| Call of the Shadows | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 23 Feb 2018 - 23:01 (56 Views) | |
| Evangelous Dimitriou | 23 Feb 2018 - 23:01 Post #1 |
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Duke of Kalosia
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“Hmm. At least it isn’t fatal.” To most others, those words would be reassuring. Their life was not sealed away yet! They could rest a little easier knowing that their inflictions, however serious, could potentially be saved, nevermind that the implication when hearing those words are that the wounds are still serious. It’s still a second chance! It’s unfortunate, then, that the friendly and aggressive chief engineer of the Castietya would be one of the few individuals who could and would find the negatives of it before the positives, especially when there exists no medical equipment aboard the vessel that could heal the broken arm and leg. “If I wanted snark I’d hit up the goddamned Captain. Don’t give me any of this right now, Amélie. This is no time for—“ The doctor laughed like a sister watching her younger brother fall down into a ditch accidentally. It was comical in its own right, but Dr. Amélie Bouchard could become a cold, hard, sterile expunged of any biomass that dared to make fun of her. The last person that did that was scraped off the side of a Fleet Admiral’s personal transport, so the Castietya is now graced with her presence. She was great fun otherwise! “Good Ludo that is a hilarious way to thank me! Here you just thought I was some sac of medicine and skin-stitching that you could just use, but no! It seems she’s actually got feelings!” Amélie was angry, but not in the bad way that could happen. Her facial expressions could best be described as the face one makes after seeing something horrifically captivating, like two plasma-fused bodies. The engineer, a Mr. Javier Felipe Sebastián, pondered his next words carefully. His own crime that led him to leading the engineering department of his ship was white-collar; embezzlement, perjury, fraud, and mob violence while he was partaking in the local administrative government of the planet he was born on. Words were usually his speciality, but aggression worked much better than diplomacy in the majority of situations, and it was difficult to fight the urges while on board. Perhaps it was better to continue fighting the urges with his built-up aggression, since the doctor standing in front of him could kill him easily where he lay. “Amélie, I’m sorry, I’m just very concerned about the projects back in Reactor Control. I’m not an effective engineer if half of my body cannot even feel anything!” Emotion is never an easy thing to do, but by god he hoped it would work. Work it seemed it did. Amélie’s shoulders drooped a little lower to the floor, her head came back from the extended position it was in while she was both speaking and yelling, and most clearly of all for those who would notice, her fists were no longer clenching the metallic rod edges of the hospital bed. The Chief Engineer would not be a fatality for the books, but on a hasty apology. “Do better on your apology next time, yeah? If you were anyone other than you, I’d have written in my final report that the wounds were fatal and that no amount of triage could have assisted the deceased.” “Yes, madam. Now, can I please get my arms fixed?” “Please. You know as well as I do that we were not equipped with the right stuff for THAT operation. Too many knives and anaesthetics for this crew to handle.” “So I’m stuck with this until we get back to Republican space. What a fantastic bit of news.” “At least yours truly thought to keep you alive for a bit longer so you may provide moral support!” Javier smashed his working hand onto the bedside table and shouted, “I am not a damned psychiatrist! I am an engineer, and I work with the physical, not the emotional!” Amélie took a minuscule step back so as not to get caught in the bad breath crosswind of her patient, and then responded deftly, “Maybe you need some moral support. I’ll have to provide it! It’ll be so fun!” The engineer looked at the doctor with a mouth so large a fly could fly in, if bugs were onboard. He felt a pain again that only set in twice before: when his bones were broken in the accident that claimed two of the crew, and when he was told he had the choice of being imprisoned for life or joining a suicide mission with other criminals to do something so insane their benefactors would let a ship full of criminals go: to travel to the centre of the Galaxy and find out why it was causing so many problems for the rest. It was so damned risky that it might actually work! Assuming they don’t go berserk on each other for giving them bad news. |
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| Evangelous Dimitriou | 27 Feb 2018 - 10:48 Post #2 |
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Duke of Kalosia
