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Liza Grier <Q-Conversation> Liza Grier says, "USCM mobile penal installation 441, actually a primary research center for project PARASPRITE, with help from the Ministry of Knowledge. I'm about to very very briefly turn it into another sun, so it'd be great if someone else could deal with the prison block on board and stop the ghouls from scrubbing any data."
<Q-Conversation> Liza Grier says, "It was rhetorical. I was offering to shoot h" --wait that part isn't relevant.

    'USCM mobile penal installation 441' is a tax form name. It's a ship, of the spacegoing variety, that has no intent to ever be hailed or addressed or to show up on anyone's IFF system. As Liza (barely) explains it, it is more or less a space station with engines, dedicated to housing thousands of max-sec inmates that the USCM either pays bounty hunters for, is paid to take in by a station or town too small to handle it, or whom they hunt down themselves for the same reason:.

    o get paid for onboarding and then have a traveling shitshow of the galaxy's most dangerous that can conveniently 'suffer technical failures' close enough to everyone they pass; the racket is to extort princely sums to be back on the way, with the implicit understanding of allowing their cargo to escape to a lovely little law-abiding society, small enough to be thrown into chaos. It is outrageous, but one of many (many, she emphasizes) that make up a fractionally appreciable portion of the PMC's income quarter after quarter.

    She also says that she usually doesn't bother targeting these, for the miniscule dent it puts in the USCM's pocket in exchange for a loss of human life that statistically almost certainly contains hundreds of the falsely accused, or ideologically inconvenient, but that this is a special case; the bioweapons job going on here is so bad, or goes up so high, that even her 'bosses' (in as far as the term applies) in the Syndicate won't condone or support any kind of strike against it. Naturally, without any backing whatsoever, never mind for a sixteen man job, she has decided to do all of it herself. Naturally, this is going to be accomplished with a nuclear device. Thus it is worth iterating: Liza believes that this is bad enough that, in the worst possible situation, she will accept simply pulling the trigger and letting the Cultivator sort it all out. The lives of anyone who shouldn't die in a nuclear fireball are in your hands.

    That, and the research itself. Without the benefit of Syndicate contacts aboard the vessel, she doesn't actually know where it's all going on, and she is equally certain that the USCM will do their damndest to hide, move, or destroy it. Anyone who can spread a wide net, take down roadblocks, prevent the removal or erasure of information, and gather intel before she gets to it, would also be appreciated.

    Because she's not going to sneak it. Liza claims that this is because there'd be no way for her to stealth around in there, but it feels sort of half-hearted, like she doesn't really care if anyone sees through it. A few people might already know exactly what her deal is: the radio link from the stealthed beacon deployed from her ship thirty minutes ago has already been repeating her infamous "You have twenty minutes to comply." line for a good ten already. Offers to try and go in the front with her are turned down; it won't speed anything up and won't help anyone out.
Liza Grier     There are several choices about making an entry. Those with their own space travel can figure it out themselves. Those without can pick one of the teleporter beacons that Liza has already fired from cold drift to several 'fast travel' points around the outermost parts of the USCM vessel and figure it out. Those who want to start closer to the action can borrow a breacher pod (there is only one altogether) that will fire them into the vessel at considerable speed, smash through the hull, and dump them out into a block of their choice under the cover of automatic gunfire and a short-lived energy shield she's rigged to it herself.

    Liza, not a clairvoyant psychic and not having an inside traitor to tap on the shoulder, doesn't have a map; she merely has past familiarity with this vessel type from years ago.

    -Being something that mainly cruises in straight lines along major space lanes, a massive engineering block at the very back feeds most of the drives and thrusters concentrated at the rear, and all non-emergency power; cells do not have their own emergency supply to be opened if the reactor goes out.

    -The mobile prison is a length stack of dangerous corridors all lumped together to create the spine of the ship, each block of which can be detached and jettisoned from the main shaft from either the bridge or a central administrative office at its middle innermost portion. It houses the main computer, but terminals are available elsewhere.

    -The bridge is at the front dorsal end, which she herself will be tackling first. Beneath it, a 'train head' of quarters, commons, storage, armories, onboard manufactories, communications equipment, and probably the research, are packed together into a single massive block, where ninety percent of the crew are going to be jammed up close with weapons in reach.

    Beacons will be stealthy, but only get to the unsecured, outermost fringes of any of these areas. Breaching is the opposite. The former will go off two minutes before her arrival, the latter one minute after.
Hiromi <Q-Conversation> Hiromi says, "You wish to be chased?"
<Q-Conversation> Liza Grier says, "It was rhetorical. I was offering to shoot her."
<Q-Conversation> Hiromi says, "I'll come see this thing you fear. If disappointment, I'll give you chase."

    Maybe that part was relevant.

    Hiromi's reasons for being here having been explicitly stated, if not explained, she's arrived onboard Staren's ship. Or, no, that's not quite right. She's approached by hitching a ride, spending that sitting cross-legged with a statue-like stillness if not addressed, and minimal motions if spoken to, and then made use of the ship's teleporter (most likely requiring Staren's help to operate it), to arrive at one of the teleport beacons. She only has one requirement for her entry point, which is that it be outside the hull.

    Hard vacuum is a non-issue for her body. There's no sound through space, but there is sound in the Archwolf digging her claws in to anchor herself on a mobile space station's outermost plating. That sound repeats as she crawls and leaps, as necessary, to make her way from there to the place she'd most like to dig and tear her way in. 'The best-defended position' is her goal, a judgment she makes based on her understanding of the station as a collection of defensible points. The places near the bridge are most likely, though she expects she'll need to get through quite a few layers. That's how she would arrange a fortress, after all.

    She hopes to run into the others making their own entry, but it's a gamble that won't bother her too much, either way.
Staren Hub - SSC Stranger than Fiction (Location #0)
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    The walls, floor, and ceiling of the Stranger than Fiction's lower deck are covered with a facade that makes the structure look as if it are constructed of large stone bricks. The 'hub' room is about 25x15' across and about 7 1/3 feet tall. The teleporter pad is in the fore-starboard corner, the doorway to the lab is in the center of the fore wall, and the doorway to manufacturing is in the center of the aft wall. A spiral staircase to storage and the residential deck is in the aft-port corner. Through thick transparisteel windows, you can see space outside. Large storage cupboards are against the walls here. A large hatch in the floor can open to lead to the airlock.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The lights that always seem to accompany FTL use streak past the window. Staren opens a supply locker here, tossing Shimmer a belt and a submachinegun. The belt has a miniature air tank attached. "That can deploy into a suit that will protect you from space. I've loaded the gun with shock gel rounds and foam micromissiles to stick down opponents you don't want to fight. The com-unit you... absorbed can control all of it and will also connect you to my AI and any guidance I get I can pass on."

    She then turns to Hiromi and offers a bandolier of foam grenades as well as a computer in whatever form she likes -- glasses, tablet, bracelet, whatever. "There's no stone for your powers to work on here. So I'm giving you the control to warp in stone using my wormholes, and other supplies I guess. Good luck. I need to... figure out how I'm gonna do this..." She heads up the spiral staircase.

    Once the ship drops out of FTL, Staren calls over the intercom, "Just step on the teleport pad and pick your destination with your device! I'll activate it when you're ready!"
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Bercilak takes Liza up on her offer of a beacon. Two minutes before her arrival, seven and a half feet of armored bulk is deposited on the outer fringes of the mobile prison. Bercilak is neither stealthy nor hurried in his approach. A cloak of reedgrass and peonies billows behind him, and heavy machined plate clanks audibly with each weighty footfall. The cheek of his axe reflects the cramped, dangerous hallways as he passes.

     He is heading towards the middle innermost portion of the mobile prison, in search of the administrative office Liza spoke of. When he is faced with obstructions--be they access doors or armed response, Bercilak wordlessly employs his axe and puts his full strength behind each swing.

     The haft is used to corral would-be defenders, slamming theim into walls, sweeping their legs from under. The weapon's massive cheek is used, when needed, as a target shield, Bercilak's grip choked all the way up--and particularly insistent obstacles have limbs caught in the beard of the axe, snapped with a brisk movement at the wrists, or else an otherwise brief and masterful use of leverage.

     One way or another, one step at a time, he's going to patiently plow his way through to that office. It's probably going to take him longer to get there than Rita, but he does make for an excellent distraction.
Redshift Operators     Is there a PA system? Of course there's a PA system. That's what the hacker for the Redshift Operators is targeting, through a constant wireless attack. Inside the rattling, rumbling breach pod, they poke at a tablet's display, and then give a nod to the gruff gunman. That nod doesn't mean 'I'm in' or anything like that, that remains to be seen. But it means, at least, the team leader can pre-record the audio that will play the minute the gang breaches the PA system through a hacking action. True, Liza's broadcast has been going for a while now. True, this might be redundant. But they have one thing to leverage against the system that she doesn't:

    Confusion.

    "This is the Department of Antagonism to USCM Mobile Penal Installation 441. I repeat, this is the Department of Antagonism to USCM Mobile Penal Installation 441. A crisis prison break simulation is now about to begin. All prisoners and guards are required to comply with the prison break simulation. Compliance assistance provided by the Department of Antagonism will arrive shortly. This max-class prison break will simulate a full escape scenario, complete with live-fire intruders. Guards and onboard gunnery officers, if any, are required to provide maximum resistance, or face a class B pay cut for this month. Prisoners *must* simulate an effort to escape to the best of their ability. The prison break simulation will now commence. All simulation agents to your positions."

