Turn 4.0 "Bad News & Blue Akers" 

    Alex had been edgy all the way through the maintenance shaft.  A blind man
did not belong in tiny cramped quarters, tightly sandwiched between two other
people.  A blind man belonged on the bridge of a ship where everything was laid
out before him and nothing got in his way.  So it was with great relief that he
found himself firmly on the engineering deck at last.  However shortly that
might last... 

    Next to him, Zach was considering going into the engineering control room
in order to hook up to a station and check the other system statuses when the
shot rang out.  The loud noise startled him and he jumped a bit, causing him
to float off. 

    "Dang it!" he exclaimed as he windmilled his arms, frantically looking for
something to catch himself on.  That was just what he needed to do... present a
nice clear target with bullets flying around.  Spotting Alex, he tried to reach
out and grasp the pilot's shoulder, hoping no more bullets would nail the view
ports.  Zero-g was an inconveinience, but being sucked out into zero-oxygen
could ruin a whole day. 

    The shot that rang out had startled Alex beyond belief, and then that was
followed by an unseen hand that grabbed at his shoulder.  With reflexes born
from military combat training, one hand shot out to pin the offending hand while
the other slid unerringly up the arm towards a pressure point in the armpit.  It
was only Cal's heated protests that stopped his strike just millimeters shy of
exploding pain through Zach's shoulder.  He grumbled his apologies to Zach and
finally helped him regain his balance and control, both still floating in the
hallway. 

    Having heard the 'shot' as well, Dr. Lugwig quickly ducked and thought to
himself, "I wonder, yesss, if that wasss weapon or ssssomething elssse..."  He
then reached into his pack and slipped on his medical gauntlet, "Thissss I might
need sssoon, yessss." 

    Nola had also flinched at the sound of the gun, and realized that someone
needed to take charge of the potentially dangerous situation.  She called out,
"Dimitrio open that door, and then help Zach try to get gravity restored pronto,
then all other power systems." 

    Dimitrio's head instinctively turned toward the room where the shot was
heard, and he looked back at Nola, "Oh shit!  Shit!  Just what I need,
trigger-happy goons and me without my trusted pistol."  The mechanic slowly
floated into the control room and toward the opposite door, traveling backwards,
his eyes fixed upon the see-through panels, and his hand grasping his many-headed
screwdriver.  He softly collided against the wall next to the door, turned
slightly around, and started working on the safety panel.

    Nola looked back to Jake after that, pointing toward the doorway and
Dimitrio, and said, "'Dig' let's go.  You cover me."  Casting a glance around her
at the others, she said with some uncertainty, "Alex and Doc, do what you can."

    Dig replied, "I'm on it, Nola.  Cover you got." 

    Cal, the AI contained within Alex's memory harness spoke quietly aloud, "The
security officers have seen someone inside the engineering room, on the other side
of the glass window, Alex.  It looks like they must be planning to go inside."

    Alex whipped his head around as he listened to what was going on around him.
His voice, when it finally came, was low and angry, "What?  Up against unknown
odds and you want to go in guns blazing?  Are you serious?  How can you be sure
he was the only one back there?  What if there are four of them back there, armed
with Null G weapons?  Or that the person we saw wasn't on our side for that
matter?  Right now, we have an advantage: they don't know we're here.  If they did,
it's likely they'd be on us by now.  I think we need to find out who 'they' are,
what they want, and if they're hostile, where best to hit them."

    Dig, keeping cover the whole while, growled back to Alex, "Hey, pilot, no one
said we're going to shoot the place up.  Nola's got more brains than that.  We've
got surprise and that means a lot in tactics.  We've got to go in to find out
because I for one don't have ESP to figure out their intent.  If they're friendly,
they'll be surprised but happy to see us.  If not, well, then they'll be surprised
and not so happy.  Just stay in back if you're afraid, OK?"

    "Only a great fool is never afraid," muttered Alex under his breath, too
quietly for anyone other than Zach to hear him.

