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Starbound Flotilla	MINIKNOG FACILITY ECHO-4751     The facility is, in a word, ultramodern. Ergonomic, white, formed of geometric shapes with rounded corners. The shape is a sort of massive crescent, with ends that taper less than the midsection. The concave side bears a mess of modular structures, compartmentalized laboratories slotted into the structure or massive solar panels focused on the nearby star. It would seem, though, that several of these structures have been blown up violently, and sections of the station are completely dark, unpowered for one reason or another, or lit red on emergency power.     The dock, at least, are easy to get to, and still seem to be connected to the main power grid. It would seem all the Miniknog ships swiftly undocked and left some time ago, because there's not anything left at the main dock. The impounded ships must be elsewhere in the structure. The six Flotilla ships have offered their own services, today, for the purposes of getting people aboard, but the array of docking seals here should be compatible with everyone's ships if they can just match up.     From the dock, you can get to a station entrance area designed with the same aesthetic. Light, brushed steel, rounded ergonomic benches, stacks of brushed steel crates and lockers... And no people, of course. The place has the look and dimensions that aren't unlike an airport scaled down, with arrivals areas and waiting areas densely packed into a claustrophobic space. The power's still on here. There are several transparent, luminously flickering false images of Apex workers -- human-sized monkeymen -- here, wearing grayish laborer jumpsuits, apparently ignoring the arrivals as they walk between crates on some kind of behavior loop, scanning them. The floating holographic signs near them state that the automated evacuation protocol is currently at the 'Cargo Inspection' stage, but it's stuck in a loop since there's no longer anywhere to load the cargo.     The high density of cargo containers here is unusual; it seems like they were amid an attempted evacuation of some sort before they were interrupted. Of note are signs of an intense struggle. Portions of the tiled and plated floors are torn up, cracked brutally, or scorched by explosions or energy weapon fire. There are no corpses. The entire area isn't a unified dock, it's more of a mess of corridors and cargo transit areas extending off of individual docks. Ash and blood have been used by various inhabitants to hand-write warnings to visitors on the walls, with varied and sometimes contradictory statements.     "GO BACK"     "THEY'RE NOT APEX ANYMORE"     "DON'T LET THEM GRAB YOU"     "WE DIED FOR BIG APE"     "HELP US"     From here, directions on the flickering, transparent holosigns on the walls can lead visitors to the RESIDENTIAL SECTORS, the CARGO SECTORS, the TELEPORTATION LABS, the BIOENGINEERING LABS, and the SOLAR POWER SYSTEMS in soft lockdown. The ERCHIUS LABS, THOUGHT CRIMINAL RESOURCE IMPOUND, and MINIKNOG COMMAND AREA appear to be in hard lockdown on all those signs, and TEST SUBJECT STORAGE has suffered major damage such that it's listed as inaccessible, so that path will lead to a spacewalk. The objective is clear: Make progress towards releasing the THOUGHT CRIMINAL RESOURCE IMPOUND lockdown, opening up SPACESHIPS for acquisition... And meanwhile, salvage all the loot you can. The Starbounders themselves are spread out among many docks themselves, and will begin to make their way into the structure. The dock area is also home to an INFORMATION KIOSK AREA if one decides to navigate there, for more information on the station itself.          The walls are creaking. There is a distant thumping every few minutes.
Black Arachnia	Currently lacking a spacecraft of her own, Black Arachnia hitched a ride on one of the Flotilla's vessels. She's very curious about this space station - and even if the research they were doing isn't up her alley (which it isn't), it's generally worth grabbing whatever data one can get. So she'll have to share it with the others who're here, in all likelihood. She's willing to be honest about that as the price for her travel and having some people to watch her back ... as long as they aren't arachnophobic, anyway, because Black Arachnia's in her spider form for the flight out to Apex Labs. She takes a look around the facility's dock as soon as she disembarks from whichever ship she was on, and heads for the information kiosk first - trying to see what kind of access it offers to the station's general network, and how tight the system's security is.
Alexis Maaka	Having rode along with Albert to the station, Alexis Maaka has prepared herself for a nasty show with this operation now. The cyborg's STALKER suit folds and seals up for EVA, and she totes her GASH coilgun with preparation as she follows the Apex renegade into the facility.     Her rifle's flashlight turns on to illuminate the way into the base, and she trails the light on any sign she sees before logging them mentally, her neural implants keeping them on reference in a handy little map interface. She makes her way towards the kiosk with Arachnia, checking her corners and making sure to take light steps as she steadies herself upon blood splatters and the bodies of mangled Apex personnel.     Her face, while hidden, is contorted into a mask of disgust and even a little sympathy for these people.
Courier Six	If you were looking for a plain old cowboy tonight, it's sure as hell not going to be Johnny. Today the person here is in fact Courier Six. It wasn't ever his name, but it's now his own legend. The man stands resolute in his hulking Riot Gear suit, red lenses in the helmet scanning the entrance to the place, the supplies scattered everywhere, the feeling of the place. That shitty bulk frighter he uses to get around is parked just offsite now, hovering in and with the Flotilla. He...might be here to upgrade.     "This is way too much like a Vault. Same sorta shitty sense of operations too. Thought Criminal Processing bullshit. Fuck the Miniknog. Fuck Vault-tec." Johnny shoulders his YCS-198, and starts tromping his way towards the Teleportation Labs. If you can't go through a door, go through the wall.
Corona Arclite	Clean white walls (other than the weapon damage). Smooth clean floors. Everything with smooth edges, rounded corners and neat, geometric shapes. Corona Arclite in contrast is clad in her usual grease smudge, dirt scuffed retro-neo Western attire. Plated heavy boots clomp on the otherwise pristine floors; a gloved hand rubs at some of the marks on the wall. The foxgirl looks around a bit, then lets out a snort. "This place is so clean and tidy. How the hootnanny does anyone get any actual work done is beyond me." Don't mind her, she's just use to a big, loud, dirty and cluttered so you know where everything is metalshop. ... And then she's promptly distracted by poking her hand 'through' one of the holosigns and back a few times, watching as it digitally wavers around her limb passing through it but continues to function others. "Though these nonbreakin' screens are maybe a bit useful..." One of her friends might want to grab her before they wander off too far.
Rory White	Rory's not stupid enough to bring the Cognizant Odyssey directly anywhere NEAR this facility. A much smaller spaceship's on the approach - under a fifth the size of the standard transport. It's shaped much like a very large rifle bullet, with thrusters both on the rear blunt end and embedded throughout the structure in the opposite direction. It's a planetary landing shuttle designed for atmospheric re-entry and has LOTS of manuevering thrusters, obviously....     The ship comes in to dock at one of the hangars...     And after Rory finds nothing harmful in the air and that it's breathable she pops the seal. A ramp extends and disgorges several passengers! First out are a half-dozen drones half the size of a man rolling around on treads and armed to the TEETH with weapons - both integrated and held in their arms. They fan out into a protective perimeter and begin sweeping the docking bay. Once that's begun...     Rory herself disembarks, carrying several bags full of who knows what strapped to her back. She doesn't seem to have a weapon this time, at least not one she's holding...     "Life support operational. The facility's damaged but still functional. Checking network..."     Instead of using her own wireless, wary of the possibility of strange programs and defensive measures she brings out a PDA (an Ecto, she'd call it) that's running separate from her PERSONAL AREA NETWORK and begins a scan for wireless signals...
Evette	As the flotilla ships arc into orbit, they would likely catch site of another massive, likewise futuristic ship coming out of a FTL jump. The designation 'H-74' is emblazoned across its side in deep red letters outlined in ebony, making for a rather jarring contrast with its pearly white hull. Like a car lining up to draw gasoline from a pump it would dock with the Miniknog installation, its dusty, dull iron doors sliding open with the telltale release of an airlock. A youthful girl accompanied by a small, floating robot whose form is characterized by a quartet of undulating, metallic cones would emerge with her, the azure sphere at its monitor carefully surveying the worrisome world it comes in to. It would beep with some urgency as it locates the others of the group, coaxing its companion to relative safety.     Once they arrive, Evette would greet them all with her standard measure of exuberance, a soft hand waving their way. "Hi, everyone~!" She doesn't seem to have conformed to the atmosphere yet, but that changes quickly once she notes the messages left on the wall by their predecessors. "... oh." This gives her pause, but her look is far more quizzical than it is fearful. Her head tilts somewhat and she softly inquires to nothing in particular, "... what is a 'Big Ape'? I mean, it's written like it's something important, but it just sounds silly to me." She would glance back to the others briefly, expectantly. Oh, but then her eyes would light up! Beyond what they already had been with NIGHTVISION MODE active, I mean. "Actually...! Here. I can do this!" Her eyes would designate the section of the wall containing the writing, encapsulating it in a fluorescent, neon green rectangle before their lids slide shut. Basically, what she's trying to do is get a ~vision~! If this is successful, she might get a glimpse of where the people who wrote this went afterwards, or what their circumstances were as they left the message. Or she might see nothing! It all depends on its situational relevance.     Whether this is successful or not, though, she would likely be most drawn to the INFORMATION KIOSK. She's far more interested in learning about the people who lived here than any ghastly experiments they might've had to endure. Stuff like that is... actually kinda gross! And she's not old enough to have a well-developed morbid curiosity yet. Likewise, she's not greedy enough to want any LOOT, unless that loot would happen to be a new stuffed animal for her collection. She's assuming that a research station probably doesn't have any of those, though.
