It didn’t quite look like it was sinking in yet. Maxi was quiet as the newcomer and potato brain had a small back and forth- he had no idea what the hell this rite of merger was, but judging from the cold, dead glare potato brain was receiving it had nothing to do with what he was suggesting. It was a little bit amusing to watch, but unfortunately potato head wrapped him into the conversation again. Maxi nodded as he gave specifics to the repairs his arm needed- really wasn’t a problem for him to fix the organic part, though he would need help with the robotics. Though, there was one big problem that still remained.

He put a hand on his waist, looked at Arex, and said “Mhm, yeah, yeah, No. Screw you.” If this guy genuinely thought that he would get help from Maxi after being all around an imbecile and insulting the guy more or less to his face, he had another thing coming. “Looks to me that you know how to fix the problem yourself, though. Have fun with it.” he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture towards Arex, as if to wave him and anything he had to say aside, and went over to the cupboards. He thought at least to grab something for his own headache before going downstairs to the lab.

@Dark Light@PlatinumSkink

Arex sighed, 'so it was going to be like this'. He looked around and was glad Lataniva was the only other one in the room. She was perhaps just indifferent and emotionally unattached enough to let him get away with anything he might recklessly do.

Arex hopped off the desk and went over to examine his arm, the thing was pretty heavy even for him. He thought about attaching the hand around Maxi's throat and leaving it there to slowly crush his wind pipe as he struggles madly against it.
It brought a silent grin to his face.

Taking a deep breath he calms himself and swallows his pride. His short fuse aggression and anger would do him no good here.

"C'mon Maxi." he playfully and loudly whines as he goes about searching cupboards with his one arm. Clumsily displacing things as he fumbles about all the medical supplies, pill jars, vials and utensils sprawling everywhere. He speaks over the ruckus of noise he makes as he continues searching and collecting.
"The least you could do is help me find what I need!" he exclaims, Arex then proceeds to awkwardly hold a vial in his mouth while he tries to stab it with a needle only guiding himself by his reflection.
He was surprisingly agile and precise, this however didn't stop him from later dropping the vial to shatter across the floor. "Oops." He says with a fake sincerity as he injected the contents of the needle into his shoulder. He looked to Maxi with an innocent questioning gaze that asked "well?"

He could either help Arex or allow him to continue making a one armed mess.
"Your not still upset about your little bot are you? Look, it looks fine now." Arex says giving a wide smile.

@Tickout

Deleted sorry!

@Turbowraith@Dark Light@PlatinumSkink@Tickout

SAL accepted Maxi's thanks and headed off without another word, remembering that he had to get back to the lab to check in on the new AI.

Grayson kept glaring at Arex, even as Lataniva stared him down and expressed to those present that she intended to do a Rite of Merger.

"You do what ya must lass, but when you're done with him, I'm next"

"What the hell is going on here?" Another voice cut in.

---

Stryker nodded at Joe as the man mulled the offer over.
"You think on it for a bit, and let me know when you decide. I've gotta run"

The captain, intent on heading directly to speak with Renli and Rento, was sidetracked once more by a beep from his datapad, indicating an incoming message to the ship's Long-Range Transponder. With a flick of his hand, he sent the message up to his private terminal, and re-routed the elevator to take him all the way back upstairs.

'This captain bullshit is gettin pretty overtiring awful fast' he thought on the way up. Stepping out of the elevator, Stryker's ears were met almost immediately with a crack of glass and Grayson's voice uttering threats coming from the open door to the med bay. Stryker sighed aloud and redirected himself to the open door.

"What the hell is going on here?" He boomed "You know what? I don't care. Churrox, like it or not, you're part of this crew now, and as of a couple hours ago, our only medic. Fix him up. Lataniva... I don't know what part you've had in this up to now, so you do you"
Truth be told the Dalentian frightened Stryker a little. After seeing her powers, even filtered through the drone's perspective, he knew better than to try and get on this woman's bad side, so he rounded on the last one.

"Grayson, I get it, you're pissed about what Arex did, but neither of us were there. Won't be time until after we stop off at Minos for the pickup, but after that, when we're back out in the expanse, the four of us are gonna sit down and have a rational conversation. Clear?"