    They intend to drive the breach pod straight into the middle of the station, at the prison blocks, where the leader hopes to work on either detaching blocks for Staren's collection approach, or having their breach specialist start a snowball-effect rush of freeing prisoners.
Rita Ma      The beacons are faster, so that's what Rita takes. Get out ahead of the bloodshed, keep her head clear. An inconspicuous beacon flashes and pings, and nothing at all arrives hot on Bercilak's heels. 'Nothing' overtakes him soon enough, with fast little pitter-patter footsteps.

     "You're doing great, Mr. Bercilak! I'll check ahead, alright?" the thin air behind him says. "Thanks for being gentle with them." Silently, what she's grateful for is mostly that he's sticking to blunt strikes for now. The smell of blood has a hard time dispersing inside a spaceship.

<J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Oh hey um... Can someone make the cell blocks detach? That would be great if someone can handle that."
<J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "I'll handle it!"
<J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Thank you! I'll try to be ready for when they do..."

     She moves towards the dead center of the ship, aiming for the central administrative office to jettison the prison blocks. Obstacles- stubborn walls, locked doors- are melted through in a heartbeat with awful acid, and then replaced by solid visually-perfect duplicates to cover her trail the moment she's through.

     If she's quick enough and lucky, she can make it all the way to the central office before the invisibility taxes her too badly.
Staren     For her part, Staren has a plan that calls for her to work outside the ship, she just has to decide how best to go about that.

    Eventually concluding that this isn't going to be particularly *delicate* work, and that she should be ready to fight off who knows WHAT outside the ship, she decides to just: Bring the mecha.

    Staren's *new* piloting suit no longer looks like it can't decide whether to be a cowboy or a Rebel Alliance pilot in awful colors; she's opted for the near-skintight spaceuit of flexible material, with reinforced boots and knees, her usual vambraces, and a bit of metal armor around the shoulders and upper portion of chest that also serves as an attachment point for gear (like the emergency air tank and jetpack on her back); it's got some tasteful white, black, and Concord-orange pattern on the suit and the Concord's symbol offset on the front of the armor piece.

    Anyway, Staren comes rushing back down the staircase in that before opening the floor hatch and climbing down, and then out the airlock and to her waiting mech; what appears to be a brushed-metal jet fighter launching towards the distant prison ship.

    If she's able to actually land on the surface of the ship unmolested, Staren begins putting her plan into action: Transforming the mech to humanoid mode and flying up to a cell block, warping in thrusters and finding places to affix them to the hull so that once the block is detached it will propel itself *hopefully* out of Liza's blast range. Lather, rinse, repeat with the next cell block!

    That's the plan, anyway...
Sleek Shimmer     With Staren tossing things at her, Shimmer raises a hand up. Her palm glows briefly and the items... stretch-whip-vanish into her palm. It's a very different effect from the absorbtion witnessed earlier. Perhaps she has some kind of inventory storage.

    "You are kind as usual, Staren." Comments the young fox, her ears perked up and tails wagging loosely.

    She's rapidly learning how to conduct business in the Multiverse, and for once, she fills a tingly thrill. Though her goal is to prevent a massacre, she knows she's in for a fight. Could be a lot of fun!

    Once the teleporter activates, Shimmer flicker-appears just barely inside the prison block, dropping to the ground and rather thoughtlessly plowing ahead into the main corridor to have a look, completely unused to navigating this harsh metal environment. Her senses are all on high alert and her fingers curl into tight fists almost on reflex. She's dressed for battle, and almost itching for it!

    "The prison parts of ship can detach... somehow. But how do you make it happen?" She... doesn't really know, come to think of it.

    So she bolts around looking to see if there's any prisoners who'll speak to her and explain.

    Unless Staren or Rita can figure it out, anyways, it's the best shot she's got.
Liza Grier     The sequence of events goes thusly.

    Staren flying her own mecha into the sensor range of the USCM vessel is immediately acquired. Her radio lights up with a "This warning will not be repeated." order to turn back, along with the citation of some kind of maritime space charter of sovreign law inherent to the owning entity of each vessel. Then she is shot at by every single gun turret and missile silo that can traverse to face her (which is most of them). It is severely non-trivial to simply get right up to the massive USCM ship's hull; 'military' is right in the name after all, and vessel 441 has enough munitions to defend itself from a large colony's best attempts to repel them by force with ease.

    Hiromi, being mere person-sized blobs of heat who skips straight to contact with the paint and titanium, suffers for no such indiscretions. Of course the minute she starts pounding through the outer superstructure, peeling away sandwiched layers of construction meant to repel collision with sizable chunks of space debris, local block alarms begin going off about the breach. The second she pierces through, she's blasted with an especially strong gust of venting air, and a stream of small debris, when the room inside decompresses.

    Given that everyone inside knows the hull is damaged before they know why, she actually enters into a chamber that has just been recently evacuated and sealed off; it's a fairly extensive armoury, though certainly one of many, near to where the main bridge guard would be stationed, equipped to provide firearms, close combat weapons, ship-safe explosives, and . . . some kind of chemical agent(?) as well as various hardsuits, security tools, and restraints. Most of it is held fast by container arms that nominally require an ID to release. Of course, the second she's inside, swivel cameras mounted all over the walls acquire her on film. She has a choice of waiting here for a response to arrive, or to try exploring away from here; she could get something precise if she could operate a computer touchscreen terminal built right into a wall by the door like an old sci-fi movie, but otherwise the signage points her to the most immediate adjacencies: barracks, commons, secure storage, brig, closed server room.

    The Watch crew arrives just in time to overhear a gaggle of marines (as opposed to prison guards, because there are none) arguing nervously over the radio broadcast. Specifically, the Redshifts. Something to the effect of "Well that just makes sense right? There's no way a Syndicate bigshot would target a prison barge." "How does that make any sense at all?! Why's our training exercise Grier?! There's no playbook!" "Shit, do you think HQ decided to scrub the staff? Did something go wrong with the project on board? Are we gonna see death squads?" This is shortly before Bercilak is seen, and short-lived sprays of gunfire are emptied on his chest and face (on sight too), and those who aren't immediately taken out set off their annoyingly convenient and portable alarm transponders.
Liza Grier     It is fairly trivial for Rita to blitz through invisibly. The clatter of stomping boots are all headed in three directions that aren't her, the pop-up sentry guns she sees everywhere don't seem to acquire her automatically, and the bulkheads that slam shut everywhere in this industrialist brutalist gunmetal grey claustrophobic nightmare are easy enough to get through if nobody is watching for a while. Going from the 'tree rings' of prison blocks to the non-detachable spinal corridor that houses the office is not a quick and easy job, though; there are marines on permanent guard positions all around the elevator that leads down (in?) to it, top and bottom, and guns that will certainly notice her beginning to melt through the thicker doors.

    The Redshifts' breaching pod ploughing right through the superstructure will skip the entire elevator portion. It'll also give them a bit of a head start when an entire platoon of corporate marines starts fighting back on the loading level outside. However, the spray of bullets, and the immediate venting of atmosphere inside (reason unknown) is an accidental serious hazard to Rita. Accessing a computer terminal under fire is already bad enough, but it alerts them to a pretty major problem too: the cell blocks don't jettison with life support. They'll be habitable for only a short time, clearly meant to be an emergency purge function and not an 'escape pod' solution.

    Running around inside the prison corridors themselves, Shimmer is not as fortunate as Rita; every marine who spots her favours her with bursts of heavy automatic fire, and a few anti-personnel fragmentation grenades, designed to bounce their red hot fragments around inside cramped quarters several times; not to mention the chaingun sentries. Worse, most of the cells are cheap, cost-cutting prison bar designs, so the prisoners themselves aren't safe from the stray fire either. As far as she can tell, everyone now either ducking under their shitty beds for cover, or nihilistically cheering for her from between the bars, all look pretty much the same in uniform, however, the cell blocks near one end of the spine are secured with much fancier full-length forcefield screens; ostensibly airtight, given the additional ventilation units. There doesn't seem to be a clear reason for this, though they don't impede her talking to anyone there either.

    The alarms popping up all over shift to full red alert when Liza's own pod crashes into the bridge tower, not far above Hiromi's position. Personnel who aren't actively engaged in a firefight already are being called away to that location-- exploitable, provided someone has the patience, but the nuclear clock is already ticking. If one really wishes to pay attention, they can accurately gauge her rapid progress already by the constantly changing directions being sent to reinforcements over the intercom. Going by the plans, she will be able to secure either the mainframe or the lockdown controls pretty soon; she will probably plough right past both unless someone asks specifically.
Sleek Shimmer     Seeing the marines start to turn guns and grenades on her without a word edgewise, Shimmer lets out a shrill and very inhuman screechy-bark, and hastily summons up the power of Earth within her meridians. Her flesh hardens and the hailstorm of bullets strikes her like fierce hail, knocking her backwards with a hundred nasty strikes that slash shallow wounds in her skin. The first grenade is the only one that's going to get her off-guard though. When it goes off she's sent flying backwards and slams into into one of the cell bars, briefly slumping.

    "Such aggressive bastards..."

    She flips up to her feet, now realizing just how bad of an idea letting these guards use their weapons freely is.