Staren	Amid all the transport ships, an aerospace fighter flies down towards the facility. Arms and legs unfold from beneath the fuselage, foot thrusters allowing fine-positioning on approach before it transforms to a humanoid robot and lands by one of the airlocks. The cockpit in the chest opens and Staren climbs out in his armor, entering that way.     Once he reaches the 'airport terminal' part of the facility, he discusses and considers options for awhile. As Courier Six runs off, he comments, "Do you really think the command area won't be protected against teleportation?" before unshouldering his laser rifle and heading towards the Residential Area himself. Time to find a corpse with an ID card!
Defiant	With the Pendragon serving as transporation, Defiant and Dragon have a way to the station. They emerge in their matching power armor and blank helmets of forest green and gold, etched with designs of scales and draconic wings. They're both about six feet tall and where Defiant has a long spear held across his back, Dragon possesses a winged backpack that makes her look like some sort of armored angel.      Defiant moves in first, with the self-assured confidence of someone who thinks he's the best around. He takes the lead, Dragon behind. But her movements seem to be strangely stuttering, like she's being overly precise with every step she takes. Whatever happened yesterday must've really left its scars.      Defiant's helmet glances at the writing then around at the flickering holosigns. He eventually says, "We would be most useful at either the bioengineering labs or the test subject area."
Starbound Flotilla	The information kiosk area is still cramped, but larger. The circular desk here offers data to visiting Miniknog, but not the average citizen. There's a flickering shape of an Apex military secretary behind the desk, who bears a forced pleasant smile. Something must be busted in the system, she's flickering very erratically. "HAIL BIG APE." She says, abruptly with intense volume. "How-how-how can I-I-I h-help you?" Her stuttering voice says, distorted. She holds up an image of a tablet, seeming to scan the visitors with flickering images of confusion and distress on her face.
Starbound Flotilla	BLACK ARACHNIA seeks out wireless signals, and finds them! For example, the holo-construct in front of her seems to be seeking out authentication signals that might be spoofable, and the kiosk itself has access to basic data about the purpose of the facility and its current status.
Kotone Yamakawa	So here they were it only been a few hours since a major life change for Kotone but it was going to be a hell of a trial by fire. She was ready as she was ever going to be she took a deep breath and checked over the last of her gear. A XCOM issue rifle in her hands, and another pistol on her hip. She was wearing a body suit like outfit which was black and grey covered in combat webbing holding other supplies she exited Rory's ship. She opens a com channel to the those whom have come in, Alexis, Rory, Black Aarchina, Corona, Johnny, Defiant and the like would all be getting pinged by Kotone as she gets off the ship. <<We find some computers let me know.>> Kotone's looking a bit different it's still clearly here but her features seem to have been almost photo-shopped from the looks of her. She keep her rifle ready. as she looks about. "We need to start salvaging but what would make a galactic power bail on an place like this and not send in a demo team? Or slag it with warships..." She thinks for a moment the information area would be the best place to go and she heads for it to look for a computer she makes hand gestures for Alexis, Rory and Corona to follow here. "Let's keep together and see if we can salvage anything from the local network I got a dummy barrier and with the output I'm packing it should help." Kotone seemed oddly confident today.
Starbound Flotilla	Alexis will actually find a distinct lack of corpses. What's with that? It would seem something has... Moved the dead, if there were any in the first place. There's blood splatters though, infreqently. Much less frequently than one would expect. Something stealthy, maybe?
Starbound Flotilla	"Affirming. I agree strongly with your statements." Seft says, to Courier Six, following along with him. She's got the same posture of aggressive preparedness and readiness. Moonfin's come along this way too, as the Flotilla's teleportation science expert.     The teleportqation laboratory area is broken up into distinct departments. There is an EXTREME concentration of blasts and other signs of violence here. It would appear something or someone launched an assault on this location. Around here, rows of small labs are set up, around glass chambers housing strange circular platforms. Several of them have been violently destroyed with some kind of blunt object, One in particular was targeted over and over, intentionally, directly, and near-exclusively. It will take a little SCIENCE and REPAIR to get a teleporter running again, but that one teleporter specifically can't be brought back to life. Someone didn't just break it, they specifically tried to make it impossible to ever repair.     Holographic scientists wander the halls, still fussing with machines, doing maintenance scans, compiling data and information, and they seem stuck in a loop of repeatedly reporting that one particular teleporter as broken.
Evette	Scanning Evette, the secretary hologram may actually think that she's a hologram, too! Or some manner of corporeal AI. Or maybe a science experiment gone wrong? All of them are possibilities given that her thoughts are written in something akin to binary, but that her form seems to be a mixture of both biological matter and metal parts. If this thing is going by a purely visual heuristic, though, it probably would have no idea what the heck she is. A human? Maaaaybe. Or she might just be a really squishy apex. Either way, this hairless, human-like being would be giving the stammering, translucent, monkey-ish person a very large quantity of headtilts and curious blinks, culminating in a straightening of her posture and a quick glance between her and her robot companion.     She's... going to assume that 'Big Ape' is just a really important person in their society, since this 'lady' looks like a big monkey herself. Like a leader or something? Yeah! There's one mystery solved. Right now, though, she's a bit more concerned for this AI's well-being than anything else. So she's gonna try to strike up conversation and see if she can help! ... though, at first, it would be inaudible to anyone aside from Evette and the hologram itself. This is because her first attempt at speaking would be to transmit audio data directly in a manner that would mimic telepathy. If this works, it might also carry an implicit pattern of 'trust' that would make her presence seem a bit less suspicious regardless of the readings the 'secretary' receives. That definitely wouldn't happen if she isn't able to transmit messages that way, though, and she would just switch to direct speech in that case too. Either way, the messages would be interpreted as follows:     "H-Hey," Evette would frown faintly, "you don't sound so good. If you don't mind, would you run a self-diagnostic so you can tell me what's wrong? If I'm gonna ask you for information, it would be a lot easier if I could hear you clearly. Would you do that for me? Pllleeaassee?" She would fold her hands together to supplement the verbal request, the little robot beside her doing the same with its metal 'arms'.     Either this is gonna go well or she's gonna trip so many security alarms that she'll trigger a self-destruct sequence! ... or something boring and intermediate can happen. I -guess-.
Alexis Maaka	Alexis notes the distinct lack of corpses, beyond the occassional hint of blood here and there as she then looks to the holographic projection. "Can you give us the facility layout?" She asks, tapping on the glass a little.     "Stay alert, Legs. I don't like this place." She 'whispers' to the Maximal, or more technically she radios Arachnia privately where the AI can't hear.
Starbound Flotilla	Rory White's wireless detection indicates that the station's system as a whole is trapped in some kind of massive, horrible loop due to first preparing for a major experiment and then, abruptly, having to half-complete an evacuation. Since the final stages of the evacuation couldn't be completed, it appears to be hanging, and will require some jimmying to work right. Subsystems will work independently of this crashed main system, though.
Black Arachnia	Black Arachnia would smile, but her spider form isn't really built to do that - and it would look more creepy than friendly in any case. Not that 'creepy' is entirely out of place here. At any rate, the wireless 'queries' - like an access point sending out its SSID and 'I'm here' signal - give her something to work with for a start; she doesn't actually know the necessary responses yet, but she starts with some conventional replies to that sort of thing. At the same time, she's scrolling through the basic data, copying it to her internal data tracks - if there are maps or the like, excellent. And as per Alexis's suggestion, she's keeping her visual and audio sensors primed, 'watching' in as many directions as her assorted optics will cover at present. "Anyone who *does* like it," she replies comparably silently to Maaka, "is probably undead at best." Or a certain Predacon who should have been dead *long* ago. If Tarantulas were in the Multiverse, he would certainly love to get his 'hands' on this place. (One more reason why she'll be happy to see it blown up once we've got everything that's worth taking.)
Courier Six	Johnny takes in the brutal scene in the TeleLabs and frowns behind that implaccable mask. "Damn. I think we found a point of failure here." A hand comes up to point at the busted portal. "If I was a betting man, and I am, I'm guessing whatever was coming out of the walls, so to speak... was doing it here. Moonfin, see if there's some record of where this was aimed before they blew it the hell up."     He looks around, red lenses fluttering in the helmet as he looks to Seft. "Alright. Parts and Labor. Let's see what we can salvage and rig up in here." The Science Cowboy gets to work.
Starbound Flotilla	Evette did receive a VISION from the writing on the walls. It would seem that the individual who wrote it was in a massively high-stress state, attempting to fight unbreakable psychological conditioning. It would seem one of the Miniknog began attacking him. And they're psychologically conditioned to be unable to resist the attacks like that. The person who wrote it did so while they were in the process of being attacked, it seems, as the only way they were psychologically capable of expressing themselves.
