Death aboard the USC Skyhawk

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viperslate13610

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The general plotline of this thread is that you are apart of a crew on a transport cruiser called the Skyhawk. A commonplace, but nonetheless deadly virus often used in biological warfare bombs called Pollus has leaked out of a ruptured container in the cargo bay and infected you and everyone else on the ship. The ship currently stocks no vaccine and as a result is trying to eliminate all hosts of the virus. Your objective is to survive the ship's precautionary measures and survive to live long enough the vaccine at the destination planet. Feel free to RP in almost any manner you wish, excluding godmodding of course. The discription of your character should only be quite brief and try to keep your background extremely recent.

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Captain Stern sat in the bridge room of the USC Skyhawk, making final correctional adjustments to the ship's coordinates before he turned in for the sleep cycle. He punched in the destination and then left to go to his quarters. He had not been asleep for more than an hour when he was woken by a sieries of loud klaxons. "Severe Pollus contamination warning. Stock of antidote on board: Zero. Commencing host elimination precautions.", blared a computer female's voice over the ship intercom. Stern sprinted for the door and dived through the gap just as the door locked behind him and the ship AI started blasting the room full of cyanide gas in an attempt to kill it's target. "Well, shit me dead. That was a close one..." exclaimed Stern.
 
Alec awoke to the blaring of sirens and the anoying computerized voice of the Shyhawk. "Ugh" he moaned, his head pulsed with pain after his long date with a bottle of Vodka, and his stomach felt sicker than it has sinse the morning after his 18th. He rolled out of his hammock and stumbled through the small excuse of a room at the bottom of te ship that became the maintenance deck - how he was able to use a hammock aboard the ship still confused him but it always gave him a good sleep. The hungover Russian rubbed his eyes awake as he stared into the small flashing screen that would tell him what the problem was. What he saw was the most horrifying thing he'd seen in his long years of engeneiring, CONTAMINATION HAS OCCOURED ABOARD PLEASE REMAIN CALM. "What the f..." It took a few seconds of staring into the screen to realize what was going on, but the irritating voice of the ship confused him. "Commensing emergence purge of maintenance bay. Disposal will comense in 3...."
"Bugger." Alec sprinted for the door, barely getting the door closed before the small garbage shoot opened sucking oxygen and tool into the empty vaccume of space. Leaning against the cold wall, he breathed a sigh of relief as he heared the whisteling of the last of the oxygen being sucked out of his small room he had come to know as home over the last mission. As he walk away, still verry tiered and humgover, Alec came to a sudden realisation. "Shit, my hammock."
 
Stern ran down the hallway of the sleeping quarters and rounded the corner to see Alec, his head engineer leaning against a wall with his fingers pushed into his eyes in an attempt to relive the pain of an obnoxious hangover. "Jesus, Alec... I thought I told you not to drink on my damn ship! Are you alright, apart from the obvious?" said Stern. He looked into one of the other sleeping bays to see a pair of corpses belonging to some of the maintainance crew lying in a heap on the floor of the bay. "Damnit... These two weren't quick enough..." he said angrily as he slammed his fist into the steel wall of the hallway.
 
Astra Teegan, dressed in nothing but polka-dot rubber duck pajamas came barreling out of her quarters and stumbling in to the hallway with the Captain and one of the crew mechanics. She half wet after a very disturbing incident with her room's sink trying to drown her. At first she was afraid that she dropped animal trans in her coffee again and was having another one of those hallucination episodes, but the red flashing alarms going off all over the ship were indication that something much worse was going.

Leaning forward to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath, she was VERY curious to find out what was going on. "Did those bullbeavers get out? I swear I made sure the crates were locked tight before I headed for bed!" Teegan was only temporary staff. Hired to be the caretaker for a strange pair of creatures being transported amongst some of the ship's usual cargo. Of course, she made up for her lack of usefulness around the ship by having a good knowledge of anatomy and medicine.

"Holy balls! There's dead people in the maintenance lab! What did you do Alec?" she accused.
 
"Get your shit together recruit! For once Alec hasnt done anything wrong. The ship has informed me that there has been a Pollus outbreak on the ship. Those motherfuckers in manufacturing on PHZ-24M didn't seal the bio bomb containers and now, I'm afraid to say, we've all caught Pollus... The ship is currently running it's host elimination procedures, so if we don't move, we are royally fucked." stated Captain Stern. He was sweating now as was typical of Pollus infected patients. "We just have to survive long enough to get to our destination and hopefully they will have a few vials of the antivirus..." Stern looked around for a maintenance panel. He found one and started to attempt to hack into the security mainframe so that he could at least take the cameras offline...
 
"And how the fuck do you suppose we survive this shit when even the ship is trying to kill us?" Alec groaned as he slowly stood up, "We're completely screwed and you know it. There's still another two days before we get back." Alec slammed his face into the wall of the Shyhawk forgetting about his splitting headache. "SHIT!" He looked over at the captain and saw Teegan standing in the hall in her half soaked pajamas. "What the hell happened to... never mind." Alec managed a to straighten up and face the captain, pain shooting through his skull. "I suppose we better get moving" he then noticed that Stern was trying to hack the security main frame. "How bout you move your ass and let a professional handle that... Captain" he finished, giving a sarcastic solute.
 
"You watch your mouth, Alec. I'll have you on insubordination charges if you dont smarten up. As for the controls, go ahead." said Stern as he stepped aside and let Alec fiddle with the control panel. Captain stern was a middle aged man, about in his mid fifties. "I apologize for being a grumpy old bastard. Cadet Teegan. Do you know how long it takes for the Pollus virus to kill it's host? Three days. So we should have long enough to survive until we reach our destination point on P3X-43Z. Being a class one colony, they should have a sufficient supply of antivirals. The only thing that we have to worry about is the ship's security protocols." the captain slumped down against the wall of the hallway. He wiped the sweat from his brow on his arm. He didn't like to sleep with a shirt on. Or felt uncomfortable against his skin. He currently donned a pair of tracksuit pants, though. "Nice jammie's, Cadet Teegan...", smiled Stern with a chuckle that only an old man could make.
 
Teegan didn't look at all embarrassed by her pajamas. After all, ducks were delightful creatures! The nature of the problem though, was a really serious deal. Dying wasn't exactly something she wanted to do.

"Oh no... the animals in cargo! I've got to check on them!" Here they were facing their own potential deaths, and Teegan was worried about the critters. Both of her hands resting on top her head, she was bouncing slightly on her toes with impatience and confusion. She was going to need a tranq gun to keep them calm. ...And that's if the ship wasn't already trying to purge them. It was pretty clear that the ship had a nasty temper.

"I've got to check them. This is a nightmare!" she muttered, already stalking down the hall with or without the Captain's permission.
 
"It's no good, Teegan, the cargo has already been purged... We were carrying biobombs that had a leak. Even If the cargo hadn't been purged, the poor little bastards would be dead by now anyway... I'm sorry..." Stern said somberly. "Alec, how are those camera's coming?" he inquired. He was sweating now, one of the first symptoms. He needed to stay calm. If the captain couldn't keep calm in the face of certain grizzly death, then who else could? He stood up again and spoke to the group. "Ok, guys. As soon as Alec gets these cameras offline, we need to start searching for others... Hopefully there is still someone left on this god-forsaken piece of metallic shit..."
 
After the loud blaring of red sirens echoed throughout the Skyhawk and awoke Sam from his computer desk, where he had been taking stock of the cargo that was held close to his quarters, he quickly realized that the one heavy door in his room had begun to shut. Sam hopped up from the desk, staigtening his tie, and rolled underneath the small opening separating him from the rest of the ship. "What the hell?" he said, pushing his glasses up higher onto his face.
A female computer generized voice then came aloud over the ceiling of the hallway "Pollus contamination reaching 40% throughout cargo bays. Proceeding extermination process." Sam quickly dashed down the hall, searching for anyone who could explain the commotion of the new disease spreading through the Skyhawk. He turned a corner and ran straight into a wall next to a small group of people including Captain Stern. Noticing the captain, he quickly scrambled to his feet and soluted him. "Evening, Captain." he said.
 
"Oh, knock off the formalities, Samuel... Good to see that you are alive, though. Nevertheless, i assume that the ship tried to purge you?" said Stern with a small chuckle that seemed pained. He walked over to Samuel and used his shoulder almost as a leaning post. "Now, boy, I have to tell you something. We are all most likely infected with the Pollus virus... The good news is that it is treatable. Bad news is that we dont have any anti-virus, but the colony that we are heading to most certainly does have some. We just need to stay alive long enough..."
 
"That's easier said than done Captain." Noel, the ships head of security, said as she rounded the corner. Her once pristine uniform was now covered in splotches of fresh blood and her laser rifle was strapped across her back along with a small pack. She came to a stop in front of the three men. "That damned AI took control of the ships sentry bots and had them attack my squads quarters. I managed to destroy one of the bots before getting out of there, but the remaining five are now searching the rest of the ship for anymore survivors."
She pulled the pack out from behind her and reached inside of it. Moments later she pulled out a pair of pistols. Holding the two out to the men she said, "I grabbed a couple before escaping just in case I meet up with anyone else. Based on the current circumstances I'm going to say that you'll be needing them if you want any chances of surviving with those things running around."
 
"Thanks Noel..." said Stern as he reached out and grabbed a pistol. He may as well shoot out the cameras as he went. His pulse rifle had been left in his quarters when it had been gassed. "Now, we need to get to the control room and switch this thing over to manual override. Hopefully then we can shut down the purge sequence." said Stern as he popped open the side of the pistol and checked the glowing energy cell. Full and unfired. Good. He would need it.
 
"Uh... Alec can use the other gun. I'm not familiar with weapons, however I may be able to get us into certain areas of the ship... Maybe even shut down some threats?" Sam said, placing the pistol in Alec's hand. He then turned to the captain. "How do you plan on getting to the control room?" he asked. "There are bots running all over the place, like Noel stated. I'm not quite sure these handguns will do much damage on them. And how much time do you think we have before the... Uh... Bad... Side affects of the Pollus virus kick in. We need to plan things through and come up with some good strategies. Knowing you, Captain, you probably have something up your sleeve, no?"
 