    With a shwoooooof-blip and ripple of space she's behind one of the squads in a heartbeat. She drops down, scrunching up like a spring, and launches her whole body upwards - and practically upside-down. "EEEEEIIIYAAAAH!!!" Her foot's aimed to catch the marine right in the middle of his back and knock him into the air... and if all goes well, well, Shimmer's rising with him, her body twisting around so she can wrap her legs around the unfortunate man's neck and - with a gust of windy propulsion from nowhere that defies momentum - rotate in place with tornado force and hurl him into his fellows. The momentum and height isn't wasted either, as she then launches into a spinning dive-kick aimed for another soldier's head. Yes, she fully intends to just slam him straight into the walkway, hard, then bounce-backflip off and land amongst their number... "Got what it takes to fight me?" The young foxgirl's grin is a bit unsettling now... "If not, scram!"
Hiromi THEN:

    Hiromi accepts Staren's tools, at least partly, judging by her expression and the motion of her gaze, out of curiosity for what they do. 'Bracelets' are the easiest addition to her outfit, such as it is, being already fond of bronze bands over every limb. She's on the large side for most bandoliers, for that matter, but a thigh does just as well or better, in her case.


NOW:

    Digging in means anchoring herself before she starts tearing things off. Though she bends backwards at the blast of air, and is pelted by debris, Hiromi goes right back to work after explosively decompressing this... something or other place. Secured containers for hard things, by her estimation. Little movements of mechanical sentries. She flicks pebble-sized debris into the first few cameras she notices, shattering glass and metal both, but leaves the rest alone when they fail to do more than look in her direction.

    Curious what sort of resistance this lot will offer her forceful presence, Hiromi begins by tearing open containers, ripping down the locked arms together with pieces of wall, pulling out guns and lasers and grenades, only to toss every one of them aside. She hefts a shotgun, tosses it up and down in one hand, flipping end over end, before finally throwing that behind her, too. "Too short."

    She doesn't know anything about these human-ish nonhumans, but their choice of weaponry is a poor first impression, along with the half-comprehensible stories of Civilization that Red Dwarf has been sharing. "Slave-taking from own pack, yes?" Desperation, maybe. But no, it still defies understanding. "Rulers, others? Not self-rule. Conquered people?" The remaining cameras are the only audience to her wondering.

    Finally satisfied to remain largely unsatisfied, Hiromi uses Staren's supply-teleporter to provide herself with a length of rope, and runs it through fistfuls of restraining devices for easy carry and uncertain usage, before heading out in the direction of the secure storage.

    Naturally, she goes by the most direct possible route.
Staren     Staren's sensors light up with missile lock warnings.

    "Oh, that's a lot of guns for a prison ship."

    Soon she has been turned aside, frantically flying her craft through arcs of overlaying gunfire and missiles, releasing chaff and shooting down what she can and still getting her machine beat up by the time she's able to make it back to a safe range.

    "Oh that is a LOT of GUNS for a PRISON SHIP!"

    Okay. So much for that.

    And the guns are really a problem, because 'just go inside and release the prison blocks and hope they get far enough away before the blast' has, among other variables, the issue that the guns could blow the prisoners to hell out of spite.

    Staren asks a lot of questions, gathers available intel, and takes the long-distance sensor readings from her ship, the medium-distance sensor readings from her fighter, and the on-board sensor readings from the tech sent along with Shimmer and Hiromi and feeds it all to the AI, because there's no more time for trying to work out all the options herself:

    With her resources and those of her allies, what's the best way to actually get as many prisoners as possible out of blast range and exposed to neither weaponsfire nor vaccuum?
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "Gramercy," Bercilak offers to the invisible presence that passes him. Bullets collide with the Green Knight. Small pockmarks and scrapes are made where they strike the armor, sparks flying--but his slow advance is unaffected. Bercilak's boot crushes an alarm transponder, and the hand beneath it, underfoot. There are still several that he doesn't account for, ponderous as his progress has thus far been.

     As a crack in his visor un-spiderwebs and the bucket helm is once again made whole during a brief stint of (relative) silence, orders pipe through the intercom.

     The haft of Bercilak's axe is driven into the floor. Thick, petrified trunks sprout from the infertile steel panels of the floor, pushing them aside and rising all the way up to the ceiling in tightly clustered groves. In this way, Bercilak forms walls to funnel the would-be reinforcements, limiting their options for travel to Shimmer and, further down, Liza.

     On the one hand, moving the ship is important and there's a timer. On the other, Bercilak is not known for his time management skills. Being extremely hard to kill and never knowing anything else does tend to skew one's priorities. Bercilak ends up traveling down one of the funnels he'd made, taking extra time to reach the engineering block.

     Bercilak knows nothing about engineering, nor working in the engineering section of a starship. He knows, however, that there are necessarily people on board who must know these things. His goal, at the end of a plodding approach down corridors packed with marines, is to find and bully an engineer into making the necessary preparations under his supervision.
Redshift Operators     BAM! The pod's door blasts open and instantly disgorges all four Redshifts. The giant rushes forward, though there's less of a spray here. Just his heavy armor is enough to shield the sniper and the gunman, to let them counter-fire freely and buy them some space while the ninja runs flanking somehow even in narrow hallways -- as she does, she swipes her katana against bars in spinning twin sweeps, intent on opening things up. This is cheap enough that the techie of the gang barely needs to be involved! Instead, they seek out fire alarms (in order to close airtight firelocks) and any onboard atmospherics systems that they can hack and reboot to deal with the decompression before it gets too lethal.

    Assuming that goes well, there might be enough air to... "Everyone get ready!" Calls out a voice over the gunfire. "This is a prison break! I want every wing on this station *prisoner-controlled* in ten minutes! We're hijacking the purge-eject, atmos cans are incoming! Find gang bosses and get them radios *RIGHT NOW*!" Only assuming the prisoners are no longer choking to death though.

    They head for the same administrative area Rita is going for. Gotta prep a trigger for the ejection. But this is a place that bullies colonies and stations. Maybe there's records on coordinates for a nearby locale to drop them off at? If so, the leader's gonna try to send that over to Bercilak for relaying. He also gets on the radio: "Grier! We need lockdown controls here! I'm looking at vented cell blocks and I need them isolated from the breaches before we hit the choking threshold!"
Rita Ma      Rita, once she's finally obliged to actually get her hands dirty by circumstances invisibility can't trivialize, uses methods that don't draw blood- more for her own sake than the guards', since they're likely to be ash in a few minutes regardless.

     For the most part, she's on them before they can light her up: pounce, strike hard enough to shatter ribs or vertebrae, keep moving before they can pick themselves up. Sometimes there's too many, or they're too far; then the ones that are about to get the drop on her find their guns 'telekinetically' sliced in half before they can shoot, or their necks squeezed as if by an unseen python.

     The turrets that alert on her when she starts melting through a heavier bulkhead only get off a few rounds each before they're neatly bisected by an invisible force too- no blood to spill there. One slug strikes her cheek, sending her reeling back around a corner with a pitiable yelp and holding a hand to the impact point gingerly until the initial sting wears off. She's bruised. It didn't break skin.

     But Rita's a brave girl. She keeps going.

     After simply ripping a hole in the elevator's floor and dropping down the shaft to reach the ship's spine, she's exposed to hard vacuum- something unlikely to bother the Redshifts she's joining, but lethal to her. Breathing water, she's discovered, is extremely unlike breathing nothing. She opens her mouth to yell something to them, but her lungs are empty.

     Nine or ten seconds before I pass out. Got to make it to them. Too much gunfire, even if they can't see me. ... Guns here aren't meant to damage the structure. Strong walls and floor, or low penetration. That'll work.

     Rita rips a floor tile out of the ground with her bare hands and uses that as a shield against the hail of bullets while running towards them- White Dwarf, in particular. Her hand is wreathed in staticky energy that blurs at the edges with ominous colors. She reaches out towards White Dwarf's helmet-

     I can't speak. There's no time to explain. Please trust me enough not to pull away, Ms. Dwarf.

     -and, if White Dwarf does in fact trust her enough, when Rita's fingers make contact with the glass of the fishbowl helmet an identical copy of the helmet shimmers into existence on her own head. She knows how to work an oxygen tank, of course- for totally different reasons- and gasps for breath a moment after opening the valve, bent over with hands on her knees.

     "Thank you, Ms. Dwarf. I was... that was really, really scary. I've never been in a leaking spaceship before."
Staren     Red Dwarf's got a plan Staren can begin working on immediately:

1. Find a habitable destination nearby.
    Staren delegates this to her ship's AI, checking long-range sensors. If needed, it can make some unmanned jumps to adjacent star systems while she's working and scan *there*.
2. Improve the prison blocks' life support.
    For that, she needs to get herself, Hiromi, or someone else carrying life support supplies or a micro-wormhole *to* all the prison wings.

    Fabrication orders are sent to the lab while Staren flies her damaged machine in to dock with her ship... Once she's back inside, things happen rapidly:

    First: Staren teleports in where Shimmer and Rita did. If there's room for exosuits, there's room for the Delilah. And a squad or two of security robots with additional weapons and reloads and such. Staren tries to make it to the nearest prison block from INSIDE the ship this time, fighting along the way with the assembled armaments and then warping air tanks and scrubbers in. Lather, rinse, repeat with each block. How many do they need to do this for...?

