You rubbed your palm against your forehead, thinking about how to get at the computer data, before either Mark or Nhi lost it completely. Nhi was currently pressing her back against the wall, whimpering quietly, while Mark was watching you intently. You could almost imagine him undressing you with his eyes.
"...seriously, are you sure you're okay?" he asked.
"Well, uh, you could come over and check me out," you said, grinning at him. That would get him close.
Mark's brow furrowed and he pursed his lips, clearly thinking it over. "Okay," he said, slowly. "Something is definitely wrong," he said.
"It is not!" you said.
"I haven't served with you very long, Sandy, but you're not...like...you're not a porn-holo character," he said, seriously. "You focus on your work when there's work - and right now, you look like you wanna chew my uniform off like it was made of chocolate. Like, this is getting, uh, workplace harassy."
You almost asked him if you could, but managed to just barely stop yourself. The idea was kind of…
Okay.
Maybe he had a point. Or maybe that was just how manipulative he got when the influence started on him? You bit your lip, considering - while Mark said: "So, why don't you take a hit of Baseline?"
"Because I'm immune and f-"
"It's just Baseline. Worse comes to worse, you feel bored for a few minutes." he asked, nodding. "So, if you take a hit, you'll be fine, even if you're already fine."
You flushed. Baseline was a clever little chemical that bound to your neurons and strictly regulated how much or how little neurotransmitter was allowed to interact, effectively cutting through the effects of a lot of mood-altering substances. If you took it on its own, everything just felt dull for a while, smoothed out. Anti-fun.
"Fine. But you have to do it too, just in case," you said, then nodded. "Get over here."
Mark nodded, then ambled over casually. As he got closer, you started to become more and more aware of him - your skin tingling and your cheeks getting imperceptibly darker and darker until he fills your field of vision, standing before you, his fingers tugging his sleeve up to show off his wrist and the vein there. You almost fumbled your hypo as you pull it from your belt, then load the baseline capsule into the base of it, then place it against his skin. Your whole body tingles as you hit the injector and he shivers a bit, then nodded to you.
"Okay, now you," he said.
You nodded, your head swimming a bit. Mark sounds nice. Very confident. Should tell him that… you load another cap and then press the hypo against your neck, then hit yourself. There was a cold cleansing and a snap of attentiveness, as if the whole world had suddenly gone into focus. You shook yourself from your head to your toes and blew out an explosive breath from your nose.
"Holy shit, Mark...I...I...Nhi!" you turned to her, partially because she was now curling up in the corner of the room, and also, to save yourself from the mortification of continuing to talk about trying to ride your coworker while on an away mission.
You hurried to Nhi, kneeling beside her and quickly getting her a hit of Baseline. She gasped and trembled, while Mark smiled, then started to lean against the wall, his eyes closing. "Yup," he said, nodding.
"You feeling okay?" you asked as Nhi lifted her head.
"Thanks," she said, sounding ashamed.
"Hey, it's fine," you said, helping her to her feet. "I think we both were getting pretty zonked, so, you know, it's not your fault or anything. For...you know…" you blushed. "At least you were just scared. I was, uh…" Nhi chuckled and gave you a little smile. "You know."
"I'd rather be scared than that, you know?" She shuddered. "Ick."
You grinned at her. "Exactly!"
"Okay, everyone, I just...got...hit with that boredom wave," Mark said, rubbing at his face. "Bleh. Is that what it's always like?"
"I think Mark wasn't affected," Nhi said. "Vai, is Vai feeling anything?"
"Nothing beyond growing concern about the nerd brigade," Vai called in from the door. "You three okay?"
"Yeah, we're good for now," you said. "This dose ought to last thirty minutes, but, um, keep a close eye on us, okay?"
"Of course. Why do you think it was affecting you and Nhi, and not me?"
"... I don't know if it wasn't affecting you. It just maybe wasn't too visible yet." you pointed out. "But… we're cyborgs. So are the Aquillians. We've all got mind/machine interfaces. Do you?"
"Nope. No cybernetics, no gene-mods except some mandatory vaccinations." he said. "Vai?"
"Nothing in my nervous system. The right half of my jawbone is titanium." she replied.
"... hardcore." Nhi said, awe in her voice. The reasserting sense of normal continued to wash through you, and you found yourself thinking back a moment.
"So, wait, you've never used Baseline before?" you looked at Mark, and he shrugged. "Seriously? Never cut a high too close to a test or anything?"
Mark grinned. "The only high I need is endorphins, most of the time."
It takes every iota of your being to not shout 'you absolute square!' at him. Instead, you focus. "Okay, it...Sythe!" You put your communication wrist up near your face. "Mr. Sythe, we need to get into the computer tapes on this ship - there has to be some kind of Enforcer only code that is used for this programming architecture. Do you know any backdoors we could use?"
"I…" Tai'lon pauses. "I have done some historical research, but...nothing on Enforcer backdoor protocol. Um...give me a moment."
He sounded… strange. Worried, maybe.
"Hey, it's okay," you said. "We'll figure something-"
"No, I know where this is." He said. "Don't...just...I can do this."
