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Post by Keeshya on Dec 4, 2007 21:23:11 GMT -8
Keeshya stretches as she sits up on her bunk, hiding a yawn behind one hand. She rakes her fingers through her short cropped brown hair, blinking away the remnants of sleepiness as she looks around.
Stretching once more, she shrugs out of her wrinkled and torn t-shirt and slips her tank top over her head. She hops a bit as she tugs on a pair of camoflage (sp?) cargo pants and then sits agian to stick her feet in her heavy boots and lace them up.
She runs her fingers through her hair once more, her fingertips stopping and brushing uncertainly over the plug at the nape of her neck. She shudders a bit, still not used to it, and puts it from her mind as she heads out of the room and out into the rest of the hovercraft.
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Post by cerhob on Dec 4, 2007 21:40:35 GMT -8
Cerhob stands at the control center of the hovercraft with his operator, Stitch. His hair is tied back in a very loose pony tail, his clothing torn and covered in patches. As he exhales, a cloud of steam slowly escapes from his lips. In one hand a bent, heavily used metal bowl filled with the so called "Tasty Wheat". The other hand covers his mouth as he lets out a low yawn.
Wiping his mouth clean, he points to the center screen, a lump of the Tasty Wheat lands near by, and speaks, "There. Start the play back from there Stitch. I want everything that was said." Cerhob then takes another gulp of the runny slop, his face showing that still after all these years, the taste hasn't really settled with him.
Stitch, a freeborn and the true owner of the hovercraft nods, "I told you Captain, there was some static. Parts of the message was lost. I tried running a trace on the source but got nothing." Never the less, his fingers click quickly on the keyboard, following his captain's orders.
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Post by Keeshya on Dec 4, 2007 21:50:23 GMT -8
Keeshya considers grabbing a bowl of the "Tasty Wheat" but quickly decids against it. There is nothing tasty about it.
She heads into the control center, shrugging into a jacket as she does, tugging at a patch that desperately needs some restitching before she zips it up. She watches the two men for a moment before talking.
"I tell you," she smirks a bit as she watches Cerhob eating messily, "you take the man out of the Matrix and his manners go with it." Her arms cross over her chest and her hip cocks as she leans against the metal frame of the door way.
"What are we listening to today?"
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Post by cerhob on Dec 4, 2007 22:23:52 GMT -8
Cerhob's head jerks at the voice, nearly spilling more of his breakfast. He nods at his lover and first mate. "Sleep well?" He turns back to the screen before she can answer. He speaks again, not looking at Keeshya. "Stitch is trying to pull up a recording of a strange phone call I got when I was jacked in last night. Ganna try runnin some traces on it. See if we get anything."
Stitch looks back up from his typing. "File coming up in a sec." He turns and nods to Keeshya. "Hey Keesh, there's a bowl in the mess hall for ya." A beep is heard on the console and Stitch's head snaps back to attention to the screen. "Aw, there we go."
A message pops up on screen.
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Post by stitch on Dec 4, 2007 22:26:49 GMT -8
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Post by Keeshya on Dec 4, 2007 22:33:44 GMT -8
Keeshya is not a happy person when she first wakes up. The fact that he asked her a question and then didn't even let her answer doesn't help matters.
She sticks her tongue out at the back of his head as she pushes her hip off the door frame. "Horribly! Thanks for asking." With a slight huff, she spins on the toes of her boots and trudges back to the mess hall to grab that bowl of mush after all.
A couple of minutes later she returns, bowl and spoon in hand. She goes to stand beside Stitch, keeping him between her and Cerhob. She looks over Stitch's shoulder at the message that popped up and her hand stops, a spoonful halfway to her mouth.
"What's... that?" she asks slowly.
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Post by cerhob on Dec 4, 2007 23:06:14 GMT -8
Cerhob rolls his eyes at Keeshya's question. "Its a recording of a conversation I had with, well.... Somebody. Could be a prank but Stitch and I don't believe so."
