Futuristic Unknown Crisis IC (full)

Kevin was always nervous. Today, he was REALLY nervous. People were dead. He had to fight a monster with teeth that looked like goddamn industrial diamonds. And he only had two robotic bodies to do it with this time. And one, ONE plasma cutter between the two of them. A mining tool. One that he was intimately familiar with, but also one that would've been here already. They were miners, they probably had six at least. If a plasma cutter could kill this thing, it would be dead by now. Kevin at least tried to lighten the mood, seeing how Eppie was sort of freaking out.

"I worked terrestrial mines, Cathal. A lot different, but most of the same principles apply... Must be a really ramshackle company if they aren't mining by remote, though. Who the heck runs this 'Good ship Frankie'?"

he said, deciding that his first body wouldn't carry the cutter. His first needed to be a more expendable scout. Both bodies did have zappers and bio-sample gear, though. If this thing was biological at all. Kevin had been quietly mulling over the thought of diamond teeth, and the more he thought about it, the less... 'Natural' it sounded. Made him wonder if it was some kind of bio-engineered monstrosity, or even a very, VERY convincing robot. However, looking at the image again made him shudder. It didn't look like a robot. He really, REALLY hoped he didn't have to try and talk whatever THIS was into chilling out.

Even as Cathal sits down beside her, Eppie barely reacts to his presence, only shifting ever so slightly to make room. She has a thousand-mile-stare fixated squarely on the uninteresting floor, her hands lying limp in her lap after she hands back Miloj’s flask. The tightness in her expression has faded into a blank, almost catatonic look, her mind clearly far, far away -

- body jerking as she loses connection to the ship - hissing - the air is gone - the air is gone and she can’t stop spinning - the air is gone and the helmet is suddenly too small - she wants to rip it off - she wants it off - everything is so dark and her lungs burn like fire for air - she wants to breathe, she needs to breathe -

Her eyes flick up to Kevin’s face as he speaks, then to Cathal, as she finally notices he is looking at her expectantly. Had he asked her a question? She wets her lips, swallows the lump in her throat, and tries to think, but she can’t recall that he had said anything at all.

“What?” She almost winces at the way her voice shakes, tone quiet and confused. When she tunes in more to what Kevin is talking about, she figures he asked her if she’s ever been to an asteroid. Maybe? “Um... no. Never. Asteroids don’t usually have aliens. Because... that’s what I do? I talk...” She trails off, knowing she’s rambling off like an absolute lunatic, but she can’t focus, and her lungs feel like they are compressing and her heart feels like it’s digesting itself, and she really has no concept of what is going on around her, or who she is, or what she’s doing, only that the air is too thin, and she is feels like she’d dreaming.

Cathal McKay

"Ground control to Major Cross," Cathal said, doing his best to scoop Eppie into his lap. "I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you, love." He rubbed her shoulders. To Kevin, he added, "Manual's cheaper, this far out. Nobody gives much of a shit about workers' rights this far out."

The fact that Donovan had read the entire teams medical files was an open secret. So when Eppie began dissociating hard enough to be mistaken for cryo sleep it was not exactly a mystery why.Her ptsd diagnosis had been neatly written on her file- he was surprised she had decided to come. But there she was in that typically rash Eppie way showing up to the shuttle anyway. He had a similar fear and frowned deeply at her as he tried to pile some words together in his head to aim at her. Personally he was much more freaked out by the mine-beasts from his mother's stories being real some how than his agoraphobia. He'd grown up on an asteroid mine and to him the dark tunnels were enclosed familiar- mountain tops and open space got to him more honestly. But for Eppie a space walk seemed to be a space walk.

"Eppie," He said at last, "If your not feeling great, its okay if you want to do this one from mission control."

Goody was signing emphatically about the time he'd been laid off because he'd followed safety procedure during a burst. Donny kept his eyes on Eppie though, trying to ignore the little translation scrolling in his vision- he could do without thinking about a burst today.