    Second: A miniature breach pod is fired to hit next to the Redshift Operators'; Its payload deploys and begins bounding through corridors to catch up with the Syndicate operatives, at last coming into sight as... A robot dog. It's been helpfully painted red to match them! And some black for style. "Attention:" It speaks with a slightly posh accent with tinny reverb. "I have presents for you." Once acknowledged, it hacks up a pair of folded-up bracers with micro-wormhole controls the Operators can use to have a couple of people call in life support equipment to their location. Its primary objective complete, it will follow commands. As a secu--err, combat model, it has what is effectively a double-barreled energy shotgun positioned in line with the muzzle, eye lasers, and the ability to spray chemicals from its mouth. Surely they can find a use for man's best robotic friend? Although, for some reason, it may also just be unsettling.
Liza Grier     The security incidentally patrolling the block corridors is not in any situation to deal with determined and heavily armed Elite insurgency; they're armed to gun down a prison riot or hold chokepoints against a lightly armed boarding actions, and not really to deal with opponents who don't drop dead or incap after five or ten shots to center mass. Corporate marines are gunned down left and right by the Redshifts, those attempting to take cover behind corridor recesses finding none against Neutron's anti-materiel rifle, and especially none from Shimmer and White Dwarf's melee attacks.

tThe instant bars are broken, prisoners of half a dozen different species are already piling out, making an uproar as they do. Some of them simply cover their heads and run for it, making a break for escape pods. Others pick up weapons from fallen security and join the assault, making up for broad lack of expertise with tremendous enthusiasm, some even resorting to improvised close combat weapons and spectacular violence. Some secure keycards from bodies and pneumatic sledges from emergency toolkits and begin working on other cells. Red Dwarf will get what he wants; the spread is exponential. It'll take a couple of minutes to overwhelm this block, but then it'll go on to overwhelm two more, and then four, then eight . . .

    The block groups hear security falling back, calling command "HoS! WE'RE GETTING WASHED DOWN HERE! REQUESTING BACKUP RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!" over the sound of gunfire. The response crackles back "Negative. Heavy response teams are currently engaged with Syndicate Nuclear Insurgent. Hold the line soldier." Furious calls argue "Hold the line?! With what?! We're at a full code black prisoner cascade with heavy armed support! The insurgents are here! Send killsquads!" only to hear "Negative, killsquads gamma and delta are K.I.A, killsquads alpha and beta are in-combat attempting to hold bridge from Syndicate Insurgent. We are at code G, I repeat, code G, mainframe assets are top priority." A few seconds go by. "Secure masks; HoS has given the go-ahead to flood all blocks with gas. Imminent in twenty."

    They can see the remaining security personnel affixing gas attack gear. Heavy yellow mist begins to trickle out of the vents, coalescing around the floor, but gradually rising. It stings, blisters, and eventually melts exposed skin. Presumedly, it'd do the same to lungs if breathed in.

    Down in the spinal corridor, Bercilak, the Redshifts, and Rita, are gradually busting down the blockade. They're just in time too, when gas starts trickling in there as well. Rita's forced entry gets Neutron access to the atmospherics just in time to halt both venting and gassing protocols, as well as whatever the hell else he wants. Staren's atmospherics seem as though they'll probably work fine; now that the air won't be vented, heating and CO2 filtering should keep the block corridors livable for a few hours, if she can get the prisoners to cooperate.
Liza Grier     Red Dwarf's request is ostensibly heeded. The running commentary on the shipwide intercom grows considerably less calm with each passing second. "Security teams eight through twelve to block 21-B." "Correction, block 22-C." "Correction, move ahead to block 24-H and hold position." "Teams thirteen to sixteen, reinforce at 24-H". "All teams within response range, reinforce 24-H." "Emergency response teams, extract survivors from 24-H and hit lifeboats. Science personnel, backup all records and report to evacuation stations in five." "Teams twenty to thirty, reinforce bridge bulkhead crews at block 30-A. Engineering, seal bulkheads 30 through 40." "Commando units one to six, approach bulkhead complex thirty from lower decks and pin down insurgent while science teams evacuate." "Non-essential bridge crew, begin evacuation." "Emergency response crews, extract injured commando personnel ASAP." "Engineering crews, evacuate bulkhead complex. Bulkhead 38 is at critical. Killteam beta K.I.A. Killteam alpha moving to defend command crew." "All remaining commando teams, divert to mainframe; insurgent is attempting to access." "Engineering, cut all power to non-bridge mainframe terminals." "Engineering?" "Engineering; report in now!" "Engineering, report!"

    The engineering crew Bercilak barges in on are terrified. They surrender immediately; the company cannot buy suicidal loyalty from them. The big huge scary armoured man can get them to do anything he wants. Thirty seconds later, "Mainframe compromised! Repeat, mainframe compromised! All open circuits are under enemy control!" And then control pings over to Red Dwarf and Neutron; an affirmative greenlight is flashed to their HUD at the same time. Shortly thereafter, the intercom drones "Powered exosuit heavy response has been authorized! All security teams and light infantry, evacuate all areas! Get to safety!"

    Shortly, everyone except Hiromi is on the end of nearby bulkheads being broken down via brute firepower (just after Liza had shut them off remotely too), giving them a small amount of warning before hulking masses of industrial-brutalist gunmetal vaguely in the shape of human beings come barging through. Each one scrapes the ceiling of even the two storey blocks, and scans the area with glowing optical lines to track down targets with thermal vision, blasting the area with anti-armour heavy machine gun fire and firing quick barrages of grenades from shoulder mounted launchers. To make matters worse, they project glowing energy screens of interlocking diamonds in front of them, blocking up corridors two abreast. Getting close is asking to be punched with wall-busting robotic strength.

    Hiromi, for the moment, is flying under the radar, for somehow not having killed anyone. 'Secure storage' almost appears to be a euphemism. Rather than heavier weapons, what she finds is row after row of capsules, each half the size of a fully grown human, with slightly out of place sleek white metal trimmings and transparent fronts. Each one contains . . . some sort of . . . creature? Maybe? They're head-sized, vaguely spherical, appear almost sort of gelatinous, and have bright toxic orange colouration. 'Claws' of mystifying purpose jut out from them in places, broken up by glowing red eyes that collectively fix on Hiromi with the eerie precision of those security cameras
Rubi-Kan Vagrants [Local Broadband] Bercilak: What labourage must be done, her-upon the FTL?
,[Local Broadband] Red Dwarf: Make sure there's purple in the pipes, and be ready to type some numbers! Don't care how many check-engine lights turn on, as long as we move.

     "Thou," says Bercilak, pointing directly at one of the engineering crew. "Ifinde som-quar sauf, awei from the bastards which emploi thee, that shalt sureli onchace us. Som-quar the gaol may be sikerli separaten."

     "And thee," he says, pointing at another. That labourage done, thou shalt agredy the stacioun to jump." Pointing at any warning lights (lit or unlit), he adds, "Forgendre theim, so long as the jump might be done. Whanne-so the gaol is separaten sikerli, thou shalt jump ayen."

     He is interrupted by the entry of the hulking exosuits. "BE ABOUTE THY LABOURAGE, AND NO HERTE SHALT BIFALL THEE! DENI ME IF THOU DURST!" Bercilak's nanites envelop the engineering crew in protective fields of energy designed to blunt the impact of stray explosives and bullets. At that same time, what injury may be suffered is quickly repaired by the healing field which surrounds him.

     His grip on the axe is choked all the way up, dents pounded into the cheek by the machine gun fire. That, and the grenades, push him backwards, and blood seeps from wounds caused by those attacks that pierce through the reactive armor he wears. As the walls and floor near him are painted scarlet, however, he continues, his weapon and armor mending themselves almost as quickly as his wounds.

     Throwing both arms wide, standing a foot from the blue barrier erected, he issues a challenge that is hard to misunderstand.

     "SWING, BICCHE! COKEWOLD!"

     The moment the armor's limb comes swinging for him, thrusters fire at the rear of his armor in time with a side-forward juke, reducing his profile as his hands shift on the axe. With his grip now mid-weapon, the beard of the axe is used to trap the nearest offending joint and yank the mech through the barrier--into his rocket-assisted knee.
Hiromi     "Better," Hiromi says, considering the toxic colors, eyes, and claws. And she slips, from there, into a perfectly understandable form of non-speech, as she prowls the lines, looking over the capsules.

    Alert, she describes them, watching their eyes as they watch her. Fighters kept as things. It's a strange notion, but these crews are a people who enslave their own. 'Bioweapon' talk returns to her mind.

    With Staren's ship-teleporter device raised, she picks one of the capsules, with a look of you'll do, breaks it free from its wall mounting with her fingers, and sends it to a locker set aside for her on the ship. Attempting to do so a second time gives her a sense of the locker being already full, and prompts her to switch tracks, instead addressing the room with her wordless growl.

    If you are hunters, know that I am Hiromi. The Final Hunter. You will come beneath my authority. You'll be given this chance, to prove yourselves. If you disappoint me, you'll die. If you remain here, you'll die. If you challenge me, you'll die. Her intentions are more than communicated. They are imprinted, forcing their way into the mind of every watching life, without the need to understand anything much more complex than 'danger.' Hierachical authority is created by force of will, and backed by strength of arm. Still, perhaps, she'll be swiftly disappointed, if their minds are much less capable than those of mice.

    The quickest way to find out, without waiting for the bioweapons to work out a means of communication of their own, is to start dragging her claws through their capsules to free them, which is exactly what Hiromi does.

    If it happens to be that she remains unbothered during the process, she'll go back to searching for secret research things. Maybe, probably, hunting down the fleeing scholars will be necessary.
Staren     Moments before everything goes to hell, the block where Shimmer is fighting becomes host to a TEN FOOT TALL BATTLE ROBOT. To Shimmer, it appears to be an armored warrior-giant, the armor only slightly bulky for its scale and somewhat rounded in shape, with visible weapons mounted on the forearms and right shoulder. It has a distinctive helmet with an antenna on the back, a ridge atop the head concealing the barrel of some kind of energy weapon, and three orange horizontal slits at eye level. The whole thing is painted with white plates, black underlayer, and glowy orange accents.

