"Of course, my group and I are still walking to the ship. We'll wait for you, so that you can catch up," János replied.
Yuga quickly replied to Janos' message, "A verbal agreement is as binding as a written. And seeing as Frosty has received compensation for work conducted for our company hence one could assume he is in our employment. Now I expect you hasten this ordeal and not waste further time with asinine enquiries."
János swiftly replied: "We will be arriving shortly with our guest of honor," he said, as he waited for Moloch to either reply or catch up.
"[I]Hold, Mr. János. I will be with you in a short moment.[/I]"
Moloch made sure to seal and lock his shuttle using a scanner which only functioned with his handprint. He hurried along towards the ramp as to not keep Yuga and János waiting.
"Let's hope this all ends well," János said to Dio, Sylvia, Hestia and Moloch, as he motioned them to follow him.
Once inside the ship, Moloch removed his gasmask and put his cowl and spiked crown back on. If János was looking, he would've been able to catch a glimpse of what he looks like, if only for a moment.
"[I]Oh, I feel I should have mentioned this before I arrived, but in the events your captain and I do quarrel... you may want to call the local fire department.[/I]"
János was, in fact, looking. He saw what he could only describe as "horrifying". He managed to get a glimpse of his eyes, which looked like they were scabbed over, one even looking like it was about to burst. The lower half looked fine, however, from what he saw. He began wondering why his eyes were like that, assuming that this guy must've been a field medic in the past and must've suffered an extreme accident on the field. He assumed he must've been a great hero back in his day.
His thoughts were interrupted by Moloch talking to him, to which he replied: "Oh, don't worry. I'm not allowing any quarreling to happen. Only convincing."
They headed towards the bridge.
Vakarus tightened the grip on both his staff and the strongbox as János, folllwed by Moloch, stepped onto the bridge.
"[I]Greetings.[/I]" said Moloch as he did a very slight bow.
((Gonna go to sleep now. Infab-Maddox & Radley-Vakarus.))
"Hello sir. Welcome to the ship." Alex looked at János. "He's checked for weapons and harmless, right?"
János slapped himself. "Why do I always forget to check for weapons?"
János turned to Moloch, from whom he received a nod. He searched his coat to find a sawn-off.
"Feeling insecure?" he said, as he held the gun in his hands.
Yuga was disgusted by Moloch presence, but this scenario could have a very favorable outcome if they played it right.
She calmly walked up to Moloch with Alex tightly in tow, one of her hands resting on the hilt of her sword and the other holding a datapad.
She stopped at two arms lengths from Moloch and looked up at him as she handed him the datapad.
"Here is the contract. Sign it and be on your way to your hovel." she said with a monotone voice with a slight hint of resentment.
"Doesn't he have the right to check the contract?" János asked.
Moloch stared intensely at the datapad while reading it's contents. He turned towards János as if he was silently asking him if he should trust Yuga and sign.
János looked at Moloch in a way that no one could see his left eye. The eye color on that eye changed briefly to a red color before switching back.
Moloch smiled underneath his hood. Seeing János' eye change color, Moloch had signed appropriately.
'Appropriately' meaning, he had written down a word in the language of his people, a language dead and forgotten and was now only spoken by them.
He had written: ".احمقی" [[I]You are a fool[/I].]
"[I]Now, this is my name as it is formally written by me and my people. Are we finished? May me and my friend be on our way? [/I]"
Porter stands behind Moloch, "Hey."
Amelia walks under Porter, "Hiya, fellas! Hiya new guy!"
[QUOTE]((I feel as though we should pause this subplot for now, and wait for everyone relevant to it to be awake.)) ((Again.))
((Next time, all those relevant should gather to the Discord!))[/QUOTE]
[t]http://barefootsewing.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/j/o/jojo-to-be-continued-base.jpg[/t]
Moloch turned around. He silently stared at Amelia and Porter.
Amelia makes a thumbs up, smiling.
Porter silently stares back in a silent staring contest.
Moloch nods his head, then turns back around without saying a word.
Interestingly, the same logo that was on Frosty's starfighter also happens to be emblazoned on the back of Moloch's tunic. The six-sided star with a snake. However, [url=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51361672/Snake.png]Moloch's version is much more elaborate[/url].
((Cue Yuga putting her crew in harms way for personal profit in 3... 2... 1...))
