Turn 9: 1st Squad

[Corporal Hicks]

As Morse began his authoritative countdown, the man in front of the metal tanks looked a little stunned and the SMG lowered halfway to the floor. As the Marines looked on, they realized what the tanks were. They were reactor coolant tanks, and the neon green liquid was coolant. (Awareness check: all passed)

In the glow of the flashlights, the man’s face seemed to twitch. As Morse’s count reached the number “Three” he shook his head fiercely. “Fuck you! It’s cursed!” he raised the submachinegun to fire. (Diplomacy roll: fail)

The crazy guy fired a fully automatic spray at Morse. The barrel of the gun shot up toward the ceiling from the recoil and he missed badly. Before anyone else could react, Davros fired a burst from across the room and hit the man in the head. His head exploded and he dropped to the ground. The low velocity bullets carried through and ricocheted off the coolant tanks, punching a few holes in a tight grouping. The coolant began to spray out in an arc and pooled around the headless body. (Gun roll: critical hit)

The girl beside Davros screamed and squeezed her eyes shut. “No more! Please!” she sobbed. “Everyone has gone mad. Please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. What is your name? Tell me what happened here.” said Davros kindly.

She looked up at him with comprehension. “You’re not crazy, are you?”

“I don’t think so, though some people might not agree. There was one time, well, never mind. Tell me what happened here, please.” The motormouth medic controlled his run of chatter and listened.

“My name is Jade. Everything was normal for the first part of the trip. I just remember there was some accident with the cargo crates. A forklift malfunctioned or the driver was drunk, and a bunch of crates got knocked over. At first, they called for extra help in restowing the crates, but then everything went… everything went horrible…” The woman looked distressed, and tears started to flow silently from her eyes. “I just remember feeling so scared and angry. I felt like everyone was going to kill me or worse. I hid in my room and I was ready to kill anyone who came through that door. You don’t understand, that’s not like me at all. I hate violence! But then I started to feel a little bit better and realized how crazy I had been acting. I think something got out when the crates got knocked over. Something in the air, I don’t know! But everyone was acting crazy when I came out of my room. A couple of guys, nice guys, tried to kill me. They were shooting at me and shouting… crazy things… They shot a kid… not even ten years old and they shot her. And I heard them yelling at her body and kicking it. They said she was going to kill them…” The girl began to sob uncontrollably, the tears running down her face.

[eyeball]

paulson heard jades story ,as they all did, and was suddenly very glad they had their own air supply. nothing seemed to effect anyone yet some people where even still helmeted thats how quickly the situation had occurred now it looks like that could be a blessing if what the woman was implying was true.
slight paranoia suddenly got the better of him and he pulled up his motion sensor and performed a perimeter sweep, if there where more crazy people coming they paulson wanted to know before they got here.
<roll motion detector>
<roll awarness>

[Morse]

The man had turned to fire and made the biggest and last mistake of his life. Morse had not even gotten his finger on his trigger when Davros had fired into him and killed him. Morse had to hesitate and wait for the opportunity to have a cleaner shot that wouldn't further rupture the already damaged tank behind the man. But Davros had been a good shot and the man was down. Morse closed the distance and stepped on the weapon the man had, thrusting it away and out of reach. All signs were that the man was completely dead, and Morse was well versed in telling the difference. With the damage to the body though... he didn't have to be.

"Sykes I got one hostile down. Civilian with a submachine gun. Took a shot at us n' didn't survive, over."

Morse did a quick search of the body for anything useful, rifle still at the ready, while he heard the girls story. There was a natural horror to her, but Morse wasn't able to tell if it was just hysteria or something real. Whatever it was, it was a bit unsettling and furthered the mystery of the situation on the ship.

"1St squad, keep your eyes up. Paulson if there's anything commin' at us you know what to do." Morse then addressed the child. "Kid, I need to know wer' everyone'r anyone else might be. Gotta know if they're as pissed as you say or if there's other's hidin' like you did. We gotta know fast n' git to em now."

Morse rarely addressed civilians without fierce and direct orders, but this child was not going to be of any use if it screamed anymore or distorted its memory with trauma.

<Tag Anyone
<Roll Awareness

[lordstrand]

Davros listened to the girls story, through her sobs and flowing tears. Davros reached out and embraced the girl "It's going to be ok, we're going to save whoever we can." She cried soppy wet tears into the shoulder of his pressure suit. It was about as much comfort as he could offer right now. Morse walked over to the sobbing 20 something girl and said "Kid, I need to know wer' everyone'r anyone else might be. Gotta know if they're as pissed as you say or if there's other's hidin' like you did. We gotta know fast n' git to em now." He leaned the girl a little away from him and said as calmly as possible "It's ok we're here to help you, you gotta let us know where your friends are hiding. Can you show us what you were doing when you started coming back to your senses? Maybe you were doing something that can help the others. Do you know which containers they knocked over? And do you have a space suit that you can wear, or at least something with its own oxygen supply?" He made sure he was making clear eye contact through the face shield of his pressure suit.