    Trailing behind it are squads of human-size humanoid robots armed and armored similarly to the security team but with a preference for ballistics.

    "Hi Shimmer! It's me in this thing." Staren's voice comes over speakers on it somewhere. Air tanks and associated gear can be warped in... But soon security forces demonstrate WHY all the rooms are large enough to accomodate Staren's robot power armor.

    "Gh... look out!" Staren tries to dive out of the way of the machinegun fire but her robots are slower to move; She summons reinforced super-concrete walls for herself and allies to take cover behind! Although those won't last long...

    But.

    She's facing ROBOTS.

    Staren Wiremu, despite styling herself as a genius inventor, is not actually a genius... except at ONE THING.

    And these corporate goons are trying to fight her with it.

    Those force-diamonds are assailed with a hail of smart bullets and plasma projectiles, just to give the enemy something to focus on, but Staren's real attention is on those robots and the sensor readings coming in from her armor and her robot squad. Perhaps there's an exploitable weakness...? And if those force projectors are better than Staren's own, perhaps she can imitate the design...
Rita Ma      Until the Redshifts can take care of the gas, Rita is protected from inhaling it by her own stolen-copied fishbowl helmet. As for her skin, it doesn't have the same impact that it ought to- maybe she turns a tiny bit redder, but it's hard to tell.

     She proves to be a considerable asset in the Redshifts' progress towards the administrative area. Aliens with corrosive bodily fluids have historically fared well at infiltrating spacecraft, and Rita isn't much of an exception; she's especially helpful at melting through or prying open bulkheads in their path, without needing to expend limited explosives to do it.

     During a relatively quiet moment in the chaos, she stiffens up and stares at nothing. "Ms. Dwarf? Do you hear that?" She knows better than to ask Neutron.

     Her question is answered in the form of bullets and explosions. Rita zips out of the way of the initial volley, accelerating hard enough to crumple the metal flooring underfoot, and shelters just behind a corner. After taking a second to regain her bearings, she sends an illusory decoy- perfectly thermally convincing, as it's made from her own flesh- around the corner to check. It is immediately torn to shreds by a hail of bullets.

     Even if I approach while cloaked, I can't get through those forcefields they're projecting. It's risky even then, too... Ms. Grier would be really sad if I put myself in danger like that. What else can I do?

     Rita looks up.

     There is a dull, quiet crunch as she leaps through the ceiling to navigate the wire-and-pipe crowded interstitial space above. The muffled sounds of gunfire and explosions below are all she needs to pinpoint the location of the mechs. When she's certain she's behind one of them, she sinks her claws into the ceiling below, pulls it open, and drops down on the other side.

     'Pilots rarely have 360-degree viewscreens. Metal doesn't have a sense of touch. Something so stiff and bulky can't punch behind it.' Those are the things she's gambling on when she leaps up to cling to the mech's back. Her acid-dripping tentacles gouge through the metal in a half-dozen weak-looking spots, and then disgorge gallons of the horrifically corrosive stuff throughout its frame. Wires dissolve. Electronics corrode. Hydraulics leak.

     She leaps away before the chemical payload hits critical mass and explodes from within.
Redshift Operators     The team's engineer cuts the link from the distro loop to the mix chamber and locks it on the air chamber instead. That should make sure they get nothing but air. Now it's a matter of making sure they can keep it. In come the mechas, and this is a *bad* situation.

    "FUCK!!" Shouts the gruff man as the armor takes its positions. They have home turf advantage here, but only so much. "GET ME COVER!" The giant obliges with whatever he can, ripping up wall segments and other shielding to make sure that nothing can reach the gunman when he gets into the halls to try to take the beasts of metal on.

    He takes cover -- or at least concealment... Then starts an unusual tactic. He's not just an expert grenadier, he's *the* grenade knuckleball specialist. Grenades start whipping through the hallways. He curvballs one over a shield. He slings one to bounce off of the blast from an AP round impacting the hull. He kicks a vent open and slides it down the distro pipe.

    IR smoke gushes out of them, huge clouds of blood-red smoke that obscure all sorts of senses. He can't afford to blast apart vulnerable hallways. But he can afford to make it impossible to get a good view of things with that heavy weaponry. As giants with glowing structures around them, they're likely still plenty visible, but it'll be tough to get a good sight-line on almost anyone! The grenadier has a lot of skill in getting grenades where they need to go.

    A dog arrives "Aww. A puppy!" Says the gravel-death voice from the giant.
    "A goddamn dogborg? Wait--" The gunman recognizes what this is about, moments before trying to blast the robot. He snatches the delivered bracers and tosses them to the high-speed ninja "RUN! *Get those blocks aired up!* Jailbirds! Tell your bosses to get everyone into some wings and ready to hold them as soon as these bastards lose their shot!"

    While he tries to continue the grenade-work, the sniper tries to take advantage of momentary blindness to simply pop AP rounds into... not cockpits? Well, not past the first. The sniper aims to trickshot through gaps under the forcewalls and slam into essential motors. If they're in the halls, they're not in the wings. Best to keep them there, and let nuclear fire sort them out. That should hopefully give the speedy ninja of the team time and space to run through the halls and the crowd to the wings, and organize the distribution of future atmospheric supplies.
Sleek Shimmer     Shimmer is perplexed when what jailers still stand dash to stations to re-equip themselves or pull out gas masks and other gear. Up until her senses tell her something's amiss. She hears the telltale clicks and hisses of some system whirring up. Smells the gas as its most dispersed bit reaches her. "Poison gas! Bastards!" Concentrations begin to build up everywhere in the halls. That's bad. really bad.

    THEN, the awful cacaphony of metal tearing open assaults her ears and out comes the BIG GUNS. "Winds, to me!" Shimmer exerts her power, and filmy green energy expands from her skin, whirling around in a tight vortex. The majority of the gas is blown around and deflected away, and she moves about wildly within the corridors, zigzagging and jumping around between the walls, ceiling, and floor as if gravity was a lie. Diving, somersaulting, dashing along the ceiling, and twisting left and right, up and down to avoid the worst of the assault. Then she reaches the shields and swings a clawed hand at them with a ferocious yowl and --

    KRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSSSSHTTTTTT! Her advance is blocked. Her blow glances off, leaving her briefly exposed and wide open, falling in the air. Multiple barrels are turned her way, spraying bullets everywhere at her extremities inwards... threatening to fully perforate and shred her in mere moments.

    Naturally that's not what happens at all. A calm, soothing, wavy blue light overtakes the stormy green and her body suddenly moves very, very strangely - she twists about unnaturally using her momentum, weaving through most of the hailstorm. A handful of bullets rip at her limbs and splatter blood and bits over the shields and corridors, but miraculously miss all of Shimmer's vitals. Her movement pattern has entirely changed all at once. When streams of bullets swoop in, her body twists to the side or ducks under them in the nick of time in strange, loose, wavy moments of minimal exertion.

    Then, with absolutely critical timing, and a look of serene calm on her face, Shimmer's form ripple-blips PAST the shields, leaving her standing right next to one of the mech's legs. Just as it begins to move her form blurs into a calamitous ELBOW SMASH. Calamitous, because the timing is just too good. The resonance from this blow will offset the machinery just enough so that its own internal kinetics turns against it and helps to wreck the leg.
Liza Grier     Bercilak, after being pummeled with machine gun fire to the point that the exosuit operator on him stops firing to see if his optics are somehow glitched (that and reloading), succeeds at tearing the exosuit's arm off completely, crunching the cockpit armour inwards and sending it crashing onto its back. The shield sputters out, but a few seconds later, the pilot has come back to his senses and is climbing back up, firing a point blank shower of grenades from the shoulder mount to cover his dash for the dropped machine gun.

    Bercilak also encounters another problem. Outside of the engineering crew mostly being occupied trembling behind cover, none of them seem to have a fucking clue what he said. They're engine jockeys on a PMC's prison ship. They don't exactly read Shakespeare.

    Out of the armoured squad holding down the former administrative group, precisely one seems to notice that something is amiss with Rita's high speed movement. After blowing her cover to pieces with grenades, the pilot actually looks up and begins firing into the ceiling --ventilating the ventilation-- really, within half a second; god knows what experience compels him to do so. He loses not just thermal, but visual, mere seconds later when Red Dwarf's grenades immediately choke the entire enclosed space with jamming smoke; even if it is fairly lage, life support is looping on itself from room to room now. The shields are extremely large, but they aren't airtight, floor to ceiling to wall --that'd make it incredibly difficult to get around.

    Neutron's anti-materiel shots ricochet from the reinforced deck plating at shallow enough angles at obliterate ankle supports and servos, preventing them from backing out of the room and forming up at the bulkhead. Rita drops out on top of them with ease under the circumstances. She hears one of the pilots --maybe the one who'd shot at her-- pop the hatch and sprint away in record time, but the others are still in position to scream for half a second before their exosuits are blown to corroded slag with them still inside.

    The firefight in the attached cell blocks is less convenient. The appearance of the exosuits has started to route most of the prisoners who were previously helping, not exactly stoked about the prospect of being torn limb from limb by bursts of .40 calibre rounds. Some of them are unfortunately (depending on one's perspective) gunned down or blown up right away, the pilots not exactly having any compunctions about sweeping fire through a crowd of fleeing convicts to hit the Elites in them. Staren's read of the shields is rather discouraging; the shields don't appear to have any particular weakness or maximum capacity, being --as far as it matters in the current situation-- immovable, indestructible walls, that simply guzzle an enormous quantity of energy to keep running, exponentially increased while blocking fire. Running out the exosuits' core batteries like this is possible, but certainly not with a short period of sustained fire --more like long minutes of constantly pounding away on them, all the while being shot and shelled. The choice of suit for this kind of fighting is pretty obvious; only facing one direction doesn't really matter when they can block a whole corridor.

