One of the robots temporarily stalls in its motion thanks to Prospero and only one of the robots is sort of able to get away from the two grenades bounced in between them. That one gets smacked in the head with a firey first from Prosper while Leila extracts herself and Cueta prepares herself for the next round.
The undead woman can talk really fast, her lips move rapidly as each member of the group is talked to separately.
Having taken direct personal measure of the assaulting group, she directs all fire on the most vulnerable member, to take the team out, one, by one.
That being the entangled Astrianna.
The soft cover provided by Vek means only one of the robots is able to hit Astrianna, however both shots from the leader do.
Vek ignores the voice in his head, focusing on clearing out the robots rather than formulating a response.
Seemingly oblivious to the plethora of gunfire depleting her shielding, Astrianna seems to be talking at length. She then suddenly twists her legs around, trying to pop out of the goo to dive around the corner outside of the line of fire.
Cueta turns to the nearest robot and slashes at it twice in quick succession. Her attack is hurried, her passenger buzzing in her head, urging Cueta to get through the robots as quick as possible, and to get to the real business of ending this dead thing's unlife.
Prospero-4 considers peppering the enemy group with scattergun, but the room is full of allies already. So it's the artillery laser that will do the job. The android follows Vek's example, and starts removing the robots from the fight.
Leila kips up and leaps towards any of the remaining robots, tumbling over its guard and then diving low. She fires her pulse caster at it and remarks to the pale stranger. She felt a lot better about taunting the creature when she wasn't glued to the floor!
My intellect will not be insulted by you for much longer.
As Astrianna manages to get out of the line of fire. Vek swings wildly at the most damaged of the robots. Only one of his punches actually land. But that's enough to take it out
Cueta's swing clangs off against the robot, seems like whatever's riding her doesn't have anything particular against robots.
Prospero's laser fire puts a pair of holes in the head of another robot and it falls over.
Leila's trick shot from beneath Vek's legs really frazzles the last robot but isn't able to get it out of the fight.
The way in is clear. The undead in charge fires two shots right at Vek. She's an amazing shot to get through Vek's defenses as easily as she is.
(24 and 17 electric damage on Vek, only 4 is soaked by the forcefield)
The last remaining robot in the room switches to trying to smack Vek with it's metal arms, neither attack gets through.
As Astrianna leans agaist the wall to try and catch her breath, electric arcs start to fly at her. From starboard (where the other robots came from) she sees two more have come in firing at her.
One lands a hit
Vek grins through the pain. Ignoring the remaining robot, he rushes towards the undead with his glowing fist raised. He swings twice in quick succession, and the light surrounding him rushes out to surround his allies.
Astrianna huffs as she was cut off, slumping against the wall. "Well you're no fun." She says to herself, kind of upset the undead didn't want to play out a scene. Clearly not a fan.
Then she is suddenly struck by an electrical bolt that makes her teeth chatter. "S-s-s-s*!$, are you kidding me?" She curses to herself, struggling to get free of the binding goo. When it continues to hold fast to her shoes, she pulls out a grenade from her bandolier and drops it at her feet in desperation.
Everyone else notices the hallway starts to fill with thick smoke, rapidly spreading in the airless environment.
Reinvigorated by annoying her foe and - she couldn't stress this bit enough - not being shot Leila tried to bring down the last (visible) robot!
As she did she noticed something new. Hmm...
Cueta swings her sword again at the robot, a grim smile crossing her face.
The robots almost dealt with, Prospero-4 turn the barrel his trusted weapon towards the Pale Stranger. All this talk hasn't made the android any more sympathetic towards the undead. With Vek and Cueta already attacking with their full might, the fight should be over soon.
The robot Vek ignores tries to swipe at the charging solarian but is unable to. Vek on the other hand lands one very hard smack on the undead woman.
Astrianna is unable to get rid of the resin stubbornly clinging to her but is able to get measure of ranged protection from the two newcomer security robots.
Leila quite adeptly blows the last remaining robot into nonexistence, leaving it a twitching mess of ruined parts.
Cueta with no robot left in the room, Cueta moves to flank the gunslinger with Vek and is able to land a hit as well, though barely.
Both of Prospero's shots are just able to land on the woman as well. Leaving her with some very large scorched holes in her once pristine uniform.
Only one of the shots from the barrage directed at Astrianna by the two new robots hits.
She raises both her pistols and fires them right into Vek's faceplate. Her speed and skill is such that there is no opportunity for either Cueta or Vek to take advantage and both shots land direct.
She can't deflate, being a breathless being in an airless environment, but seeing Vek not go down from two of her best point blank shots does seem to change the expression on her face.
Opting not to reignite his fists, Vek tries to shift around the undead gunslinger to force her to split her attention between him and Cueta.