    "Brace yourselves, everyone, when Dimitrio cracks that door," Jake continued,
moving into the room and taking up a field of fire to cover both Nola's entrance
and Dimitrio's activities. 

    Then, Nola stepped into the control room and put her torch on the floor facing
the main engineering door.  Dimitrio cringed for a moment as he was spotlighted
against the door, fearing that the light behind him might have cast his own shadow
into the engineering chamber.  Nola finally pulled up beside him, staying to the
side of the door and readying her Charge Pistol for whatever lay behind.

    "Damn, woman!  You tryin' to give me a heart-attack here?  Or just get me shot
while I'm workin' with that damn light behind me?" Dimitrio asked, his breath
coming fast enough to fog up the glass next to his face.

    As if nervous, he looked back at her, stating, "And, don't you be yelling at
me and giving me orders here!  I'm trying my best and doing a damn good job if I
may say so myself!  You should be worried about our safety and let me worry about
the trinkets here.  How come you, security guys don't let me, a Concord citizen,
have my weapon for defense purposes anyway?" 

    Dr. Lugwig peeked into the room, noticed Dimitrio pulling out an access panel,
and decided to float over to him, drifting right through Jake's field of fire.
"What you doing Mr. Fontecelli?  Perhapssss I help you, yessss?  You lookie
ssstressed.  Sssomething sssmellss like Vantoosss 4 here, yessss?" he says as he
makes a quick scan over Dimitirio with his gauntlet while sniffing the air.

    Jake threw up one hand and waved, trying to get the T'sa's attention so he
could tell Lugwig to get the hell out of the way.  Unfortunately, the curious
nature of the doctor was completely focused upon Dimitrio's activities.

    Dimitrio simply ignored the T'sa and unscrewed the panel, putting everything
in his many pockets for later replacement before they managed to drift away.  He
pulled out some many-colored wires and clipped some leaving the shiny copper ends
bare. 

    "Ewwww, lookie lookie many wiresss with pretty colorssss and ssshiny metal,
yessss.  I help you, yesss, yesss?", Lugwig added as he seemed very curious about
what Dimitiro was currently doing.

    A tentative connection shot forth sparks, provoking a stream of curses from
the startled mechanic, as he feared he may have given himself away without Nola's
flashlight behind him.  He peeked through the glass panels of the door and into
the main engineering chamber, but couldn't see anything.  Apparently, no one had
noticed.

    The sudden spark had caused Lugwig to lurch out of the way hissing, "Lookie
out.  That wasss a clossse one, yessss?"  Jake was happy to see that the T'sa was
now out of his direct line of fire and reset his rifle into place, taking aim on
the door. 

    Finally, Dimitrio smiled as his last conection was in place and added,
"Alright, girl.  Everything is set.  Are you ready for the door to open?"

    Nola looked back at Jake and nodded, holding her pistol steadily pointed
toward the ceiling. 

    "Wait, I have to get in there as well if you want me to fix things but not
just yet," Dimitrio added, "Make sure that I have a safe work environment."  He
nervously chuckled again, "Heck, that was what they promised when I joined the
Concord.  If I would have wanted crooks and run-down places, I would have stayed
back home in Naria."  Dimitrio pulled forth his slim stiletto and grabbed it in
such a way that the blade was hidden behind his forearm.  He dropped to the
ground and floated low, almost horizontal to the floor, trying not to present too
great a target.

    He pushed off toward the engineering control stations behind him, intending
to remotely operate the door from one of the them, but said over his shoulder,
"Alright security, you tell me when it's safe to work and I want someone covering
MY back when my attention is on the job." 

    As the mechanic started to float low to the ground and away from the door,
Lugwig reached out with a foot-claw and 'hitched' a ride by grabbing onto the
utility harness that Dimitrio was wearing.  "Weee, I watch your back!", Lugwig
squealed, grinning at everyone that looked his way.  He happened to look down at
Dimitrio's arm and noticed the stiletto clutched in the mechanic's hand, prompting
him to blurt out, "Hey Mr. Fontecelli, why you need ssslicey thing?" 