Zwei	Last of all, a ship only roughly the size of an earthbound VTOL transport makes its way into the docks, simply cancelling out its inertia into perfect stillness just outside rather than attempting to join up the the machiner. It's just as well, because it doesn't appear to have any exterior ports of any kind, simply smooth, sloped black metal, twisted into a flowing, blade-like shape, save for a series of tiny rotating thrust nozzles studded into it at various angles from which little jets of blue fire spew to correct it.     Out from the cockpit jumps Weiss, ignoring the vacuum that exists between her and the airlock. Unfortunately, the claustrophobic insides of the station aren't enough for someone of Asche's stature to nagivate around. The guy is built for destroying these things from thousands of miles away, not exploring their insides. Weiss looks around for roughly a second, before deciding that the place is probably dangerous, assembling her body armour in a rapid reverse-disassembly process that leaves her armoured head to toe in sleek material similar to the hull of the transport, where faint green light emanates from a handful of seams in the plate. She leaves the faceplate down for the couple of moments it takes to smile and wave to everyone present; especially Evette. Staren, Alexis and Kotone are familiar figures. Six, Black Arachnia, and Corona are new. Dragon is new, and Defiant technically isn't, but she doesn't know that. Yet.     "Wow, this sure is a pretty big turnout for a salvage job!" She looks around to the various holograms going about their tasks, her expression now obscured past the solid, eye-less helmet. "Though this seems a little more in-depth than that. Creepy." She strides forward in the direction of the labs, deliberately overtaking Defiant. "Don't mind me! I'm just here for one thing and then I'll be on my way out!"
Rory White	"Why bail? Because it was too risky to keep. Why not destroy it? Because there's something here too valuable to risk losing, or focusing on higher priority tasks." Rory answers. Simple, logical answers.     "That would be my reasons for not doing so! ... We'll not get anywhere without going in deeper. Should we head to the impounding storage? Perhaps a security office and try to view whatever monitoring they have to see what's out there? I'm all for gathering information as step one!"
Starbound Flotilla	Staren heads off to the residential area. It's broken up into two parts: The common residential area and the Miniknog residential area. The common area seems to be arranged like a hive of beds, giving the bare minimum of space to everyone here. Predictably, nobody's around, though it would seem that everyone in it was incinerated immediately upon the evacuation order being given. George has joined him. "Yipes. Wow."     The Miniknog Residential area is practical but luxuriously so. Many corpses are entirely missing. There are SECURITY HOLOGRAMS wandering about, doing scans. They have black full-face masks and commando armor, and their patrols behave like broken videogame NPCs, twitching and jittering through the area. They've reported the corpse of what looks like a high-ranking officer lying in the middle of a hallway several times, due to their looping, and nobody being around to respond. He appears to have committed a gruesome suicide in the middle of being attacked, rather than let... Whatever attacked him have its way.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite gets dragged back to reality by Rory's remarks, and the comment about Kotone's 'new look' over the comm chatter. Which is probably for the better, she might of been facinated with those holographic signs for a long time otherwise. Though she does make note to try and grab one of them so she can figure out how to reverse engineer something like that when they get to the actual salvaging. Fortunately her companions know more about these fancy futuristic computers than she does. So instead she reaches back to pull her sawed-off from its sling, having little problem with riding shotgun for the moment. And literally if need be. "Just lemme know when we find somethin' actually mechanical. Or that needs blowin' up... and not blowin' up already," she adds at the end with an afterthought.
Staren	When Staren notices the incineration equipment, he's struck speechless for a moment as his mind reflexively starts thinking about how to take down Big Ape...     He shakes his head. No, stay on task. "Guess we can see who the real monsters here were..." he mutters, before following George to the Miniknog area.     He takes a moment to take in the situation here. "...Why are the corpses /entirely gone/? If they were being /eaten/, there'd be bones and bits of clothes left. Something else? Stored food?" Staren makes the sort of closed-mouth, irritated sigh also known as the 'Marge noise'. He doesn't like the looks of this, but... they've got to get to that command area if they want to learn so much more. "I imagine you know the drill." Staren comments to George as he kneels by the body and starts patting it down and rifling through its pockets. "I wonder why they left this guy?"
Starbound Flotilla	Defiant manages to get a solid bearing on the labs. The bioengineering labs are obviously quite close to the test subject storage area. As such, there's a bit of damage when he gets there; the nearby explosion has crushed a portion of the labs down. It looks like the standard fare for any lab, though with horribly poor containment structures... Most of which are still working! There are a variety of mutated, twisted Apex contained in these huge transparent tubes, kept asleep. More holographic scientists on loop move around, scanning the inhabitants, examining their vital functions and making sure they're still alive. Any of the conscious mutants seem to recoil in abject fear of any of the scientist holograms.     There's a great deal of information here, stored in vast server banks, but while the containment systems are all... Very FLIMSY, they're not broken. If it isn't a specimen, maybe the data can help? Or heading out, to spacewalk in the test subject area that someone went to the trouble of blowing up.
Starbound Flotilla	Kotone hasn't headed anywhere in particular yet, so Biteblade seems to decide to pair up with her and focus on keeping her safe, or something like that. The plant-creature wanders about nearby her for now, something to match her partner Rory's swarm of defense robots.
Starbound Flotilla	"Self..." The strange translucent Apex stutters and flickers, more distress on her face. "I'm sorry, I don't understand." She looks down at her tablet with an even more severe lack of comprehension. "Please ask any questions you have about Installation E-4751, I'll be punished if I try to do other functions." That's a weird response for an AI that Evette gets. Huh. Well, she's at least gonna try to answer questions.
Starbound Flotilla	"Here is a facility layout." The secretary hologram says, providing it! The signs seems to only direct the group to this smaller sector of the station, which seems to encompass several weapons development technologies, and carries a full thought reassignment suite, as well as assorted communications arrays necessary for Big Ape contact and similar. Alexis will also get to see the actual layout of the wings of laboratories here. That's all transmitted wirelessly, after the flickering image seems to push a button on the computer in front of her.
Alexis Maaka	Alexis taps the glass again for the AI's attention. "WHat happened here?" She asks, before studying the layout grimly for a moment. DOwnloading the map to her HUD, she then begins uploading the thing to anybody who has compatible software to render the map. Then again with this group, everyone ought to be fine with that. "Can you give us a log of activity up to a week or more?"
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa looks to Rory at this point and humm for a moment. "I'd say hit the offices I'd wager maybe we'll have footage of what happened here. Corona come on lets not get split up here." Kotone is making for the office and hopes they can get some more information before they start rifling through the impound area. She does muses about what Alexis Maaka said things seemed to devoid of organic remains, could something have gone thorugh here and purged it all? Chemical? some kind of tech? Even venting wouldn't have got rid of everything she muses. As she looks to Biteblade she nods once. "Let's make for the Security office before we hit up the impound area." She'll move at a good clip but will let Rory, Corona, Biteblade and anyone else keep up.
Rory White	"Let's go!" After glancing behind to make sure that nobody's sneaking up on the group and Corona's with them, Rory starts making tracks. With Corona, Biteblade, and two of her defense robots... that should be enough firepower, right?     USing the map data from Alexis, it's time to head to the nearest security office. Even if she has to use a plasma cutter to force her way in...
Starbound Flotilla	Black Arachnia gets a stressed look, as the tablet flickers, but eventually testing responses will let Arachnia get a confirmed Miniknog identity of at least a low level. It's not much, you know, but it's a start, and it let the rest of the group ask their own questions. Alexis' map is something she can get, but there's also other data! She'll need to query for it, of course, either digitally or verbally. What data might she be after?
Zwei	Weiss steps into the damaged lab almost immediately, not for lack of hesitation, but rather for the fact that the pause in which she scans the area more thoroughly is near infinitismally brief. If one of the doors in require authentication, she'll wireless hack straight into it, probing the circuits with individual electrons if need be. If the electronic locks are non-functional, she'll simply smash it down with sufficient application of brute force, or even weapons fire if need be.     As she steps into the room proper, she takes a minute to turn her head and look over its contents more seriously, lingering especially on the holograms rather than the test tubes. She looks back to the two capes behind her. "What's the point of all these holograms anyways? Do they use some kind of hard-light tech to produce them rather than robots? It seems kind of pointless just to project images of people into a work environment, though they might just be too damaged to function properly at this point." She walks over to one of the server banks, ignoring the console to instead press her fingers to the surface of the metal, reading the data straight out of storage with the use of her transience drive.
Starbound Flotilla	Johnny sets about the repairs. There's plenty of spare parts, though only enough to get about a third of the teleporters up and running again using the power of SCIENCE! and also Seft's suite of incredibly useful multitools. Several of the scientist holograms mill about besides Johnny, speaking in stuttered, garbled tones.     Moonfin takes Johnny's orders and heads out to go see what data there might be about what happened here, moving to the computer consoles and high-rising server towers that occupy the exterior of the lab. "Odd." He says. "It looks like it never had any particular destination in the first place, it was being aimed in a vast, unknowable multitude of directions, for both receiving and sending. It looks like this was more an experiment in teleportation /method/ using Erchius. So I've little idea why they'd focus on it."
Corona Arclite	"Yeah, safety in numbers and all that." Corona lets the shotgun dangle from her hand (yes the safety is on) as she throws her arms over Rory and Kotone's shoulders. "Now we're a proper posse." Pause to glance at Biteblade. "And the sagebrush person, too. I ain't got that many arms though." The moment is passed as she pulls her arms back to herself, gripping the shotgun properly as she warms it up. "Let's giddy up and goin' then y'all."
