• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Chapter 4: First Trial

Ray of Meep

Ray of Meep

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Late December, 2320

Sol System, Asteroid Belt, High Orbit of CH-458

Discussing anything of CH-458's orbit was a massive overstatement of the asteroid, as the kilometer wide rock barely had enough gravity to hold itself together. Anything within CH-458's vicinity effectively entered and left its gravity well as it pleased. From a sentimental standpoint, CH-458 wasn't even a blip on the radar. However, somehow, rare earth metals were discovered on this little rock in the void, and the AU corpo's, Elna Prospecting, secured the rights to it before anyone could object, and sent the carrier Lovey Dovey over before the first salvos of lawsuits could be fired.

It seemed fire fire will have to do for now then, as the Audentes arrived in the general vicinity after a week of coasting through the empty void, on the bare minimum of power to keep eyes off of it. The ship's passive sensor systems barely picked up the asteroid, while the Lovey Dovey was large in comparison, thanks to its generous heat exhaust. Idiots.

Alex floated up to the dimly lit bridge. It was a small affair: a table in the middle with a screen on it, then several crash couches facing plastic monitors plastered on the walls. He secured himself in one of the couches with belts and straps, then made sure his suit was sealed. The bridge might lose atmosphere, and he wasn't about to die out of negligence. "Cindy, James, Marius, get up to the bridge." He ordered through the comms. "KB, Skolos, Sovanna, standby in the drop crate. We're an hour out from engagement range."

In the vacuumed chamber, a supply crate was magnetized right next to one of the large bay doors, improvised with with thrusters and directional explosive charges strapped to the front. Next to the crate were boxes of ammunition, grenades and contraband shotguns and machine pistols.
 
James grumbled as the remnants of sleep left his grasping clutches, undoing the latches that held him to the bed he went over what he had been doing before tying down for a rest. While he hadn’t gotten the best sleep after the almost non stop trial and error testing of the virus he would take what he could get, the end product being a fairly decent hyjacking visus.

Pulling himself out of the bunk and floating to the bridge with a packet of water sticking out of the open helmet he had put on en route. “Morning.” The blue haired human took a seat at the comms console and buckled in plugging an extension data cable from the suit into the terminal in the chair, the slowly increasing flow of data waking the still sleepy brain.
 
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Sovanna is already up at this point, and is halfway through her morning routine, cleaning her S-17 thoroughly. She was excited to get back into the action, finishing her work with an unusual cheeriness.
 
Cindy rolled off their bed and floated off their bunk and they hurriedly swam to clutch onto their bed latches. They took the water bag and drank from it, pushing themselves from the bed towards where they kept their bag. They ruffled through the bag, searching for something when their hand touched a smooth wrap. They pulled out their favourite peanut butter chocolate protein bar out and munched as they floated towards the bridge.
"Morning, you done with the virus?" Cindy said as they struggled clumsily to sit down without drifting away.
 
Skolos came out of his room already fully awake. He had been up for a few hours working out and mentally preparing himself for the task at hand. He was eager to finally get somewhere other than the Audentes. He headed over to the drop crate, taking a few deep breathes to focus.
 
James spat out the empty plastic pack, which bounced off the wall and started floating aroud, and closed his helmet James said "It's as done as it's going to get."
 
KB-231 lived in what amounted to a storage closet with a large socket set. He didn't actually need it, he was essentially self-powering, but he felt it fit the aesthetic he was going for. Maybe he get some skulls on the wall, some bones, but those were thoughts for another time. He moved down the hallways like a dark cloud of metal, walking towards his destination. Eventually standing before the crate, 231 began to select weapons from what was on offer.
 
Marius Noble had discovered he hated space travel, and after a week of doing it he'd only become used to zero gravity enough to not feel like throwing up constantly. Sleeping strapped to a bed to avoid floating away, the unfamiliar food of the 24th century, and the constant sensation of not knowing which way was up quickly stripped away any of the novelty of space travel. Any hour before 3pm (not that the day-night cycle was anything more than the ship's internal clock) was also entirely too early to wake up and Marius drifted out of bed very reluctantly, putting on his suit at Alex's direction and arriving on the bridge shortly after the rest.

"When this is over and we get paid, I'll get you what I owe you--cross my heart." He says, sitting down next to James. Last night's poker game had not gone particularly well for Marius.
 
"Make sure you get your vac suits on." Alex admonished in a neutral tone to the arrivals on the bridge. He hated to admit it, but some of these people the corpos sent him were rookies. It seemed their priorities were more finding people with no strings attached over real competency. Regardless, he was going to make this work. "Suffocating to death is a pretty painful and embarrassing way to go out here."

"Away team," He talked through the comms, "Schematics have been sent to your datapads. Your top priority is to take control of the bridge. If you need fire support from the outside, we can provide it, but we can't guarantee we won't hit you if you're asking us to hit targets less than two rooms away."

"Bridge team," He looked over to Marius, James, and Cindy, "Our job is to keep the target from asking for help, and to destroy their laser. James, Cindy, I trust you'll keep them jammed and send that package through. Marius, you're on the RCS thrusters and the gun itself. I'll help with maneuver this lady."