    They don't block teleporting though. Shimmer causes one of them to collapse by attacking the leg from inside, opening up a large break in the shield wall. The downed machine reaches out suddenly to grab and crush her in its robotic grip, even while the one next to her sweeps its automatic fire across her, taking no time to aim and simply swinging the active machine gun in her direction like an axe.
Liza Grier     Hiromi's impression of the glow-eyed floating orange blob creatures is perhaps best described as 'eerie'. Given the way they react to her, it'd be easy to describe them as 'braindead'. One some level, it really does feel like they have intellect even less than mice; huge portions of comprehension are missing from them that even insects have an incredibly primitive version of. Concepts like 'challenge', 'prove', 'disappointed', and even 'hunt' are beyond them, only getting her blank stares and blank minds.

    However, 'authority' is one amongst several concepts they appear to have absorbed at a human intellect level instead, and 'alert' seems to strike them more as 'at attention' than anything else. Freeing them causes an entire cohort of floating, evil-looking critters to form up around Hiromi like a formation of fighter jets. Their utter, eerie silence, fixed in mid-air, mixed with their soulless, boring stares, is unpleasant to say the least. It's really not clear how they follow her. They just sort of drift, and . . .

    Phase through the walls, actually. When she leaves through the door, most of them just pass right through the sides of the corridor around her, acting as if the physical geometry of their environment doesn't even factor into their sense of pathfinding; they simply beeline after her.

    Following the markers to research, Hiromi comes across several heavy-duty airlocks and extremely locked down doors, to say nothing of a score of emergency bulkheads and automatic guns and gas emitters between them, some ostensibly to keep people out, some ostensibly to keep something else in. All of these are functionally irrelevant to her, because she is Hiromi.


The first sight of 'scholars' she gets is a fairly vast room filled with computer equipment and record cabinets, where numerous men in white coats and off-duty grey fatigues are scrambling to unplug, download, bag and zip, and otherwise make portable, everything they can, while burning the rest. Her swarm of floating creeps activates pretty much on sight. They rush past her as if she'd just fired a swarm of missiles, phasing through the walls and doors and lunging at the researchers within. When they get close, their neon gelatinous mass splits down the middle to reveal that they are almost entirely fanged maw by volume.

    A good bite to the throat is more than enough to take down a squishy scientist, but any that are grabbed by an extremity instead, perhaps defending themselves with an arm, strangely seem to collapse of their own accord; Hiromi can hear their heartbeats slowing, the scent of blood disappearing, but find no particular cause for why they might be dying. Quickly. Panicked gunfire from a handful of scientists having time to get out their sidearms accomplishes very little. Being struck by bullets sends the floating monsters tumbling away, but they typically only phase through something --breaking line of sight-- and then come flying back with a little hole in them.

    White Dwarf is having a better time. All of the exosuits in the prison blocks are focused on the ongoing firefight; this ship doesn't have a million of them, and according to the computers, half of them were dispatched to try and prevent Liza from reaching the bridge, two already down. The prisoners, finding they can't launch the lifeboats, and knowing exactly what is going to happen in barely more than five minutes, are more than happy to simply listen to her and organize 'not asphyxiating'.

    It's because she's wearing Syndicate gear. Liza had given her whole menacing 20 minute warning spiel, as she always does, and so they've had plenty of time to conceptualize what it means that the Syndicate is attacking the vessel. It's very convenient to earn their cooperation. However, though the rest of the team could purge the prison blocks at any time now, the ship still isn't ready to jump.
Staren CELL BLOCKS:
    Staren takes some hits and some of her robots are gunned down as they move from rapidly-erected cover to cover. At least every shot aimed at her machines is one not killing a prisoner.

    And she can't use missiles while Shimmer is in melee, if she can even get one past the fields...

    In the end, Shimmer, at what looks like great risk to herself, opens up a break in the wall.

    Staren siezes the opportunity immediately. The Delilah is faster and lighter than a Marauder, less a bipedal tank and more a way to bestow enhanced capabilities on a human pilot. Thrusters fire, she closes the distance through the break in the shield wall in a second and pulls one first back.

    Plasma stake, set! --Wait, wrong setting. But the Delilah IS equipped for melee, and powerarmor-sized armblades extend as Staren tries to punch-stab the one clawing at Shimmer, and swings her other arm to try and cut, or at least parry, the adjacent exosuit's machinegun.

    Despite the name, it isn't the vibroblades themselves that vibrate, but the high-frequency energy fields projected around them, designed to cut and shred armor.

    "Rrrgh... hang in there!"

    If Staren was able to get a good enough reading on the forcefields to copy them, an appropriate emitter warps in on the Delilah's left shoulder and puts down fields on either side of Staren to stop non-adjacent Marauders from getting an easy shot on her.

THE SPINE:
    The definitely-not-a-dogborg barks at the giant's acknowledgement. It has a pair of ion blasters mounted parallel to the muzzle, the obligatory eye lasers, and a chemical synthesizer it can spray the results of from its mouth. Honestly, the Operators probably have more inventive ideas for that than the metal foam or knockout gas Staren might think of. Information on its capabilities is offered wirelessly. In local terms, it's more of a drone with a limited AI and the option to teleoperate it. It will follow commands... But as it turns to look at the fallen exosuits, it sees no targets to attack, so it sits and waits, wagging its tail until given further direction.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Bercilak looks over his shoulder, to see an engineering crew huddled together in a mixture of terror and utter confusion. "Ah. Shit." His first thought is to patch through someone who they -will- understand, and also be likewise afraid of.

[Local Broadband] Bercilak: Dwarf! Red. Wher-awei art thou?
[Local Broadband] Red Dwarf: Trying to push into the cell blocks, but-- FUCK! Some big bastards in here! Someone's gotta focus these sons of bitches down, gah!
[Local Broadband] Bercilak: Bah! For obtent of fuck... wel afin. I shalt hondle hit mineself.

     He is then pelted with grendades, which drive him backwards in an ungainly, stumbling fashion, boots clanking on the ground as that huge harness over his breastplate is cracked open. It falls off in pieces as he moves to handle the pilot.

     "I shalt not deni thy spirit," he intones, as he loosens his grip all the way to the bottom of the haft, holding the weapon one-handed. "But thou'rt in the wrong bisinesse." The axe's reach is ridiculous, being almost as tall as Bercilak is. When he swings it in a sideways arc, cutting a gouge in the wall as it passes, the heel of the axe intercedes the Mauler's leg, just above what passes for its foot. Bercilak's off-hand finds its way back to the weapon's haft, resting midway up its length. With both hands, he pulls, stepping back with his front foot and working his shoulders to trip up the mech.

     This needs to stop--and so he attempts to stop it in the most decisive way possible. Petrified trees form a wall between the Mauler and the dropped weapon. The axe is then yanked back into a ready position, as the Green Knight switches his grip. With the blade now at his left, Bercilak feathers the thrusters on his armor, sparks flying from his boots grinding against the floor. Blow after blow is rained down upon the Mauler, with the intent of completely separating all of its limbs.

     The only pause is when he looks over his shoulder. He said he'd handle engineering.

     "WHAT IN FUCK ART THOU AWAITEN? A KISS?! JUMP THE STACIOUN!"
Sleek Shimmer     Giant robot hands are hella ripply on the strange awareness that Shimmer's reacting to right now. She vaults upwards in a purely vertical backflip. Unfortunately, here is where her focus falters - the aura flickers out and the swung machinegun smacks her HARD across the everything, sending her sailing into the prison block walls with a resounding KABANG!

    She drops to the floor in a heap, gasping for breath and coughing. She lifts herself up a bit shakily.

    With another hard breath, the green windy aura resumes, and she draws back one clawed hand... only to swing it down, HARD, dragging a trail of green light--

    "Show us blades that tear metal, mighty winds!" Her claw swipes become a storm of five different blades of compressed wind in-between vaccuum. As it travels through the hallway, it howls and thunders, splitting into four times as many sickles but still all focused on the walker that tried to grab her!
Rita Ma      The first bullet that passes through the ceiling comes within a couple feet of Rita; she yelps, which would give her away if it weren't for the godawful din the weapon itself makes. The rest of the blind-fired barrage doesn't get much of a chance: a normal human would have to crawl in a space like that, but Rita can gallop between the wires and the pipes, and refuses to give them much of a chance.

     The fleeing pilot isn't paid any mind. Nor is the fact that the chemical explosions weren't as clean as she'd hoped. Whatever moderate disquiet she has about that is pushed to the back of her mind.

     Instead, she presses onwards. Less than five minutes left- no time for 'sealing stuff up behind herself'. Instead she taps into the things her body had integrated from Liza's ghost: as Rita runs, she turns halfway translucent and takes on a shadowy lavender tint; her hair starts to billow as if underwater or in zero-gravity. Her feet stop making contact with the floor altogether.

     Then, locking onto whatever life-signs she can find in the rooms and corridors ahead, she lunges through walls from one to the next- not enough siphoning to take anyone out, but daisychaining between them until she reaches the central administrative office.