He didn't stick around for any retorts, just simply walked on out with a curt nod and headed off for his quarters. He received the contents of the message, filing it away under important enough to bear repeating to the crew. He'd call a meeting after and fill them all in, but now, he had to get below, he'd kept the androids waiting long enough.

@Dark Light@Tickout@Crossfire

Lataniva initially frowned when Arex began saying that he was flattered, for that didn’t make sense with what she had proposed. Then she realized what he was hinting at and her glare turned into a cold, unamused stare of I am being very patient in letting you talk to point and not just dispensing immediate punishment. At the very least, seems like his mood lifted. Which is a plus. He wasn’t about to attack someone with the negative energy residing because of what had just happened on the station anymore, though this had been done on her expanse. Which she did not enjoy.

Then Maxi refused to treat him. Then Arex tried to do things to himself but was failing clumsily. Lataniva had no intention of cleaning up for him. She had no intention to get herself involved in their feud at all, if they wanted to be like that to one another then it was no matter to her. But they were holding her up, which grated on her. Then Stryker came along and made a situation out of a situation that really wasn’t much of one. He didn’t have any intention to come in-between Lataniva and her intention, which was fine enough with her. She merely gave him a stare before turning to look at Arex again.

She said, her tone not hiding her annoyance.

She demanded, glaring at Arex. As long as she got to say that, she was fine. Then the rest could come to any conclusions they wanted to about what they wanted to know..

---

---

After all the delays, Stryker had finally arrived outside the door to the Storage Room door. He found that the door wasn't responding when he touched the panel to slide it open. A few more tries, and still it didn't budge. Finally, he took out his datapad and hit the override controls to force the door open.

Stryker walked inside to witness a mass of wires spread and strung around the small room like a complex spider's web. The 2 androids on standby nearby.
"Ok, here to talk, first you have to explain what the fuck all this is about" Stryker said in a commanding tone and his gestured to all the wiring.

In response, the Tower's frontal hatch swung upen to reveal a console and screen. Some various bits of hardware were scattered about inside of the machine, suggesting that it had its own manufacturing capabilities of some sort. The screen turned on and, after a few moments of boot-up time, a very generic face appeared, which began to speak. The voice was broken -- with a lot of background noise of various sorts and difficulty maintaining pitch and playback speed, but it was perfectly understandable with some light concentration.

"Survival, sir. I am not a fa&/fa&/&segfault.01xff11 -- I am not fond of exposure to lethal doses of debris, bullets, and energy bursts," it said. The generic face on the screen broke into a slight smile as it continued. There seemed to be some bugs with the voice control systems. "...So I made some minor upgrades to the ship."

A small scrap of paper flopped out of an old-style receipt slot, listing the infected systems. All RCS thrusters, the engines, a number of doors, and a number of cameras freshly mounted externally were present on the list. Stryker was taken aback at the sight before him, he'd never seen technology like this before. He reached out cautiously to take the paper and scanned down through it quickly, before tucking it into his pocket.

"Right" he said, still not sure if this was even real "So what the hell are you, and how were you able to access my ship's systems without setting off an alert?"

An extra pair of cables wiggled out of a port and waved around in the closest equivalent to 'jazz hands' that Ren could manage, and the face on the screen shifted to a shit-eating grin. "Magic, of course! Though, in all seriousness, your ship has only standard design features in terms of security. It would not adequately stand up to any nanotechnologogical attacks, for example. Those are a thing now, right? I forget how far along that tech has come."

Shortly after speaking, the screen flipped again, this time to a 3D diagram of the Revenant, slowly rotating. Red dots were regularly scattered across the entire image with blue, snakelike lines representing the cables spreading out from the position of the Tower. If Stryker had read through the schematics of the ship at all, he would recognize the positions of the red blips as damage sensor packages, all of which were spaced no less than two meters from the cable indicators.

"As for what I am... Would you believe me if I said that I was hu/hu/hu/hu/&FATALERROR.f2xfb14/[Debug Report Sent to Manufacturer]--", it said, complete with a Windows XP era error sound. The screen went black for a moment to return to the bootup screen and Renli, standing in the corner, completed the Tower's statement for it in almost jarringly unbroken speech. "...If I said I was human? I can show you after my brain finishes rebooting." Renli seemed rather annoyed by the crash.