Black Arachnia	"Black Arachnia, maximize." The spidery Maximal's transformation into her robot mode is less a response to the kiosk's hologram, and more a reaction to a combination of minor facts which seem like, taken together, they outline a potentially MAJOR threat issue. And she has only rarely hoped more intensely than now to be proven wrong about her surmise. In the meantime, she's offering the wireless access protocol she's put together for others to use, if they can make use of it, and is starting to use that basic access to try and jump further up in the authorization ladder, or just to pierce the security and get direct access to the network. The 'stuck' nature of the main computers ... Hmmm. "Information query," she addresses the hologram. "How long ago did you lose free access to the station's information systems, and for what reason are you now threatened with punishment if you go out-of-task to answer requests?" Getting a basic timetable together MIGHT be useful. And if nothing else, it'll be something to distract the kiosk while she's attempting to hack it more aggressively.
Courier Six	There's a swear from the Courier as he hears that. "Christ. That's... that's the dumbest thing ever, why would you want to-"     And then he snarls as he kicks on the teleporter he's just repaired. "Dammit, why am I even asking 'why' in the direction of a busted egghead experiment? Dumb as they are, Johnny." He swats the transporter online, and then shuffles over to to controls, aiming the device deeper into the facility, if it can go that way. "Moonfin, find me a good point down towards command. Even if you can't get me there all the way, I'm sure Seft and I can handle what's down there. Or we can't and it'll be vary poingant."     And with that, the Courier steps into the transporter pod, and waits for his ride.
Starbound Flotilla	Zwei arrives at the same labs Defiant does, getting to see pretty much roughly the same sights! it'll be no problem to immediately dig into the records, if Weiss wants to, this data is physically stored right here and therefore can't really sustain much hacking. Her efforts to breach will be met with success! So much success that the next part may be a disappointment.     There's copious amounts of data here on various genetic manipulation technologies and its unethically accelerated acquisition. Looks like Big Ape doesn't much like the idea of having a race of completely cowardly soldiers, he'd rather be in absolute control of something a bit better. But it looks like several weeks ago, a major project on the telporter side of the station started taking up huge numbers of test subjects. It seems the data about the test subjects who went through the process was -- or hopefully is -- stored at the specimen holding area.     Accessing the test data is making the scientist holograms fidgety and jittery at Weiss.
Evette	"Um... okay." Evette doesn't really know how to respond to that. How do you help an AI that doesn't want help? Or, to make things a bit more clear, how do you help an AI that -can't- want help? As much as she hates seeing this AI under such significant amounts of duress, she can't fathom a question pertinent to what she's allowed to answer that would lead to a solution, so Evette just... sorta lets Alexis take over for a few minutes. She would slip into the background, wrap her arms behind her back, and sway. What -should- she be asking? I mean, she could ask what subsystems are malfunctioning, but that would be pretty useless since this is more of a salvage trip than a repair one. Or she could ask what this installation was used for, but she gets the distinct impression that's privileged information... and that Alexis' question will likely answer that in passing anyway. Soooo...     "Um. Could you give me a list of the times this ship has been accessed from the outside before today, or the times it has been left from the inside?" That might give her an impression of when all of this bad stuff started happening, if anyone had managed to escape. More for curiosity's sake than anything, but if there's some sort of mutant infestation here it might help to know how long they've been developing their populations. But, what else? Evette taps her chin. "Oh, oh! And could you let me know how much oxygen and energy are left in this installation's reserves? I mean, assuming the oxygen isn't recycled by some rebreather device, it might be important for people to know that!" Yeah, don't want any nasty surprises! They might not have a whole lot of time to stay here before things start shutting down.     Just ooneee, last thing: "Does this ship have any kind of centralized AI controlling it? If so, does it have any sort of extractable core? And, hey! Do the -holograms- have extractable information cores? It would be great if I could take some of you back with me!" Friend recruitment! Or something to that effect. Really, if saving any survivors is the responsibility of the others here, then it's hers to 'save' any artificial presences left hanging around! Even... if they're fully indoctrinated by whatever weird thing Big Ape has going on. Who knows, she may be able to ease them out of the conditioning, or mess with their programming somehow? Maybe...
Starbound Flotilla	Corona will find that the holographic emitters for signage can be easily yanked out of the walls and fed arbitrary data, though the emitters for the Holo-Apex around here are too well-hidden to find.
Defiant	With Weiss set to handle the information retrieval, Defiant and Dragon both give a curt nod to her, before reporting on what they found. It's nightmarish, really, like some of the worst things some of the biological tinkers of his world might dream up.      He pushes it from his mind and makes his way towards the specimen holding area. There'll be a brief spacewalk, which Dragon and her flightpack should be more than capable of handling for them both. She's more than strong enough to pick him up, armor and all.
Zwei	Weiss casts a hidden uncertain look towards the holo-scientists fidgeting at her, slowly backing away from the server bank. She hadn't actually used the console, and hadn't made a conventional connection, so they probably don't realize she'd actually downloaded any data from it; it's likely best that way. She strolls over to a space where she can see Defiant and Dragon at the same time, while also being close enough to examine one of the specimens in the tubes, leaning over too close for someone possessed of a normal sense of revulsion or healthy caution, peering through the murky liquid and running MIR and mossbaeur scans to see if she can detect any implants.
Starbound Flotilla	The body has a keycard! How convenient! Staren's suite of sciency tech will be able to tell that the card itself seems to contain a full suite of biometric data, such as fingerprints, retinal scanning, and suchlike. Completely making the security of those technologies pointless for the sake of minor convenience. Huge steps forward, huge steps back. Additionally, after advancing in, Staren's had the chance to see more of the writing on the walls. This, from the Miniknog.     "THEY DON'T BREATHE"     "THEY DON'T SLEEP"     "THEY DON'T EAT"     "THEY DON'T DIE"     One of the holograms stops by and scans Staren. "Cit-cit-citizen, you are not a-a-authorized-d-d for this area. Report immediately to Thought Reassignment, in accordance with the WILL OF BIG APE-APE-APE." The hologram takes an aggressive posture. But it seems confused, aware in some sense that Staren isn't even an Apex.
Starbound Flotilla	Maaka's question gets the hologram... Trembling? The flickery form is stressed and strained. "The Hol-hol-hollow Ones." She says, simply, with a strange pronunciation on the end. "Attack by lo-lo-local specimens. Contagious effects-ects-ects. A ssssssspread within-in-in-in the chain of command-d-d-d. Please do everything you can-can-can-can to prevent Miniknog officials from coming into contact with Hollow Ones." Odd pronunciation there on that word again. And surprisingly human in behavior, for a moment, before she jitters back into stability.
Starbound Flotilla	There's a security office just outside the locked down impound area, mostly unlocked. Or, rather, defended by what appears to be an automated internal turret on wireless control, as well as a blast door on a mechanical track. There's an occasional THUMP, THUMP, THUMP from inside, a strange noise heard erratically. Unfortunately, no windows means there's no chance to see who's inside. Looks like a combo of issues here.
Staren	Staren interfaces with the card, and /sighs/ as he realizes what the biometric data there means. "Idiots..." he stands and then notices the writing on the walls. Before he can comment, one of the holograms bothers him. He turns towards it. "Yeah, whatever. George, let's go." He turns to leave, then has a second thought. He can test something, AND avoid setting off some stupid security system! he waves the card at the hologram. "Scan me again, you stupid program, you missed my card. If I don't get to Command immediately, I'll have you deleted!" This is how he assumes the Miniknog talk.     Whether it works or not, he then bolts off for COMMAND. Once there, if the card lets him in, he sets to work on crucial tasks:     1. Connect a spare tablet to the command computers for use as a remote access point     2. Access cameras and security feeds so he can find out what went wrong     3. Release the lockdown on the spaceship impound lot
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite snatchs one of the holo-sign projectors and tucks it away in one of her pouchs while passing it with the others to the security office. Which is locked. And has blocked out windows. And is making noise. Suspicious noise. ".. I reckon there's a fifty-fifty chance of that bein' a survivor, or somethin' else lookin' to get out." She mulls this over for a moment, and reslings her sawed-off. Only to pull out her Breaker instead. "Either way..." As it extends out to full sledgehammer size with a click-a-clack of extending parts and locking components she heaves it up to her shoulder, turning towards the office as if ready to swing. "Just say the word and I can get us in there right quick I reckon."
Starbound Flotilla	"Self-reporting of all tho-thought crimes is required-ed-ed. I will be required to dis-dis-disclose independent action beyond my-my role as cit-cit-citizen. As willed by Big Ape-Ape-Ape, I have already done so. Bu-but, I stilllllllllll h-h-have access." The hologram manages to stutter out as it begins to flicker and tremble at the strange behaviors of the giant robot. It looks like there's... Oddly no actual hardline of data from authenticating with the kiosk and authenticating with the system as a whole. So she can authenticate as the highest level miniknog, but only with this one person... Which doesn't make sense and is completely counter to natural system design.
Rory White	"We don't have much choice." Rory says moments after backing away from the door and looking worriedly at Corona... and Biteblade. She sets her two war drones (the remaining four are guarding everyone's way IN after all in case something goes bad enough to send them all scurrying out...)... to patrolling the corridor. And steps away.     "If it's a survivor, though, chances are it would be the security personnel. Who could open the door on their own! ... So..." Who can say, really?     She just backs away... so everyone else can do their thing!
