Log:Defiance Guild: We Didn't Start the Fire

Defiance Guild: We Didn't Start the Fire

OOC Date: June 8, 2017
Location: The Void of Space
Participants: Defiance: Tarion Tavers, Hex, Trillian Taim, Sapphira Tavers, Rheisa Dirleel

"Listen, just dress up as a New Republic officer and tell my parents I'm doing a great job," Tarion is trying to persuade Hex, on the way to wherever they're going. Tarion is already decked out, in what would be a sensible Ensign's uniform if it didn't have a Tavers inside it. He's even got those little magic-marker looking code sticks, although he's only important enough to have one shoved into the slot on his chest. "It'll make the video more convincing." They're onboard a ship, one of Hex's, on their way to intercept some slaves someone heard about, or to learn more about slaves someone heard about. Slaves are involved, that's all that matters, it's Defiance. The hunter holds out another uniform towards the Twi'lek. "Come on, just try it on, you might like it."

Hex is leaning against the wall, and while he regularly does not look like a military-issue person, everything about that seems heightened when someone is offering him a uniform. The tattoos, the floral duster, the generalized Space Scum aesthetic, the missing arm, the extra 15 kg... maybe at one point he operated semi functionally within the armed forces but has anyone actually SEEN it? He is smoking, and makes no move to take the uniform. "I'm bad at lying, Tavers. You /know/ that I'm bad at lying."

"... so I just press this button here?" asks a small voice for probably the third time. Trillian is holding a holo camera with one hand and trying to get it to cooperate. She focuses it on Tarion and makes sure to get him squared in the frame. "... um... I dunno. I still don't think it looks believable."

"They've been accepting these as reality for like, three years now," Tarion retorts to Trillian's doubts, with a frown. How dare she question the legitimateness of this lie. "Just keep it steady, you're supposed to be a tripod." Turning back to Hex, he says "Just put it on and say something about a training maneuver that we've been busy with. I haven't sent an update in a while." Did anyone else know that Tarion is lying to his parents to this extreme? They do now.

This impromptu improv portion is interrupted by a loud beeping from the ship's nav computer even as they pipe along through hyperspace. "What /now./" The hunter's eyes roll upward as he wanders over, looking for all the world like a New Republic junior officer, and punches the button. And then another, and another, bringing up the warning message onscreen. "...what am I looking at here. Oh, that." Another button, and a transmission opens up.

"All vessels, this is a distress call," a crunchy voice blares to the room. "We have a *blrpt* onboard and cannot *blzoorkurple* *droooo*"

Tarion keeps pushing buttons, as the signal continues to degrade, and then repeats, trying to get something intelligible out of it.

"How do you even have parents?" Hex asks, incredulously. "I thought you just sprang fully formed, angry and adult, from the fiery depths of an enormous trash fi--" Oh no, woop woop woop distress! Hex siiiiighs, exhaling smoke -- he's not supposed to smoke inside the ships, but Kasia isn't here to enforce it -- and then steps towards the cockpit. "Any way to get more of that transmission?"

Trillian furrows her brow as she listens intently. Putting down the camera, she moves over beside Tarion and presses a few buttons, trying to help clear up the audio signal. "um... it... um... it sounds like they're in a lot of trouble... a fire on board and some bulkhead misfunction. Um... should we help?" asks Trillian nervously, brushing a tendril of hair from her face. She looks expectantly at Hex, and then at Tarion. Looking down at the nav computer, she punches in the coordinates that she overheard. "Look, it's not too far out of the way..."

"Why is there beeping?!" That's Sapphira. She's been inside the bulkheads for a big chunk of the trip. Which is ironic, considering she is one of the few people who is fully aware (and likely complicit) in Tarion's lying to his parents. She slips out from one of the crawlspace panels and jogs forward toward the cockpit. Today she's wearing fitted pants and a tank top, which was under her hand-knitted poncho earlier, but that's now been set aside. She still wears that necklace from Tanaab. Her hair is pulled up and back in a tight braid, then a bun. She pauses just inside the cockpit, bright green eyes flitting to her husband and his uniform. "Is this special effects for your parents, or is this real?"

"It's real," Tarion confirms tepidly, but the consternation on his face (mostly directed at Trillian for figuring out what the transmission said before he could) melts into an easy smirk quickly enough. "Real and /dangerous,/ from the sound of it, and this rescue sounds like CASH MONEY, baby." No one said anything about a rescue yet, but.

"Sapph, see if you can get a lock on their transmission and send something through to them. Trillian, you fly us through when I pull us out of hyper. Hex, you- you let me know if I'm allowed to do this shit and how much of a bonus I'm gonna get for my heroism."

"Mmmmmnnnhhh," Hex makes an unhappy and noncommittal noise, lekku shifting in thought as he runs this information through his mind. Which is probably less like a steel trap and more like a wet paper bag, but anyway. "Honestly, I like obvious damage more than I like /no/ obvious damage, because it's less likely to be a trap. Not impossible, but it'd take a dedicated trapper to actually set the ship on fire in order to lure us in. Let's get a closer look. You're not getting a bonus unless I actually see heroism, Tavers. Showing up for work doesn't count as heroism, you misbegotten catastrophe."