Leila flip-flops between all the channels, just to see if they were open again real quick. Then she levels her gun at the stranger and makes an attempt.
Vek's second punch catches the undead woman square on the face and she spins around like a top and is only, barely, able to stay standing, she turns blearily towards the halfling and through a very broken jaw slurs
she horks up and spits a blob of some sickly green looking fluid of undead vitality in Leila's general direction.
The teletechnologic woman was quick, that was for sure, but Cueta was possessed by a undead-hating, life-saving, superpower-granting being from beyond. Plus, probably more importantly, she had friends. Cueta centers herself and takes her time swinging the sword again, figuring a well-placed strike was more likely to break through the undead's defenses than a barrage of swings.
Prospero-4 pauses his attacks momentarily, trying to figure out what passes between Leila and the Pale Stranger. While it's hard to guess what passes between the two, it surely looks like the undead isn't going to surrender. So the android continues firing with his laser.
Without a receptive audience Astrianna finds herself unable to work up the creative juices to find some sort of clever quip about her unfortunate situation. Another shocking bolt hits her as she is typing a note into her wrist comm to add some funny lines in post at this particular timestamp, causing a few hundred thousand smiley faces to fill the screen instead.
She would have thrown the communicator onto the ground in a rage if it wasn't attached to her wrist, so instead she pulls out her secret weapon- THE QUELLER. "This ancient Kishalee artifact is too COOL for every day use! ...ugh." Grimmacing at her own lackluster performance, she just points the nozzle forward and waits for the bots to get in range for quelling.
Her crew will have dealt with that undead and restored communications any second now... aaaannnnyyy second now.
Prospero's laserfire uncharacteristically misses the staggering undead but Cueta's single swing neatly separates the Stranger's broken face from the rest of her body. They go in different directions.
Everybody focused on the battle inside the room relaxes as the threat comes to an end.
The security console behind the now fully deceased Stranger shows a simple control screen for a comm disruption utility that is toggled on. It seems like the stranger activated it just before tossing the grenades that started the fight. There is also an access panel that has slots for four keys as well as a biometric scanner much like the panel that opened the door.
There is also a sealed locker right in the dias in the center of the room that the Stranger had been taking cover behind.
It seems like this is exactly the place the team had been looking for to get more information on The Empire of Bones. There is a lot to search and discover.
Outside however, the robots, deciding Astrianna isn't enough of a threat to stay at range, rush in to flank and apprehend the the intruder at which point they get sprayed by an ultra cold stream of ancient technology.
Their momentum allows them to avoid most of the damage though and they end flanking the struggling, and still entangled, and quite hurt, half-elf.
Vek sighs in relief as the gunslinger falls to the ground, but as he counts his team members his brow furrows with worry. 1, 2, 3... Where’s the fourth?
”Captain?” he tests on his comm device - but the blare of static that answers him does little to reassure him. Making the most of his solar-driven speed, the vesk makes his way out into the hallway. As he spots the smoke cloud, his expression darkens. With a silent roar, he rushes into the fray once more.
Oh well. Guess they had to just extract the secrets from the computers instead! Leila fixed on the computer and dashed towards it. She couldn't wait to talk normally again!
she flailed around a bit to convey her excitement over the fact. And some rude gestures towards the smoking robots just because.
Now. Hopefully this was easy to switch off?
The interference dissapears, you guys can communicate again.
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Cueta's comm lights up with words not suitable for family programming, in a very familiar, Castrovelian-accented audiogenic voice, lilting in the end with a vocal fry. "Astri's in trouble."
Turning, the pilot sprints from the room, bringing her longsword to bear against the nearest security bot.
"Robotic s*+%-piece m~*&%$%!$!+! going to bash your circuit board with a tungstan rod covered in viral-loaded nanites AND FEED THE SCRAP TO AN ORB OF ANNIHILATION!"
Astrianna's melodic voice streams over their comms as she whips out a knife and takes out her pain on the nearest robot just as Vek rounds the corner. He can see her repeatedlyjamming her knife into one of its joints.
"Thank the gods you ended that b+%%* in the other room! There was so much dead air I'm going to have to dub this entire sequence. Now destroy those dumbass robots!" The brief respite of Astrianna not making a fuss over their comms had come to an end.
”The radio silence had it’s benefits, ” Prospero-4 utters as the familiar rantings of his captain hits the air. But it looks like she is in trouble. The android looks at his feet, and estimates the substance keeping him in place will loosen its grip soon. In the meanwhile, he targets one of the attacking androids and tries to shut it down
Everybody other than Leila are fighting in a still thick cloud of smoke which probably makes for some terrible cam footage. It might be too bad as none of the melee attacks miss on one of the robots and it is taken out by Astrianna stabbing her knife right into its faceplate.