"I don't as a matter of fact" Stryker said, arms folded "I think that you think you're human, wouldn't be the first bot to have a few screws loose," he continued. Renli's eye twitched annoyedly in response, but he held his tongue. Showing would be better than telling.

"You do what you have to do, but I'm on a bit of a time limit, so let's get right down to it. I've told the Alliance that we've picked up a couple extra hands, but I've left the details out. As far as they're concerned, these two" he cast a glance at Renli and Rento "came from the Mining Station.... unless someone recognizes them, and scrolls back through the security feeds of the cameras mounted everywhere in the ship to see the truth. She already told us they had to get away from the Alliance, so what's stopping me from turning you over... in short, why should I let you all stay?"

"You should let me stay because removing me from the ship would require more firepower than your internal hull can handle without long-term repair work. My shields are up and it's not worth the effort of setting off explosives in the central storage area. And then there's this..."

The tower came back online and, as Renli had said, the Spherical structure sitting on top opened up along the central seam to reveal a number of easily identifiable repulsorplates, a small shield module, and some very unique hardware - specifically, what appeared to be a dark grey and black human brain sitting within a dome of transparent aluminum oxynitride. The brain was softly pulsating under an artificial heartbeat, with off-white 'veins' spread across it. It could be safely assumed that heavier-duty hardware was present underneath in the main tower. Renli went inactive again for the Tower to speak.

"I strongly believe that I am worth more to you on this ship than in an Alliance laboratory. This ship does not have a built-in intelligent computing system and I am willing to work as such in exchange for not being fucking vivisected. My avatars are available to work as parts of the away team and ship crew as necessary." At the mention of vivisection, images of lab rats split open on a surgical table flashed across the Tower's screen in rapid succession, and there was a hint of fear in its voice.

"Ok, I can see your point.... I have one last question. And this is going to be pretty important.... can your systems access the Alliance's surveillance system? Like I mentioned, this ship is wired to the brim with cameras and microphones, and the footage gets automatically transmitted out when we're in range of an Alliance network link. It'd be extremely beneficial to our mutual interests if you could get in and mess around with.... certain aspects of the footage"

Stryker tried his best to hide the shock and surprise he felt of seeing the brain. This thing was totally unlike anything he'd ever dealt with before, and worse yet, if it turned hostile, they'd be completely subject to its will. Everyone on board the ship was a potential hostage to this strange being.

"Let's put it to the test" Stryker said "If you can, access the camera in this room, right above my head... show the feed on your screen, and then erase yourself from the frame."

The machine responded cheerily while closing the lid on its spherical portion. "Of course. I hadn't considered it, but I suppose I could give it a try. Let's see here..." One of the cables slowly rose across the room and quickly melted its way into the wall above the doorway, just beneath the camera. A quiet snipping noise could be heard as wire insulation was stripped away and clamped, followed by a louder 'pop', indicating that the wire had been severed. The tower's screen switched to a bright smiley face for a moment, then started importing the camera feed. It was a top-down view of the room, and from the angle, it didn't appear as though it would've been able to see under Ren's 'skull lid'.

"Oh, now that is delicious. Modern video feed, hm? I haven't seen a picture this smooth in years. Maybe I'll use something like this for my next modification... Oh, but the camera feed needs to be modified. I'm not the greatest with data editing, but I can put through a dummy image, if I'm understanding this thing's output format right."

The image on the screen flickered for a moment, then wavered, and in a few moments it had morphed to a video feed of Stryker standing in a mostly empty storage room, checking a crate and ticking off boxes on a clipboard.
"If they're recording images and audio, then you may need somebody else to go in and tamper with the ship's memory at the first available opportunity, as I am mostly unfamiliar with modern data storage methods. I will however provide falsified footage and recordings to fill any erased data."

The machine sent out another bundle of cables to search out the remainder of ship cameras before adding one final note. "Before you leave, Captain, I figured I should introduce myself. My name is Ren."