<ooc im assuming we get some answers><and not sure what kind of roll i might need to make to get this info, diplomacy maybe?? If I need one>

He glanced around at his squad, with all their suits still sealed up tight. "Keep those seals buttoned up tight gents. I think were dealing with something airborne that i don't wanna have to deal with on a more intimate level. This could get ugly if it did this aboard a freighter. They run family and friends on these tugs and if they can turn on each other I can only imagine what would happen if some hot blooded marines get a whiff of the devil's farts"
<tag first squad>

"Chief gonna recommend that the other squads make sure their suits are sealed. Hopefully no one else opened that shit."
<tag morse>

Davros keyed up his comms link "Marines if you haven't opened your pressure suit leave your seals fucking shut. Potential airborne contaminants are in the air. If you have opened it reseal that shit right fucking now!! There is a possible out break of space herpes, so don't breath it, eat it,or fuck it got that marines!! We are here to rescue civis but we can't do that if i have to scrape the barnacles off your balls. Keep yourselves as safe as you can. There was a crate that was knocked over that contained whatever is affecting this crew, we need to locate it and figure out what it was."
<Tag everyone.>

"Chief hold her for a minute I gotta talk to Doc. Just hold her and let her cry it out, hopefully she'll be ready to move in a minute." He gently passed the girl to Mores "It's gonna be ok, gotta talk with my buddy Doc, he can help."
<tag Morse>

Davros walked a little away from the girl and keyed up doc. Doc, Space herpes outbreak. Someone got drunk and decided to plow a crate. He got somethin and now so does everyone else. They went nuts. Watch our boys if they start eyeballing you they probably don't want a date. Its not gonna be fun. Hope we brought enough supplies. There should be enough sedatives in the medic bags i set up to knock out an elephant so it should help calm a dozen marines. If we do find that crate make sure no one touches shit we don't want anyone's dick rottin off. Stay safe, stay frosty. Holler back if you got anything." He had to remember to breath in between his sentences, hopefully Doc caught all that. He would hate to have to repeat that slower.
<tag Doc>
He came back over to see how the girl was doing.

[eyeball]

paulson heard the order to leave suits on a sealed and started to panic more, he wasn't sure how long he could stay buttoned up in this thing it was making his skin crawl. he could hear his own heart beat pounding like a drum and sweat was streaming from him.

[Corporal Hicks]

The young woman looked distressed as if struggling to comprehend everything that was asked of her. “I don’t know, what was I doing when I came to my senses? I was standing by my door with a chair leg ready to… hit anyone who came in… I’m sorry. You think it’s like, an airborne disease? I don’t know if it helps but I’ve always got over sicknesses quickly. When I had mono I was fine in like a week. Sorry, that’s probably not relevant…”

"Kid, I need to know wer' everyone'r anyone else might be. Gotta know if they're as pissed as you say or if there's other's hidin' like you did. We gotta know fast n' git to em now."

“I don’t know where anyone would be hiding but most of the crew was in cryosleep. We only have about 18 crewmembers awake at any given time. They should still be in their tubes.”

Do you know which containers they knocked over?

“Oh, right. I think the spill was on M deck; that’s one of the lower decks. I can take you there or anywhere you want to go. If you had access to ShipNet you could access what was being transported in those crates, but you would need special access, you'd need the Captain's keycard or something. I suppose we should save the people in cryotubes but… Well, I guess you must have come on a ship, but where did you dock it? And why are you wearing those suits?! Did you know this was going to happen?!”

[Corporal Hicks]

Sykes' voice came through the radios, sounding a bit more stressed than usual.

“Morse, I copy you. Lance Corporal Davros, cut that bullshit and speak like a professional Marine, you understand me?”

[eyeball]

Paulsons motion detector came back a clean sweep nothing there that shouldn't be, slowly his fears began to subside, he no longer felt quite so caged in, he spotted a temrminal glowing in the back of the room and called it in, "somekind of interface here no idea what it does"

[Morse]

Davros seemed to be taking over the handling of the girl. This did not bother Morse very much. He was trying to handle the tactical situation that they were in, and getting information from the girl was not going to be among Morse's fortes. The fact was that most people struggled to understand Morse, and Morse struggled even more to understand them. His years of doing what they were doing was in a way eroding his empathy, and he was handling it one day at time.

