Peace in our time

[Ocfos]

"Ey hold up, something IS wrong about that thing here! That Warp-Engine is fake! It's not emitting a hum as they're supposed to!" She protests, whilst being pushed out by the guards.

"Those things are bloody expensive, let me pass damn it, and nobody leave before I've had a look at that thing. I'm a mechanic, trust me; I know my shit." She grunts, trying to push herself back inside past the guards.
"Either you're selling fake shit, or that thing has been replaced with fake shit. Neither is good, you should know that as security."

[exalted]

"You got a problem? Report it to the duty officer." Maria sighed as she walked out, motioning for her men to let the mechanic and merchant do whatever. As long as they didn't spark up it wasn't her problem and if something had been stolen it was case for the MPs, not her.

[Riptide]

Zilch shuddered a little as the Displacer started checking him out. He was used to being ogled at, but this woman felt a little more different than the rest. It reminded him of his days as a slave. He wasn't primarily used for sex, but if there wasn't a sex slave girl easily in reach of the King, he'd be the next best choice. Hell, the Kibg sometimes chose him alongside or even above the slave girls due to how much he cried out while being used. In a weird twisted way, he came to enjoy it, as for the first time in his life, he felt wanted. After becoming the king's fuck toy, many high ranking Davultan's would sneak him off to have their way with Zilch as well. They were much more gentle and treated him with much more respect, especially the Davultan Princess, who wanted to be dominated by Zilch. She even eventually came to fall in love with Zilch, and was heartbroken when her father's reign ended, and she was forced away from him for her own safety. Zilch never saw her again, but is actively keeping her eye out for the former Davultan Princess. He grew to like her as well.

Zilch focused back on the Officer after reminiscing. "Well, since I'm "exotic meat" I'm usually priced at 300, though if a customer is not impressed, I can charge you for the standard hour of 200." He wrapped an arm around the Displaced and whispered in her ear. "Hint, I'd recommend you say you're not impressed with the 'exotic meat'." He speaks normally again. "Plus, those two discounts I mentioned should bring it to a solid 100 from there. In addition, after I finish my hour, I can always take a break for some 'personal time' in your room if I like you enough." He starts groping her breast with his electrical touch as he whispers to her again. "Hint, I already like you a lot. I already have enough money, so I'd be ecstatic if you could save me from the freaks that visit me down here."

Knowing he had her hook, line, and sinker, he led the Displacer to a private room, while he told the story about his time as a sex slave that he reminisced on from before. When he finished, he was already lying seductively on the bed in only a flimsy pair of underwear, showing off his pale, but very fit body. "So, how about you be my boss for the night. I'll be your loyal worker who doesn't question a thing."

[Lynxy]

"It's just as well" she thought with a roll of her eyes as the clone at the counter faded and she stopped hiding herself. The shop keeper was apparently going to need plying she didn't have time for if she wanted a real answer. Better to send someone a little more descreet for the process of digging for anything new.

While heading for what looked to be a quieter spot she hastily stuck an earpiece in her right ear and answered the call. "Ak'tuul speaking. You'd better not be depressurizing out there already."

[Ocfos]

A low "Useless son of a..." escapes Nellie's lips, clearly starting to get her ticked off.

"Sure, don't do your job you're paid to do. I have to get back to mine sooner, rather than later. Ain't no pay for slacking around, when you actually do something, which requires you to know what is going on." she snarks, letting out a small huff.

She approaches the desk, trying to see what is going on with it. "Ain't gonna break it, just looking around at it." she assures, reaching to take a look unless stopped.

[dndman997]

"psssh" she replied listening to them "ive been dirtier in the past" she chuckled "seems like these boys are lightweights anyway" she was challenging them a bit as she winked over at them.

[Randomizer4]

Zilch:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

The woman follows you and seems a bit giggly about it until he started the story, undressing out of her uniform that showed her rank and the company she worked for, and wasn’t very flattering for the female form at all. When she was only in her practical underwear herself, Zilch could see that her breasts were in fact a bit larger than what they looked like, about cup E. “I’ll take your price” She says, looking a bit more serious, inspecting the prostitute like an officer would inspect an army recruit. “But are you sure you want to be the slave? You probably get this all the time, but with your past and all, I’d get it if you didn’t want to.” She smiles sincerely “It would be nice being in control for once, my boss never lets me slack off at all, not that I can complain in front of someone who worked for the Davultans.”