Mako hated exosuits, she admired their usefulness and versatility sure, in environments without oxygen or impossible odds. But she hated that she had to use them unnecessarily. They restricted smell and hearing too much for her to be comfortable in them. Her eyesight was never great relatively, so not being able to smell or taste would be... a handicap. Especially if they were going to be following a blood trail. She leaned against the wall next to Miloj, thinking of a strategy while hearing the man beside. "Pft, " She muttered back, "Teeth are not the threat, if they try to bite you, you just take the head they we kind enough to thrust at you." She looked down at Miloj, "Though any dog'll smell you coming with that much alcohol on your breath." She wasn't against drinking, but Miloj worried her. She liked him, from what little she'd seen and hated the idea of him being in any way unsteady when the hunt started. "Besides, if we can talk to it, we won't have to worry whats inside its mouth.

She distantly feels Cathal's hands on her arms, and blinks as her straight-ahead gaze is shifted to the far side of the shuttle, rather than the floor, as she is brought into Cathal's lap. He soothingly rubs her shoulders, and she tucks her head onto his bony shoulder, officially ready to burst into tears under the relaxing power of the Cathal Mom Hug™, holding it together by the strength of willpower alone. Sure, her heart is still pounding a disjointed rhythm in her chest, her breath still isn't even, and her hands are still shaking like hell, but she is almost convinced that she might be okay.

Eppie moves her head to the side to look around Cathal's head at Donny, her mouth setting into a fine line. She feels the knot of stress and anxiety in her gut grow heavy, knowing that, unlike the others, Donny knows the exact source of her distress. She can't pretend that it was nerves or any other excuse she could make up, because Donny has her diagnosis, knows the medications she's supposed to take for it, and knows that she doesn't take them. He tries to accommodate best he can't, and she appreciates it. She does.

But she also knows cowering from it is pointless. She lives on a space ship, for fuck's sakes. Besides, exposure therapy is a thing. Call it Eppie trying to take her recovery by the horns.

Her grave expression vanishes, swiped away into a smile by Eppie's 'fake-it-till-you-make-it' attitude, "NASA doesn't pay me to make First Contact from mission control. Plus, by that last picture, I finally get to live my dreams of being Ripley from 'Alien', so there's no way in hell I'm passing on the chance to make First Contact with a xenomorph," Her expression becomes a bit awkward, since she is often dismissive about talking about her PTSD, "I appreciate the offer, but I think... I think I'll be okay. I'll... I'll have four walls around me and people to help out if anything happens."

"Your a maniac and I like it," Donny said. He hit the loading button and the shuttle closed up dull whomph. The engine hummed to life and after some flight radio chatter, and some lights blinking near the helm the shuttle piloted itself out the air lock. The base on the asteroid from the distance of the Sundethunderbabywagon666 was like a small lego creation, four squares and one dodecahedron in a straight tidy line. As they got closer it was more apparent the dome shape was a garden and the squares were lodging.
When the shuttle finally docked and they could shuffle into the teeny tiny cargo bay it was ransacked- boxes smashed open, canisters rolled around. it was like a very large naughty dog had been left alone too long- except also there was a was a body, equal torn apart and scattered about.
"Maybe it's friendly?" Goody said out loud with his too calm, too pleasant voice.

Miloj

"The alcohol is protective measure. Maybe will not be eaten if taste like booze. Or maybe taste really good and get eaten. Fifty fifty shot. Good enough for me," Miloj replied to Mako. "But, is also liquid courage!" He said, thumping a fist to his chest. "Also may be addicted and go to shit without it," he mumbled under his breath. Upon arrival, Miloj took one look at the dismembered body before sealing his helmet on, grasping his firearm tighter, and going silent.

Donny went first, riffle at the ready- looking up first and then around him. He pulled the scanner out of his med pack and started looking for non human bio contamination. Anything that could rip some one up like that must have left some sort of residue. The machine was coming up empty. He sent the cadaver's dna sequence back to base for identification.

"Is he dead?" Goody called.

"I'm going to slap you," Donny warned.

[sorry] he signed reflexively, "This is how I cope."