    "So I can poke anything that gets too close to me," Dimitrio growled over his
shoulder, pointedly looking at the mischievous T'sa, and obviously annoyed at the
sudden hitchhiker. 

    "Oh," Lugwig was suddenly at a loss for words and slowly began to unhook each
of his claws, one at a time, from Dimitrio's harness.  "Perhapsss, Lugwig ssshould
watch your back from sssafe dissstance, yesss?"

    "Yeah," Dimitrio replied, "Something like that..." 

    Waiting for Dimitrio to open the door, Nola steadied her breathing, returning
it to a resemblance of order.  She also pulled her thermal goggles from her pack
and rested them on her head for use if need be.  As she waited, she realized that
she might have something useful for the doctor.  She pulled out a first aid kit
and threw it after Lugwig, calling out to him as it floated across the cramped
control room, "Doc, catch!  You might find use for it." 

    Lugwig heard his name called out and saw something floating towards him.  He
reached out and caught the object, examining it briefly and then saying, "First
aid kit, yesss.  Handy, yessss."  Taking advantage of the T'sa's distraction,
Dimitrio pulled himself behind one of the engineering stations and powered up the
hatchway to the main engineering chamber.

    As Nola's first aid kit had gone sailing by Jake's head enroute to the T'sa,
Dig took the time to move up next to Nola and looked over at her, commenting,
"From what I could see, whatever is in there was walking, you know?  As in normal
gravity.  Now whether we get gravity when we open the door is no sure bet, but we
should get into a gravity environment once we enter.  So be careful."

    He then made sure his rifle was on "safe" so it wouldn't go off prematurely
if the gravity kicked back in and tossed his butt on the floor.  Even so, he kept
his thumb on the selector switch to flick it off once it was needed.  As an
afterthought, he looked behind him and called out across the room to Zach and Alex,
"Hey Zach, here's the prime opportunity to put all that studyin' to work.  Why
don't you get on one of those consoles and see if you can get a readout of the
status of this station?"  Without looking to see whether Zack took up the
suggestion, Dig then got into the best position he could to cover Nola once
Dimitrio opened the door. 

    Ever since Dig and Nola had entered the first room, and seeing how they were
the ones with the guns, Zach had already tried to make it to a console and jack in
to check the other system statuses.  He kept his head down in case more shots were
fired, and finally came came up beside Dimitrio at a separate control station.

    Beside him, Alex drifted along as well.  To make up for his earlier mistake,
he helped Zach move over towards the engineering panel.  As the computer
technician began to jack in, Alex reached out one hand to stop him momentarily.
"You realize that the moment we start fussing with the grav controls and the
lights around here, someone's going to figure out that we're up here.  Maybe 'Dig'
was right.  We probably should have gone straight to Security for the Null G
weapons."  The thought of going back through the maintenance shaft put him on edge
again.  He took a deep breath to let the tension go, finally saying, "Just be
careful and don't alert anyone to our presence."

    "Don't worry," Dimitrio said next to them, "After I let them inside the room
over there, I'll see what I can do about making sure we get gravity restored.
Then we won't have to worry about null-g anything."

    Alex simply sat down in a lotus-position behind the cover of the engineering
panels and placed both hands on it.  Mumbling a quick mantra to put his mind at
rest, he let it empty of all thoughts.  From long practice he'd been able to
garner impressions of previous events that had happened to an item, and Alex
tried that now.  It would be helpful to know who, or what, had tampered with the
gravity and the power on the station. 

------------ 

    Zach nodded to both Alex and Dimitrio, and then quietly plugged into the
computer station.  In his mind's eye, he found himself standing upon a bridge made
of light.  In the distance the bridge was intersected by many other beams of
light.  By concentrating, he began to drift along the bridge, almost like when he
had found himself in zero-gravity earlier, only he was much more at ease in this
environment. 

    He summoned his "shadow" program onto the bridge with him, giving it
instructions to query the status of each control station in the system.  The
shadow coalesced into a liquid black image of himself and nodded briefly before
darting down the first intersecting beam of light.  While the "shadow" was busy
performing that task, he took it upon himself to check the status of the current
engineering control station. 

    He reached out into the air, just off the side of his bridge and a globe of
multi-colored lights sprang into being, whirling at an incredibly fast pace.  The
rotation finally began to slow down until the sphere stood at attention before
him.  He softly contacted the various lights with his hand, running a simple
diagnostic.  Textual data began to scroll past within the sphere, like a
disembodied ghost trapped inside.

    "Engineering - Auxiliary systems are...inoperable..." 
    "Engineering - Primary mass reactor is...operating at 100% efficiency..." 
    "Engineering - Current outages: 
         Levels One thru Six - Gravity systems offline. 
         Levels Three and Six - All power offline. 
         Levels Two, Four, and Five - Partial power, approx. 48%." 
    "Engineering - All other systems are online and operating normally." 

    Suddenly his "shadow" program reappeared at his side.  It reached past him
and added its hand to the same sphere of lights and inserted the additional
system status reports that it had gathered.

    "Sensors - Warning - A temporary sensor blackout was in effect for
approximately the past ten minutes...Logs from that time are not currently
available.  Mass detectors indicate that something roughly the size of a small
shuttle is leaving the station on a vector of -28 degrees from the orbital
plane." 

    "Command - Warning - Unidentified command sequences have been initiated from
the Level One Command Station.  Authentication is in progress."

    "Security - Access denied to Point Defense Gun controls." 
    "Security - Access denied to Mass Cannon controls." 
    "Security - Access denied to Mass Reactor Self-Destruct Sequence." 
    "Security - A Code-3 security breach has been detected." 
    "Security - Red Alert!  Lockdown in progress..."
    "Hangar Ops - Warning - Hangar Bay Doors have been exposed to vaccuum
        conditions." 
    "Hangar Ops - Warning - Unauthorized maintenance vehicle operation in
        progress." 
    "Security - Security Cameras are currently offline...unable to monitor
        unauthorized use of maintenance vehicle in Hangar Bay."

    Zach's electronic eyes widened with surprise.  "What the hell's going on?"
he yelled into the void.  Frantically, he tried to issue his own commands into
the system...but the computers weren't capable of answering him yet.  He was
powerless to do anything more than simply inquire on the other systems.  "Damn
it!  If I'd only finished setting up those last two communication protocols, I
could at least take over the Command Station's computer!  I can't do anything
from here!" 

------------ 

    Alex, on the other hand closed his eyes and drew upon his psionic ability
to look into the past...specifically concentrating on how the engineering control
station had been used recently.  In his mind, an image slowly began to take
shape, very fuzzy, and very brief.  It was an image of an engineer, dressed in
the standard blue e-suit of the Concord Space Authority.

    It looked to be a man, though he couldn't be sure, and definitely couldn't
see the man's face.  Mostly, he could only see the man's hands moving across the
console, systemtically shutting down the gravity controls and various power
systems.  At some point during his movements, something fell down onto the
console... an ID-tag of some kind.  The man's hand reached out, almost as if it
were Alex's itself, and picked it up in order to reattach it to his suit.  Before
he managed to do that, though, Alex could clearly see a name on the tag...'Akers'.

    And then, the image was gone... 

------------ 

    Meanwhile, back in the real world... 

    Dimitrio pressed a control on the engineering console in front of him and the
door to the main engineering chamber popped open.  Everyone braced themselves in
case of a sudden exposure to vaccuum conditions...or fluctuating gravity of some
kind.  Nothing like that happened.  The atmosphere seemed to be in perfect balance
between both rooms...and zero-gravity was still in effect as well.  The only
changes were the increase in sound as the noise from the mass reactor and the
other mechancial components of the engineering chamber came crashing into the
room, making it more difficult to hear.

