The Captain was the Captain for a reason. With limited time and the lives of at least one, possibly two, rockets on the line, she didn't hesitate.
"There's no kill like overkill," she said. A tiny crease seamed onto her scared forehead and she shot a little smile at Mr. Sythe. "Sorry, no stun like over stun. We'll telemat in some grenades first, then snap him up and get him medical attention and an apology once he's safe."
"Understood." Mr. Sythe said, voice utterly neutral.
---
Security Supervisor Vai Asau, when she arrives with the grenades...well...you can see why Lera gets really quiet and very red when you had asked her how her integration with the Newton-2's security department had gone. Vai was at
least six feet tall, with an undercut and a face that had been carved from jaw to ear by a scar, turning her lip into a perpetual smirk. Her features were from somewhere in the Pacific Islands - bronzed skin and dark hair - but her body was purely sculpted by some hard work. She was
strong in a way that was hard to really put your finger on. It wasn't
just the muscles.
Though she had plenty of that.
It was also how she walked. She came up to the telemat room with a bandolier of stun grenades and the young blond Security guy, Mark, close in tow, both of them with pistols and wearing black armour vests, helmets tucked under their arms. Without comment, Vai flipped open the safety cover, forcefully jammed her thumb on the activation switch, and casually tossed the grenade into the telemat tube, followed by a helmet camera.
"Well, let's hope that's enough. Let me know if you want us over there, captain." she said to the air, stepping into the other tube as the seal closed on the grenade, followed by a flash a few seconds later. On your tablet, getting a live feed from Nhi's console, you heard the telltale sound of the teleporter operating, like cascading glass beads and a
pop of displaced air.
"Telebomb! The humans are attacking, tactical alert! For the Emper-"
There was a
thump and a rough, static-filled crackle as the grenade went off, and the clattering sound of things (Likely, Warrant Officer Gideon, his sword, and what was left of Dummy) clattered to the ground. You glanced back to your tablet as Nhi switched to the camera, and you saw Warrant Officer Gideon sprawled out, grasping for a support beam desperately. Dummy was… well, you swore you heard Lewis swear from two decks below you through the open grav-chute. Dummy was in bad shape.
"Well, he's not moving much." you said, showing the screen to Aliya behind the telemat console.
"I would prefer him a bit farther from the wall… it's gonna be hard not to take a good chunk of the ship with him." she said, wrinkling her nose as if disgusted by the thought of a less-than-perfect teleport.
"Just make sure you get all of him, please." Mr. Sythe's voice said through the console, and Aliya's fingers flew over the console as she inputted the coordinates. Looking almost disappointed, Vai stepped out of the tube, beckoning Mark out. The two of them took up positions in front of the large cargo tube, though Vai took a moment to adjust Mark's stance, helmets down.
"We going to be okay back here?" you asked. It was taking a
long time to activate this time, presumably due to the mass of the Warrant Officer and whatever else was coming along.
"That's why there's a containment tube. Capacitors peaked, here we go." Aliya said casually, flipping the activation switch. When you glanced back up, Warrant Officer Gideon was lying on the pad, with half his sword and half of Dummy around him, along with what looked like a chunk of bulkhead. "... Oh, yeah. Well, better to overshoot than undershoot, bill me the repairs."
Gideon stirred, rubbing his eyes, looking around weakly. He spotted the security team outside the tube, and made an attempt to grab for his sword before stumbling with a
thud against the side of the glass, like a fish running into the edge of the aquarium.
"Earthers?" his voice was raspy. "Damn… they have...you'll never take me alive!" His shoulder bonked against the side of the telemat.
"Well, good news, the tube looks clean for any serious quantity of harmful chemical agents. Doctor, are you getting this scan?"
"I am. Initial analysis indicates nothing viral or bacterial out of the norm. His life signs look normal, though I'd like to get him to sickbay and take a proper look. Shouldn't be infectious, though masks on?"
You glanced to Aliya, and she waved it off. Trusted the bioscanners, you guessed.
"Uh… I don't know if you're going to need us for much." Vai muttered through her radio, and Mark broke into a nervous laugh. "Pop the tube, we'll get him down to medical."
Aliya depressed a button and the tube hissed open, Gideon flopping weakly out, the hilt of his sword in his hand.
"Whoa, buddy, calm down. We're here to help." Vai said, holding out her hands. Mark, behind her, had a hand on his holster. "We're going to take you to a doctor, okay?"
"Earther scum!" Gideon's eyes were wild. "You will not have my babies for brisket. Stay back! I have poison capsules, my blood will be toxic!" He flailed around with his sword.
"...brisket?" you asked.
"We all
know what you do with captives! Torturers! The stars will be cleansed of genetic filth like you!" Gideon growled. "For the Emperor!" He lifted his sword hilt, the jagged tip catching the light with a flash of menace.
"Okay, fuck it. Mark?" Vai said, and Mark pulled his pistol and fired. There was a blue flash, and Gideon collapsed hard on his face, leg twitching slightly.