You are so concerned about the uncertainty in his voice that you almost don't notice the whirring shimmer of sparks and crackling energy at the far end of the room. Mark and Vai, though, do notice it.
"TM!" Mark shouts, grabbing you by the back of your sash and yanking you back, hard, so that the two of you collapsed behind one of the computer consoles. Nhi, hearing the shout, flung herself flat.
The telemat signature cracks to life in the form of a circular disk of metal - which explodes with a sudden gush of smoke and noise, crackling and popping and filling the air with tiny fragments of metal, not moving fast enough to cause much damage, but more than enough to keep each of you ducked and hunched down. Nhi scrambled behind the console opposite of you and Mark, shielding her head with her hands, and you could see Vai take up position at the edge of the door, carbine held at the ready.
Then there's another crack crack crack and the smoke is blown away by a trio of interlocking air bursts - they had telematted in with a bit of extra air, to displace the smoke, so that their energy weapons wouldn't be shrouded by their visual cover.
Each of you were under cover and held there by a trio of armed and armored men and women. You peeked around the corner of your cover, fumbling with the holster of your ACER pistol while Mark adjusted the dial on his rifle, and saw that each of the new arrivals were…
Well.
They were fucking pirates.
The first of them was a Narine, her semi-translucent, glowing skin mostly covered by armor plating and crude space suit material that had been painted the same undersea coloration that she had chosen for her skin and bald head. She was holding a heavy duty, several century out of date particle blazer which looked for all the world like a Great War era flamethrower.
The second was a human man (complete with an eyepatch) and a mohawk, who was holding a short cutlass that had a clear monomolecular edge and a second gen ACER pistol, the kind with the elongated dish and glass focusing aperture on the front. His space suit was a Great War era relic, with the words BORN TO DROP and CAP-FOR spray painted on it.
The third of them was an alien you didn't recognize. Big and lizardy and holding a surprisingly compact flechette shooter in his burly arms. He eschewed a suit for a life support vest and a breathing mask that clamped onto his muzzle like a metal mask.
"All right, Aquillian scum! You will keep cowering right there!" the human said. "Or else my friends will start blasting."
Well, you weren't dead, so they probably didn't want to kill you.
"We're not Aquillians!" Mark shouted, indicating with his hand for you to stay back. "Who are you?"
"...they're not Aquillians, Quasar," the lizard dude grumbled. "I can smell them. They're humans."
"Did he just say your name is Quasar?" you asked, still clutching your ACER pistol to your chest, your legs tucked underneath you.
"It's Quasar Jones...and you're from that Coast Guard ship we spotted, aren't you?" he asked.
"...Quasar Jones…" you said, slowly.
"You heard of me, then?" he sounded real smug.
"No, she thinks your name's fuckin' stupid, dude," the Narine girl muttered.
"Uh, why are you here?" Nhi called out.
"This has been a prime Aquillian hunting ground," Jones said - you were going to be five days into a recycler before calling him Quasar. "We've pinched three supply rockets before this catch fell into our trap."
"How does it work?" Nhi asked.
"It's far too complicated to explain - and we wouldn't even if we wanted too!" Jones said, swishing his cutlass through the air.
"They have no fucking idea what's going on, they're just carrion pickers." Vai muttered through your headset. "Just stay calm."
"What I wanna know is why the Newton didn't spot them," Mark whispered back. "There's no way they have a cloaking device."
You risked another peek - Jones was still showing off, and the Narine girl was covering each of you with her blazer, but the lizardy dude had racked his flechette shooter onto a magnetic latch on his vest's back and was beginning to rip open the side of the computer. He was pulling the magnetic tape reels out and stacking them up away from the main machine - and doing so none too gently.
Since they couldn't have a hope in hell of stealing a whole war rocket, even with the crew easy pickings, they'd have to be going for the most high value salvage… that meant the computer tapes and the top secret data that could be ripped from it and sold to the highest bidder. Any of the Republic's enemies would pay top dollar for that. Or whatever they used out here. Imperial Credits, maybe. Pay, then use that data to intercept shipping, sabotage automated miners, ambush patrols...who knew what nastiness.
That's probably why these pirates weren't shooting you immediately though: a gunfight in a computer room would turn their payday into scrap. So they were trying to intimidate you. And… you were scared, like you were a hundred percent aware that you could die and you really, really would prefer not to, but the expected grip of fear just wasn't there. Things felt… unreal. Not urgent. As normal as anything else you did, like checking sensor readouts.
Oh. That was the baseline.
Out of the corner of your eye, just barely visible from your vantage point, Vai lifted her wrist to her lips and muttered into her coms. "All right, I've got the drop on them. On three, I'm going to-"
"Wait wait wait!" you whispered.
---
What's your plan!
[ ] You're going to back away clear of the walls and the Newton is going to telemat you out.
[ ] You're going to try to talk them down. (Write in: What do you say?)
[ ] … no, you're just asking her to wait because you're terrified. Go for it, you're ready to shoot.
[ ] Write In