Ak'Tuul:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

A nervous male voice answers, which she recognizes as her own communications officer, Nick Taylor, a human who was 22 and, if rumours were true, only dominant in bed. “Commander. I’ve been trying to reach the captain of the marines for some time now, but she is totally unavailable… There is a situation here. We’ve been contacted by the Davultan government Sir.” How the hell did they even get our comms? “They say that they have credible information that known Davultan terrorists that oppose the treaty are aboard the station. They don’t know what they are looking for but they expect a bombing of some sorts. I-I don’t know what to do, they want it to be handled discreetly and I’m trying to run them through facial security, but the tech isn’t really made for Davultans sir. There is a silence and she hears some typing “I’m uploading their profiles I got now.”

A few photos and descriptions appear on the holoscreen of her hand held device. One of them looks eerily similar to the Davultan that just left that shop… A scar across the face is pretty unique. What to do?

Maria and Nellie:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

The shopkeeper allows the Shrelling to look at the device, handing it to her. “I assure you, it is a genuine product miss.” When the mechanic once again confirms her suspicions out loud, he sighs, then his face seems to stiffen as if he realizes something. “Th-that was…” he mumbles, then his voice swells. “SECURITY, GET BACK IN HERE” He seems to breath heavily now, his eyes darting around heavily once the marines react. “That person. Did you see that scar? I heard a Davultan soldier talk about him. He was a career officer in their fleet and then entered their supreme war council once the war started. When the King died, he was so angry at the pursuit of peace that he left with some of the other warmongerers to a far of region of space. That’s what they said. What if that was him?” He seems very nervous. “What if he needs the warp engine to make a bomb?”

Jan:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

One of the soldiers stands up and almost falls down again from drunkenness. “Sergeant... I-I request corporal Pu-punishment for her insult, delivered by all of us, sir.” The sergeant laughs even harder, eying up the pilot. “Serious accusations have been made against you” He drinks another big gulp of the alcohol. “What do you plead?”

Sylvia:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

He nods, chuckling “A real nice change of pace would be if soldiers stopped being drunk all the time. I had the hopes that that was only a Davultan thing.” He points over to another puking partygoer being brought in. “I’m not sure I can handle a galaxy-worth of parties, how about you?” He reaches out his hand to her, a bit cautiously “I am Tirunak Cyrodar, nice to meet you.”

Ophelia (intro):

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

The press room, of all places. She worked hard on it too, but apparently not hard enough, some of the journalists have been complaining about the giant Quantum transmitter. This thing was basically made to broadcast all the footage made by all the news-agencies of the galaxy to the entire galaxy, and provide live communication between all the people at Pax Station, the fleets orbiting it and the outside galaxy. To say it was a fine piece of engineering would be a massive understatement. But the last hour or two have seem a few glitches, and the uploading seems to be going a bit slower.
Ophelia has been sent to fix the issue and is now in the room which is a chaos of journalists, security and spokespeople of various important institutions. She would need to get to the main console to log in and to fix the glitches. Luckily the system was (secretly, if anyone found out that the programmers did this to safe themselves work, heads would roll) a bit self-aware, so that it can find issues easily with some basic instructions.

[CondorBoH]

Why, of why did it have to be in here of all places. The most busy place on the damn station and here she was. Though did she feel self-conscious walking into an extremely crowded room in risque clothing? Not at all. But having to slip her way through crowd, attempting to be polite and mumble 'excuse me' and 'coming through' every two seconds was wearing on her circuits. The guards would let her pass, her clearance and ID numbers would be on their displays as soon as she was in sight.

After getting through to the main console, resisting the urge to elbow the closest scrub, Ophelia found an access port and plugged herself in. She began to 'whisper' to the hidden AI, making sure that anything it said was only heard by her. Gotta stay simple and polite, this thing wasn't as smart as her.
"OK, what's the problem? You have displayed several errors and performance has slowed down. Identify and explain any errors."

[Fantasy Fanatic]

"Bah, you'll see. Only a few more parties and then things will calm down. Trades will have been established, territories will have changed and jobs should become plentiful for everyone. Parties will become a luxury no one will be able to spare the time for, so you should enjoy all this, even if it just our job. And it's nice meeting you as well, name's Sylvia Brabring. It's a pleasure working with you." Sylvia responds, taking his hand and shaking it slightly with a smile.

[exalted]

Maria gripped her temple with one hand as she sighed, rubbing beside her eyes with thumb and middle finger to try and ease her growing headache. Really? Was this really happening?