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Among engineers that work on spacefaring vessels, there’s a common unspoken creed that if we cannot do it on board, then no one can do it on board. Now this is mostly ego since without the engineers to monitor the reactors the ship would turn into a cold lifeless husk filled with desiccated corpses, but it also has a kernel of truth when it comes to medical advances, as the doctors cannot always manufacture the necessary cures or treatments necessary. Aboard the Castietya, that message rings even more painfully true given the lack of additional supplies the vessel would ever receive aside from what they can scavenge along the way. Their next stop at a friendly station would have to come after their time in the Core is finished. So, the Chief Engineer, Javier Sebastián, took the engineer’s creed to heart and to body, as he needed to fix his arm to ever work again. Standing waist deep in a pile of spare parts and scrap components pulled off and out of old obsolete ship systems that maybe should have stayed given their necessity and lack of possible upgrade, he dug into the pile to find a number of sizeable servo motors to serve as his arm’s muscles. A few smoothie makers were disassembled after the vessel embarked on its voyage, and they would be the key to Javier’s success. “Signor Sebastián, c’è alcun problema?” The hairs on the poor bastard’s neck rose up like a freshly baked loaf of bread. No single fibre in Javier’s body could prepare him for this eventual meeting with the most dastardly, the most insane, the most innocent of all those on board the Castietya: Captain Severina Silvestri. Javier struggled to make a physical response beyond simple gulps and some small sweat beads forming on his temple. Mentally, he knew exactly what the response would be, but speaking with someone who was enigmatic is, by definition, never a safe bet to say everything. “No, Captain, just looking for some E-class servo motors.” The sweat was now visibly rolling down his face and was starting to make the outside of the cast on his broken arm moist. “Oh. Bene! Vi necessito nella vostra migliore condizione, Sig. Sebastián. Dicami se ha bisogno di qualcosa cue non può trovare!” Captain Silvestri seemed positively cheery, like she was an anime character that just met her crush and wants to help out. Previously she was a brooding individual prone to lashing out. But the good engineer’s character was that of a nervous one, and so to hear the captain in such a matter did massive wonders for both his mental health and the sweat that was now evaporating off his skin. “O-oh, of course, Captain.” The captain nodded, gave a smile, and turned quickly and left with pep in that step. Javier sighed after the door closed, and started to laugh. Edited by Evangelous Dimitriou, 27 Feb 2018 - 18:40.
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| Evangelous Dimitriou | 2 Mar 2018 - 20:09 Post #3 |
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Duke of Kalosia
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It was two months into their journey to the Galactic Core when the crew of the Castietya began to hear what they would later dub the 'Tunnel Messages'. Navigator Kati Meggyesfalvi was the first to hear it, and it was her initial thought of it that began to sow doubt in her of their mission. It was not unlike she had joined an expedition into a region where some laws, but not all, were bent, and where some preconceptions about the methods by which people governed their lives were ever so slightly broken. But before she could seriously doubt her entire life, Captain Silvestri had to be notified. "Captain! I've got a message coming from the Core," she had stated, unsure of whether what she was hearing was genuine or not. "It's. . . odd." But the captain was on top of the poor navigator's position like a vulture to carrion, and grabbed a half of the second pair of headphones to raise it to her head. "Riproducalo dall'inizio." This time, her demeanor was wholly serious, as her mission briefing before departing did not include a mention of possible messages emanating from the Core. This is where the captain and the navigator came to a disagreement. The message they received said different things to the both of them. Kati heard her dead mother and father, through a sort of static-inducing filter, speaking from beyond the grave, talking of strange backroom dealings on a planet that, to the best of her knowledge, none of them ever visited or even knew about before her training. Her selection for this mission was based on a number of successful robberies and getaways she had led, until she was caught by someone on board the Castietya. Severina, in all her history that the crew knew nothing of and in the enigmatic and bipolar personality she worked hard to create, was not prepared to hear it's message. The words flowing into the headphones, they weren't of a family member or a loved one, alive or dead. They were her, talking about the mission, and about the next thing they would experience. It's completely natural to assume these messages are faked to a great extent. After all, that is literally what the two of them did after the message ended at the same time. Captain Silvestri laid the headphones back onto their rest, and turned to the monitor that Kati was looking at. "Navigatore Meggyesfalvi, cosa c'è davanti la Castietya, 1.34 anni luce là?" she had inquired, looking carefully at the map present on the screen. It showed the ship as a caricature of its silhouette in a blank field of nothing. The navigator adjusted the settings on the screen. It had a remarkable resemblance to a highly advanced oscilloscope, which is no surprise given the ship's sensors. "Uhhhh. . . There's an object at that exact distance. . . Definitely smaller than a sun. . . Planet. . . Asteroid. . . Captain, it's a ship!" Kati exclaimed rather suddenly. It would not be the first time that a message would lead them to something. That's what Severina heard, when she listened to the first. "Notifichi al Ufficiale Esecutivo che prepareremo un gruppo d'assalto. Attrezzatura offensiva completa. Portaci, Kati." Kati lost all colour in her face when she heard they would be boarding. |
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9:11 AM Jul 11