If Maxi was stronger and able to, he would have thrown the idiot right the fuck out of the med bay for being such a prick. He did his best to keep his expression of calm about him, to give off the impression that Arex’s actions meant little to nothing to him, but it was clear after a point that Maxi was LIVID. He shot glares from behind his glasses, and was about to give the imbecile a piece of his mind when Stryker entered the room. Maxi’s intention of giving the guy a piece of his mind and storming out of there was crushed by an order- an unarguable order to fix Arex up. The look he gave Stryker from behind his glasses was one filled with venom. “Fine, BOSS.” he grumbled, not even trying to hide his spite towards the order. Fix the arrogant shithead, he’d fix the arrogant shitheads personality by leaving him to bleed out if he was allowed…

He took a breath to steady his thoughts, and turn to Arex. “Sit down.” He didn’t even look to see if Arex followed the order- he simply started to look for the supplies that he needed amongst the mess that Arex left behind, and set them down at his work station. He intentionally “forgot” to grab any sort of painkiller- he may have to do the procedure, but he wasn’t obligated to make it a pleasant experience. He looked briefly at the alien girl- it seemed her and Arex had some… personal, mind to mind business to attend to. The thought of someone reading his mind was a bit creepy, but he figured she wouldn’t do so out of the blue. She was asking Arex, after all. Maxi tapped a finger on his side, waiting for his… patient… to get seated.

What did Tibulus make while Stryker was gone?

When Stryker came in to address the situation, all Tibulus gave was a simple nod, then he went back to tinkering around with his tech. Not before long was there a small little robot driving around on the ground, albeit it wasn't a mechanical marvel. It was a rather simple RC vehicle with a few wheels and a small antenna coming off the back. It was being controlled by a small pad in Tibulus' hands, and it simply functioned like a normal RC car for the most part. There was one difference, and it was that it could jump a very short distance vertically. It didn't scale much more than a foot, but it was quite interesting to watch and play with. It appeased Tibulus for the time being until he had a small thought in his head. "I wonder if Stryker would let me join the crew in the next mission..." He may have been an ace pilot, but maybe the ground crew would need someone like him next time.

@Xandrya@PlatinumSkink@Tickout

Arex groaned as he rubbed his head and replied. "I don't even want to be in my own head right now let alone have someone else in there too." He pauses to grit his teeth in pain. "But my earlier offer still stands." He quickly adds with a taunting smirk. Brash humour aside he hoped to detour any further questions on the topic.

His visit to the med bay didn't last too much longer. He avoided any further conversation and left feeling worse off than when he had arrived. The rest of the repairs on his severed arm he could sort out in his own time. Arex got what he needed from Maxi without killing him and now had other matters to attend. Where he not in such bad shape or a rush he might have caused more trouble before leaving. There would always be future opportunities.

A short moment later Arex found himself leaning heavily against the doorway to Amy's room for support as he banged against it calling for her attention.

The loud, unexpected banging on the door startled Amy awake from her nap. She rubbed her face in frustration when a familiar voice demanded she opened the door, and it only took her a few seconds to realize who it was.

"I don't want anything to do with you!" she shouted, sitting up on the bed as a wave of anger suddenly hit her. Regardless of the fact that she was wearing her pajamas—a plain white t-shirt and light blue shorts—Amy stomped across the small room until she reached the door and opened it just the slightest bit, the sheer weight of it throwing her off guard.

"Unless you have a work-related message to relay, your best bet is to turn around and go back wherever you came from," she said, her voice not as loud as before but nonetheless carrying the same level of hate. She had honestly assumed that Arex was dead, but now that she found out that wasn't the case, she couldn't help but feel even more contempt towards the man.

@Dark Light

@Banana@Azereiah@Turbowraith@mackielars@Rultaos@Tickout@Xandrya@PlatinumSkink@BKburke@Dark Light@Silver Carrot

"Ok Ren, welcome aboard. your first assignment is this: there are a couple of.... moments I want erased from the record, similar to what you did with the feed to this room, and I need it done before we reach Minos Station and the data gets uploaded to the Alliance. Let's take it from the top...."