Pivoting on her heel, she trudged back to the merchant, glaring him the eye.

"So you see a lizardman with scar and immediately think it's this boogeyman because of a story you 'heard'?" She questioned, "And never having seen this guy before you can immediately pick him out from all the other lizard fucks with scars out there? Is this what you are telling me, just so we can be right clear on the subject?"

Turning to her men she order them to break off drag the xeno bastard back so she could deal with the issue once and for all.

"Central, this is Sierra Peter 66," She spoke into her radio, "Have a report of possible bomb threat, need a couple of MPs sent to my location to investigate."

Maria gave the assembled party another deathstare as she waited for her men to get back or the MPs to arrive and take over.

[dndman997]

"hah" she said "i plea not guilty and a better pilot then any of these deadbeats who probably got in cuz they couldnt get a real job" she said taking another swig and getting up. "now see you all later boys" she said winking at them as she walks away.

[Ocfos]

Nellie groans audibly at the conflict, turning to Maria as she inspects the device for any marks that it's a fake.

"This is why I always tell people to save their bloody transaction history... I'm glad it's a lull in work right now, or this would be a waste of my time."

She pauses, mumbling lowly, "Right, in either case everyone here is way too bloody trigger happy. Chill your asses and get a CCTV output for me so I can check the last few minutes on record. Can't be that hard, and it'll take less effort than what's going on here."

Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out a PDA with her empty hand, moving the drive to be securely cradled by her tentacles once she has finished inspecting it.

[Randomizer4]

Ophelia:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Most of the people there were either too busy or too polite to care about Ophelia’s attire, but a few people gave her some stares. The server room was humming softly like always, which was pleasant for someone used to the sound… A very robotic voice answered, as even a voicemod was too much to ask for this thing. “System performing at 101% efficiency (well that seemed odd) … Running diagnostics…” The thing actually took minutes to complete this simple task. “Query completed. System over performing. All scheduled tasks being performed at maximum efficiency. No system malfunction to report.” Either the AI was lying, or it was doing something that it wasn’t supposed to do.

Sylvia:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

The doctor smiles “You are right of course, let us hope for…” His sentence is cut short by a Shrelling nurse rushing into the midst of the two doctors. “Doctors, you have to see this. They just brought in a Davultan who went batshit insane.” Both of your doctor impulses went on and Tirunak smiled calmly, exposing his predatory fangs. “Probably some kind of wrong drug. Lead us to him and we will see what we need to do.” The Shrelling leads the way to the emergency unit…

Maria:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

The marines dispersed in groups of two and ran off, searching for a needle in a space station. Maria heard excited shouting from the other end of the radio, apparently something was going down. A female voice answered, it sounded like she was nervous as all hell. “Roger SP 66, but negative on that request. All units are being used on possible level 1 terrorist threat. Some Davultan terrorist is planning…” She paused. “Did you see the Davultan terrorist? Big scar, easy to spot?” Her comms seem to be grabbed by someone else, shouting. “SP 66, we just got confirmation that a level 1 threat was on your location minutes ago. Uploading description to your device now. Be advised, target extremely dangerous. We’re following you on the big screen and will give more advice when available.”

Nellie:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

The shopkeep grumbled a bit but soon gave Nellie access to the security feed. And well, his face was clearly caught, but she would need a photo to cross reference. If there was any way for her to follow this guy through the station…

Jan:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Jan hears more laughter and some whistling form the table she leaves. As she walks away from the pub and into a crowded corridor. There seems to be something a bit off and she noticed that several guards and MP’s were walking around hastily. No one else seems to notice that something has the station’s police forces nervous.

[CondorBoH]

Ophelia frowned, staring confused at the giant computer. There was something wrong with it, clearly, but it couldn't find it for some reason.
"That is incorrect. Run another diagnostic, then run one that searches for any physical irregularities."

While the computer went through it's scans, Ophelia ran her own, piggy-backing off of the process to get the results faster. It was missing something, probably deliberately, and she had to find out before someone blamed her for the damn thing crapping itself. As she scanned, she began to look around to see if anyone had hidden something on the thing, something that would make it do this.
If that failed, and the scan found nothing yet again, she might as well have to search inside of it. Sabotage was a possibility. With the tap of a few keys, she brought up the Task Manager, trying to see where it was devoting all of its resources.
"Isolate any unknown files, systems, or viruses with exception to myself."