Kevin felt so underprepared now. His scanners and sensors weren’t showing anything out of the ordinary. His eyes saw nothing ordinary about the torn-open boxes and the mutilated corpse. It was the sort of thing that’s only ordinary if you live in a horror movie franchise, likely experiencing a slow death by sequels. Part of him didn’t want to move. The rest of him had to.

“I’m going to scout ahead... I just... need to not think about this... except... I need a crew count. How many were... here?”

He said, walking in slowly, stunlaser drawn. He was terrified. His mechanical body didn’t show it much, save for his hesitation, and the slightest tremble in his weapon hand. He saw nothing, no signs of life. He opened the first door, and his weapon popped up, ready to fire...

"You'd think none of you've seen a dead man before," Cathal teased, squeezing Eppie's shoulders one last time before wiggling out into the cargo bay himself. He wanted to ask Donny if they had a box to put the badly battered body in, but his job was to keep everybody from panicking right now, and that might be a question to cause more panic. He'd ask a little later, once they had gotten started and focused.

"For us or the miners?" Cathal asked Kevin, and then didn't wait for an answer before giving him both. "There's eleven of us, and there were twenty-nine miners here. We've got, uh. One accounted for." Cathal looked down at the remnants of the miner in the room with them. He hoped the rest of them were whole. Somehow though, he doubted it.

There wasn't much room, but with Lacy around to nitpick, Cathal told the security team, "Let's get a perimeter set up. No doggies allowed in here today."

As the shuttle doors open to a room that looks like it got ripped apart by some very enthusiastic dogs, Eppie can't even focus on the destruction; only on the fact sweet, sweet gravity is holding her to the ground and she's no longer on a shuttle that's one door malfunction away from flushing the whole squad into space.She feels a not-insignificant chunk of anxiety fall off her shoulders, and even though it was clearly emphasized that the mine is zero-grav, she feels... confident. She'd sort of been lying through her teeth when she told Donny she'd be okay, but now she actually feels like she might be okay. At least she can breathe again and use the artificial gravity environment to get her shit together.

She steps out of the shuttle, following after Donny, Goody, Kev, Cathal, and Miloj, inspecting the room herself, until she gets to where Donny and Goody are gathered, ducking under their arms to see what, exactly, it is they are looking at, and finds the dead body sprawled and eviserated. Eppie blinks down at the body, and drops a silent thanks to God that she has always been far from squeamish when it came to blood, guts, and gore, or else she might be disturbed by the fact she's standing in a pool of blood.

"Over my dead body you slap my boy, Donny," Eppie warns, lacking any bite to accompany a real threat as she flicks Donny on the head. She crouches down to the body, looking along the major wounds on the corpse, "All jokes aside... this is a hell of a way to go."

She watches Cathal and Kev, "So we've got twenty eight unaccounted-for miners hiding away somewhere..." She looks over at Donny, "How big did they say this mine is, again?"

"See, maybe it'll be friendly!" Mako said cheerfully, before turning to shout at Donny "If its friendly can I keep it!?" Not expecting an answer she patted Miloj on the shoulder, before whispering down to him, "I have extremely good hearing. I'm not going to stop you but if you ever need help with your liquid courage, or not going to shit. I've got you. Take it from a crew-member who's had a few friends lose their faces or...more vital body parts." She gave him a stern look. Mako firmly believed that her friends had moved on, bodies returning to their home and spirits going to their patrons. But the look she gave Miloj had the shared honesty of losing too many friends. But that wasn't her focus right now. She had a goal. This creature gave her chills, in the best way. Sure she had lost people to similar. But every friend lost was avenged with a tooth on her necklace, or horn on her wall. If it was friendly, great! If it wasn't, she'd carve the name of every miner lost on its bones and make Miloj his own bone charm. The man needed the protection of the spirits with his liquid courage. She stepped out of the shuttle and was immediately annoyed. She had a blood trail but no scent. Kneeling down she examined the body with survivalist's eye. Looking for any hair, skin or teeth the predator could have left on him. Nothing. It was a clean kill. "Whatever it is...It's efficient," She said out loud, "Any of the miners get a good look? Do we know how it moves?"