Stryker rattled off everything he'd prefer the Alliance not know about and suggested alternative events to spoof in their places, when the list was complete, he added on some closing remarks.
"I realize there's not much time, but I have faith you can do it. One other thing, I'm calling a meeting with the rest of the crew. I'm still not quite sure how all this works with you, I guess you'll send one of them? We'll talk later about a way to commune more directly, perhaps I can loop you into the team's communication channel directly. Anyway, couple of minutes time, send someone up"

--

After getting called off by Stryker, Grayson had retreated to the Armory, but he'd kept the window-slot on the door open, and worked in view of it, so he could keep an eye on Arex, and follow him down if he made a move on Amy. He did just that when he noticed the cyborg exiting med bay and walking briskly towards the way downstairs. Grayson nearly tripped over his desk as he shot out towards the door. He was just about to call out to Arex and tell him to back off when the intercoms sprang to life.

"All crew report to the War Room. All crew to the War Room"

--

"Ok everyone, just a quick meeting this time" Stryker began once everyone had arrived "We're gonna be arriving at Minos Station fairly shortly. This isn't exactly meant to be shore leave. In fact, I'd prefer if we kept this trip as short as possible. If anyone has any business to attend to, now's your time to speak. Any requisitions that were placed and approved will have likely been filled and will be included in the resupply we're picking up. There's one more reason I called you all up here, and that's to relay our new orders directly from the head dick himself"

Stryker flipped on the holodeck and began playing the vidmessage from Captain Dawson. The asshole's head filled the screen then rose into a 3-dimensional hologram and slowly rotated as the message played.

"Crew of the Revenant. Nice job on the Helsin gig. The official story as the rest of the universe knows it is that a band of pirates attacked an illegal mining operation. Alliance flagships entered the system to investigate and they witnessed the Station go nuclear and a single ship slipping out of sight. No survivors to tell the truth, so as far as you're all concerned, complete success. We'll be expecting similar results going forward. As for what's next, well you're gonna have to wait a while. Coordinates are gonna be included in the supply drop from Minos as well as some gear you'll need, but no matter how fast you get there, it's gonna be a few days before the action kicks off, so standing orders as of now, take the scenic route, don't draw attention to yourselves, the usual. Failure to comply will result in an... unfortunate end to this little experiment. Oh, and one more thing, Stryker we have a new recruit, she'll be included with the supply drop on Minos too, but you're gonna be losing the Kzargett, Sammn. Command needs his... particular talents on another assignment. That's all"

"So, that's that. Like I said before, anyone with business on Minos, you'll find me in the cockpit, we'll be at Minos shortly. Sammn, you wanna come with me? I want a word......"

An hour or two later, The Revenant finally arrived at Minos. The large station loomed out at them from it's lodging on the edge of a frozen asteroid that was easily twice as big as Earth's moon. Stryker opened a comms line once they were in range and tried to negotiate a landing pad with the local port authority, or what passed for one out here. In the end, he settled for a docking berth and helped Tibulus navigate their craft in. He engaged the docking protocols, and swung out of his seat.

"I'll head on down then, meet up with our contact"

As Tibulus pulled into the docking area, he swung his chair around to face Stryker as he was leaving. The Funganoid had a small request to make of Stryker, but he wouldn't be too mad if he couldn't manage this. "Yo Stryker... do you think you can swing by somewhere and get a set of cards? It can be like normal playing cards or like stupid party game cards, but just some cards? Oh, and send someone up, like maybe that Joe guy." The ship was kind of dull right now, and the cockpit was starting to get more boring by the minute. Some drunken and absent-minded company would be appreciated for sure it would seem.

One Week Ago:

"C'mon, yah bastard! C'mon!" Taleste screamed at the electric safe as she continued to drill it. She could still hear gunfire behind her, though it had lessened in intensity. Her team had always been a bunch of amateurs, but their leader had decided that stealing from an Alliance deposit building had been a good idea. The best security on the entire planet, and probably the surrounding ones too, with the best trained soldiers of probably the largest collective military force in the galaxy ready to pounce if it goes off? This was a rotten job from the start. Why did Taleste even take it instead of leaving her idiot crew? Well, besides having grown quite attached to them over the past year, she also relished the challenge. That's why, even though she knew she had no chance of getting away, she carried on trying to steal the objective. She didn't even have to grab it. There would be no point. As long as she opened the safe, she'd count that as her having successfully stolen from the Alliance; something she could put on her CV if she survives this.

The gunfire was getting closer. Taleste was starting to sweat. She could feel some give on the drill. Almost....there....She did it! The safe cracked and swung open, revealing the largest gemstone Tal had ever seen. This was probably worth a small planet by itself! Just think....if they could have gotten away with this.