The other robot meanwhile is completely taken over by Prospero.
Liela finds she can only access the comm disruption program on the security console, getting anywhere else will require some unauthorized access.
On the undead officer in command they find four elite semi-auto pistols, an ultrathin longsword, the last emergency security key, and a system-wide comm unit.
The security on the console seems to be incredible. So any help they can get from the 4 security key slots and a biometric sense pad should help.
"Pew! Everyone okay? Okay-ish? Maybe we'll take that small break now ..." Leila celebrates the return of the coms by looting as much ammo from the pistols as the others would let her get away with. Now she could actually shoot the darn thing!
---When we've had a chance to catch our breath---
Leila looks at the biometric sense pad. Then at the pale stranger. Back at the pad. And the stranger again. "Okay. She's dead. But... She was dead before too. So... We could just borrow her hand? Or eyeball or whatever bit it wants ..."
While the rest of the team finishes up with the remaining robot, Prospero-4 finally gets free from the entangling substance.
"I am fine, merely scratches from the grenade. I saw Astrianna and Vek taking heavy damage, are they all right?"
Once the android replaces the battery on his weapon, he is ready to go.
---
Prospero-4 joins Leila at investigating the console. Looking at the security of this thing, it should be quite important hub.
"We have four keys, and I believe we could use any required body part from the Pale Stranger. She is as fresh as she was before."
Astrianna finally shakes off the entangling goo, staggering past the scrapped bots and into the room through a cloud of rapidly dissipating smoke. "I'll be fine after a rest, nothing I can't handle!"
Quickly striding over to the Pale Stranger's body, she gives it a swift and savage kick. "What a trash-tier undead. I've known feral ghouls with more class." She scoops up the system-wide comm interface and whistles. "Check this out Prospero, it's an "Eloritu's Ear" system-wide com. These are ex-pen-sive, she must have been some sort of communications officer."
Finding a corner to sit in, Astrianna plops down for a rest and begins to tune in to the system-wide com to see if anyone else beside security bots were focusing in on their position. "Close and lock the door, I'm tired of scrapping bots."
"Vek, could you bring the Pale Stranger's hand over here - with or without rest of the body." Prospero-4 points at the biometric sense pad. "Rest of you, take a security key and be ready to insert it into the slot on my mark."
The android takes one of the keys and keeps it ready in front of the reader, while his free hand works with the console.
"All right, my code is ready. Ready to insert the keys - 3.. 2.. 1.. now."
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The Empire of Bones is one of the most dangerous ultranoughts in existence, and even with direct physical access to a console, the security privileges required to get access to the tier 10 computer network that can control such a massive ship are extreme.
Yet as all the keys slot into place and the hand of the dead officer slaps against the console, Prospero, with the knowledge gleaned from hacking into the cyber zombie aiding him in the server farm, is able to sweep away the last defenses against his access and the secrets of the vessel are made open as the communications disruption app swipes away from the console screen and many many different windows and folders appear as Prospero scans through it all.
The first thing they find is much of what they have gained access too is read only. The control center of the computer systems running the ship aren't in this hanger, but centralized in the command and control decks.
In there, the bridge controls the weapons and navigation, while cybercontrol is from where sensors and engineering are managed. Both are needed to control the ship and send it hurtling into the emerging ancient star killer.
Another thing they learn by going through the security logs of the hanger, is that Malakr, the Pale Stranger in charge of this section had been busy with her own plans. She had been aware of your intrusion from pretty much the get go, the records of all the alerts that had been raised by security cameras and door access reports are available for you to see. She just had been intercepting all of them and not allowing the alerts to be escalated in service of something she called Project Tombstone which is a folder and collection of programs, documents, and scripts that is also available on this console but seems separate from the standard applications available.
"Read-only. And hardwired that way - I cannot access any controls from here."
Prospero-4's fingers quickly on the console, but that is only half of what he is doing - rest is purely mental effort as the android and his exocortex scan the data and write code on the fly. As he works, he relays his findings to the rest of the group.
"Most curious... We could have had all of the stations security coming at as, but the Pale Stranger decided otherwise. What she was planning?"
And Prospero-4 digs deeper into the Project Tombstone, trying to figure out the big picture of the project.
"I *think* she wanted to be the captain." Leila remarks as she attempts to look over Prospero's shoulder both in the meat and virtual worlds. At least in cyberspace she didn't have to use jump jets for that!
Leila's instincts are right. As they get past the personal encryption on the folder, which wasn't too too hard for the experienced hackers on the crew (Malakar relied on physical separation for invisibility and security in this instance), they find that she was, in fact, planning, if not a mutiny, then at least a plan to undermine 'inappropriate members of the command staff' by escalating some minor security incident. Her most recent notes revolved around some newly dwarven undead that had shown initiative.