"If we knew more, they would have called some one else," Donny said. He finished tagging the body and when they were all in position opened the next set of blast doors. This room was also the airlock for the entrance to the mines and the gravity was low- before they had entered the room had been depressurized and the entrance to the mine open. when the doors cracked open with a little beep the first obvious thing was that, like the cargo room, this room was thrashed. There was also tools, plates, personal items and some garden supplies; The whole structure had suffered an airlock malfunction venting everything down into the mine. There was no fresh blood and unless you had a keen eye or nose it might take a moment to notice the bony remains of partially suited miners stuffed in the corners. There were seven total and they were neatly arranged in the corners the way that many burrowing creatures often stored their garbage and left overs.
Goody and Donovan seemed to be familiar if not accustomed to the low gravity as they moved across the trashed room. Goody snatched up one of the holo pads. "The mine's been open since before the last transmission- there are still six beacons activated. but their just beacons. no life sign info attached."

[There is the rest of the structure to search and then the mines themselves. There's no problem solving in this one. Your goal is to tag and account for the 26 missing miners in case of survivors and fight aliens. Go nuts.]

Kevin couldn’t say he didn’t expect more bodies. He could say he wasn’t sure what condition they’d be in. The first bodies in the previous room were scattered and bloody. Barely eaten. These were picked clean. No chance that this was a territory thing. Well, the scientists could debate that. It did take him a minute to spot them, of course. But those were definitely bodies. And he couldn’t bring himself to pick through the scrap piles to find out how many people died in this airlock. Until he had a terrible thought. These might not just be trash piles. So... Kevin’s metallic hand began to slowly dismantle one, keeping a zapper pointed at it at all times.
“Please don’t be filled with monster babies or eggs or...”
He didn’t finish the thought as the pile came apart, revealing nothing but the bones and a few scraps of suit. Okay, that wasn’t necessarily good, but it also meant he didn’t have to worry about monster babies emerging from piles of almost-clean bones.
“Okay, so these are just trash piles. Of bones. I’m not seeing any creatures, babies, or eggs... No survivors though... You guys draw your own conclusions. I... I have to think about anything else.”
Said Kevin, sitting down by the outer airlock door, looking in... He almost wondered if this was supposed to be a heroic sacrifice. But the control panel inside the airlock was broken. No matter the miners’ intent, they had no choice.
“Did we bring any technicians on the shuttle? I know we wanted to pack light, so I left the twins on the wagon... I’m asking because the airlock control is busted on this side... They couldn’t even make a choice...”

She follows in after Donny and Kev into the next room. The disaster is expected, but her breath catches as she realizes the rather sizable mound in the corner is not debris, but picked-clean remains of human beings. She stops, pursing her lips as she takes in the devastation with a new sense of solemnity, then steps through the wreckage, coming beside Kevin. As an anthropologist, she did, technically, deal more with the cultural aspects of aliens, but there is a lot than can be judged of a culture based on the burial traditions and there are tales to be told in the tattoos on the bodies left behind, but with the added experience of this job, Eppie is no stranger to seeing corpses in varying states of decay.

Since some of the bones are scattered away from the bodies, she goes by the number of skulls, and starts to dismantle the mound of bodies, pulling the bodies to the floor one at a time, counting as she goes. As she pulls the last body from it's contorted position, she counts the body Kevin had opened up, this time out loud, "And that one makes seven. So... Eight total. We've got eighteen miners left to find somewhere in this compound. I know this sounds like a very ‘White Girl in a Horror Movie’ thing to suggest, but we could split up in pairs to cover more ground...?”

"Pairs? Eppie, just how badly do you want to be a pile of bones?" Cathal asked. "I'm all in favor of covering more ground and getting the hell out of here ASAP, but I think we need fatter groups. Enough that at least one person doesn't have to do anything but keep their eyes peeled. And least one security person per team." For all their advancements in tech, there was very little better at getting something dead than a lead bullet.