The gunfire stopped. Taleste dropped the drill and put her hands up before the advancing Alliance soldiers had even seen her. Best to surrender preemptively lest they get trigger happy and don't give you a chance. As she waited for them, it dawned on her that the rest of the crew was almost definitely dead. She didn't cry. Though she wanted to, she just felt empty now. "Yu were a bunch of eediots to the last..." she muttered under her breath, feeling the pit in her stomach growing.

Present Day:

Taleste was leaning against a wall, in the marketplace adjacent to the docks in Minos Space Station. She gave another sulky glare to the two undercover Alliance Operatives that were keeping an eye on her. That was twice now that they confiscated wallets and purses that she'd pickpocketed while she was waiting. She didn't care about losing the money. She was only doing it for practice; to make sure that she hadn't gone rusty from a whole week without stealing something. Alliance prison had actually been pleasant. It was quiet. Her cell was bigger than her old bunk and the bed was softer, she was even provided with a councillor who had helped her cope with the loss of her whole crew. It still stung, but now she'd be getting a whole new crew. The offer of prison or joining this 'Project Revenant' wasn't a tough one. In prison she'd not be allowed to steal anything again but live like a queen compared to how she'd usually lived. Shades of her first life, the life she escaped from. That or work for what should morally be her 'enemy' but she didn't really have enemies. The people who shoot at her are usually just doing their jobs, while she's disrupting her job with her hobby. They were always the one in the right. Still, getting to steal things and put her skills to the test was an offer too good to pass up.

God, waiting was boring though. She glanced back at the Operatives. They'd told her their full names but she just called them Datchi and Juli, which somehow got under their skin, so she kept doing it. "Oi, Datchi!" she cried out to the 'shopkeepers' "When're those whuns due? I'm gettin' bored over 'ere!"

It was a quirk of her strange, alien accent and dialect. Instead of 'person' or 'people', she said 'whun' and 'whuns'. It came from a mutation of the word 'one' as in 'someone', and this quirk had eventually got on the nerves of everyone she'd ever met, but they learned to get used to it eventually.

@Silver Carrot@Banana

"I'll see what I can do" Stryker called back over his shoulder to Tibulus' request for cards. He ran into Grayson just outside the door separating the Docking Bay from the rest of the common area.

"Don't forget, we're shippin' out in 2 hours" the Captain muttered to his quartermaster as the pair walked down the docking tube to the station proper.
"Aye mate, I'll be back in a jiff, just need ta grab some components from an old contact" he replied as he turned left and disappeared into the crowds.

Stryker carried on ahead to the marketplace a few steps away from the main docking annex. A short, balding and tattooed man stepped out from a shop labelled as "Datcho's" and met him halfway. A young woman leaned against the wall and a large dark skinned fellow stood not far off, taking it all in. The short guy stretched out a hand.
"Adachi Wren" he said "That guy's Julius Brein, he was born without a sense of humor, so no funny stuff ok Cap'n Stryker? And this here's Taleste. I'd keep an eye on your valuables from here on out buddy-boy, she's got a case of the sticky fingers, know what I mean?"
Stryker ignored the small man's derogatory comments and addressed the new recruit directly.

"Call me Stryker" He said, extending a hand "Got everything you need?"

@Crossfire

Taleste shook his hand, grinned, and introduced herself by her full name. "Taleste Jot-Anne. Just call me Tal. Got everything I need in the bag on me back." She spared a quick glaring glance at the two Alliance operatives before she turned away from them and walked with Stryker back towards the docks. "Oh, and for the record, don't let Datchi and Juli give you the wrong impression of me. I am loyal. I won't die for you, but I'm loyal as far as loyalty goes nowadays. I won't steal anything from you or the crew, because I'm not an idiot, and I like being alive in a ship that isn't full of enemies. I'll usually steal from the other guy, though, whoever that may be."

@Silver Carrot

"Ok then, Tal. Welcome aboard" Stryker said "You can head on up, I've got some business to tend to before we ship out. From the docking bay, you'll find yourself in the common area, quarters are at the back of the deck, pick yourself out a room from the empties. I'll find you in a bit and give you a quick tour, ok?"