Starbound Flotilla	"Three gr-gr-groups of Hollow Miniknog performed evacuation pr-proceduuuuuuuures. That was the last-t-t-t recorded accessssssss of the area, five ho-ho-hours before then." Then Evette receives the most strange answer yet. "One centralized non-sap-sap-sapient AI. Hologra-gra-graphic signage does not have any in-in-in-information core, as there is no information to store."
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa says "Yes and ... you know I'm really the newbie here." She may always see her self as that maybe it's not a bad thing, it will keep her from getting too cocky right? She's carrying herself well enough but she's on edge, what the hell happened here? She's not certain at this point an the question to what happened has her worried here. She keeps tabs on Biteblade, Corona and Rory however as she goes. Kotone pauses at the office and hears the sounds she looks to everyone for a moment. "There's likely infested in there or survivors it could be either or. Also if it's combat personnel they might not be willing to listen. I'm going to try to get into the systems here and find a Camera or something else that might be of use." Kotone pulls a strange thing out from her webbing and moves to the back of her neck there's four plugs there now rather than two, she plugs this item in and pulls out a cable from it, she then slots in an adaptor, thankfully her time with the Flotilla here. She'll try to find an access point to check if not she'll try wireless the dummy barrier she has on will protect her in theory form security measures and if something foreign tarts coming in and starts to breach her systems it will blow it self forcefully severing the connection. "Okay let's see what we can find, wait! Biteblade can you smell anything? Does it smell like Apex or something else?" She's going to keep doing her work but hey Biteblade's got some very impressive senses. Also she's glad Corona has stuck with them all too.
Alexis Maaka	There's nothing more to do here, and Alexis decides to move on after a bit of discussion. RIfle carried, she taps Evette and Arachnia both on the back before she begins to make her way down to Control where Staren is, using the map in her HUD to make sure she's headed down the right path.     "Stick close to me, check your corners." She advises the others, as she continues down the hall, taclight revealing the way clearly.
Starbound Flotilla	The spacewalk will take Defiant straight to the destroyed sector of the ship. Flickering lights are still active, residual power churning within the blasted-open hull of the structure. It would appear there is not very much solid ground left here, just drifting walls and suchlike. Scouring the area, Dragon would be able to find stray storage devices that weren't ENTIRELY annihilated. One solid-state drive drifts by.     It contains vast amounts of status reports for subjects for years and years. Only the past two weeks or so has anything relevant.     "Subject Echo-84 status report: Following the test vis a vis the Erchius Teleporter, the subject had to be forcibly returned to their cell, as they appeared to be suffering an extreme behavioral maladjustment and obsession with physical contact with those around them. Containment factors have also been recalibrated to accommodate their new appearance and behavior elements. As with many previous subjects, this one displays the same unusual effects, such as transparency, visual distortion, chronological disjointedness, obsession with their previous role, and adherence to the behaviors of the apparent group mind possessed by group. As of this time, Echo-84 is no longer Apex, but one of the Holo Ones."
Black Arachnia	"I actually know Big Ape personally," Black Arachnia lies flawlessly to the info kiosk hologram, "and he'd be pleased with your initiative and your efforts to assist us." Then she walks away, perfectly content to let Alexis Maaka take the lead - she HAS got bigger guns than the Maximal fembot can offer, after all. But Black Arachnia is staying alert, and ready to return to spider form if she thinks it'll be advantageous; she just loses her firepower in favor of maneuverability if she has to do that. Next stop, hopefully, the Control Section.
Evette	Evette looks to the AI sullenly for a moment before Alexis taps her on the back. She would turn and give the woman a faint nod, but before she follows along, she would give the hologram a parting wave. People had told her before that most robots and AIs -weren't- really self-aware, but before now, she hadn't really been able to believe it. She herself -is- sort of a robot, and Mono - the little bot floating beside her - definitely is. Up until this instant she had hardly thought of them any differently from humans, and to her, leaving this hologram here, all alone, was just the same as leaving a person alone. Leaving them is hard for her, but at the very list she understands that there's no way around it, so she would eventually break away and follow after Alexis.     She wouldn't say much on the way over, but if she's given an opportunity to stand still a moment - say, if Alexis wanted to take point, peek around a corner before they followed - Monoceros would take the opportunity to nuzzle gently against her cheek. She would reciprocate this gesture in the form of a small pat on the more robotic bot's head and a tiny, almost invisible smile.     Before now, 'adventuring' meant walking down sunny trails and picking flowers for her. This is a very, very different experience.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite clenchs the grip of her weapon, causing the pulsarium generator in the head to light up through the visible portal and the entire hammer head starts to glow faintly in a crackling blue-green hue as a sheathing of plasma builds up around it. The foxgirl shifts the breaker across her shoulder a bit, tail flicking to keep her balance steadily, rubbing one boot in a twisting motion a few times to make sure her stance is stable. "Just tell me when..."
Starbound Flotilla	Zwei finds the inhabitants just chock full of implants, actually. An incredibly large amount. However, the scientists still seem FIDGETY about this. It would seem the holographic scientists did not have any particular affection for the practice of manhandling their servers, at least.     One of them reaches out to put their hand onto Weiss' shoulder, speaking some garbled, stressed tone. The contact is making an unusual attempt to unstick her body from the plane of reality itself, making the contact point become flickering and translucent.
Starbound Flotilla	Staren finds the Holo security officer is ignoring the card. "You are hu-hu-human." It says, stumbling and jittering towards him, showing that it's not even scanning the card. George immediately and violently jabs at it, trying to catch it right on the chest and send it off its feet. And, of course, it turns out to be solid.     "Yeah, I'm thinking we get out of here." He says, trying to keep his humor while the guard lets out harsh, garbled tones over its radio. The other guards in the Miniknog residential sector immediately seem to "wake up" from their patrols, jittering and flickering to attempt to interpose themselves between Staren and his objectives, not trying to stun him but trying to... GRAB him.
Defiant	In the lab, Defiant stands by. His gauntletted hand rests against the hilt of his gladius, just in case. Dragon flits here and there on wings of fire, little bursts of energy giving her the momentum to pluck the drives from the air. Still, Defiant can't help but note how agonising the simple motions seem, how she flat out misses grabbing one until she has to try again.      Eventually, she comes to a stop by him, the storage devices in her hands. She nods to him and, taking one final look at the area, Defiant heads on out, making the return spacewalk on his way towards the control section. He looks down, towards the hull of the station.There's something about all that space that just unsettles him.
Starbound Flotilla	Courier Six blips out of the teleporter lab! He's heading to command! When he gets here, he'll realize things are... The lights are red, everything's on backup power. The whole area seems to have been locked down hard, and that would be specifically to contain a positively huge mass of Holos going about completely mundane work. It's pristinely clean due to the work of tireless janitors, maintenance personnel, and similar Holos, wandering and making garbled, stuttered fear noises.     Courier Six will have landed just ahead of the massive blast door that keeps the place shut. It looks like he'll need to restore power before anyone else can get in here. The luxurious BRIDGE is too swamped to do stuff while you have all these roaming threats... Who may "wake up" at any time now.
Staren	"WHAT?! Holy shit!" When the holo turns out to be solid, Staren looks around in alarm for other ones. He fires his beam cannon at the guard to test if the weapon works. If it does, then more beam cannon and laser pistol shots are tried on any guards that look like they might get in his way. "Yeah, get to control, hurry!"     Since they're going for grabbing, Staren presumes getting grabbed would be /bad/. Hopefully his weapons and power-armor-aided punches and kicks will be enough to keep them off. If it comes down to getting grabbed, though, he's ready to whip out his beam saber and try to cut their arms off before... /whatever/ can be done to him.
Starbound Flotilla	"Floran smellsss monkeyman. But, mind-corpse of monkeyman. Like dead, but heart ssstill beating. Teleporter, tearsss out Apex mind. Leave body. Body, still trying to sssmash door." God damn, Biteblade must have a hell of a nose.     Kotone gets a peek using the internal turret. There is a MINIKNOG-rank security officer inside the security booth, who is pounding on the door. He jitters between sitting at his security desk, slamming on the door, and trying to "patrol" the interior of his security office rapidly, inhumanly, like a man unstuck from the flow of time. Gotta be more than enough firepower here to take that thing out, though.
Courier Six	Johnny growls a bit, gently making his way as nimbly as he can in the powered armor towards the main power relay in here. A look over his shoulder to Seft. "I'm pretty sure... you ain't got the sort of flesh they're looking for, champ. See if you can't find me something to crank the power on. In the meantime, I got a way to get started on that."     The Courier grumbles and then shuffles around in the 'inventory' of the folded space his Pipboy allows. It's not a lot, volumetrically, especially since he still needs to be able to physically carry all this crap. But there's enough room for at least one thing. He presses a knob and from his Duster falls... a heavy powered drill, with a bit meant for cutting through metal, mounted with levered rare earth magnets. There is a readout power display on the side. He grunts, wanders over towards a door marked 'Personnel', and sets the drill running.     Assuming nothing goes wrong, the drill estimates... 5 minutes of work to get through. Shitty fucking drill.
