aaaaaaaagh_sky | Sariel and Invincible

By the angle of the sun through the door, it's mid-morning in the Wasteland. Warm, too, by the feel of it. Ellen's wearing her skin-close black stealth suit and heavily reinforced overcoat from the Anchorage campaign anyway. "It'll be easier this time than last time," she says to Mark. "I moved the door." To Sariel she notes, "The nearest house with a door I can use for Milliways is about a quarter-mile from here. There's a closer building, but it's full of feral ghouls and I don't think we need to take that chance. The human beings on board the ship aren't comfortable with targeting the teleportation beam themselves, so we're going to a homing beacon the ship fired into the Wasteland some time ago. If we activate its signal while the ship is making its pass over the region, we should be good."

The landscape is rocky and dry; the last rains came through here a week ago. Nothing grows nearby but yellow-brown scrub. A pinkish, scabrous thing the size of a beagle, with the yellowing teeth of a gnawing rodent, is digging in the dirt not far off; it seems content to ignore the new arrivals.

Crossposts: http://aaaaaaaagh-sky.livejournal.com/63154.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

1nv1nc1ble

Invincible looks around. The Capital Wasteland looks pretty much the same as it did the last time he looked around, brown and dry. He stares at the giant mole rat for a minute or so while Ellen is explaining things, then turns and greets his fellow traveler. "Hi," he says, extending a hand, "I'm called Invincible. California, Earth, 2003."

From:

visible_sariel

Sariel... is going to take a second to acclimate fully, say sorry. This is a woman used to genuinely alien landscapes, yes, but this is also someone who grew up on a literally tropical island. The vegetation or lack of it, not to mention the pinkish--what is that, anyway?--is giving her a little pause.

Eventually, her attention returns to Ellen and her fellow traveler. "Feral... I probably don't want to know details on those, do I? Understood, though." Beat. "Sariel Rager, 2370, and either Saint Lucia on Earth or the Federation starship Enterprise, depending on duty and shoreleave. Good to meet you." She accepts Invincible's hand, and does not comment on his name.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"It's a long story," says Ellen. "The easiest way to explain it is to say that sometimes it's really a lot kinder to die of severe radiation poisoning than to live through it. It does things to the brain and body most people are happier never knowing about."

She's got an apologetic look on her face; she's normally pretty good about briefing people about her world, but this time she got a bit careless.

"Fortunately there won't be any of those on the ship, unless the aliens captured one and froze it by mistake," she adds as they crest the hill and start down into the crater. It's a long, ovoid gash in the ground, left by a round craft coming in at high speed and low angle. There's no sign of the ship any more save for a pile of rocks which Ellen moves aside- or rather, save for what's under the pile: a metallic object pulsing here and there with blue light.

"This is our beacon, and Elliott should be making his pass in about two minutes. I'll set off the signal for him to pick us up, unless you have questions first?"

Edited Date: 2012-09-27 02:31 pm (UTC)

From:

1nv1nc1ble

[OOC: Order of responses: Me - Sariel - Ellen?]

"None here, but I've been up there already," says Invincible. "Are we trying for an evacuation of the ship, or some other plan?"

From:

visible_sariel

"No questions at the moment," Sariel answers, "given what you've already told me." The feral ghouls thing she's leaving weeeeell alone now she has the details, say thankya. As for careless? Nah. There being comparatively lots of information to cover about the wasteland about, well, covers it. It has nothing to do with Sariel-mun failing, nopenope, we swear, reeeeeally.

Sariel's eyes are on that crater as they descend toward the homing beacon. That is, until they hit the beacon itself.

((OOC: Suits me!))

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"We're not ready for an evacuation," Ellen says. "I wish we were. Right now what we're trying for is a successful thawing or two, and familiarization with the ship's controls if at all possible. The only stuff I know how to work on the bridge is all either the death ray or the shield generators. Sariel here's much more familiar with starship design and advanced tech than I am, so we're hoping to figure enough things out there- the servitor aliens on the ship know how to maintain the cryo area, but the actual controls were left for the officers."

"And I'd really rather not get any unpleasant surprises while we're up there. There's still parts of the ship we can't get into and I've been told there were sightings recently of hostiles hiding out in some of the remote parts of the ship. If we do get anybody thawed out, we're going to need protection during the process, and I can only handle so much myself."

From:

1nv1nc1ble

"Protection I can do," Invincible replies confidently. He follows Ellen down into the crater. "How long's it been since we last visited Dr. Tercorien?"

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

Elliott gestures to Invincible to follow him to a small room with a teleport pad. "I hate the cryo labs," he confesses. "It just gets worse every time I'm in there. The idea of all those people... it just gives me the creeps. I make notes every time of all the stuff I've been doing and I think I've made progress, but the whole place just gives me the shivers even before temperature comes into the picture."

From:

1nv1nc1ble

"I can imagine," says Invincible, nodding. "I mean, it's like a tomb in there, only with chrome and weird lights. Still, every person we can wake up is another person that isn't in there, making it creepy."

"Hey," he adds, suddenly, "can you tell who is who in there? Maybe there's some other doctors that could help. Not that you don't know your field," he adds, "but more trained professionals is good, right?"

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"I wish," says Elliott. "Unfortunately the aliens didn't record people's identities. I have a stack of recordings they took from some people, but the labels don't match up with any markings I can find on the outside of the pods. Not even the one that's just mooing. The only thing I've got to go on is the gauge that shows how long ago these people were put on ice."

From:

1nv1nc1ble

"Mooing?" Invincible grins and shakes his head. "Wow, the crazies were right; they were abducting cattle."

"Well," he continues, "I suppose then that the best plan is to start with either the most recent or someone who looks to be from a year recent enough to speak English or at least be civilized. Thawing a Pict or a Spartan is likely to end up with violence."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Mooing," Elliott confirms. "And alien babbling, of course. At least that Asgardian guy Ellen brought here understood it, because I sure don't."

"Yeah, all things considered I'd really rather not get screamed at in old Norse or something. There's a display we'll be using in the labs, with a green-to-purple color bar. The more purple the bar, the more recently the person was frozen. Their vitals show up on a different readout that's a little hard to explain, but I'll show you when I see it.... okay, here's the labs."

The six-part door that spirals open lets out a gust of frigid air, condensation rolling through in waves. "Just like I remember from Earth," says Elliott. "Not that Alaska was my favorite place to be..."

From:

1nv1nc1ble

Invincible follows him into the lab. "I can understand that," he says, "what with a war in an arctic climate. Couldn't have been pleasant."

He looks around. "Are the cylinders sorted in some order? Chronological would be good."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"It was nasty business," says Elliott. "It was January, and I'm from DC anyway, so you can imagine just how much of a shock it was...."

"Oh- yeah. The first room on the left is mostly people from the past... I don't know, I'm guessing fifty years by how purple they are. The further back you go the more green they get. There's some seriously green ones on there, some of them with next to no vitals at all- steady, just very, very low."

From:

1nv1nc1ble

Invincible thinks for a minute. "Well, it sounds like the oldest ones are the most risky to thaw out, if their vitals are that low. So, more recent would probably be safer and surer, both because they're more likely to understand us and more likely to survive."

"Or we could try for someone closer to your era," he adds. "They might be more likely to believe you. Unless they were, you know, Chinese."

Sariel and Invincible

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags