

"Pickup and drop off, Rama, we do actually have a job this time," she continued. "You wanna tag along, or stay here and wear out my replicator again?"

Malory proudly attempted to clap, causing some pain in his shoulder strong enough to encourage him to not clap. He was done with this bullshit job and could go back to slacking off and probably selling drugs that were hopefully delivered without a problem. Kal invited him into a meeting, to which he promptly declined. "Listen I uh, no. Meetings are not my think babe." He patted her lower back, luckily aiming higher than her butt and avoiding a terrible fate, regardless of how she took the unintended advance. A crushed pelvis was just as bad as a crushed skull.

"Ahhh, finally, I can get back to not doing security things." he sighed, as the doors were forced open behind him by his boss. Christian pulled out a holopad and started looking at a list of weaponry. Some of it was listed as illegal, some of it labeled doomsday. Only a few of them had check marks next to them, marking them as in stock. None of the doomsday devices had received a check, but an rifle designed to destroy the strong nucear bonds of molecules was there. His pride and joy, the most dangerous thing he had ever owned. A rifle that could reduce anything into a cloud of molecules unable to bond together. If only he had a reason to use it. His holopad continued scrolling, showing wanted posters, silhouettes with contact information under them and finally planets with a list of rare or dangerous materials there. "Ooh, a grenade that kills all life that it touches, including grass? Where are those... Hmmm, where is Lemea?" He asked aloud to himself. He continued on past the server room, headed toward his bunk.

"Kal, this is a topic we have discussed repeatedly over the last couple of days," Annalynn said softly. It was difficult to convince the gung ho Security chief into acceptingaccepting 'no' as an answer, but few people stood up to Kal's attitude.

She continued, "We were just going over our mission to Iorus II. I was suggesting that you and Ensign Mallory tag along with myself and Commander Mason in the ground team, as well as discussing diplomatic solutions to evading the topic of our Captain's disappearance, which I may remind you," Annalynn raised an eyebrow for emphasis, "you are not to discuss with anyone. That means no more Search and Rescue requests. The Science department is currently looking into Captain Ray's disappearance and it will be handled in due time, but the Audacia cannot afford yet another reprimand, so please, co-operate on this with us?" Annalynn smiled warmly at Kal, hoping it would ease the subtle blow of her words.

"That should bring you up to speed. So, are you coming ashore with us or no?"

“Ah! Like the dulcet sweet tones of an angel, it’s nice to see you Kal,” Kiera said cheerfully despite the obvious sarcasm. Unlike the rest of the crew who were a part of a rigid military hierarchy Kiera was not strictly speaking a member of that same military. A member of the Diplomatic Core she had some authority within the military structure but she herself possessed no official rank therein. As such she often left out rank when it came to talking with most members of the crew and expected the same informality in return. Needless to say some crewmen and officers found this unsettling, others it put at ease however. She turned to face Kal but did not get up.

Kiera let Annalynn speak first, nodding in agreement. [colour=violet]“I understand your frustration at the situation Kal but Annalynn is correct, this is no time to be trumpeting the captains unexplained absence. There is much at stake, much you cannot see. And we are not doing nothing, each of us has been trying to locate the captain or at least work out what happened to her. I myself have been, how should I say, pulling some strings. But it will take time, since we cannot be so obvious about the situation. [colour] Kiera said, aware that Kal was very unhappy with the way that the situation had been handled thus far.

Roy stayed quiet, the others speaking as the doctor thought about the mission. If it was as simple as they were making it out to be then he wouldn't even be needed on it. Of course it was never that simple. The absence of a captain threw a wrench in there and really raised the possibility that something might complicate the mission. Of course he didn't know for certain and was just spouting paranoid thoughts, but it was his job as a doctor to worry for the potential safety of those under his care.

"I think I'll stay on the ship, ma'am, doesn't seem like you'll need a doctor for a pickup mission." He said, glancing at Maggie. Roy almost mentioned something about that they should have some high ranking personal stay on the ship, to keep everyone from eating each other alive and have at least some semblance of order.

"Besides, I think Dr. O'Neil and Kiera are more than enough brains for the mission." He added with a smile.

Kal grunted. "Bah. Buncha fuckin' pussies..."

Military demerit or the threat of discharge held little importance to the super soldier. While she hadn't quite pieced together what she'd do without the Audacia and her crew, she'd already been given the boot once. She was sure she'd be able to figure something out. Maybe. Probably...

... okay, she honestly had no idea where she'd go if she lost this job.

She sighed heavily. Reaching into her pocket, Kal angrily ripped into another candy bar, chewing loudly before swallowing. "So what's the job then? What are we humping and what are we dumping?"

Maggie helpfully tossed a datapad at Kal's face, trusting the supersoldier's reflexes to avoid a broken nose. "Read and weep," she said dryly. "Real boring stuff, just a pickup here, but the first person to say The Words Which Shall Not Be Spoken is getting a kick in the nuts." The phrase 'what's the worst that could happen?' had only been said once on the Audacia. Almost immediately after, several irreparable cascade failures had occurred and at least once crewman had died. The crew had a healthy suspicion of any phrases even vaguely similar ever since The Incident.

She glanced around the table, counting off on her fingers. "Alright, so—Bolts is coming, Kal, that's you if you're in, do we even want Mallory to come, and me. Is that enough?" It was a genuine question—it wasn't like she'd had any experience putting together ground teams before. She was also a little desperate for someone else to take charge—she did NOT want the Captain's chair.