((We now resume our regularly scheduled programming. SniperComZero, I forgot to mention this, but you have two "stat points" which can be applied to Attack, Defense, or Health, which slightly augment your character's properties during combat. You can get more info about them on Discord, but regardless I need you to send me a private message to assign them. Also, Radley, you have an unallocated stat point for Markus that I've mentioned to you twice already. Please allocate it. :v:))
The Cataract had lost all pursuers during the long and meandering route it took back from Dyatiq and was now closing in on the empty reservoir where the Muramasa and the shuttle belonging to Moloch had settled. The rain had finally stopped completely and the sun had just set, leaving the planet in a sorrowful shade of twilight. From the windows in the medbay, Taylor's away team could see the city of Vohmdash glowing in shades of yellow, green and red. The factories had closed for the night and the smog had cleared, revealing a city which, centuries earlier, might have appeared vibrant and hopeful.
On the bridge of the Cataract, Captain Pharrell Sharpe got his first sight of the Muramasa and was somewhat relieved that his now-sister ship seemed to be a competent fighting vessel. Having made his deal with the mysterious Terika in such a hasty fashion, he had worried that he had accidentally made his own ship a workhorse instead of a support vehicle. The Cataract wouldn't put up with much fighting, that was for sure. He removed his hat, a comfortable woolen beanie he purchased in the Sol system earlier that year, and scratched his dark hair. He was a human of mixed heritage; his father hailed from the southern tip of Africa while his mother was born in the isles of Japan. He, however, was born in orbit at a petrochemical supply station where his two parents had met.
Now in his early thirties, he was an accomplished contractor who had spent most of his career evacuating the wounded from warzones. He took special pride in his own impartiality; he had once managed to recover a wounded UGC colonel and the human mercenaries which had shot him, during the same airlift, and managed to collect rewards from both sides. He appreciated level-headed people the most, and considered respect to be essential to his business. He did not allow his crew to address him by his first name, and had made sure to surround himself with a those which could work well under pressure.
[B]Gaokah Prima[/B], his first officer, was a serek whom he had met on a mission to the rural planet Roki-Khon. The local inhabitants, the aptly-named Roki (or perhaps it was the other way around, as the planet was named after the people) had graciously accepted large numbers of serek refugees after the pirate rings of the latter's race had been exterminated by the kanads in the 1800s. Unfortunately, the local inhabitants grew increasingly weary of the overcrowding and social unrest the refugees brought along, and intolerance followed. "Integration" programs were fully instituted, requiring the sereks to forgo their native language in favor of the impractically obscure Roki language, and to accept foster care for all newborns into Roki-households. Centuries later, when Gaokah was born, it was considered perfectly normal for her to be taken from her parents and raised as a servant to a middle-class Roki household hundreds of kilometers away.
Gaokah, however, had the good fortune of being raised in a multilingual environment. Her foster parents were merchants who spoke several languages, including Roki, Bokoma (classical and modernized, both spoken on nearby Paradora), some limited Kanad, and, most critically, the human trade language they call "English." They also spoke a useless tongue called Esperanto, but they refused to teach it to her, as if they were embarrassed at having learned it themselves. Gaokah, then, was eventually able to accompany her father on a business trip to faraway Auros, in human space, where she met and befriended Captain Sharpe. Two years later, having gained her rights as an adult, she tracked him down and joined the Cataract as a navigator and pilot trainee. She now worked both positions adequately.
The Cataract had four mercenary security officers.
[B]Reece Conroy[/B] was a Martian and the son of an ecologist who, as an impressionable and misguided teenager, fell in with the now-defunct Fifth Column Raiders, sympathizers of the religious fanatics which once held the planet. Reece was a firearms enthusiast and amateur military historian, quite obsessed with the "heroes" who dared to stand up to Sol. Having been ratted out by a high school friend, he narrowly escaping discovery for his unlawful gang membership and quickly sought escape and employment with a series of contractors. In the end, he wound up on Rigel with a miserable job maintaining "base facilities" for Helix Corp, or in other words, he was a handyman. At an icy outpost in the middle of Podunk-nowhere, called Sanctum, the most exciting event of his young career brought contractors from all over to kill some giant bugs which were infesting company mines. Here, he met Ravis.