Stryker walked back to Datcho's place and accepted the electronic manifest for the resupply. He scanned down through the list as Wren droned on about protocol and other bullshit. Stryker cut him off mid-sentence.
"Great, everything's here, where do I sign and pick it up?"
"No signing, you don't exist, remember?" The shorter man sneered up at him "Julius is rounding up some dock rats to bring it aboard, they'll leave it in the docking bay, you can sort it as you like. Roughly 3 months of supplies all-in. And that's not just food, that's dwarf-star cells, Armory provisions, medical stuff, hygenics... the works. Quartermaster had a special request in for some sheets of titanium-iaonic, it's in there too, though I'm curious as to why.... anyway, Command wants you to disappear for a while, no errant surfacing for anything basic. Big supply drops like this will be the norm going forward. Oh, and it's not on here but there's a package labeled '321-C' Dawson wanted me to mention that specifically. Ok, all good now?"
"Just about" Stryker said as the manifest auto-deleted itself "Got any cards, or anything at all like that? Crew might need something to kill time"
"If it'll get you out of here sooner, here" Adachi leaned beneath the counter and emerged with 5 decks "On the house, now get the fuck out of here"

Stryker pocketed the card packs and exited the shop. He saw a familiar face approaching through the crowd- Grayson, pushing a cart with a trio of military-style crates stacked on it.
"Alright Stryker?" he said as he got close.
"Yeah, guess so, get that stuff aboard, I'll check in on the crew. If everyone's good, we'll get out of here"

---

---

"Of course, Captain," the Tower replied. Two hours was more than enough to do the job, though it would take a little tinkering around inside the Revenant's computer system to figure out how the operating system worked and what the data storage format was. In a matter of minutes, it had thrown together the dummy footage that the Captain had requested. Drama in the cargo hold, erased. Delicate conversations between crew members, erased. Certain recordings of materials being brought aboard, erased. Any suggestions that the Revenant had taken on a new crew member from their job at the Station, erased.

Really, anything that was vaguely sensitive information was tweaked, and Ren made absolutely certain to keep the file sizes and file lengths exactly the same as the originals. Then it dedicated the vast majority of its processing power to cracking the Revenant's computer system and swapping the files, which would take the remainder of the time. Rento snapped back to attention as control was passed back to her.

---

She moved to take part in the meeting, where she saw the bloated head of Captain Dawson on a screen and shook slightly in anger. That asshole? His bullshit was part of the reason she had had to leave her home on Earth with her avatars. Thankfully, she was certain that she had been sufficiently cautious to avoid being caught on camera. At least, with this face. One of the previous ones had been roasted alive after being caught illegally acquiring fuel, and she remembered it happening in full detail.

Dawson's image on the screen flickered off at the end of the meeting.

"I have some things to attend to on the station. It shouldn't take long," she said. This was the first opportunity at real downtime she'd had in months, even if it would only take a few minutes. That should be enough for a little fun, at least.

---

Ten minutes after docking, Grayson and Stryker had acquired their needed materials and the new crew member. Rento, meanwhile, had rediscovered her genuine joy of booze for the first time since her old brain was repurposed by Ren. She'd been a raging alcoholic before Ren had taken control of her shuttle, and she still remembered bits and pieces from back then, including when a certain group of people tried to pick a fight with her here on Minos Station, in the Baked Bogye'kr bar just off of Market Street. Most of those people were there this time too, so after chugging an entire bottle of vodka, Rento had decided to have some fun. The bioreactor loved the fuel, but the brain felt its effects just as strongly as it had back when it was purely organic.

The muffled sounds of crashing, shouting, and breaking glasses echoed down Market Street, just barely masked by the mumbling of shoppers and shopowners and hobos and shiftless drunkards, and Rento rejoined Stryker and Grayson on the way back to the ship some time after. She had a few cuts on her face (one of which was sprinkled with glass dust and tiny shards), showing the metallic fibers beneath that made up she and Renli's style of musculature. That would probably need to be patched somehow.