Cerhob stands up and turns to look at Keeshya. "First day with the believers and we get this. Stitch, run all the tests you can on this. If you can't dig up anything on it, perhaps we should turn it over to Skyscream." He places his hand around Keeshya's waist and smiles at her. "Good morning in the real."
Suddenly, a red light fills the jack-in deck and alarms go off as the hovercraft suddenly shakes violently.
"Stitch! What the hell is going on?!"
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Post by telemancer on Dec 5, 2007 4:31:31 GMT -8
Telemancer sat alone on the bridge...Skyscream, his captain, had gone to sleep hours ago. His standing order; "keep an eye on the new guys". "what the hell?" Telemancer leaned forward in his chair, all signs of the new TTB hovercraft were gone from his screen. "Sky's gonna kill me" he mutttered to himself as he started for the captain's bunk...
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Post by Keeshya on Dec 5, 2007 17:10:41 GMT -8
Keeshya listens, rather perplexed, as Cerhob speaks. She's reading as she listens, setting her bowl and spoon down, completely ignoring them now. She barely smiles to Cerhob as his hand slips around her waist, her brown eyes still focused on the screen. "I don't think the words good and morning go together at all," she comments dryly.
Her head cants to the side as she studies the words from Cerhob's conversation with the... 'Somebody'. The words sounded eerily familiar to her.
"Stitch, did you get that conversation I had yestur..."
Her head snaps up as the alarm blares and she curses softly under her breath.
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Post by stitch on Dec 5, 2007 20:00:42 GMT -8
Stitch pulls up the message. He knew he could easily but he makes it look much harder then it really is. It puts a smile on his face, something that he knows that pisses off his Captain. Stitch wipes off the glob of Tasty Wheat on one of the monitors as Cerhob reads the message. On another screen he runs a few trace hacks on the phone conversation. His programs were good. Most of them were stolen from the machines. He notices some strange glitches in the code, but nothing that makes any sense.
What he fails to notice is the blinking red light flashing. The one that tells him when there is an incoming object. The one that he is supposed to tell everyone about so they can launch their EMP. As Keeshya comes back on deck, Cerhob had finished his breakfast and leaves it lazily on the keyboard in front of him. In the corner of his eye Stitch catches Cerhob's arm around Keeshya. Stitch rolls his eyes and focuses back on his hack results.
By the time Keeshya's message makes it to his ears, its soon flooded out by a thunderous alarm and red lights.
Stitch reacts even before his Captain barks an order at him, his fingers a blur on his keyboard. "Squddies, Captain! 'Bout ten of the son-o-bitches. Just out of the way of the EMP blast. We gotta move."
Even before his Captain gives an order, Stitch jumps out of his operators chair and runs to the bridge and into the pilots chair.
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Post by cerhob on Dec 5, 2007 20:21:30 GMT -8
The blast was from a near miss of one of the bombs the new sentinels love to throw. The ship wasn't moving. Either it was a warning shot or these guys just really can't aim.
Cerhob wasn't going to give them a second chance. In his line of work, second chances are few and far between. "Stitch, get to the controls!" But its to late, Stitch was already heading that way. With no one else to bark an order to, his eyes turn to Keeshya. "Keesh, I need you on the aft lower gun. Don't ask questions, just do it!"
Cerhob takes off, his heavy boots banging loudly on the cold metal floor. He throws himself up against the ladder that leads him to the upper stern gun, as the ship lunges to life and as another blast rips just a few meters from the ship. Cerhob buckles himself into his gunners chair, slaps on his headset and grabs the two joysticks in front of him, placing his fingers on the triggers.
As the monitors come alive, along with all the other LED's and other buttons, half of which he didn't know what they were for, Cerhob's eyes widened. The squiddies were on to them fast, and he could already see the lower aft guns firing. He could also see some damage to the starboard, and aft sections of his ship. His eyes narrow as he squeezes the triggers, throwing his own beads of molten lead into the cold air and hopefully into the long tentacle bastards trying to rip apart his ship into shreds, he yells into his headset, "Stitch, get us the hell outta here, and fast!"