[B]Ravis Myvaz[/B] was a lirya- a furry, wild-eyed creature with bat-like wings, from the Collective-held planet Vashkom. From an early age, Ravis was a decent shot with a subsistence-class (read: non armor-piercing) plasma rifle. Spending most of his young life without a formal education in the rugged, forested terrain, he became a companion to the Black Fleet patrols which monitored activity in the wilderness and kept the law. In a sort of errand-boy arrangement, he would earn extra credits from bored enlistees to retrieve fresh game and firewood, and sometimes even to travel to the base station (two days' flight round trip) to purchase items that the officers in the city deemed too frivolous to justify air-dropping by drone- things like candy, fishing line, spray paint, and condoms. While visiting said base at the age of 17, he encountered an offworlder whom was having her vessel serviced by local technicians before a long-haul trade route into human space. The young, resourceful and independent lirya was exactly the sort of "odd-jobs" man that Vitka Sidikan wanted on her ship.
Vitka had hired most of her crew while stopped at various places in the Collective, and so Ravis became the lone lirya on a ship full of kanads. Most of them wanted nothing to do with the illiterate mountaineer in their ranks, with the exception of Orik Rozel, the ship's stuffy and cerebral navigator who seemed to be involved in [I]everyone's[/I] business. Orik, surprisingly, knew English quite well for someone who hadn't been involved in the trade business for long, as was also quite keen to teach it, despite never really using it with anyone else. The two became close friends. Eventually, their travels brought them to Rigel, where Orik became quite obsessed about a local "bug hunt" phenomenon, and the "sort of crowd it'll draw." While Orik mingled with seemingly any kanad offworlder he could find, Ravis wandered off and found himself in a conversation with a fellow "odd jobs" man, Reece Conroy.
Reece and Ravis decided to work together after the latter lost sight of his crew in the large crowd, which was easy to do thanks to the humans and khergians being so much taller than his comrades. After a largely unsuccessful hunt, Ravis found himself jobless as Vitka believed her lirya had gone AWOL just before a dangerous job, a move that Orik protested vehemently. Nonetheless, Ravis and Reece were down-and-out handymen doomed to failure, only rescued by a chance encounter with [B]Dr. Melody Sycamore[/B] that same day.
Melody had come to the Bug Hunt independent of any crew, simply to serve the wounded on a donation basis. She needed a translator who could speak Kanad and English so that she could perform an emergency amputation on an unlucky kanad and fellow doctor, Gataska Vor'Pangn, who was caught up in a tunnel collapse caused by an unqualified drill operator in a partnered crew. After the task was finished, the three used their donations to travel to Mars, where they stayed with Reece's father while searching for work. He, in his son's absence, had begun dating a tetrian woman who had helped coordinate sales of Itaran foodstuffs all the way to the Foxglove region, and knew the names and contact numbers of innumerable cargo ship captains. Captain Sharpe was thus called, and one special stop to Mars later, Ravis, Reece, and Melody joined the Cataract, the former two happy to finally be recognized for their weapons proficiency.
[B]Wilson Reilly[/B] was, at one time, a soldier of the HarkArk Privateers, a life which he now refuses to discuss. Born on Auros to a middle-class family, Wilson had brothers fighting for the SDF, but he was uninterested in joining them, or in humanity's protection in general. He did, however, want to be a soldier, as this was all anyone in his family seemed to know about. When HarkArk went on one of its famous hiring sprees, in preparation for a major expansion in the southwest quadrant which never fully materialized, Wilson sprung at the chance to join its ranks. Over time, however, he became disillusioned and increasingly skeptical that he, or any of his brothers, would take part in a historic or illustrious battle, and even if they did, he wasn't sure if warfare was all that glorious to begin with. Despite promoting and becoming an officer, the gradual, and then sudden, slide into warfare against the Crimus lead him to resign and depart the company. The destruction of Odenia was the final straw, and by the mercy of fate, Wilson very narrowly escaped the Battle of Zeruel.
While departing Termina Central, the mobile headquarters of HarkArk, Wilson met a rather pathetic, spent, and bedraggled kanad named [B]Arkadam Sidikan[/B], who readily admitted that he was a former SS agent and a fugitive. In the course of a long flight to Paradora, he told his whole story, admitting to a series of embarrassing failures which included being fired from the only job he could ever imagine himself working, tricking and nearly killing a girl who, in hindsight, might have been worth a serious long-term relationship, changing his name to an obvious alias and dying his hair a ridiculous color (black!) in what probably amounted to the weakest attempt any fugitive has ever made to dodge the kanad SS, being assaulted by said girl and a thuggish crew she assembled the night before, being manhandled, imprisoned, and very nearly shot, and then being abandoned with no money or possessions on a star base which had, by generous estimates, less than 8 hours before its total annihilation.