Zwei	For the first time since arriving in the multiverse, Zwei reacts to something with actual, genuine alarm. It jerks Weiss out of the way the instant it detects the reality shifting, extremely sensitive the the phenomenon of dimensional dislocation due to the multi-dimensional, quasi-nonexistence of its core personality. Having Weiss undergo the same transformation as the hollow ones, or rather, if Defiant over the radio is to be believed, 'holo ones', would be far more dangerous than her simply being destroyed.     Weiss purges the armour plate the scientist makes contact with immediately, rocketing back across the length of the laboratory with the full use of her titanic physical speed, crumpling the floor like a candy wrapper as she streaks across it at over 60 times the speed of a human being. She makes no attempts to limit collateral damage or conceal her capabilites, fixated entirely on purging the threat as immediately as possible, any emotional or ethical input from Asche's side completely suppressed by fight or flight programming. Assembling a compact raiser carbine, she sights the holos in a steady right to left string across the lab, locking on with more primitive cues than her usual, deprived of the normal signatures living beings give off. She opens up immediately, letting loose steady streams of fire at each one until it goes down (assuming it even will), using enough juice in each shot that the thermal discharge will probably unfortunately vapourize the test-tube subjects as well as everything else in the room.
Corona Arclite	".. So they yanked out his brain and the body is still moving." Corona's ears splay back under the brim of her hat. "That ain't a ghost, that's a zombie... Either way, we can put him outta his misery and maybe find somethin' out inside." With one hand she grabs her goggles and pulls them up over her eyes, then regrips the handle of her breaker in both hands, fingers wiggling a little to readjust. Then with a whoop of "Knock knock!" she heaves the hammer into the security door. The Corona Breaker was designed to smash through armor and other structural reinforcements, releasing its plasma charge in an additional shockwave upon impact to help with the demolition potential. Someone be ready to shoot or stab the ape if he isn't caught in the blast though.
Rory White	"You can tell all of that just with your sense of smell?! ... Maybe... I -should- try a Biomorph..." Rory muses warily, but she's more distracted by the revelations heading across the radio. She's recalibrated all of her drones now to regard the Holo-Apex as 'untrustworthy.'     Meaning that if they try to approach her ship they'll be treated to warning shots. At first...     "I'm not much use without some kind of computer to work with! ... We have to force through..."
Starbound Flotilla	The look the holo gives Black Arachnia is completely uncomprehending. She opens her mouth and more garbled stuttering comes out, completely incoherent but vaguely strained. She flickers and jitters in a stressed way. Arachnia, Alexis, and Evette will be treated to the sight of a Miniknog enforcer, with a mouth-mask and helmet and full-body commando armor, go jittering and twitching by them in the opposite direction, heading for the holo at the info kiosk. following some kind of grim ritual. Neither of them are cognizant of what they're doing, they're just elaborate actor constructs playing out their old roles.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa nods has control of the turret and takes control, they need to get information and possible systems controls from the office. She'll power up the turret take control and move to put the poor zombie down, at this point. She attempts a chest shot to avoid taking out the eyes or hands, as they may need those. For now however the turret will fire while Kotone calls out. "Breach the door now I got the turret keep frosty there may be other things inside!" She calls out as she now moves to open the door once Rory, Biteblade and Corona are ready. It should be hopefully simple enough for her to digitally trigger the locking system and if not? Well they can force it open right?
Starbound Flotilla	The guards brought down go down, for a time. Staren will swiftly notice that they don't seem to stay down, at least not completely. They die instantly, then flicker, and their disjointed, uncollapsed waveforms become even more destabilized, jumping to a different hypothetical state of standing up again. It looks like they can be put down easily but killing them permanently means killing them /repeatedly/.     But that means Staren can get through here, for the most part.     Staren, Defiant (via spacewalk, to bypass Zwei's sudden violent incident in the labs), and then Arachnia, Evette, and Alexis Maaka all get together! Unfortunately, not only is the door to the COMMAND CENTER locked down, it's also UNPOWERED! It looks like, while Black Arachnia and Staren's work together might be able to take on the digital defenses, they'll need power to the thick, large blast door before they can move on!     Unfortunately, the security team has been awoken by the Miniknog in residential, meaning a team of a dozen or so armored Holos with their own weapons are approaching, requiring the group to defend the door for the moment. They don't... Use their weapons, though, they're reaching out, trying to grab the group, and afflict them with the same contact-based reality-disconnection.
Black Arachnia	Just looking at the enforcer, 'hologram' or otherwise, is enough to reinforce even further Black Arachnia's desire to haul Big Ape off of his throne and smash his empire into rubble. And blowing this place to plasma will still be relatively satisfying, putting these dataghosts or whatever they are to rest. Reaching the command center is something of a relief ... albeit a short-lived one, given the lack of power to the door. She studies out the door controls for now; if *those* have power going to them, she's going to hack in and start prying her way through the security - the power should be on to the main door by that point. "I'm gathering, under the circumstances, we don't want to just cut through it?" she asks in a somewhat desultory manner. ... possibly made less desultory by the fact that she does, indeed, have lasers - and the tips of her currently back-mounted spider mode legs open up to reveal the emitter lenses. Y'know, just in case 'cut our way through' is an option. She'd rather be able to close a solid barricade against Holo Miniknogs coming at them from behind, but if the INSIDE of the command center is occupied, a solid barricade would be more of a problem. So, letting the others decide.
Alexis Maaka	Alexis doesn't waste time waving to anybody or whatever, as she makes her way into the room. There's no time to really come up with anything fancy, just find a defensible position and just keep shooting these things, she supposes to herself.     She grabs something big and heavy like a table or an unused terminal or whatever, moving it into position as cover before she takes aim with her EM-GASH rifle and fires away at some of the holos.     Her coilgun kicks against her shoulder, and she fires burst after burst until they stop getting up to try and hurt her after they get shot.
Staren	Staren arrives at the door to find it... off. "Oh COME ON!"     Well. Someone else is working on getting the power on, right? So Staren turns back and approaches the... holos? Quantum ghosts? Whatever they are, continuing to blast them and try to keep them from approaching the door, so he'll hopefully have a little more time, even if only just seconds, once the door is ready...
Starbound Flotilla	"Panicked. I do have the brain." Seft says, in her monotone. But she shuts down her own panic response. In fact, Seft is perhaps the best example of a person to deal with this; she can outright disable the portions of her brain that they're after, deactivating her capacity to act as a conscious being after programming a set of parameters for herself.     She now goes to sleep, of sorts, her visor disabling and she goes to wander. A beacon will light up on the Pipboy for her location, as she gets to the power control panel. It'll require SCIENCE to bypass all those finicky buttons and things like that, though, something beyond Seft's more crafting-focused ability! She stops and stalls there, letting Johnny know where to go.     The sparks from the drill are making the local Holos fidgety, but nothing too out of line from them yet... Seft is calling Johnny to the command center, the densely packed rows of controls farther ahead, where he'll be able to use the power control console to reroute power and bypass screwed-up systems, hopefully... The personnel door can be dealt with later, it seems to be doing just fine on its own, mostly, getting drilled through.
Starbound Flotilla	Weiss had about four scientists hassling her, and now has none, at least for a moment. The overwhelming firepower kills them in this particular waveform state instantly and thoroughly, tearing out a portion of the distributed waveform they have, but it seems they need to be killed /repeatedly/ more than /thoroughly/; the possibility of them living in the first place needs to be killed. This buys Zwei plenty of time to back up before they flicker and stutter back to their feet, much more unstable now and likely only killed when their waveform contains no states in which they can be alive. The mutated test tube inhabitants do not; one barely managed to survive with blistering scars, and one of the holographic scientists is already descending upon its screaming form to reenact some experiment that let it contact the mutant for a short time. Escape may be most efficient, though it's not exactly a necessity.
Courier Six	Johnny, for all the grouchy, is not about to abandon Seft to ghost-zombies, and once he's got his SHITTY FUCKIN' DRILL going, he carefully starts to lead Seft around like a not-quite-living sesnor to the panels he needs to unjam the rest of the folks here.     The power controls are there, along with the rest of the Station's Rigging. Okay.     Johnny starts to limber out his Science and Hacking, working by feel and response how to get things open, operational. He's looking to just open sepcific doors, letting the crew into this section of the facility.     Once that's done, he gets to the busy work of waiving clearance for all those ships in orbit, the ones he's here for in the first place. But first, Johnny Boy, you need the mains on.
Zwei	Just like they had said over the radio, simply blowing up the holos is no good. As long as they remain unstuck from the current four dimensions everyone is occupying, they can continue to collapse fifth dimensional states into intersection with this reality as many times as it takes, until they outright run out of states in which they exist in the same general proximity. Zwei doubts that they're sufficiently dislocated that they could actually have infinite parallel iterations, but there's no telling how many times they'll need to be killed otherwise. That's why it hatches a plan.     Of all possible courses of action, Weiss directly approaches the scientists as they descend upon the test subject, engaging stealth mode and creeping up behind them so as not to draw their attention. As soon as she is within range, she engages her transience drive; not for the purpose of recombining subatomic particles, but focused on the holos instead. The device is specifically designed to discretely observe all quantum activity in a large area at once, and collapse uncertainty states at the most basic level, in order to shift matter and energy through different states. Here, Zwei is devoting a large amount of power to crunch the calculations necessary to collapse the holos themselves. It can't recover their teleported consciousness, but it should at least be able to 'decide' that they simply don't exist in this dimension.