     Where's that universal release? They need it now.
Redshift Operators     "Fuck, fuck, *fuck*, they're in the cell blocks!" The squad lead yells, falling back into cover. Everyone's more than a little damaged by that. These exosuits are a huge problem. He jams his fingertips against the side of his head and rambles, "Think, think, think, come on, gotta be a way to pull this out of the fire..."

    "Dogborg! I NEED *THE GREASE!* The tough gunman bastard calls out! "H2O-Si-O!" Jamming one of his disassembled grenades into the muzzle of the dog and cranking the tail like a pump, he crafts a grenade that ought to deposit a good amount of SPACE-LUBE, the space-age equivalent of machine oil. "Giant, get ready to shove them outta here, gotta protect the prisoners! Newt, take out all the optics you can!"

    He tosses another grenade, after a long time cooking it. As it rolls towards the firefight in the middle, it starts gushing that horrid-smelling blue gunk out of both ends. Thank god for Syndicate No-Slip Mag-Boots. The hacker desperately tries to remotely reboot the optics on those exosuits, and the massive tank of a man comes rushing down the halls, enduring whatever is left. The cell-block exosuits need to be dealt with, and the Redshift Operators don't have the time and firepower to get them dead before they need to eject. Which is why he blasts his jetpack, leaps high over them, slams on the ground, and delivers such a mighty shove that, good luck willing, they'll slam back *slide* back, with subsequent strikes and shoves. That's the classic Spacer technique!
Hiromi     The Multiverse astounds, as Hiromi makes displeased, growling noises for reasons entirely outside of any expected.

<J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Minds carved to smallest fitting pieces. Now, I see."

    Allowing them to follow is convenient, and they are as effective as they are unpleasant. Fixing the scientists with some small measure of her displeasure for their association with this situation, she only has to watch, nigh dispassionately, as they are slaughtered, lacking practical means of resistance.

    Prey.

    She picks up a body by the leg (that had died by contact of its arm), stretches her jaw, showing far, far too many teeth, and tears into it, before spitting out suit and fabric and tossing the remains aside. She expects no taste of power of in these ones, but taste, close to smell, tells her other things, at times. For true appetite, she has little, at the moment.

    The research they were attempting to retrieve may still serve some purpose. Again, with the convenience of Staren's ship device, Hiromi sends small data drives, things that might otherwise fit in pockets, back to the storage locker. She has no way of ascertaining their value, but it was enough to delay these creatures to the point of death, which is some point in favor. Once she's out of room for even that, will the bracelet-shaped device to work in the other direction, sending her enough 'unworked' stone that she can will it into some more convenient shapes. A specially-fitted carrying case for server drives is just as easy to make as any other mold, with the devices she needs to encase right here. Ropes go through that, the restraints she took still carried but unused, and she finds that there's no further reason to remain.

    That they could not understand 'hunt' is unfortunate, and irritating. How could anything with teeth fail to hunt? They're incapable of proper lives. Supposing this may be within their comprehension, Hiromi orders: Stay.

    And then, she goes hunting for better prey.

    Fortunately, for Liza, Hiromi's path happens to take her in the direction of the tail of the ship.
Liza Grier     The ongoing disaster in the cell blocks is starting to stabilize. The exosuits deployed to the prison corridors are incredibly durable, and decently well-armed, but very slow, and once a teleportation-induced gap opens up in that shield wall, Staren's delilah suit has little trouble exploiting the opening. Shimmer's wind blades tear the weapons from the prone exosuit, and Staren's vibroblades cut through the bulky armour in the enemy's suit that is far less adapted to close combat, though it takes some sustained doing.

    Throwing down forcefields on either side is quite timely; it's just in time to block a spray of fire from the second squad arriving down the hall. Of course, they're aware that they too are functionally impervous to fire for the moment, coming in with fresh power cells, and so they charge the choke point without fear-- then divert sideways, using their raw strength to simply smash through the cheaply constructed cell walls lining the corridor and flank Staren like that. In retrospect, possibly kind of obvious.

    It doesn't matter all that much though. The classic setup works as well as ever. Even moreso, actually, now that they're engaged in combat. Red Giant has the strength to send the exosuits colliding into one another, and the magsoles to keep pushing them along the frictionless surface until they pick up too much speed to stop. Fortuitously, just as they reach the airlock at the end of the corridor, the doors emergency cycle, and the exosuits are send careening out into space. Another green affirmative light is flashed into the Redshifts' tactical display.

    The engineers are even more terrified of Bercilak after he dismembers the exosuit. The pilot clearly waits for him to turn his back before attempting to make a break for it, but the hatch is jammed, mangled by his rocket knee strike. It seems that, if nothing else, they pick up the word 'Jump', and figure it out from there. They flock to the manual drive controls, eager not to be dismembered in the same manner as the robotic suit. The engine room fills with the steady roar of a thrumming flywheel, a faint purple glow creeping into the surroundings. The intercom is too late to stop them. "Attention all crew! The bridge has fallen into enemy hands! All command staff are K.I.A! Combat personnel casualties upwards of eighty percent; battle readiness levels below critical! Move to evacuation stations immediately!" The engineers panic, but it's too late now. In a minute minutes, the entire ship will be warping to god knows where with them on it.
Liza Grier     Rita is running the clock shortly beforehand. Phasing through all of the walls and slingshotting herself from one fleeing marine to another drops her in the admin room immediately. Thankfully, it's really not difficult to find the emergency cell block purge, being very large and red and locked behind glass, given that it is nearly an automatic death sentence to their financially valuable cargo. All those in the cell blocks feel the lurch as the prison compartments explosively detach from the main superstructure, lights flickering and turning dim red as they switch to backup power, gravity disappearing with it.

    They aren't exactly detaching from the main superstructure all that fast. There's no way they'd escape the blast radius of the ensuing nuclear explosion if the ship weren't set to warp away. This is fortunate; it's not too difficult for Bercilak, Rita, or Hiromi (now carrying a very large amount of research data that was so helpfully made portable by the now-dead staff) to reach them in the couple of minutes remaining. Really, even just breaching a wall and jumping out into space would serve them just fine.

    The mysterious creatures remain exactly where Hiromi tells them without question. Thankfully, they'll go up with the ship, remaining a mystery until that data is examined. Whatever they did to the staff might be harder to figure out. It reminds Hiromi most closely (even if still only a loose approximation) of a certain, familiar miasmatic cause of death.
Sleek Shimmer     The situation is now rather hectic. Shimmer's consumed much of her qi and is starting to feel the pressure mounting against her human form. Not only that, everyone bailing in a panic has her instincts in alarm. She's not sure quite what's happening, but it's obvious that the ship is now the worst place she could be.

    In just a few moments, she *blips-shifts* across reality, seating herself lightly on the shoulder of Staren's crazy armor. "Think it's time to go, right?" She now... doesn't look to have any injuries, not even her clothes are torn, though there's no missing the exhaustion of her slumped posture. "Metal titan armors put up hell of a fight."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Bercilak taps the haft of the axe on the ground. While the Mauler is effectively out of commission with the pilot trapped inside a dismembered mech, it's better to be safe than sorry. A thickly entwined wall of trees sprouts up behind him, as the shattered pieces of that massive harness are consumed in encroaching tides of blue light.

     He steps past the wall just before it's finished, and strides up to the engineers. His helmet dissolves next, revealing his smiling face. A gauntlet comes up to sweep back his undercut mohawk, opposite hand shouldering the axe. They did what he asked--but they're making it very easy to bully.

     The Green Knight strides up to the nearest engineer, head held high, footfalls heavy and purposeful. Calmly, Bercilak places an armored hand upon his head and pats twice. Seven and a half feet cuts a very imposing figure--all the more so, in all likelihood, when he leans down to make eye contact. Bercilak chastely kisses him on the forehead. "Thou hath my thankinge."

     He then turns around, refuses to elaborate, and leaves, hewing a path around the enclosure he'd made to trap the pilot, so as not to undo his own work. He emerges in the neighboring hallway, on his way to the detaching sections--right into the path of Hiromi.
Hiromi     Hiromi, presently carrying a line of prisoner restraints and a weirdly natural-looking stone block all on a rope, doesn't run into the exosuits. She doesn't run into the killteams. She hardly runs into anything worth mentioning at all, considering how below noteworthy automatic guns and locked bulkheads are. She has not (technically) (herself) killed a single person during this entire encounter (probably), and has not met a single one that would be worth remembering. Smashing her way down the length of the heavily hacked and moderately combat-scarred ship, she gets all the way to engineering before finding--

    A man close enough to her own height, at his seven and a half feet, strong and thickly made, covered in green plates of armor, with cloth of gold trim, carrying an axe to fit his stature.

    Finally.

    Her face alight with sudden hope for this one, Hiromi lets out, politely enough, a howl with the unmistakeable meaning of you're about to get some (with overtones of so don't bite your tongue) as she maneuvers through the ship section in quick bounds from point to point, carrying her into a tackling trajectory on Bercilak, ready for that immediate transition to toss, turn, anchor her hands on the deck plate, and double-kick him to the opposite wall.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Bercilak is hit, Hiromi's strength enough to draw sparks where his armor grinds against the metal interior. Taken completely by surprise, his belly-laugh survives even the impact with the wall, which tears his cloak of reedgrass and peonies from its mantle.

     Prying himself from a hole made in the wall, he chuckles and cracks his neck. Finally--someone who gets it! He doesn't bother with words, instead letting his actions speak.

     The weapon's long reach is brought to bear against her, with several harassing thrusts of the weapon's blunt eye aimed at her lower legs. At first, it might seem as though he's fishing for a grapple--after all, the beard is large enough to catch a human neck.