Taking pity on the fool, Wilson paid for Arkadam to travel along into human space, where the latter hoped to find work. At some point along the journey, the pair found a job listing for security aboard the Cataract, and managed to get hired on.
Captain Sharpe appreciated his crew for what they were. They weren't elite, but they also weren't stupid, and all of them worked hard to promote the success of the ship. None of them more than the engineers. Along with Istasha, [B]Rey Pryor[/B] was a mechanic from Novithus who spent almost all of his spare time hanging out in engineering, doing work that he insisted wasn't actually work. He came from a long-line of engineers, some of which served on notable ships in Sol and UGC service, but Rey wasn't interested in a military setting. He just wanted enough credits to get by and maybe get a nice drink now and again on some exotic planet. If Rey had ever taken a day off in the three years he'd been on the crew, Sharpe wasn't around to witness it. And considering Sharpe spent all of his time on the Cataract, it was doubtful that he missed anything.
The crew of the Cataract: Sharpe, Gaokah, Reece, Ravis, Wilson, Arkadam, Melody, Mercy, Rey, and Istasha- they went about their duties quietly and, well, dutifully. And now, with their acquisition to the Terika-Belladonna Company, they wondered how their lives were going to change. Word had already gotten around about their unmet employer; Arkadam had spent the entire evening looking green in the face, but had avoided the medbay and anyone from the Muramasa; Reece and Ravis seemed curious and eager to help, and Gaokah seemed indifferent to everything.
As the ship touched down, Captain Sharpe's voice came over the comm.
[quote]Attention, Cataract crew and passengers- we will be standing by in preparation for our next mission, to begin at dawn tomorrow. Rest well tonight; our new company owner, her staff, and our contractors in Argos will be discussing matters and will reveal to us the next stage of our activities here on Voyak.[/quote]
---
All that remained to be done on the night of January 18th was to settle who would remain in possession of Frosty.
Maddox got up. "I can't wait to strip off this armor." He walked up to Abrax. "Hey Doc, are they stable enough to be moved?"
"No."
[i]Istasha continued catching up and conversing with Johannes while working on her assigned maintenance duties in the medbay.[/i]
Maddox nodded. "Ten four then." Seeing as Abrax wasn't the most talkative person of the crew, Maddox went to the cargo hold and left the ship. While there was far less smog in the air, he chose to play it safe and enabled his helmet respirator.
Walking past Moloch's shuttle sent chills up his spine. "Reminds me of Frosty's fighter." Instinctly Maddox scanned the roof of the Muramasa for the aforementioned fighter which was nowhere to be seen.
"He must be out on patrol."
A few minutes later he stepped onto the bridge. "Maddox reporting for... duty?" Most of the Muramasa crew were talking with a odd-looking man. He must be the owner of the shuttle, thought Maddox.
He then spotted Alex. "Alex, you need to go get a respirator and head over to the Cataract ASAP. It's your sister."
[i]Istasha finishes up her tasks, and puts her tools away. She turns to Johannes.[/i][b] "Will you be in the medbay here for much longer?"[/b]
[i]He looks up from inspecting a few scratches on his armor he was holding in his hands and nods.[/i][b] "Yes. At least for a few more hours. Just in case Amy or Valkyrie wake up. Why?"[/b]
[i]She grins and shakes her head.[/i][b] "Not telling. But I have a surprise for you. Wait here."[/b][i] And with that, she takes off. Johannes shrugs, and reaches up to toggle the communications implant embedded just behind his ear. He opens a low priority narrow band call to the Muramasa, pinging anyone not currently busy with a simple message.[/i]
[u]Is anyone coming to the Cataract that could bring me a change of clothes from my quarters? -Johannes[/u]
Bucky, sitting around doing practically nothing at the moment, decides she can lend Johannes a hand. She keys the comms and responds: "Yeah, I can pop over and help you out. Just gimme a bit!"
Bucky pops up out of her seat and heads down to Johanne's quarters, snags something decent-looking for him, and buggers off to the Cataract via whatever means are readily available. Once there, she presents Johannes with a comfy PT shirt, and some baggy shorts. "There ya go, Jo. How's Valk doin'?"
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