Sirus messages the captain (because he was listening in, of course), "I'll get the Halo ready. We have a while until the orbits are right for a transfer burn to the delivery area. It shouldn't be a problem to go take a look around at least."
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Anton responds back. 'Alright.'
After that lengthy and witty response he gets on the horn. "Attention all crew. We're gonna be takin' a small nature hike on a unknown and untamed station to search in hostile environs and dark mysterious vent' shafts to look for a girl gone missin' who is rumored to know which end of the scapel to not cut herself with. So giddy'up!"
He admits it doesn't sound nearly as smart an idea as when Ms. Turnelle said it.
He sends a text to Aurora. 'U R Goin wit uS. Robo-chiX is stayin heer.'
Aurora texts Anton back. "As we are searching for our new Doctor I shall accompany you. I wrote up a short questionnaire for our prospective crew member. Also, a nature hike sounds fascinating! Do you know much about the ecosystem in the vents?"
Satisfied with her response she goes and grabs her 'small' bag of necessary items. She checks on Elizabeth before heading to the join the rest of the crew. "Elizabeth, will you be alright on your own? I left you some of Val's book on courtship rituals."
"Yeah, I think I wi-- Wait. You left me with what?!" Elizabeth blurts out, too late to catch Aurora.
After the Angel has been put into a parking orbit to be offloaded, the shuttle is undocked and in a transfer orbit to the Rock Bottom. The ride is long and uneventful, but soon enough you dock with the station and prepare to go find your new crew member.
Sirus embarks with his usual compliment of armaments called "tools" by the unenlightened, cheif among them his heavily modified plasma welder/"rivet projector".
As you disembark from your shuttle, a bored looking guard waves you past. It isn't long before Anton notices two suits tailing you.
So, you have a need to prove yourself, right? Would you confront these guys, rather than ditching them, for a Fate Point?
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Anton stops in his tracks and he turns to Sirus, a look of sharp panic in his eyes. "Whoops, hey, did you bring it? I don't think I have it. Do you have it?!?"
Anton frantically pads down his pockets and comes up empty. He pads down Sirus' pockets and comes up empty. He pads down Val's pockets, "What? Hey, big important stuff. I thought I left it in my shirt. Priorities!" and comes up empty. He looks at Aurora, "Nah, you never had it." and he starts looking at the ground.
He searches the ground intensely like a man looking for a dropped contact lens in a sea of broken glass. He circles out, farther and farther, in a searching-spiral pattern. He finds nothing.
He searches evenly, paying no heed to any bystanders, until he eventually crosses paths with two suit-wearing men. "Oh! Hey, guys, can you -really- help me out here I totally need a favor. Oh, hey, I'm Anton by the way, glad t' meet ya," he shakes their hand with the enthusiasm of a Nebraska farm boy on his first visit to Venus City. "Glad. to. meet. you! Hey what are your names, since we're such good friends?"
The diatribe of lethal kindness doesn't pause long. "Hey, I -reallllly- need this, and I'm sure you have it, so I'm gonna ask you for it, okay? Are ya ready, are ya ready, are ya ready? Okay, here goes....
....Do you have the time?"
A smile like a house fire blazes across his face at the obvious prank. "Oh, hey, thanks guys, I really needed that. Now since you've been so very -very- helpful..."
His right hand goes inside his coat. His left is still out. His voice burns out the innocence that he had been cultivating the past few minutes and grows dark, like the sun eclipsed by an alien warship, "...is there something I can help you gentlemen with?"
Sirus thinks for a moment that the captain had indeed lost something: His mind. The ruse eventually comes to light just before Sirus applied some indiscriminate force to the back of his skull and forbade him from setting foot off the ship again.
The men are a whole different brand of trouble. Sirus silently thanks his lucky star that they'd been spotted and subtelly starts charging his capacitors.
Anja sighs in relief as she watches the fanblades spin in their reinforced titanium casings. "Okay, we need to find a marked hatch, about the size of my head, and get that opened. There's a switch in there that shuts down the fans, and if we're lucky, the engineers that installed it were lazy and didn't bother to connect the alarm systems. Of course, if they did, I have no idea how to check for that." She begins to look around for the hatch.
Aurora watches Anton in confusion, brow furrowed as she tries to make sense of his actions. She never had...the time? Time in what sense? Time itself is, of course, an illusion, so nobody could really have it. Time to do things? Back when she lived in the Pod she had all the hours in the world...but not the chance to leave
That must be it! Anton's touching on her lack of Real Life Experience, and something about these two men...helping them?...will bring about valuable life experience!
She bounds over to where Anton's standing. "Do you require assistance? We are professionals in matters that require assistance!"
When Anton frisks her, for a moment Valerie assumes he's looking for his sidearm, strapped to the small of her back and hidden (mercifully) by a lightweight jacket. What are you doing, Captain? she asks herself in bewilderment, watching the suits closely, trying to read them for any sign of hostility, a distraction already forming in the back of her mind.
"Uh, Control," one of the suits says, apparently ignoring Anton's question, "We have a gu-- oh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Thanks."
His partner looks at him and asks, "what did they say?"
"Standard protocol," he answers, a nasty grin coming over his face. Soon enough his partner is grinning in the same creepy manner.
"Shoot to kill," they say in unison as they draw their guns.
These guys are obvious tails. They are also obviously short on brains.
As you and Sela find out, the engineers were indeed lazy. No alarms activate when you open the hatch for the shut-off switch, nor do they activate when you flip the switch. That, unfortunately, is the extent of the good news. The bad news is, they didn't hook everything up right and you didn't catch it before flipping the switch. The fan goes from normal and safe operation to something the madhatter might use in an overclocked gaming rig, which is also decidedly unsafe. The two of you go careening back down the duct to who knows where.