     He disavows this suggestion with a surprise stance change, using the haft to batter from the left, aimed at her torso, then promptly funneling the momentum into a bladed swipe brought down upon her shoulder on the opposite side.

     "Gretinges," he offers cordially.
Staren     Some doing. Staren RIPS AND TEARS apart the armor of evil, to give her allies and the prisoners a chance. Perhaps with the suits weaponless she can focus enough attacks on the cockpit to kill pilots without having to tear through the suits as much as she would otherwise.

    More come. Staren can't block EVERY direction with forcefields or she'll become useless and risk being boxed in. Her sensors indicate fresh powercells, but the earlier victory has reinvigorated Staren, and she has an idea for something to try... But the Redshift Operators have an even better idea! Staren's mouth hangs open for a moment in surprise as she realizes how they've used the dogbot's chemsprayer. She wouldn't have thought of that... But she'll have to remember that one.

    There is a moment for her to breathe, after the block they're in is detached. She puts out the call for the Concord to send transports. Or maybe some techs with an artificial warpgate, or SOMETHING.

    "Nah, we're gonna be here awhile." Staren replies to Shimmer. "We still gotta get all these people," Staren waves a power armored-hand at the prisoners, "and those in all the other blocks, to someplace where they can choose their own destiny. Good to see you seem to have healed all those holes in you."

    Her armor opens up, and Staren steps out. She's wearing a near-skintight spaceuit of tough but flexible material, with reinforced boots and knees, her usual vambraces, and a bit of metal armor around the shoulders and upper portion of chest that also serves as an attachment point for gear (like the emergency air tank and jetpack on her back); it's got some tasteful white, black, and Concord-orange pattern on the suit and the Concord's symbol offset on the front of the armor piece.

    As there is currently atmosphere, she pops the helmet (it kind of rotates backward from its attachment to the shoulder armor/backpack, for easy manual or automatic re-closing), takes a couple of deep breaths, unwinds her tail from around her and stretches it (the flexible part of the suit covers it too) and shakes her hair out.

    She walks over to Red Dwarf and smiles, holding out a hand to shake. "Nice to finally meet you."

    Once pleasantries have been exchanged, while waiting for Concord support to get here she sets about examining the pair of Marauders further, just to see how they build things here. And maybe take anything worth salvaging.
Redshift Operators     The gunman almost beefs it, slammed by one of the exosuits leaving an airlock at high speed. The ninja adeptly snatches his hand before he goes flying out with them, and yanks him back as the airlock cycles.

    Rolling over, the squad leader lets out a heavy sigh, stares up at the ceiling of the drifting block, and takes a few seconds among the prisoners. Then he calls out, "Alright, good job everyone. Uh, in case you didn't know, that was a *real* prison break." He just has to clarify, after his initial deceptions. The giant pulls him up on his feet with a big meaty hand, and he directs the hacker to pop an emergency distress beacon -- "Rate it for a few thousand souls minimum. Lot of prisoners."

    Ah, he's being greeted. "Fancy kit. 'Staren.'" One of those optics shifts a lens, like he's quirking an eyebrow. It's the orange pattern. "Never met a Concorder who gave Egregorism the time of day." He doesn't reciprocate the helmet removal, even while the cyborg does. It doesn't seem to be out of tension, though: he shakes the hand. "Good work. I'm gonna settle the prisoners. Here's hoping that goddamn bomb jumps right -- with none of my team on it."
Staren     Staren doesn't ask for a helmet reveal, although if any of the rest of the team approach she'll offer them a handshake too. She also looks between them, taking a headcount. One, two, three, four. "You're all in this block now, aren't you?"

    "Really? I don't understand why... Heck, if anything, I'd think it'd be within the Concord's mission to try and figure out how to make a *good* egregore; one that keeps helping people regardless of the occasional bad actor and stymies the spread of corruption. If nothing else, understanding how to stop bad ones from forming seems like an important part of building better societies."
Rita Ma      After double- and triple-checking over radio that they're ready to be jettisoned while en route, Rita turns corporeal again for just long enough to smash the glass with her bare hand and slam the big red button in the same motion. "Prison wings are released! Double-check the atmosphere!"

     She allows herself a tiny breather, hands on her knees. Her side still stings where she got shot earlier. I did okay, didn't I? I bet Ms. Grier's going to be really happy. That thought lets her smile a little.

     Then she's daisychaining her way back to one of the prison wings, tactically swooshing from one crewmember to the next to ignore obstructing walls. When she finally gets there, still with a decent cushion of time, Rita just collapses onto the nearest unoccupied prison cot and stares at the ceiling for a while.

     Eighteen minutes of full-bore physical exertion feels a lot longer than it sounds. When the adrenaline wears off, everything starts aching. Hopefully the prisoners will let her vegetate in peace.
Hiromi     Hiromi moves slowly, while waiting for Bercilak to get out his wall-crater, in that oddly methodical way one has to maintain a state of unshakeable balance while in motion. The tension before the jump can't be seen if it's continually readied. She watches, wide-eyed, teeth just slightly bared, low to the current downward direction, 'ground' not being truly available.

    The thrusts she avoids, possibly taking that for a grapple, after all, but the haft's blow she takes solidly, openly grinning afterward. It's like striking a mountain. There was not the slightest attempt to avoid it, even to an aborted flinch.

    One may take away a sense of being measured.

    The follow-up axe strike, that split moment later, is given greater respect, Hiromi's opposite hand palm-striking the side of it in a whirl of motion, her body twisting just enough to avoid a diverted blow. Preferentially, she slides in rather than dodge away from every attack coming her way, so long as it puts her in a better position from which to apply her strength. Taking the attacks head-on isn't much worse, in her opinion.

    I am Hiromi. Those aren't words, but sounds that form into words only sometime after a mind realizes they were spoken. (One could say the same of all words, perhaps.) You knew this, didn't you? I'd hoped to find one of your stature here. Were they as disappointing to you as they were to me? For not being a verbal language, it's frightfully information-dense, letting her say that in as short a time as it takes to feint a leg sweep, a spin into a straight kick, and then the real attack, the sharp bone-claws sprouting from her hands that hook into armor and make it that much harder to break a grapple.

    Hiromi kicks off the deck to build up speed before withdrawing her claws to throw Bercilak at the far end of the room with the 'much more' force she, having seen how he took that first attack without a problem, considers appropriate.

    It happens to be more force than the ship can take, but that's not a problem.

    She can just leap out, into space, after him.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      There is an impressed sort of 'ha-ha' at the Archwolf's response to his attack, changing his grip in response to an anticipated leg sweep--the blade of the axe dropped downwards to ward a leg that doesn't come. The next feint, he responds to with a remarkably fast roll of his upper body, considering how heavily armored he is. It has him coming back into position perfectly to catch the unexpected bone-claws.

     Caught in a clinch, struggling to break free, he gives his answer. "*Ani-man* who ifightes to isave ivel as this, shalt himself be demed failment, hou-sum-ever craftuous and sprakli he may be--"

     He activates the thrusters on his armor, attemping to drive both of their skulls into the ceiling. They don't reach it. Instead, it ends up assisting Hiromi's toss, putting him through the wall. The last thing heard before the atmopshere completely vents is his spirited belly laugh and the roar of the Wraith's engine.

     They'll probably be at it for a while, even in the freezing vacuum of space, if that's his reaction. At least it's happening with all the other objectives done.
Redshift Operators     "You, the person, aren't *good* for your cells." The gruff fellow rambles, sourly, jabbing a finger towards Staren. "Maybe you're a good person, but you aren't good for your parts. A 'good egregore' would think about human life the same way you think about gut microbiota: You *don't*." He jabs that finger onto his own head, after that. "Remember that any time you think about a 'good egregore'." Is it hostile? Maybe to the idea of an egregore.

    "Forgive him his race-war rhetoric. You have not made him upset, he is simply cursed with this demeanor." Says the ninja, on her way out. She's heading to go get Rita. "You appear strained. Let us hope there is no more struggle to endure. And then I shall administer medical care for extreme exhaustion."
Liza Grier     Not ten seconds after Hiromi has plougehd Bercilak through a wall and into hard vacuum, the sound of teeth-rattling flywheel roaring behind the two rises into a scratchy electronic crescendo, and then the entire ship --the entire town-sized mountain of metal-- vanishes with a soft but dizzying 'boom'.

    It's no property of sound that gives the impression, given the lack of air to transmit any, but it's difficult to say why it feels like being close to something 'supersonic'. A faint purple streak seems to split the entire universe in half, disappearing along the ship's former axis of movement, and then they're simply adrift scores of building-sized compartments gently drifting away from each other.

    No prisoners are intent on hassling Rita lying down. Despite the understandably hideous reputation associated with this facility, it seems nobody in particular --at least no one within a hundred feet of Rita-- is intent on causing a scene while still drifting in space and thus easily left here. That, or they're just glad to be out, and the adrenaline is wearing off for them too. Or a very significant number of them aren't here for good reasons. Take a pick. All anyone bothers to ask the Redshifts and/or Staren are where they're going now. Some are probably still plotting a breakout, but don't have the means anyways.

    Thirty seconds later, Liza's voice crackles on over the local band. "Confirmed successful nuclear detonation. Shame you sent it all the fucking way out there; would have been nice if you could see it. No salvage. Wasn't much time to pull data on the project, but whatever it was, it's not going anywhere fast. Good work." There's a burst of data on the encrypted Watch band. "Sending teleporter codes back to my ship. You remember where the beacons were on the outside of the cell block hulls right? I'll know once you're in range. Let's go home."