Starbound Flotilla	It'll take two or three solid smashes from Corona, with all her expertise in how doors should be dealt with like this, to crash through the door, tearing it off its track and slamming it into the security room's opposite wall, pinning the security Holo under the door and killing it instantly. And then right away, it's flickering back onto its feet. The stream of bullets from the corpse means a stream of corpses falling out of the standing position on the Holo, making it more and more unsteady and unstable, visually. It would seem that low-caliber high-ROF is the way to go, killing them rapidly instead of intensely. It's running out of waveform states, and by the time it staggers out that door and out of range of the turret Kotone's on, Rory will be able to finish it off with restraining foam, or outright lethal payloads.     Inside, the security setup has footage, racks of guns, and one step of the two-step command authentication for accessing the impound. The door-knocking quantum wreck they just dealt with left his keycard to authenticate access to the impounded resources area, it seems!
Defiant	Well now, this is more Defiant's speed. Stepping between Dragon, the others, and the oncoming security team, Defiant pulls his spear free from his back and engages the disintegration field around the spearhead.      He swings the spear in quick arcs, aiming to force the security holo ones back - or remove them of their limbs, if not.      Of course, Defiant can't help but wonder if the nanothorn field will even /work/.
Starbound Flotilla	The door controls, at least, do have power. If Staren provides his fancy KEYCARD, Arachnia will be able to get a good bearing on the biometrics she needs to spoof several times over to get the door to accept them. Lucky her, she'll immediately encounter a digital backdoor someone else set up to help this process. It looks like Miniknog agents attempted to quarantine a huge mass of Holos here before, requiring authenticating all of them as they passed through.     Well, it won't be trouble to authenticate a few more. Meanwhile, Maaka and Staren tear away at the foes, who seem to go down easily with any shot but get right back up later, while Defiant will be able to get rid of any that get too particularly close; even if they don't die, a dismemberment is actually close enough. Killing them rapidly is better than killing them thoroughly. After one of them is killed a dozen or two dozen or so times, it falls to the ground and then ceases to exist anywhere nearby, They're very easy to keep back, but without an escape plan, it's not very good.     Shortly, though, power is restored. The big blast door opens, and... A swarm of More Holos pours out! And around the group, as if not noticing them. It looks like they were trapped in a cleaning loop until the door let them out to go to their "go back to residential" behavior. Concerning. Well, the main point is at least they're dealt with for now. The main team can back into the command area, which is much more luxuriously furnished, well lit, and now finally mostly devoid of Holo Ones.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone is very glad she got the turret to combo with Corona's kicking the door down she quickly learns that rapid fire is the way to go with these things thankfully they get that one down as she moves in trusting in Biteblade to cover their backs she comes across the key in short order while she pauses to pick up the card. "I got his keycard this should be useful." Kotone notes as she goes to search for any items of worth at this point such as checking for any weapons that might br worth grabbing such as rapid fire sorts. "Thanks by the way Corona, once we finish sweeping here we should make for the impound hanger as this looks like this card is for that!"
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite does the smart thing when the door crashes into the office finally... duck out of the way of her comrades likely opening fire. "Darn undead should learn when to just stay down!" She waits for the shooting sounds to die down before getting back up and picking up her hammer, smirking at Kotone. "Anytime, pardner." Then takes a look inside herself. "Well now, what do we have here..." Almost immeadiately she gravitates to the most familiar looking thing.. which is the guns, of course. "I wonder what these babies can do..."
Starbound Flotilla	C6 does SCIENCE to the power systems, allowing them to properly reroute power! Immediately, the doors open, and a majority of the Holos begin to leave. Several are left behind though, just the Miniknog, a good half-dozen or so wandering the halls of the command center more absently, or trying to fuss with control consoles at the bridge itself.     As for authenticating access to the impound, it looks like that needs local authentication too! But other people are there already, surely they'll have dealt with it when it's time to head there. For now, releasing specific lockdowns and getting command-tier info is the important part, alongside dealing with the rest of those Holo Ones! Those who enter and head to the control panels will get the chance to select from an assortment of small shuttles, the equivalent of space economy cars, for themselves and for others. Several are especially appealing to particular individuals. These will be detailed shortly.
Staren	Dawn, Staren's support AI, provides the keycard data to anyone who asks. Staren's busy fighting! When the door opens he turns to run for it -- only to be faced by holos! The shoulder missile launchers move into firing position, but in the time it takes Staren to prepare a firing solution, it's clear the holos... don't see him? It's nerve-wracking, but he waits for them to go past, then books it to the door, "Get in, get in!" standing outside it and shooting until the others are inside, then going inside last and shutting the door.     Now, what were those objectives again?     1. Connect a spare tablet to the command computers for use as a remote access point     2. Access cameras and security feeds so he can find out what went wrong so his allies can be alerted to the positions of all remaining holos     3. Release the lockdown on the spaceship impound lot
Rory White	"A-ah!" While Rory was expecting SOMETHING to come charging out, SEEING it in a frothing frenzy is another matter entirely. She backpedals briefly, but eventually decides to make good on an earlier idea.     If these things 'respawn' when killed, then stopping them from being a threat without killing them just makes sense!     So she pulls back the sleeve of her right arm and exposes a wrist-mounted FOAM SPRAYER.     Which she turns to coating the Holo-'Ghost' with after it's been shot down several times. "... I wish I knew how to HELP them!" She bemoans. She doesn't have the proper physiology to experience biological nausea, hence explaining a lack of shuddering at this sight, but plain old despair and fear work on her just the same.     She's hesitant to step past the fallen 'quantum ghost' and into the office, her motions a bit stuttery and inefficient as opposed to the simple and elegant gestures she normally employs!     Rory gets to work hooking her Ecto into hopefully an available data port. This will provide her with a remote link to the security systems! ... Maybe. Or at least the place's sensor network!
Courier Six	Aaaaaaaaand then everyone else barells in, and the Holos barrel out, and Johnny sighs. No one thanks the Courier, always just enjoys getting the package. Ain't it the life. Oh well.     He gingerly taps Seft's communiques on his Pipboy. "Okay, kiddo. Wake up, we're all fine now." A look to the rest, and he just... sighs. All these damn idealists in here. A shake of his head, and he starts parsing through the ships that the station is telling him are in orbit... even as he slinks back over to the HoP's door, restarting the drill for good measure.
Starbound Flotilla	For all their apparent immortality, the Holo Ones don't seem to have a lot of defense against stealth, and as such the holographic scientists immediately lose interest in Weiss when she kicks into Stealth Mode. She can sneak up on them immdiately, and then take them out, but for it to work, it seems some measure of stealth or immobility on their part is a requirement! Getting a fix on their waveform requires being right up close to them, and then observing them out of existence takes a while, so it can only be done if Zwei can keep the drop on them!     There's a useful bit of science done, though. If Zwei's more interested in the Erchius, that lab just opened. Otherwise, the impound is going to open shortly as well!
Black Arachnia	Black Arachnia is all set to go in as soon as the door is open. A sudden flood of Holos pouring OUT of the command center nearly causes her to regret that, though, and the Maximal actually stumbles a littlea s she backpedals away from them. Only once the exodus is over does she stand up straight and head inside with her allies, wasting no time in doing so.
Defiant	Spear in one hand, gladius in the other, Defiant wades into the remaining holo ones, blades flashing. The grey fields around the weapons part anything as if it were air but that's of little effect against these beings. Still, they hum as they carve and Defiant twists and turns, combat prediction software giving him something of an idea where to strike.      The thing is, he can bisect them, behead them, impale them... they just... flicker... and return to the fight.      But Defiant is nothing if not persistent, and the fact that these things could affect even Dragon... well, that gives him a bit of extra reason to swing hard.
Starbound Flotilla	Visible in the impound systems are dozens of ships, but some will stand out to the viewers and to any of those who get the data uploaded to them.     DEFIANT will most immediately notice a Glitch ship, a green and gold draconic shuttle with a nose shaped like a knight's helm, offering additional protection when folded down.     Black Arachnia will notice a Floran ship apparently composed of eight other scavenged ships held together by a black and gold cage, built for someone maybe 9 feet tall or so.     Alexis Maaka will find a smooth, sleek-looking Hylotl ship, looking like something right out of neotokyo, with soft glowing blue lines and a harsh geometric edge to every part of its shape.     Courier Six finds what looks like a SPACE-AGE ROCKET SHIP of human design, with three curved fins and a cockpit at the nose, definitely appealing to 50s sensibilities.     The first one Kotone will notice will be at flattened, modular hovercraft-looking thing built specifically to easily be host to expert modifications.     Corona will notice what appears to be a train of Novakid design. Yeah, it's literally just a train engine that flies through space. You could put more cars onto it later.     Rory IS a ship, so the point is moot; she'll be more interested in a set of cargo aboard the craft Kotone noticed, that seems to be a full retrofitting kit.     And Zwei, of course, will be most interested in an ultramodern white Apex craft that appears to have been built by Holo Ones, who, trapped in their loop, have overloaded it with too many Erchius FTL engines.