"... sorry." Mark muttered, and you could just picture him wincing behind his helmet before pulling it off.
"Ah, he'll live. Night, buddy. Okay doc, we're going to bring him down the grav-chute." Vai said, and then turned to hold her hand out, down low, for Mark. Mark gave her a sheepish grin that just made him look even cuter, then smacked his palm against hers. "First stun in the field! Good job rookie!"
"It was easy! Though, uh, I think he broke his nose."
"To be fair, the next time, it might not be a zonked out ally," Vai said, seriously. "Most of the time, you're not shooting fish in the telemat. Though, if you have to stun somebody like this for their own safety, it's better they fall forward than backward. Backward, they might crack their head. Forward, instinct is your hands go out in front of you. Wait for them to step forward."
Mark nodded, seriously. "Got it!"
"Officers, if you're quite done turning my uncle into a teachable moment, I would like him to be transported to sickbay now please."
As the two security certs - being the burly ones in the room - took the zonked out, groaning Gideon away, you took a moment to open a line to Mr. Sythe's console on your wrist-comm.
"You okay?" you asked, quietly. "Like...that was your uncle, and, I'm sure he'll be fine once Dr. Sprout takes a look over him." You paused. "...so, like, is your uncle super racist or-?"
"He was delirious," Mr. Sythe said, his voice firm. "Many of his generation internalized quite a bit of propaganda, even if they have since renounced it. When I was young, right after the war, he came home from a prison camp. My father had not yet returned from the war yet, so he was my first exposure to human culture, even second hand. It turned out that his inculcated assumptions about you were...erroneous."
"Which is why he's now 'Gideon', huh?" you said.
"He claimed it was the most accurate human transliteration of his name - and the one that sounded the most...cool." he said, sighing. "Typically not a metric by which we select names."
Sure,
TALON SCYTHE.
"Well, I'm going to, uh, check and make sure that he's okay," you said, tripping over your words. "Cause… I'm supposed to be doing that. Astrobiology. Bye!"
---
The sickbay on the Newton-2 is relatively small, taking up only one of the sections of the habitation deck it's on. That's because, normally, not that many people need to get patched up at any one time...and if there was ever an emergency, the walls could be taken down and the sickbay could be expanded to take up the whole thing.
Dr. Theodosius Sprout is the exact kind of person you'd imagine if you heard that name. He has a big fleshy nose that seems to be perpetually red, a close-trimmed beard that has been waxed and then stroked up to have mustaches that curled so fiercely they almost touched themselves again, and he is as bald as an egg. He has Gideon restrained lightly on one of the beds and is drawing blood with one of his medical apparatus. Seeing the bright green blood filling up the syringe makes your stomach do a little flop. It doesn't matter if it's green, red, blue or black, how do other people
survive knowing that they're walking bundles of...that?
Your blood was much more tasteful - transparent, and it instantly crystalized on exposure to air.
"Well, I'm fairly sure I've got it all ruled out. It's not viral, not bacterial, not prions, nothing he's ingested would suggest it, and clearly not a natural development of his life cycle or any such thing." the doctor said, tapping his tablet. "But it's clear that something's done a number on his neurological system. Miss Robinson, unconventional biology is your field. What do you make of it?"
"Well… I'm honestly not sure." you said. "One thing we do want to make sure of as quick as possible is if this is actually only isolated to Aquillians, right? If it's being produced by something in this system, then we may be being exposed to it right now."
"That's good. We don't have a cause as of yet…" he frowned, then strokes his left mustache, twisting it to an invisibly finer point. "I hate to bring it up almost, but psionic effect-"
"I'd rather not immediately default to the psionic explanation the moment we're stumped." you said, maybe a bit more firmly than needed. "It's certainly a possibility to be investigated, but a material cause… frankly, will be easier to work with."
"Agreed. Besides, not your field. That said, I think I can officially say that we ought to be safe transporting a team to the Aquillian vessel." the Doctor said. "Which I hear you'll need to. Something happened to the drone? Lewis will be inconsolable."
"Well… we'll get Dummy back and maybe you can patch him up." you said.
---
The captain is arranging an away team to the vessel: drones took you as far as they could go. As the resident astrobiologist and one of the backup medical specialists, you're the most qualified to lead the discovery half of the team. You'll be accompanied by two security officers and one additional person.
[ ] Medical: In case others need to be treated.
[ ] Astrogation: to help stabilize the ship and get things in order.
[ ] Engineering: to help with navigation through damaged sections and any repairs, if needed.
[ ] Signals/Admin: To help communicate with survivors and parse logs.
What's your primary goal? The other goals will also be pursued as opportunity allows, but this is your mission.
[ ] Locating and aiding survivors. If there's anything close to a full crew compliment, there's too many to take on board, but maybe you can help.
[ ] Locating the source of the problem and discovering to what degree the Newton is at risk.
[ ] Getting the ship in working order, stabilized, and ready to move.