[Ocfos]

Nellie holds the pda up to Maria, raising an eyebrow."That gonna cut it? Feed shows he's a thief."
Pausing, she looks around.
"I should head back to my own shop ASAP, in case that guy returns to try something with my stock of spare parts."

She lifts the drive back up to the shopkeeper, not planning to keep it any longer.

[Fantasy Fanatic]

Following the nurse to the emergency unit, Sylvia wondered to herself about a properly trained a nurse using the term "batshit insane" but then remembered that she herself was one of the more unusual doctors out there. Besides, when it comes to healthcare, no person or medicine is turned away as long as they preform their job properly. And since medical staff was valued everywhere, terms like "batshit insane" wasn't even the worst "condition" she's heard anyone utter. Of course, "batshit insane" still wasn't much to go on, so she'd better just see the patient herself.

Upon entering the emergency unit, Sylvia made a rudimentary assessment of the situation.

[exalted]

Oh you've got to be kidding me, Maria thought, a broke ass clock is right twice a day.

And here she had two broke ass clocks, and both seemed to be right. Snatching the PDA from the alien she compared the image with that of her own and sighed.

"Goddamnit" She muttered, switching her comms to the team channel,"SP66 to all units, detain suspect at all cost. Suspect is confirmed Davultan terrorist, I am changing the ROE, lethal force is authorized if needed. Report contacts immediately."

Fuck it, thought Maria, she could with the political backlash later if things went to shit. Stopping this bastard had to come before making people look good.

[Ocfos]

"Can I get my PDA so I can get ready to safeguard my workshop better against thieves? My workers are probably too busy to notice most of the time, " Nellie asks, looking less irritated and more nervous over that guy running free.
She hands the clerk his rare part back with her tentacles.

Last thing she'd want is her shop being the victim of a crime. With a dangerous outcome at that.

[dndman997]

Jan walked over to one of the MPs "whats going on officer?" she said before hiccupping.

[Randomizer4]

Ophelia:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

This was interesting… as the computer responded her own scans found that it quickly transmitted a signal and got something back. Ophelia couldn’t pinpoint the location, but maybe it got a command from something? She was just about the override the AI and just fix the sabotage manually when she heard shouting from behind her and then gunshots and screaming. Looking behind herself instinctively, people were running away as a group of Davultan was shouting for everyone to get out of their way, wielding heavy weapons. Ophelia was not equipped to deal with them, but she now found the likely culprits of her AI hickup. How was this all connected though?

Sylvia:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Upon entering the emergency unit, Sylvia made a rudimentary assessment of the situation.
The remark probably came from the informal Shrelling attitude, which even seems to have dripped down to the medical professions. The Davultan was restrained on his stretcher and seemed to be making all sort of frantic movements. He seemed to be unable to talk, and his eyes seem to be shining more bright than she ever saw a Davultan do. Of course the doctor looks at her Davultan colleague. Was this some kind of Davultan rabies? Tirunak looks at her with the same confusion she herself was probably showing. “I have never seen this before.” The Shrelling hands Sylvia a document. “Tox results came up clean… there is nothing odd about his blood. I have no idea…” Tirunak checks the patient’s eyes a bit more “He seems to have lost his mind… perhaps we should do a brain scan?”

Jan:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

The soldier looked at her seriously “Is that your uniform? Shit. You’re with us right? There’s a threat somewhere, we are…” He seems to get some communication from his earpiece. “Come on miss, we need to head to the press room. There was gunfire there.” This was all very confusing and the MP was heading out again. Perhaps she should follow him? Did she have her gun? Could she even fire straight?

Maria:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Only thirty seconds later she got her first response. “Team Epsilon 3 reporting contact…” then static “We’re pinned down in corridor O-12, enemies seem to cut of access to the station’s core. All the civvie journalists are there.” That wasn’t too far from here… Another communication from the ship comes in next: “Gunshots reported in the press room Maria. The secret services are securing the politicians, but we can’t get to the station core and the press without going through that corridor. I have no idea what the Davultan are doing, but you’ll probably need some heavy weapons if they have erected a barricade there.”
This all happened very fast. So terrorists are kidnapping journalists and have barricaded the only access, with her boys outside taking fire.

Nellie:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

The human seemed to get more serious by the second. The shopkeeper meanwhile sighed. And just seemed fearful. Nellie could go to her shop, but if the station was in danger, maybe she should pack up and leave.