Sykes came over the radio, and while Morse understood the point, he was not precisely the ideal person to be enforcing the "professional standard." What stood out to Morse more was the tone that Sykes had in detailing that professionalism was needed. That sort of thing only tended to happen in a dire situation. And while Morse did not see the immediately dire circumstance they were in, Morse was beginning to suspect the other squads came across something that 1st hadn't.

"Paulson, see if you can figure the interface out. If nothin' else get a good stab at who made the damn thing. Corporate'r Communist'r whatever, I just wanna know what we might be dealin' with."

<Tag Paulson

Morse moved over to Davros. "Davros!" Morse directed, but then brought his voice down. "Just keep them words off the net." Morse's response was not nearly as severe as Sykes response. Morse was sympathetic as a decade ago it was he that was doing just that. "They're keepin' with protocol, but I need you handlin' this one." Morse said pointing to the girl, who was entering to hysterics. They could handle a civilian, but tactically she was going to bring them down substantially and Morse couldn't afford it. "Emphasis on calm and not in our fuckin' way."

<tag Davros

Morse looked to Mckenna. "Mckenna, watch our rear." That directive was simple.

Morse then reached back out to Sykes.

"Sykes, you want us to close our position and link back up or hold here?"

<Roll Awareness
<Tag Anyone

[Corporal Hicks]

The tanks on the port side of the room began to hum loudly as if someone just turned the pumps on. Sykes replied to Morse through the radio:

"Keep looking for stairs; we need to link up. We found no stairs aft, going to try forward. Fusion reactor has a coolant leak but I think we bought some time. Private Carlson is out of action. Over."
<Tag Morse>

[eyeball]

Paulson examined the terminal it had a screen which was good but apart from that it was all bad "Needs ship ID it says " Paulson reported, "that dead guy got one?" was his next question.

[lordstrand]

Davros made a mental note to "stow his shit" the humor that he used to alleviate his anxiety and stress was not being appreciated by the other marines, let alone Sargent Sikes. He decided instead to focus his attention to the sobbing mess of a girl next to him. "Just have one last question Jade, where is the way up or down between the decks? Elevator or stairs we probably need both. As for the suits, were marines we prepare for anything. The ship is a bit compromised after all the things the crew has been doing. We had to make sure we were ready for anything. I'm not 100% if it's an airborne contaminant but its probably a pretty safe bet. We will take you to the ship as soon as we can, right now we need your help to save as many people as we can. He made sure to keep eye contact with her while he spoke and did his best not to ramble. He didn't want to directly answer her question about where the "ship" was docked nor did he want to give away how many of he fellow marines there were. Whatever this was on the ship it had driven a lot of people mad and there was no way he could be sure that this girl he just met was "safe" to tell. A little healthy paranoia never hurt anyone.

Davros keyed up his comms.
"Civi says that they work in shifts aboard this ship. There are 18 people awake at any given time. So were looking at 18 potential hostiles minus however many we neutralized and the girl sitting in front of me. The rest of the crew should be in there cryopods, but I'm not sure of the protocols here for when "accidents" happen. The crates we are looking for are on M deck, so be careful if you are around there. Civi says that we may be able to access their ShipNet if we can find a key card, probably with the captain or other high officers.
<tag the squads>
<if the girl gives us the location of stairs or elevators relay it to the other squads for a meet up>

Davros glanced at the dead guy on the floor, brains now dripping out to mingle with the blood and iridescent goo on the floor. Great he thought more nightmare fuel to go with all the rest. "Who calls dibs on going through his pockets, I think Ill pass on this one, got my hands full anyway."
He briefly had a flashback to the last mission with the containers of the black goo, now gone, he hoped they weren't related to these ones. That would make things a hell of a lot worse.

[Morse]

Morse searched the headless corpse before him thinking on the waste that it was. It did not throw him off entirely, but more contemplated the uselessness that so many lives had. They lived for a moment in time and then they were expended for next to no reason. It was hard to wrap one's head around, how they were little more than cells in a machine that was always churning the galaxy over, and no one would remember almost any moment of what was occurring. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, they were all about the same. And it all meant very little, as was exemplified by the headless corpse before him. And that thought was summed up in a single phrase in his mind.

"I need out of this suit."

What? Why had he thought that? It didn't matter the mission was the mission, and he read the name on the tag in front of him, the corpse. It was easy to read.

Captain Michael, A.