"Any questions?" He addressed his entire team.
 
Sovanna puts on her vac suit, making sure that her gun’s sling is attached the way she prefers. She heads down towards the drop crate, radio in hand to address Clyborne. “Captain, after we take the bridge, do you have any secondary objectives for us?”
 
Skolos put on his suit before doing some basic aerobic stretches to make sure he had enough movement in the suit. He then grabbed a gun from the stockpile and followed up on Sovanna's question. "No survivors right, mate? I mean... Captain." He was not used to taking orders.
 
KB-231 stood there, armed to the teeth and honestly bored with the conversation. He was a machine, he could receive mission updates immediately, so the briefing was a courtesy for him. "No survivors is best. No one to cry for help."
 
Precisely as he feared, Marius had been given the illustrious task of handling the giant gun. He'd played video games before, a lot of video games in fact, but long nights of call of duty or overwatch didn't make him any more comfortable with guns. He didn't like looking at the things, touching them, and he'd certainly never had to use one. He was the "steal your social security number" kind of criminal, not the "mug you on the street" type of criminal. There was a difference. But this was a very big gun.

He'd spent part of the past week trying to learn as much about the ship as he could, a few conversations with KB and what he could parse from digital manuals had netted him enough cursory knowledge to know what all of the buttons did, even if he wasn't sure they'd give him the willpower to press them. Even if he did successfully fire the giant gun, there was also the matter of the thrusters. He had gotten a chance to play with the RCS thrusters a bit in preparation, and tried to assure himself it was just like his old motorcycle, a lot of careful little adjustments--there's even a computer to help. But he'd never had to ride a motorcycle the size of an apartment in three dimensions and zero gravity before, so he wasn't much convinced.

"We won't necessarily need the coilgun, though, I mean, their laser could be a valuable asset, we shouldn't destroy it unless we have to, right?" He asks, casually, resting his arms on the back of his seat to keep himself from drifting away. He bites his lip. No, that sounded like he was too chicken to use the giant gun. "I'll...defer to your signal, then?"
 
Alex turned his crash couch around to examine Marius. His face was unreadable. Did he figure out Marius? The newcomer couldn't tell, because Alex instead nodded. "That's not a bad suggestion. Let's try not to damage our prize as much as possible." He turned his crash couch back around to the monitors. "Slight change in plan, people, we'll launch the assault team right after we confirm that their comms and systems are compromised. Only when they start pointing their laser at us will we shoot." He cracked his knuckles. "Take a nap if you need to. Hell breaks loose in an hour."

---An hour later---

Seemingly without warning, the dim lights on the bridge turned into an oppressive blue color, the blue of a bright, Earth sky at day, striking at the human subconscious, forcing the brain to stay awake and alert. The engines stayed silent, but something else quietly whirled to life: fans that kept the backup battery cool in the Habitation module, at the expense of heating up the air inside. Even with the insulated Vac suit on, a sphere of sweat started to form in Alex's helmet. "James, Cindy, you've got 5 minutes to jam and hack them before we're forced to use the radiators."

"Assault team, I just gave control of the cargo chamber's doors to you, along with the drop crate's thrusters. Even with the velocity we're at, you should be able to leave the ship and slow down on your own, but you can also wait until the ship's engines come online to decelerate. The choice is yours."

Meanwhile, the dots on the radar display that were the asteroid and the security carrier just grew bigger. Smaller dots were also visible now, presumably the mining drones with their waste heat.
 
Sovanna radios in, already in the drop chamber and all suited up. “Roger that, captain.” She then switches her comms to only address the drop team. “I’m thinking we go all in on the surprise factor, don’t let the ship’s engines come online first. It’ll be bumpy, but I think the main thing that’s going to win us this engagement is the ambush we have planned, and that ambush is going to be less effective with the ship’s thrusters denoting that we’re here.”
 
James looked at the comms pannel infront of him without really looking at it. His eyes were staring into the digital universe and using the comms relay he sent a fals distress signal, spraying garbled words and fake static through the comms he waited for them to attempt contact. His virus waited for the contact, ready to destroy anything in it's way and hand over controls to him.
 
Cindy felt exited, the feel of screen on the tip of the fingers. They followed along james, adding messy words as they immersed themselves into the comm. They lied back on their seat and stretched when finished.
 
Skolos's tail and ears pricked up as adrenaline coursed throughout his body in anticipation of the upcoming mission.
"Heh, I think we can stand a little turbulence."
 
He locked eyes with Alex, gave him a smile and hoped the light reflecting off his helmet visor made his expression harder to read. James seemed similarly preoccupied, Marius decided to not mention the poker game again. For the next hour, Marius waited at his post, trying to quell the shaking in his limbs and almost wishing he'd picked the other options Phoenix offered him instead of trying to break back into an industry of crime that'd gotten vastly more deadly in the intervening 300 years. Or maybe it had always been. Couldn't people just stick to pirating video games? Apparently not.
 
KB-231 stood in their excuse for a drop pod, watching their fellows waiting to be deployed. They had no opinion on the turbulence, they were a machine, they didn't even need the pod to survive. These squishy humans and semi-humans needed the pod, but they'd at least be useful meat shields if nothing else.
 
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