Pressing the stock of his carbine firmly against his armored shoulder, Miloj's masked face scanned the area slowly. "I agree with Cathal. Is not the episode of the Scooby Doos. This is dangerous mission," he said, his voice slightly altered by his helmet, carbine sweeping the room.

"fat groups or no groups," He agreed with Cathal. He then waved him and security over to him before he opened the door leading to the public area, and beyond that the crew quarters and the garden. The door opened with a small shhhk and a woosh. The pod had previously been de-presurized. From where they stood they could see all the way down to the garden- the floors and counters were empty as most of the objects had found there way into the mine airlock when the initial vent had occurred.

There was a haunting metal on metal clink of something moving in the crew quarters. Donovan glanced at Cathal and Miloj and then conceded his position as point.

It came at them fast, running along ceiling; a blur of vanta black before dropping on Miloj bearing those glowing blue fangs that the end transmission had recorded.

{FUCK!} Miloj roared, as the alien leaped onto him. Before the creature could use it's glowing fangs, Miloj dropped his carbine, grabbed the creature by the head with both hands, and threw it off of him. {BITCH!} He roared again, as he stomped his armored boot down on the creature's head, crushing it. Whipping out his pistol, he unloaded three shots into it's body. "IS MY FACE, NOT YOURS!" Bringing his boot down a second time for good measure, Miloj then kicked the body away from him as he holstered his pistol, then proceeded to pick his carbine up off of the floor. Finally, he switched off his comms and his helmet's speakers, before letting loose with a long string of swears.

Kevin's comms let out a small click as they shut down for a moment. It wasn't a communications issue, and his mechanical body was still moving, firing wildly at the second of the horribly toothy monsters charging them. He hit it with a LOT of zaps, and it wasn't even long before it was on the ground, twitching erratically while he panic-shot it more. Eventually, it went still, and Kevin's scanners registered it slowly getting colder... Fuck, he gave it a heart attack. But it wasn't the only one, and soon Kevin was wheeling his zapper around, firing wildly but shockingly accurately (He had something of an aim assist script running) at the black shapes. And though no-one with his robot body could hear it, the twins, back on the ship, could easily hear his screams from inside his pod.

The thing was spiky as it was vanta black and it gushed a bright robin egg blue out of it and laid still- looking like a creature shaped puddle.

"Shit," Said Donny.

Three more came skittering across the ceilings and walls- they had no respect for gravity it seemed and deeply wanted to crack open the UCC team like tasty tasty walnuts. clams? What else came in inedible armored shells other than space marines.
Donovan opened fire.

Cathal Mckay

"This is the worst dog," Cathal complained, firing at it. "You gonna make it, Miloj? Kev?"

Mako paused for a second watching the creature, it did no good to jump in right away after all but after she saw Miloj kicking butt well, there was metaphorical blood in the air. Mako barely resisted giving herself claws, she did feel her fangs (Or canines? Friggan humans and their lack of multiple fangs) lengthening. Bloodlust stirring, she jumped at the alien, knife flicking out of her sheath. She weaved through the others fire easily, knife finding the leg of the creature and cutting through it easily. This, this is what she was good at. That deep dark part of he mind reminded her. She had a PHD, a conservation advocates reputation and the respect of the human police. But she never felt alive unless she was hunting, ripping things apart her bare claws. Hand reaching out she grabbed it by the throaght, feeling its spines rip open the arms of her suit. She didn't even feel it as she slammed the creature into the ground. It cut through her arms, but they were her human arms, she had a lot of muscle to spare. It hurt but she pinned it to the ground, "BAD DOG," She snarled, "DOWN." She held its throat to the ground and growled, "Someone either give me a treat or finish it."

Donnovan was at her side in a flash and a double tap from his riffle.
"I was expecting domething more-" he said and the instantly regreted it. the space hounds were squirming and- reinflating for lack of a better term. there vanta black sides smeared with day glo blue whete they had been struck. for creatures designed for the void a little bit of depresurization dodnt seem to keep them down for long.
"okay." donovan said opening fire on the same three space hounds again.