The notes date back around a year and the impetus seems to have been the Admiral of the ship, Admiral Serovox, starting to introduce new undead who were former enemies of Eox, into the command structure of the ship. In particular a Vesk name Churd Nashal who is now a captain seems to have really triggered Malakar's ire. She seems to have a real grudge from the time the Veskarium attacked Eox during their general invasion of the Pact Worlds. Only the old stock could be trusted as far as she was concerned.
Her plan was to release competent undead beholden to her into sensitive parts of the ship to cause havoc and discredit the current leadership.
She was definitely a romantic of old Eox based on the names of the folder and the pair of viruses that Malakar has been slowly and surely propagating through the systems of the ship to assist her saboteurs OR aid in her escape should things not work as she expected.
Wraith 2.0: Prevents the security cameras and security robots on the ship from seeing or recording any creature that is entered into the virus’s memory.
TombRobber: This program is capable of creating false security alerts anywhere on the ship, and can include in these alerts false security footage of anything in Wraith 2.0’s memory.
The Tombstone folder also contains a control to unseal the locker in the dais she had been standing at, which seems to have been a personal stash of hers of some sort.
Vek's eyes widen as he reads about Churd, but he says nothing until reaching the bottom of Leila's printout. "A stroke of luck the dead remain as petty as they were in life," he says at last. "What targets are currently invisible to the security cameras, and can we add ourselves to that list?"
Asrianna pockets the system-wide comm while no one is looking after she has the great idea to turn it into a pay-per-view streaming service of their daily life on The Sunrise Maiden when they return to the Pact Worlds.
The vlogger suddenly appears behind her two brightest eggheads as they break into the sophisticated Eoxian technology, emerald eyes widening as she comprehends their galatic-scale luck. "The broken bay door, now this... either we have luck to rival every halfling god put together, or someone is helping us out."
Knowing they weren't going to be swarmed with undead shock troopers at any moment, the Captain assumes her role and starts giving orders. "Vek, Cueta, unlock the door, go outside and start dragging banged up security bots into rooms. We might be able to fool the security cameras, but if someone walks through here they could send up an alert. Leila and Prospero, I want you to key our RFIDs to Wraith 2.0 and record footage of Vek and Cueta dragging bots around outside. We can use it later with TombRobber to both clear out the command deck and make some cover for our escape. Get those programs wireless-executable ready and map out the best route to the command bridge."
She smiles, and rubs her hands together. "Oh, and open up that locker. I'll go through the stuff."
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"Mm!" Leila takes a moment to survey the locker for any nasty surprises, physical or otherwise, then attempts to open it via the computer. Surely this would distract their captain from poking around in cyberspace! And, also equally important; give herself more time to poke around in cyberspace!
"Working on it, captain."
Prospero-4 takes a scan of the five of them, and starts feeding the data into the virus.
The only imagery already in Wraith 2.0's memory was Malakar but it has the capability to add plenty more.
Both programs are very small as good viruses are and have been propagated throughout the ship. All that is needed to trigger them are the scripts that are already ready to go in Tombstone and can be transferred to any decent handheld computing unit that can access the data ports throughout the ship.
The question of getting to the command central is obviously on everyone's mind. People don't walk everywhere on a ship of this size of course. The fastest and safest transportation method, especially from where they are to where they wish to go, are grav trains, with stations all across the ship.
The closest station is located a convenient 150 metrons or so away from the hanger they are in. This hanger really was choice real estate and Malakr was probably a pretty well regarded captain in the hierarchy of the ship to have such a sweet spot.
I mean she wasn't assigned to one of the more prestigious parts of the ship or anything, but it's still pretty nice.
The locker is long and thin and is it swings open, seems like was the gunslinger's personal ammo stash.
It includes two batteries, two high-capacity batteries, two super-capacity batteries, one ultra-capacity battery, 90 small arm rounds, 100 longarm and sniper rounds, 60 heavy rounds, and 25 scattergun shells.
There is also a wrapped case taking up most of the locker. Opening it reveals a yellow star plasma sword. A treasured memento? A trophy of some sort from Malakar's obviously long history as a soldier in service of Eox? Who can say.
Leila scratched her head at the stash. While pondering the contents she'll take the chance to scoop up a bunch of small arm rounds and refilling the looted pistol. "It seems like she was planning to shoot a *lot* of people!"
After looting her fair share - eventually - she gets back to the problem at hand. "I wonder if we can see if there's any grav train shipments heading up? There should be some logistics in here somewhere!"
Cueta grins and hoists the sword, enjoying the hum of the plasma as she waves it around. It was weighted a little differently than a metal weapon, and that would take some getting used to - but she suspected she'd get lots of practice.
"Pssst! You need to say something cool while you lift the sword like that. Otherwise Astri will edit something in!"