Zwei	It's a little more risky and effort intensive than just shooting them until they fall down, but confirming how quantum mechanics work in other places in the multiverse is invaluable data. Zwei sticks with Weiss' processes until the room is completely cleared, cataloguing every minute detail for reference later. A chance like this is extremely rare given the general lack of technology and science that functions on this level outside of its own universe. With that cleaed up, Weiss makes a second pass around the room, and to its adjoining facilities, going Defiant's way with little bursts from armour-mounted jets if necessary to cross a lack of floor. She scans for anything that reads as an anomalous material or energy signature, specifically in hopes of finding this 'Erchius' substance the Flotilla occasionally talks about. If she finds none, she'll head back to rejoin the group, but provided the science staff kept some on hand for their experiments, she'll begin containing it in electromagnetically insulated containers/vials immediately, affixing them to magnetic clips on her suit.
Starbound Flotilla	The weapons in front of the impound are all explosive! This explains why they died. Great for a zombie outbreak, shit for a quantum zombie outbreak. Biteblade's got the group covered while Corona and Kotone examine the handheld rocket launchers and grenade launchers and things like that, which are a great addition to any arsenal.     Things of use Kotone will find will be stuff like the slot to put the keycard to authenticate the impound opening. If she does, and if Rory's operations on her Ecto go after it, that big old door is gonna start churning open! Opening a hanger with a few dozen craft, a vast menagerie, catalogued after being taken from their owners. Still working, easy to steal. Rory should also now be able to release passage to the secondary closed dock, letting them just drive the ships right back out and swing by their old craft!
Alexis Maaka	Alexis stares at the spaceship she's located. It's got smooth lines and some nice look to it that appeals to her world's style of designs, all designed to look good as well as get the job done as a ship. She stares at the ship for a moment before she grins a little behind her visor. "Hello sexy...~" She purrs, approaching the vessel with glee.     This is gonna be a lovely thing when she manages to get this thing refitted, somewhere down the line.
Starbound Flotilla	Seft seems to have set herself to wake back up as soon as C6 tells her to, and her eyes hum back to life. "Appreciative. Thank you." She says, in her monotone, and follows along. Courier Six is gonna find... Well, it's not exactly a stash. It's raw materials, supercompacted. Pixels! Stashed in a pickable safe under the desk, there's a huge stack of the little cubes that seem to be this universe's equivalent of currency and supplies all at once. There's also backups of several data packages set to go out to other Apex sites. Valuable nuggets of scientific data, even if they're procured unethically, on Codex Tapes.
Black Arachnia	Black Arachnia is mostly just casting a curious eye over the impounded ships when she spots the jury-rigged one. Not exactly easy on the eyes, but ... still somehow interesting to her. She might have to take a closer look once we're inside the bay. Although on that note - well, there are some 'Holo Ones' left who need to be put down, and it's not like she has to worry about ammunition. She powers up her lasers, and gives Defiant some assistance in whittling away at their numbers. If any of the other hackers in the group need her to break off and lend a hand with opening the bay doors, she's keeping her radio open and 'listening'.
Starbound Flotilla	Defiant and Arachnia jump back into the fray, dealing with most of the last half-dozen handily. The others have gotten in, and will get to select their almost perfect match of a ship over in the impound area. Then, as Rory manages to link up her security feed with Staren, who's in the command center, the group can then be endowed with feeds from all the security cameras on the station, letting them figure out which hallways aren't currently filled with the quantum undead, get right back out into the hallways, and get going to the impound area.     Home stretch, now! They have a clear shot to get to the impound.
Starbound Flotilla	Zwei finds Erchius. The Erchius labs, after all, were here; it's there in many forms, in vast glass tube. In rare crystaline form, its true power can be chaotically used. Around it, some of the Holos have gotten a little... Mutated. But if Zwei puts dedication into killing them stealthily, Weiss can wind up having a clear shot at taking some of these sweet as hell giant crystals, because it should be clear to anyone with her suite of sensors that the laws of reality cease to exist in their proper form near them.     No time to loot anything else, though, from the sound of it! Time to get to the impound with your fat stacks of big crystals.
Courier Six	Johnny smiles over at Seft, and then sighs at the 'haul' they come across. Pixels... and information. Both are valuable, very very valuable. It's the latter that Johnny takes carefully into his coat, uncerimoniously scooping the Pixels into his Pipboy for later usage.     In fact, Johnny looks over at Seft with a meaningful look, and then out the door at Albert, wherever he ended up. A little chat over his radio, and the man pats at the pocket with the tapes. "You going to be okay, Seft?"
Zwei	Unlike a lot of sci-fi camo tech, Weiss doesn't lose hers if she attacks. If she used raiser weapons, it'd be fairly obvious where the attacks are coming from, but simply using a high intensity, gamma spectrum laser set to pulse several times a second should do a good job of whittling down the Holo ones still present in the back end of the lab in short order without compromising her position. She takes a couple of fluid samples, some chips of crystal, and then the biggest intact ones she can grab hold of, before booking it out of there, making her way to the impound where she detects everyone else.     Without even stopping so much as to give off the impression of a thoughtful pause, she points directly towards the apex ship. "This one's mine!" She says.
Starbound Flotilla	The ship Staren would most immediately fixate upon, doubtlessly, would be a large Glitch ship, and despite the fact that these crafts are the size of small busses, this one seems to have a small particle accelerator built into its midsection, the looping structure meant to condense miles and miles of research apparatus into the size of something you could double park on a lot.
Black Arachnia	So much for the Holo Ones. Given that the doors to the impound bay are open by now, Black Arachnia wastes little time in heading out and going to investigate the ship that caught her eye. It's bizarre as hell as spacecraft go, and it might be a little big for her, but she'll manage. She can work with this anyway.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite shoves a grenade launcher in her belts and slings a rocket launcher over her back. It is a salvage mission, after all. One might be less concerned with the fact that she's gotten her hands on explosive weapons, and more at what she could possible reverse engineer from examining them later on. Or that holo-sign she plucked earlier. Look, they got the impound unlocked! "Great job guys. Let's blow this haunted wreck so we can -blow- this haunted wreck. Betcha these hog grubbers got all kinds of stuff stashed away in that hold." You would never of guessed they just dealt with counter-phased holo mind-zombie things by how cheerfully she strolls out of the security office and to get to the impound. Spaceships are a little out of her general field of knowledge. Sure they exist in her world, being WILD WEST IN SPAAAAACE in its own right, but they're not seen out in the badlands of Brimsteel very often. There was a reason they had to ship things to and from large urban sites as part of the trade. Or through recently established warp gates to the rest of the Multiverse. All the same, seeing what's suppose to be a space craft that looks like a -locomotive- almost immeadiately gets her attention. Guess where she's going? "Hoo doggie, someone at least had a good taste in style!"
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa takes a moment to check over the armoury she notices the weapon types and does go to pack some of the explosives into her combat webbing she also takes one of the rocket launchers as well. She doesn't say much as she collects her spoils from the armoury and gets ready to move out she has the launcher across her back now and she holds her rifle in hand save for when she needs to use the card and soon they are in the whole hanger she just stares and goes wide eye the horror fading a bit and she squeals a little bit as she sees the ship, the modular almost hovercraft like ship. "Rory lets get this one!" She's also going to try to figure out how to get aboard and it doesn't take too long. "Holy cow! Rory? It's got a full cargo hold looks like it was hauling something!"
Rory White	Rory's leaving the Ecto behind.     She has camera access thanks to it! And some amount of remote control. Up to about a kilometer away, anyways...     She follows along with Kotone in a hurry, and comes across the strange ship that's very different from the ones the Flotilla uses! If the gesture were natural to her she might be sheadscratching. As it is she's just tilting her head while looking it over.     "And it looks very strange... aesthetic appeal for ships is very common for these races! ... Mine's pure function. I wonder if it could use some..." There's a pause as she has Rolan searching for words... her eyes brighten and she finishes with, "...Pizazz! ... odd word..."     But she hurriedly quiets down again and rushes in after Kotone to look around and check it out...
Staren	Objectives complete!     New objectives:     1. Get the hell out of Dodge     2. Blow Dodge the hell up!     Someone else apparently has 2 taken care of, so now that everyone's got access to their loot, Staren claims his! Staren looks over the impounded ships, and deactivates any anti-teleport shielding on the base. That Glitch science vessel looks like just the thing. Staren looks around the now-empty command center, shrugs, and activates his teleporter. A few seconds later, he appears next to his chosen ship and heads inside for takeoff!     The Star Hawk, meanwhile, is ordered to take off remotely on autopilot.
Staren	...Staren's support AI, meanwhile, is set to the task of having the base network dump as much SCIENCE data as can be reached through Rory's ecto to his own computer. What's been done here has been done, but you never know when information might come in handy.
Starbound Flotilla	As the groups slowly make their way to the ships, aboard they'll find a barebones set of ship functions. Artificial gravity. Engines for interplanetary, FTL, or atmospheric navigation. A teleporter and associated retrieval equipment. And, of course, S.A.I.L., the simple, non-sapient AI they can conversationally speak to on radio or in person in order to direct in piloting if they can't pilot themselves. This means, of course, that they'll be able to get right back to their own ships, if they need to.     This will specifically make things a lot easier on Courier Six, to enable him to teleport to and from his old ship to set it to blow. When all the vessels, including the Starbounders who are now laden with new equipment and materials for their ships, finally do take off and make their escape, Echo-4751, and the echoes of the Apex that still go through their unthinking rituals aboard it, will be annihilated in a quick, violent nuclear fire, followed by a warm, distant peace. And so the Holos are gone.     Except, of course, for the evacuee Holos.