Is that what it really said? Morse read it again. And then again. And then again. He had trouble retaining information sure, no more than anyone else. But every time he read it, the wording became clearer in his mind. It shifted and molded into the new word.

"Corporal." Morse thought. "Morse, Allen."

He was Corporal. He was Morse. He was Allen.

That's right! He was still a Corporal... he was Allen... and He was Morse....... and Morse was dead on the ground. Dead because he was still in the suit.

"I need out of the suit."

He muttered that allowed that time. He felt his lips move. He couldn't quite remember what he said. How could he remember? He was in this death trap. This form fitted coffin that was just his size. It had a window in the front so people could see his corpse.

The Tag said "Corporal Allen Morse" didn't it? He was going to die. That was a fact. He was going to die.

Die unless....

"I need out of the suit."

Morse stood up straight and looked away, towards the slightly ruptured tanks before him, standing over the body. His head turned and his face looked bewildered.

He reached up and undid the clamps on the neck, ejecting the canopy helmet and took it off, breathing in a firm breath from his nose and he repeated... holding his weapon in a way that was simply not becoming of a marine that had as much experience as he had.

"I need out of the suit."

<Tag Anyone

[eyeball]

Paulson watch Morse head over and search the body presumably for an ID that paulson had just mentioned, as paulson watched Morse stopped and just stared then looked at his suit then back at the dead man. Slowly so very slowly morses hand began to rise and he started to begin to process of taking his helmet off. Paulson had had the same feeling less than two minuets before now he just knew it was a really bad idea. he hustled over as fast as he could calling out as he went. "Sarge leave the helmet on mate this is a suspected toxic environment the feeling will pass in a second" he tried to sound calm and confident as he crossed the gap between them as fast as possible.

Morse had his hand near the latches but thankfully seemed to be struggling with his coordination and the helmet was still on as paulson arrived. then suddenly it was off Paulson had been just to slow Morse seemed to gulp in air a bit wide eyed Paulson stepped back he did not know what to expect next.

[lordstrand]

Davros turned to the girl. "Stay here. Stay low." Mildly shocked that not only did Morse freak out he completely took his helmet off. "Shit" he though. "What else could happen to make things go completely sideways." He stood up slow and kept his hands where Corporal Morse could see them. "Hey buddy, needed to get that helmet off huh? How you feelen now? Take nice slow breaths there bud, I got something for ya that should help out.
<tag Morse>
"Paulson, I got this. That's the Captain there, grab his key card and see what you can do with that console there. We need to know what was in that crate and where the crew are. If they are in the cryo-pods do you think you can get them to eject underwater? I can help you in a minute."
<tag Paulson>

Davros reached nice and slow into his medic pouch. He grabbed for a good sedative for Morse, he was a big boy in his prime so this would probably take a good dose. "Corporal Morse, this can help you out. I need you to take it and thump the pointy end into your leg. It's gonna sting but it will make you feel better." He placed the tranquilizer on the floor and backed up a step. Morse shook his head and gave him a funny look, as if he had a few too many drinks and was trying to remember who his friends were. He picked up the hypo and gave it another funny look, shaking it like he could figure out what was inside.
"Come on bud right in the thigh." Davros mimed the motion just in case he needed to see it. Watching Morse carefully, to see if more aggressive means of convincing him were necessary. Morse wacked the hypo into his thigh with a solid thump. The drugs took effect quickly and he started to slump downward. Davros ran up and guided his fall down to the floor. Wouldn't do to save him from the ship only to have him crack his head open on the floor. He gently rested Morse's head down and put something underneath it so he didn't loose his air supply, the air in this ship might be driving him mad but no air at all equals death. He grabbed the discarded helmet and did his best to button it back on without hurting Morse.

He stood up and glanced back to the girl to insure that she was still ok. "You good? We got this." He walked over to Paulson rattling away on the keyboard. "whatcha got man, find any info on those crates? Might help us solve this shit. Think if we eject the cryo-pods they can survive the trip to the surface, if they even can eject underwater?" He hoped that Paulson didn't take offense to him taking charge, and that he could find something useful.
<tag paulson again>

He keyed up the Sykes. "We have key-card access going to see what was in the crates and see if we can find and rescue the crew. We may want to bug out if we can get the civi's out of here. Things are going FUBAR and I don't have any answers yet. Morse is down, no injuries, but we are going to have to get him back to the mini's ASAFP. I'm at a loss for what is effecting us, he didn't take off his helmet as far as i can tell. Hope we can all fit in the mini's don't need any of us taking our helmets off when we're underwater. Any orders SIR."
<tag Sykes>