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In Ares Solutions Inc. - A modern day PMC Roleplay → 4 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
“Can do!” the Russian replied to the talking Nimr ordering the elimination of their welcoming comitee. She would’ve loved to continue laying hate down range at the primadonna squad over at the Jeep, but ran into two problems. One, members of the the dream team were just a little too attached to life for her liking and refused to die, no-selling several shots. The million dollar question was whether their plates were ceramic composite or steel. Hopefully the former and a few more shots would render the plates useless and their wearers dead. Sinking dozens of rounds they didn’t exactly have to spare into steel plates hoping they’d fail didn’t sound like fun, and usually wasn’t. Second, by now the inside of her magazine was in all likelihood getting as empty as a shitty pub in Samara five minutes before closing. Indeed, she sent a few more shots at the armored bastards, these much less accurate and much more hurried as they figured out where the offending Russian was hiding, before she pulled the trigger and the rifle didn’t do anything. “Or not, new mag!” She retreated back behind the bulk of the Nimr’s engine bay, swapping out the magazine, returning the empty one into the pouch and racking the charging handle, the whole process taking little longer than she’d liked. It’s been a while since she reloaded on the left shoulder.

Sadly, it was now her turn to sit hopelessly behind a hunk of metal while bullets whizzed by, at least one of the honor students of jihad college keeping her pinned. Hopefully though, between the reduction of enemy numbers and Hypatia now at least temporarily back in the fight, the pucker factor of the situation would significantly decrease, the rest of the squad would start aiming properly and the remainder of the carpet pilots would just fucking die already. She would’ve loved to repeat her Lada maneuver, but didn’t trust herself to throw a grenade at 20 meters without even seeing where she was throwing. As she thought that, she found herself eyeing Cronus’ rifle, namely the grenade launcher attached to the business end of it.
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
If Rod survives, he's gonna have quite the war story to tell.

"Did I tell you about the time I headbutted a Fithagian pirate so hard it crushed my helmet? What, shot in the head? Noooo, noo, whatever gave you that idea? Definitely didn't happen like that."
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
“And I didn’t bring anything to deal with that, idiot! What irony that I suggested Alpha do this exact same thing to Du-Vos!” She mentally kicked herself, about to go down a deck to access the device when she noticed a small box with a red light on it. A commercially available motion sensor. And it knew she was there, just not moving fast enough to trigger it. Good thing it was a civilian device that required line of sight to work and not a detector ripped out from a mine, else she would’ve triggered it when she walked into the room. “Someone check if there aren’t any more. This is going to be a chore, but I think it can be done. Very slowly. It’s a shaped charge used by combat engineering teams to disable hijacked ships without being detected or risking firing upon them, I’ve worked with these in the past. If I die, don’t bother sending word back home, my old lady and I aren’t on talking terms.”

Usually, these bombs were placed on the outside and the vacuum of space made it quite safe to be in close proximity when one detonated. Here, however, it was in a room pressurized to 1 atmosphere, bringing several unknowns into the mix. One thing was for sure, if shit met the fan, the overpressure in the room would at the very least lay her out and most definitely ruin her eardrums, but it was much more likely it would simply kill her like an oversized grenade, and that’s not to mention how much debris it would kick back her way. In light of all that, she decided to keep the suit on to try to lessen the effects should she fuck up as she inched closer to the thing, silently cursing the damaged neural pathways in her cheek that made the corner of her mouth twitch like a methhead a week after his last dose. At least there was the small comfort in knowing the Moray used regular Terran atmosphere instead of a low-pressure pure oxygen breathing mix, thus significantly lowering fire hazards.

Finally reaching the cursed device, the first thing Astrid did was slowly grab a roll of vac tape from her utility belt and secure the sensor to the bomb’s casing. If she died because she moved the motion sensor, which it would interpret as motion in its surroundings, she wouldn’t be able to look the other engineer’s souls in Hell in the eye. Next she retrieved an allen wrench from the toolbox attached to her suit and painfully slowly undid the two screws holding the cover panel in place, carefully setting them aside. She knew the damn thing was tamper-proof with redundancies, so cutting the connection between anything and the primer was out of the question. But in the bottom-left corner, there was a flat panel, about the size of a human palm, with two wires marked ‘+’ and ‘-’ connecting it to the circuit board. It was a lithium-air battery, and the sole source of power for the charge. At least under normal circumstances. This thing was clearly modified, and a second battery connected in parallel to this one was just the kind of thing she’d do if she wanted to fuck with an EOD technician’s day.