Val is fast enough to realize what is going on almost before the suits have their orders. She does something just before the suits open fire.
Just after the shots ring out, there is a thumping noise above, then a crash as two dazed and entangled women fall down through the vent they just mangled.
"Y'know, Anja? Gettin' shot's startin' t'look mighty good," one of the woman, the one with short black hair, mutters.
Sirus turns his weapon on one of the suits. There is a hissing whine as the weapon powers up, then a "thump" that is more felt than heard. A steel spike shoots out at him.
Not too bright. That's good, Val thinks, ducking into a gallery and trying to yank Anton out of the line of fire as she does so.
Jumping back only slightly as the two women crash through the mangled vent, Valerie decides to take advantage of the distraction. "Good, the backup's here!" she calls to no-one in particular. "Best you be running now, boys. These two you don't want to tangle with!"
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Anja shakes her head, blinking back the double vision from her bumpy ride. A thumping sound draws her attention, and she watches a steel spike fly toward one of the suit-wearing men. Then, a moment later, one of the women says something about backup, causing Anja to look around groggily. Seeing no one else, she finally puts two and two together. I guess I'm on their side, now.
She fishes her handgun out of her waistband and points it unsteadily at the suits.
*Bang!*
"That was a warning shot! Next time I'm shooting to kill!"
Aurora sprints away from the gunmen and ducks around a corner. "Cover increases your chance of surviving an armed confrontation!" she calls out.
Sirus blows one of the suit's chest into hamburger. The other manages to get off an alert before Sela takes him down.
Unfortunately, There appears to be more suits nearby.
Two more of the men come running around the corner with pistols out and begin to take aim.
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It turns out between the deception, feeling up most of the crew, and having Aurora both rush in and rush out of danger, it was just too much to also see to a minor thing like personal safety. Both rounds slam into the captain's dingy old coat like on oppressive government finding a secret cranny of property rights that they haven't trampled yet.
Anton avoids getting shot by the awesomely cool method of ripping off the ancient movie, The Matrix. Sadly, he can't seem to manage to get himself back upright and winds up falling on top of both Sela and Anja.
That, of course is when the two suits show up.
"Omaigawd! They killed Kenny!"
"The bastards!"
Both of them raise their weapons and fire wildly.
One bullet whines inches from Anja's head, while Sela struggles to get moving and just barely manages to avoid getting hit in the shoulder.
Sirus winds up his weapon and launches another spike at the new suits.
As the big...spike-thrower...spools up for another shot, Anja instinctively presses her face against the backs of Anton's calves, then whimpers a bit as the *whoosh* of air from the shot blows her hair around. "Fine. We warned you!"
*Bang*
Two corpses later, the corridor is silent.
Aurora peeks her head around the corner. "Oh dear. I do not believe those men ever wanted our assistance."
She hurries over to where Anton and the new women are lying in pile and peers curiously at the newcomers. "I didn't know we had backup. When did we hire you, and why were you traveling through the vents? That doesn't seem like an optimum mode of transportation."
It is if you don't wanna be seen. Sirus comments. His "tool" hisses as the coolant system brings the internal temp down to something reasonable.
"That's us," Sela mumbles from where she lays, "express delivery backup via air duct."
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Anton tries maintain his dignity after unceremoniously landing in a pile of feminine athletes, but after he feels a heavy pressure on his calf followed by a pair loud shots between his legs, he reconsiders and just starts thrashing about. Eventually, after the suits have gotten themselves perished, he again tries to regain his feet.
"'Scuse me. Pardon me. Terribly sorry. Whoops, terribly sorry, don't know how that got there," he mumbles in apology as he eventually gets upright again.
"Sirus, take a look out for any more of their friends. 'Rora, no, no I don't think they wanted assistance. Murder might be the term for th' thing they wanted," Anton says as he starts padding down the suits, looking for intel.
While he works, he address the two express-delivery girls. "Pleased t' meet ya. You wanna entertain us with the story of who you are and why you dumped your pretty selves all over our perfectly respectable gunfight?"
Sirus nods and checks the immidiate vicinity.
Only once Anton's up does Anja start getting up as well, carefully safing her pistol and then shoving it back into her waistband. "I didn't see much respectable about it. I'll entertain you with stories all you want later, but for now, we've just had a firefight near the outside of Rock Bottom. Shouldn't we be making plans to leave?"
She pauses, then offers a quick handshake before schlepping her bag over her shoulder again. "Anja. Anja Stavarov. Can we leave now?"
Sela hefts her bag and looks around.
"Yeah, I've had enough of this place for a few lifetimes, and I'm sure that Anja has had more than that," She says.
Looting the suits turns up four pistols with two full clips and one missing a bullet each, four nondescript suits with bloodstains, four earbugs, four minicomps, and a thumb drive labeled "blackmail."
The bugs are still on and connected.
Having come back from checking about, Sirus takes a look at the tech to see if it can be hacked or "salvaged" for the ship. He wouldn't do the hacking, of course, but he still wanted a peek at the hardware.
"Well, in that case," Valerie says dryly, "Congratulations, one of you can be our new medic." She steps out from the gallery she'd taken cover in, offering a hand briefly to each of the two newcomers, before turning her attention to the dead suits, claiming herself a pistol and ammo. "Better late than never, Cap'n," she winks, handing Anton back his older, more battered sidearm, and trying to figure out how to stop the earbugs from transmitting.
"A medic?" Anja looks Valerie up and down, then eyes Anton. "I have a basic degree in bioengineering, but if you don't have the equipment, that's not going to get you far. We never really learned much about improvisation."
She gives a nervous look at the suits. "Could we get a move on? I'd prefer not to be here when their friends show up. They seem to have it in for me...or for Sela."