    "Go!" Jake nodded to Nola, who ducked inside and crouched low to the ground.
Unfortunately, she overcompensated the movement and spun out of control in the
zero-g environment.  Jake reached out to catch her foot and keep her from slamming
headlong into the opposite wall. 

    "Damn it!" Nola cursed.  She'd be happy when Dimitrio brought the gravity
controls back online.  This was getting ridiculous.

    Fortunately, no one was in sight to take advantage of her precarious
position.  She carefully regained control and Jake drifted slowly in behind her.
Somewhere inside the chamber, possibly around the large pulsating cylinder of the
mass reactor, a steady noise could be heard...sort of like the sound that
magnetic boots on an e-suit might make.  "Clomp...clomp-clump...clomp..."

    Jake motioned for Nola to go around one side of the mass reactor, while he
took the other side.  She nodded and they slowly began to float apart and further
into the room, weapons held ready before them.

    Nola was the first to see the man.  Covered from neck to toe in a dark blue
e-suit.  A vacuum mask dangled around his neck, but he hadn't bothered to put it
over his face yet.  He wore a pair of mirrored sunglasses of some kind, keeping
his eyes hidden from view.  His short hair was so blond that it might be considered
white, matching the pasty color of his skin.  On his suit was an ID-tag, bearing
the name of 'Akers'.  He immediately paused when he saw Nola, staring into the
barrel of her charge pistol.  In the man's right hand was also a gun, though he
didn't bother to point it at her yet. 

    "Wh-what are y-you doing here?" he stammered at the woman, struggling to be
heard over the noise in the room and obviously on-edge and very, very nervous.
Behind him, Nola could see Jake slowly floating around the side of mass reactor,
unnoticed by the man evidently. 

-------------------------------------
---------- Turn 4 Comments ----------
-------------------------------------

    1.  Rich and I have been discussing his situation with the autoresponse
thingy.  It's not something that should come into play all that often.  And,
given that he really won't be able to participate much in the game if we don't
continue using that address, let's go ahead and keep directing our posts to both
addresses.  He'll let us know whenever he has to turn on the autoresponder...
and since that won't be all that often, we should be okay.  Okay? 
    2.  Jamie, typically Nola would not pick up all the items that were in her
pack when she got ready for her security detail.  They were simply personal items
that you had available in the event that you needed them.  There's typically no
reason to walk around the station with thermal goggles anyway.  And, much like
Jake was just getting off duty and still had to go back for his thermal goggles,
Nola would have had to do the same, if she intended to bring them with her on this
trip.  Pretty much everyone went back for something, so I'll rule that Nola had an
opportunity to do the same thing.  So...in essence, she can have her gear with her,
but in the future, you need to mention that ahead of time.
    3.  Let me clear up everyone's present position.  Zach, Dimitrio, Alex, and
Lugwig are all inside the Engineering Control Station room (#19).  Nola and Jake
are presently positioned around the other side of the mass reactor, out of sight
of the rest of the group, inside the Main Engineering chamber (#20).  Zach,
Dimitrio, and Alex are all further back in their room, behind the various control
stations.  Lugwig is roughly half-way between both groups, still holding a first
aid kit in his hands...and looking from the technical guys back toward the door
where the security guys just went though... 
    4.  Hai, Alex has successfully used the psionic power "Psychometry" and
received a Good skill check result.  Your total number of psionic energy points
for the day has been reduced by one to eleven. 
    5.  Actions?

-- Neil

I am living in Jacksonville, Florida (ever hear of hurricane Floyd?) so
don't be surprised if I loose access for a couple of days.

-- Fabian

It looks like I've been playing and reading entirely too much Deadlands.
Sorry.  Like Fabian, I also am in the path of that monster storm that is the size
of Texas and after the next day or so, I might be off line as I unbury myself.
Thankfully, like the 3rd little pig, my apartment is made of brick, but even
that's no guarantee against Brother Floyd.  And I'm not as close to the coast
like those in Jacksonville.  Good luck, Fabian (and anyone else who might find
himself in Floyd's path).

-- Paul