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Post by Keeshya on Dec 5, 2007 20:55:50 GMT -8
The second blast jars the ship and Keeshya is thrown against the door frame as she scrambles towards the lower aft. She grunts in pain but bites it back. No time to be hurting. It'd bruise later.
Her boots thud as she runs to the lower aft hatch and tugs it open from the floor, dropping down inside and closing it behind her. She straps on the harness in the gunner's chair and shoves the headset on as the monitors blink to life.
She doesn't take any more time to study the scene than it takes to locate the squiddies. Her lithe fingers curl around the joysticks and she quickly begins to turn the guns, sending lead blasting out towards the things with a squeeze of the triggers.
She can't help smiling a bit as the rounds blast and echo in her ears while Cerhob yells at Stitch over the headset.
And she was hoping for a quiet morning...
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Post by cerhob on Dec 5, 2007 23:17:04 GMT -8
Two... now three down... The count goes up. But for each squiddie taken down, two more seem to take its place.
Cerhob lets his thoughts drift for a moment, "Hum, we should have restocked the ammo the last time we were at Zion."
But reality soon kicks Cerhob's attention back into the Real. Two squiddies have landed on the ship, in a blind spot where he can't swing his guns to hit at, sending their crimson beams into the protective shell of his ship.
"Keesh, see if ya can nail the two squiddies on the Phoenix." His order is more like a spoken thought, as he refocuses his shots onto other Sentinels.
With ammo reserves low, and the squiddies cutting through his ship they needed a new plan, and fast.
Cerhob exhales into his mic then speaks, "Any one got any ideas?"
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Post by Keeshya on Dec 6, 2007 21:04:20 GMT -8
A slight yelp is cut off over the headset as Keeshya ducks a red beam cutting through the hull and over her head. She snarls slightly, grabbing the joysticks once again and watching the moniter intently as she swings the guns around and squeezes the triggers three times rapidly. Hot lead rips through the Sentinels tenticals and she cant help smiling with satisfaction.
Spinning the guns agian she takes aim at the other squiddie that's landed on the ship and squeezes off another series of shots.
"Hey, Stitch?! Any ideas? You're the brainiac here... I'm just the looks and Cerhob's..." she pauses a moment as she fires a few more rapid shots; "...Cerhob's the muscle with the cute ass."
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Post by stitch on Dec 6, 2007 22:38:16 GMT -8
There were only a few things Stitch held dear to himself. One, was his one life. The other was his crew. But most of all that he held close to him, something that the mere thought of losing sends him reeling, the very thing he wakes up each and every day, was 'his' ship.
The Phoenix was an old ship. The inscription on the plaque reads " Ezekiel XXI No. 17 made in the USA year 2071." Many have questioned the ships out of sequence number. Stitch has told others it was a personal request from the original pilot and crew of the ship. Due to most of the older ships that were lost in the First Battle of Zion, the Phoenix was most likely the oldest ship in Zion's feet, that is if Stitch ever had gotten the ship registered.
She is a good ship, capable of holding a crew of six snugly, and is an agile ship, despite its size.
But right now, it wasn't her agility that was being put to the test. It was her speed. The weight of two squiddies threw her balance off, and damage to the hull also disabled two of the mag board on the starboard side. Stitch was givin' her all she had, but would it be enough?
"Get off my frackin' ship you son-o-bitch's!" Stitch yells into his mic, forgetting he even had it on. All he cares about is that right now, two squiddies have got it in their mind to rip apart his baby, and he can't have that. He pulls the ship low, hitting the hull against the tunnel below them. It's enough to knock one of the Sentinels off but the other still holds on tight. The jolt from the impact sends Stitch forward, but his protective harness takes most of the impact.
Stitch hears his Captain then the First Mate. "Sure," he says, as he looks over his scanners and over-lay map "I got a plan. But I'm ganna need thirty seconds. Do you hear me? Thirty seconds, then hold on for all you got."
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