Whichever of Du-Vos lackeys set it up probably didn’t give half of a shit because after five minutes of slowly checking the bomb and its surroundings while giving muted reports to the rest of Beta so they knew she was still alive, Astrid found nothing. She sure was thankful the suit came equipped with laryngophones that could pick up subvocalization and thus she didn’t even have to move her mouth to communicate. Deciding it was safe to end the problem, Astrid hooked her finger behind the battery on the side with the pins and pulled it upwards out of the casing, depriving the det pack of power. Indicator lights went off, the engine was undamaged and she was still breathing. “Faust here. Bomb disabled. Unless it has friends around, we’re good to go on my end.” She reported back to Beta team and Cake. “Damn it, I quit combat engineering to get away from this shit.”
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
As the shuttle was docked quite close to the engineering section, Astrid left the heavy tools there while they proceeded to the bridge. Once there, Astrid planted herself in the pilot’s chair, fingers running along the keyboard like a pianist as she tried to get the diagnostics software to cooperate. Moments later, the central viewing screen displayed a readout of the ship’s systems. Filtering out what they didn’t need for the task at hand, she breathed a sigh of relief when the navigational computer showed ‘offline’ but not ‘damaged’. Power and heat management systems were also intact, meaning the ship wouldn’t start melting after a minute of use. “Once you get the comms up, Cake should be able to handle any software-related trouble. If you run into hardware issues, give me a call. I should be able to talk you through anything that’s at least remotely repairable via your helmet cameras. But according to this, the navicomp was disconnected from the rest of the ship. I’ll have to go to engineering, shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”

The engineering section was a hall taking up three decks - The lowest deck contained a workshop and a general purpose assembler, the one above that was filled up by the main drive, service catwalks and support beams granting the room some structural rigidity, and the topmost part was where all the control stations were. That’s where Astrid was headed. Arriving with a happy tune on her lips, she quickly found the breaker that separated the navigational computer from the rest of the power grid and switched it on.

“ALERT! Navigational computer control: disabled! Please contact a licensed technician.” An automated voice echoed across the hall.

“Yeah yeah, I know, shut up.” As the navigational computer was the shipmaker’s proprietary software, it took a bit of poking to find the menu she needed to allow the computer to manipulate the ship’s attitude and velocity. “Hey, Sparkle,” She tried to contact Cake, “assuming the lads unfucked the comms already, you should have access to the Moray. I’m leaving the navicomp disabled for now, because I don’t know what its last instructions are and I don’t want it to start moving the ship and give us away. It’s in your figurative hands now, just tell it what to do now and then switch it on when the fight starts. Unless you have a better idea, what do I know, you’re the computer.”

As she waited for any potential response, she leaned against the railing, looking down on the engine - and the song froze in her throat. “Ah shit, bomb!” Astrid cautioned on a channel to the rest of Beta team and Cake, not wanting to risk contacting the Prize and risking Du-Vos would overhear through the negotiations that were probably being led from the CIC, “Now I DEFINITELY want to send Du-Vos to kingdom come with a Moray-shaped missile. I recognize the type of charge, it shouldn’t be too hard to diasble, but: Don’t think me to be a coward - or do and see if I care - but if he thought to rig the junker with a bomb, don’t you think they might be watching?”
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
The hardest part of preparing was choosing the correct equipment. Back in her combat engineering days, she’d have an entire squad to spread the gear among. Electronic toolset - yes, no telling what was wrong with Moray’s computers on the physical side of things. Welding equipment - no, would be on board along with cable patches should it be needed. Vac suit - definitely, that shouldn’t even be a question. As with all other engineering personnel who had suits issued on a permanent basis, hers was adorned with personalized markings so they could easily tell each other apart in a manner similar to medieval heraldry, since otherwise all the suits looked mostly the same. In addition to name, rank and position inscribed on her shoulders and back of her helmet, the front chest piece and the back of the backpack were decorated with a white silhouette of a spin-gravity station on a red background. The engineering suits also differed from the standard model by the type and layout of armor - where the arms and legs tightly hugged the body to make movement easier and allow the wearer to survive with nothing more than a bruise if the suit got torn in vacuum, the torso and helmet were lined with boron carbide and tungsten armoring to protect the wearer from harm as well as shield them against various types of radiation.

On approach, she observed neither the Moray’s engine nor its maneuvering thrusters looked damaged, at least from the outside. It was possible Moray’s crew were too scared by their situation to run, something she could hardly blame them for, so the pirates didn’t bother targeting the propulsion and risking harming the passengers by accident. If that was the case and Moray complied willingly, they could’ve pulled the entire kidnapping off without physically damaging anything else besides the communications arrays, which gave her hope that getting the navigation computer up and running would be no harder than entering a few commands or flipping a breaker switch. It would make the task quite easy. Almost too easy.

Astrid was more than happy to let the big guys out of the shuttle first, implicitly considering Geu’rach to be in command of the boarding party. Truth be told, she felt a little inadequate among the two alien giants, each towering over her by at least half a meter, and armed only with a laser carbine either of the two could almost consider his sidearm, but at least any potential hostile would be busy looking at them and ignoring her. Not that the thought of danger to her comrades was a particularly comforting thought. Fortunately, at least the immediate vicinity seemed to be clear of any trouble.

“Have you seen the sum that octopus-looking bastard is asking for? ISA could save money by buying the hostages at slave market value instead of paying the ransom. At least we don’t have to feel bad shooting at slavers.” Astrid rambled while unloading a case containing some of the heavier tools she couldn’t carry on her person all the time out of the shuttle. “Hmm, they left ventilation on. Not just that - lights, gravity, A/C… Most pirates I’ve encountered would’ve stripped it clean of anything useful or vlauable. As if he’s expecting to get paid, return the crew and fuck off. Can’t be that naive, can he?” After three years of salvaging dead and silent ships, finding one for all intents and purposes untouched, yet vacant was a strange feeling, even if they knew exactly what happened to the crew.
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
And then it is revealed that the rugged old Captain Du-Vos actually a big fan of flower gardening.

That's an interesting way of saying "He prefers to grow his own weed."
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
“Hey Alphas, pack an incendiary grenade. Fried calamari is hard to come by.” Astrid commented when the captain revealed what the villain of the hour looked like. It was comforting to know they were not dealing with a complete monster. At least as far as morals went, appearance was a different game entirely. Still, his military background, the size of his vessel and the sheer fact he survived his path of crime long enough to retire in the first place was enough of a warning not to underestimate Du-Vos under any circumstances.

Astrid wasn’t exactly sure how twenty frightened and possibly injured people, some of whom were children, were expected to orderly stand shoulder to shoulder, but at the end of the day that wasn’t her problem. They could wrap them in stretch foil and tape them to the walls for all she cared. Nonetheless, she was pleased to hear Franchesca’s time estimate. “Assuming everything we need is repairable, three hours should be all I need with plenty time to spare to address any unexpected developments.” Of course she knew better than expecting the estimate to be hundred percent accurate, but if she prioritized her work correctly, the important things could be done. As the briefing carried on, she kept listening, turning her eyes to the deckplan of the Moray, trying to memorize the basic layout of crew compartments, service tunnels and power and data cables. Finer details could be looked up on the go as problems arose.