"...we good to go?", she asked the two. Someone else's credit notes were half stuffed into her pockets and she was visibly having enough trouble staying totally upright that her inbuilt AI subprocessor had to compensate with jerky motions. She'd obviously managed to cause a lot more mayhem a lot faster than most in only the space of a few minutes. At least Renli was more well behaved, from the limited interactions the others had had with him. Rento was completely unaware as to whether or not Taleste was with the group, but she'd been looking forward to meeting the new crew member regardless.

@Crossfire@Silver Carrot

Maxi had, of course, done a proper job of his work; going against the commanders direct orders was a risk he didn’t want to test. He’d have a chance in the future to get some revenge for potato brains actions, and he was patient enough to wait until that time. Until then, though, the imbecile had staggered out in an idiotic mess in a rush to who knew where, leaving Maxi to clean up the mess he made. What an ingrate this dude was. He half hoped they got another medic soon so they could be the one to deal with the idiots on the ship.

He had just finished cleaning up the broken jars, salvaging any lost medicine, and overall tidying and organizing the room when the speakers came on. This ship sure liked meetings, didn’t it? He really thought he had better ways to use his time than to go up for yet another meeting, but alas, captain's orders. He never even got the chance to grab anything for his headache, though it was settling itself down more and more. Once he was sure the room was tidied, he gestured with two fingers for his bot to follow him and left the room.

The meeting was rather brief and boring. Useless in his eyes. Mission well done, they’d be laying low and picking someone new up from Minos station. Hopefully this newbie wasn’t as bad as potato brain. Heh, for a while he was the newbie, and now there was already someone else that came to take that title. There was nothing he specifically needed, so he departed once the meeting was over. Everyone was so engaged with each other that he had some peace to himself. After all that tidying up and completing a procedure, he thought he ought to sit down and take a break. He wondered if there was anything to do on the ship outside of prepare weapons and be an idiot. Some games could be nice. He made his way down the the common area and took a seat on one of the couches, and plucked his bot out of the air. He wanted to double check the repairs on his robot, to see how they were done and to what standard.

@Silver Carrot

Stryker and Grayson made their way back to the ship and did a quick check to make sure everyone else was aboard. One last piece of business, Stryker walked Sammn down to the docking bay, said a farewell, then handed him over to Adachi and Julius. As the door closed up, Stryker thought he saw a glint of malicious intent in Sammn's eyes, maybe he'd try and make a run for it, maybe that was just his expression, whatever was next for the lizard-man, Stryker silently wished him well, and walked back into the ship's proper. He gave Tibulus clearance to begin disengaging from their docking berth, and wandered back to find Taleste in her room.

"Ready for that tour?" He said after finding her "Don't worry, it'll be quick, you've obviously already seen the quarters and passed through most of the common area, so there's not all that much to cover really. First off, the restrooms, showers and whatnot are at the end of the hall here in the Crew Quarters, women's is the door on the right" He pointed towards it then waved an arm for her to follow him over to the elevator.

"Kitchen is that little room off to the side of the Common Area, there's not much downstairs to cover, just the cargo bay, engine room, tech lab, stuff like that, you can explore those at your leisure. We'll head on upstairs, just so you know where everything important is"
They emerged at the Upper Deck and Stryker quickly pointed out the War Room, Armory, and Med Bay.
"Cockpit's up at the front, and oh yeah, nearly forgot, in the case of some kind of catastrophic failure, every floor has ladders that provide quick access down to the escape pods on the Lower Deck. That's pretty much it... any questions?"

@Crossfire

Taleste had made a beeline for her room. Before she explored she ship, before she properly met any of her new crewmates, she wanted to unpack. Arriving in room 6, she shut the door, and then emptied the contents of her bag onto her bed. Her clothes, she put in her wardrobe and drawers. Her weapons found their home beside her bed, and her makeup bag went under her bed. There it would stay until needed.

With all that done, she lay down on her bed for a few minutes before the captain returned, and started taking her through a short and sweet whistle-stop tour of the ship. She just followed him and made a mental note of every location pointed out to her. He asked her if she had any quests, to which Taleste slowly shook her head.

"Nnnnno, I think that's everythin covered. If I think of anything, I'll come find you. Now, I'm gonna go meet the rest of the crew. That would probably be a good idea. Seeya!"

With a quick wave, Taleste returned to the common room and sat down. She figured she'd eventually run into people if she stayed here.