Teegan hadn't gotten far away from the others, the truth of the Captain's word sinking in. On the bright side, she wasn't crying. Though she did have her hands resting on top of her head and that wide-eyed oh shit look on her face. -Usually- lockdowns were because her animals got lose and started attacking people - and that was a situation she knew how to deal with. Viruses and killer ships were a whole different bag of tricks.

"Uuhm..." she muttered out, unable to add much to the planning. She eyed one of the guns, but if anyone knew Teegan they knew handing her a gun was a quick way to get shot. She plucked at her shirt trying to cool herself down. The fever and sweats already kicking in from the virus. "how many days do we have to live again?" she asked, not really caring to hear the answer. Better to focus on being alive!

"Do you think we can hole up in a room for a couple days? We'll need food and supplies or we'll starve to death, even if we do keep from getting ripped to pieces by the patrolling bots."

"Oh blast it!" she suddenly exclaimed. "One of those bots has my video game! I'm going to get bored!"
 
Boop boop boopboopadoop booop boop boop boooop boopp boop boop boop boop boop.

Metal against metal, one of the few things that could be immune from the virus was also beeping the Super Mario Bros. theme to itself.

D7S4U-A one of the robot aboard that was not in direct control of the ship had also been the victim of what regulation would call vandalism, geeks would call a poorly executed main protocol override if they were in a good mood and if they weren't they'd call it a fuckup.

It's sic metal legs propelled the modified robot's crab-like body over the deck as it rounded a corner and say movement.

**SUBJECT: BOWSER**

It's head rose up to the height of Teegan's and his held up it's metallic grippers.

"Itsa me! MARIO!"

it said in greeting to the human that has gone into it's head with a screwdriver and a game rom in order to get it to beat her least favorite level for her.

**KILL ALL ENEMIES BY JUMPING ON THEIR HEADS**

**HUMAN LIFE IS NOT EXPENDABLE**

**DEFEAT MAIN ENEMY**

"Awaiting input."
 
Teegan nearly jumped off the floor and ducked behind Noel. ...after all, the other woman did mention all the robots had gone insanely murderous. So Teegan didn't want to be the first human on board to get their head ripped off. (...although it was likely she wouldn't have been the first, considering a lot of the crew were still missing!)

But, the robot didn't attack. "Oh! It's Bowser. Bowser, I'll just take my game back before you go wild and ki- No wait."

Teegan stopped and thought about it a minute. Her video stuck in his brain might be the only thing stopping him from going mad and killing them all. She wasn't a mechanic (in fact she was the last person who should've been tampering with the robot), but when something wasn't killing you - don't change it.

"Ahem. Seeing as the whole ship is going to kill us, I'm not gonna get in trouble for one little robot mishap, am I?"
 
"Teegan, let me just state to you..." said Stern in a manner of building to something more serious and consiquencial. "...That you are not the on one guilty of late night gaming." he said with a chuckle. He walked over and pet Bowser on the head much the manner of a dog. A bolt of thought ran through his brain. "Jesus titty-fucking Christ..." he said with a look of utter amazement and realization frozen on his face. "Hey Bowser... Could you do a favor for us?"
 
The robot froze as soon as it's head was touched.

**HEAD TOUCHED**

**GAME OVER**

Boopboop boop boop bopp booop

It's three left legs collapsed and it he feel half on it's side.

**RESTARTING**

**EMI FIRMWARE LOADED SEARCHING FOR BOOTROM**

**BOOTROM LOADED ENGAGING PROTOCOLS**

...

...

...

...

...

**PROTOCOL CHECKSUM MISMATCH**

**CONNECTING TO MAINFRAME**

...

...

...

**CONNECTION TIMEOUT: UNABLE TO LOCATE HARDWARE**

**EXTERNAL ROM DETECTED**
**BOOTING**

Someone was giving the robot instructions and it's head panned up to look into the captain's face.

**SUBJECT PROFILE NOT FOUND**

It looked to the other faces.. only recognizing one of them. The girl standing right before it.

"Itsa me! MA...."

**FATAL ERROR**

The robot got back onto it's feet barely a second after it had fallen 'died'.

**THREE LIVES REMAINING**

"Astra.... Shall we play a game?"

It was clear the machine wouldn't listen to anyone else.
 
Teegan started laughing nervously and far too loud. "Ha ha ha... That's uh..." she coughed. Apparently she really jacked up that robot's system. It was completely senile. Thank goodness someone -else- caused that deadly cargo leak and they were all going to die soon. The captain wouldn't fire her!

"Bowser! New game! It's called SHIP ATTACK! You have to protect Captain Stern and his crew from evil robots and make sure no humans die. And um, it's like Mario but you don't die when stuff touches you, okay? You only die if your humans die and if you lose all your humans, the game is oooover." Teegan cast a look towards Captain Stern, hoping that was what he was planning to ask the robot.

"...Oh, and the first person to get kidnapped will be the princess!" Teegan threw that in there for fun. Why not? Might as well enjoy her last days in space!