“Alright, that’s the rescue part of the operation more or less squared away. What then? Disarm and disable and wait for someone to come mop Du-Vos and his lackeys up, or do we set the Moray to ram them at full burn and call it a day?” Astrid asked in a voice as if she was talking about the weather or some other trivial matter. “Hardly a loss given Moray’s size, state and age, and it’s not like they’re going to charge us for the damages, we’ll be who knows where by the time anyone starts pointing fingers. Over and above that - and correct me if I’m wrong - Du-Vos and his rabble are officially recognized as pirates, therefore not protected by any law I know of.” She added with a shrug, a small part of her wishing she’d actually paid attention when the legal side of things was discussed at the academy.
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
The answer to the Captain’s unspoken question was actually quite simple. Most species’ eyes reacted differently to different wavelengths of light they could discern. Since the majority of Prize’s crew were Humans of various origin, their ancestral homeworld or not, the lighting was designed with their eyes in mind. Emergency lighting was red, because red light didn’t disrupt the human eye’s natural dark vision once it was accustomed to it. The majority of human-made image intensifiers were green since they were invented since human eyes were the most sensitive to the color green, therefore they could work with significantly lower brightness than any other color, thus putting less strain on the user’s eyes. And the color blue inhibited the production of Melatonin, a hormone responsible for regulating the sleep-wake cycle, used here to keep everyone awake, while the rest of the room was kept in darkness to avoid distractions and keep everyone focused on the important things.

Prize’s designers generally knew what they were doing, at least they did in this instance, because Astrid had just gotten off a 2200 - 0600 shift and had been woken up by the captain’s summons about thirty minutes and one strong coffee ago. She listened to the captain explain the plan, studying all of the information available about Du-Vos’ ship. As soon as the subject of boarding the civilian craft came up, she pulled up the schematics of the Moray on her datapad as well, leaving them side by side.

“If Alpha’s approaching from aft, they could pack some shaped charges. Place them when they arrive and disable Du-Vos’ main drives once the fighting starts, though it would require someone who can perform EVA. Would make it a lot easier for those manning the Moray in the fight if Du-Vos was a sitting duck. Although in such an event, being stuck without sublight propulsion could drive the scumbags to desperation. Executing hostages out of pure spite, that sort of deal.” She suggested, not liking the idea of fighting in a glorified interstellar bus.

“Beta team, affirmative. Board the Moray, restore to working order, await further instructions.” Astrid acknowledged her assigned role. Four months on this ship and she still couldn’t get used to the captain almost pleading with people like this. Like she would complain, even if she had a choice. It was safe and easy work compared to Alpha team. Poor sods. “Hmm… Charon-class transport. Encountered one or two of those on salvage duty before. Magnetoplasma thrusters, that’s good. Very few moving parts, easy to fix most of the time, won’t have to carry half a damn workshop with me, assuming they’re not shot to shit.” She thought out loud, “I’ll need a pilot with me on Beta. I can plot maneuvers, but I don’t know how to actually fly it. Cake could fill that role and fly her remotely. Even with the slight delay, she’s still faster than any organic pilot. That is, of course, assuming Moray’s broadband communications array is intact, It would make sense for the attackers to disable it so the target ship cannot call for help as it’s being boarded.” The engineer summarized the technical side of things as she saw it.

She listened to Gue’rach’s proposal, nodding to herself at certain points of his explanation. “Even if they shut down Moray’s reactor, she wouldn’t have had enough time to noticeably cool down, therefore they shouldn’t notice a difference when we get on board and get it going again. As Lieutenant Ve’tame pointed out, the main drive will be a dead giveaway by thermal emissions alone. Of course any change in velocity, even small, can be detected, but at this range even getting 500 meters closer before they notice would make a difference given Moray’s armaments, and that’s quite doable by maneuvering thrusters alone. May I just suggest the Prize and Moray be kept on separate planes?” Three dots appeared beside the main projection, two green ones representing the Prize and Moray, a red one being the hostile vessel. A plane indicated by a blue square appeared in such a way the Prize and the pirate ship were placed on it and the Moray was slightly below it. Dashed lines representing the general direction of fire appeared between both friendly and the hostile ship, extending past the hostile to illustrate Astrid’s point, namely that ‘missed’ shots from either friendly ship came anywhere near the other one. “The probability is low, but I’d like to minimize risks of friendly fire regardless.”

“Do we have Moray's passenger list? Specifically, do we know how many were on board and whether they’ll fit onto the shuttle in one run?” She turned to Carabello once the previous point had been addressed.
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
Just thought I'd clarify, because misunderstandings over meanings of words have happened in the past, I have a habit of referring to Humans in Sci-Fi settings with alien species as "Terrans", as in originating from Terra (Earth).
In Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay


EDIT (03/06/2020): Added time served on the Prize in header and bio (additions marked in cursive).
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