Nodding at Tarion, Trillian slips into the pilot's seat and grabs the controls in preparation for coming out of hyper. She hits a series of switches and buttons with a confidence that's unusual for her usual timid self. "Realspace engines primed for reversion, Tarion. On your mark..." The Mayhem shifts slightly as the white streams of light resolves into individual dots. Data from the system starts flowing onto the screens and Trillian pulls at the controls, smoothly pulling the Mayhem in a curve. "Anybody see anything on the sensors yet?"

"What am I supposed to say?" Sapphira, still so fresh out of school, asks the room rhetorically as she makes her way over to a terminal behind Tarion. She flips a few switches, squints at the screen in front of her, then flips again. "This is the Mayhem, responding to your distress signal," the woman's voice rings clear into the transmitter, and she flips a few more switches, adjusting a dial ever so slightly. She clears her throat, and repeats her words. "Please prepare for docking if you're able."

"Well, who knows how old this transmission even is," Tarion points out, but soon enough something starts blipping on the sensors, a little bit removed from the coordinates they were given. "That way."

The sensors show another light freighter, and heat signatures indicate what the transmission said is true; a fire onboard that's so intense the small blips that are presumably the crew look very cold in comparison. "Krif, that looks bad," the hunter remarks, waving Hex over to take a look. "I don't think they can fake that, without hacking into our sensors somehow."

The transmission crackles into life, and a panicked woman appears onscreen, her blue skin looking less saturated than it probably should. "Hello? Hello, is someone out there? We're trapped in the cargo bay, it was... it was the furthest place from where the fire broke out."

"This is a crottin' joke," Hex sighs, because Defiance is a compassionate group of people who will always do what is right. "You guys ever been set on fire? Cause I /have/, and I will tell you that it's not a good time." He extinguishes his cigarette, and then takes a step away; maybe the experience of his own flesh burning has made him reluctant to condemn blue woman and her crew to the same fate. "Take us in closer, dock if you can, I'm going to go put on armor. Let's see if we can help these people."

"Approaching now, sir," Trillian's hands fly over the controls as the Mayhem makes a graceful approach to the freighter. Cutting the engines a few clicks out, the Mayhem glides to a slow stop in front of the freighter. Trillian grabs the controls again and uses the maneuvering jets to match the rotation of the freighter. "Sapph, I'm lined up here. Got you as close as I can for the docking. Let me know if you need any adjustments," Trillian calls out, still holding the controls with her hands.

"Is the cargo bay sealed?" Sapphira asks into the comm again, taking her finger off the 'talk' switch to allow an answer to come through if there is one. While she waits, she looks over at the others. "I mean, if they're sealed in there we can just open up the rest of the ship and let all that fire get dragged out into space. Pop into some suites, get life support back up, and they'll be ... well, not in business. But alive." She turns back to the console, making a few more delicate adjustments and then pressing two switches at the same time. The ship rumbles as it locks itself on to the other, and there's a slight shift as their speed slows to match the dead, floating speed of the flaming space junk they've just attached themselves to.

Tarion likewise starts jumping into his armor, one leg at a time and then tugging on the jacket. "Where's my helmet?" Glancing around, he doesn't spot it, apparently. "Sapphira, where's my helmet? I thought I brought it onboard." Frown, frown, mutter, grumble. "Does anyone see it?"

The room must be transmitting to the poor unfortunate souls in the other ship as well, because the blue lady suddenly yells "NO, don't open the hatches! Our bulkheads are malfunctioning, you'll vent the whole ship!" And of course, the spot they've docked on has fire between it and the cargo bay. Wonderful.

"I like that plan, Sapphira," Hex confirms, hollering from where he's strapping his ~glorious~ Scarif armor on to his hottie body. Tarion is on his own for helmet hunting. "Do --" Well, there's the blue lady saying not to do that. "-- not that," he sighs. "I dunno, adjust. Do what you can to get us where we need to be without venting those poor assholes into space. We do have some fire extinguishing kits on board the Mayhem, but I got a feeling it is not gonna be equipped for that magnitude of you're-screwed fire."

"Sapphira, can you pull up a schematic of the freighter?" asks Trillian. "Um... maybe... um... maybe there's another way we can isolate the crew? Can we get access to the door controls from here?"

"I can probably access it if I go for a walk," Sapphira responds to Trillian, no doubt referring to a space walk. She doesn't even look at Tarion as she plucks his helmet up from a safe corner of the floor and offers it over to him. Men and their socks. "Unless you want to try and plug in and override it from here. Which is //an// option. Not sure if it's better or worse, but it's an option." She looks to Hex, because he is the bossman. "The ship should have some extinguishers built-in, but they might be offline." She begins to draw up information on the ship, typing quickly and efficiently.

"Oh. Thanks." Tarion takes over the helmet from Sapphira, popping it onto his head. Will it protect him from noxious space fumes? Who knows. "Okay, Hex and I are going in. I think these things are fire retardant or something so maybe we can manually get the extinguishers running again. You two, uh. Computers. Science. Flight. Engineering. Stuff. Make it work so we don't die or whatever motivates you." He's a great leader, is Tarion Tavers, and he pops open the hatch between the Mayhem and the crippled craft.

Smoke. Immediately smoke, it's fairly bellowing out of the other ship and coming straight into their area. "That's not good."

Hex sneaks in a pose, slacking from work, thus handling both work and RP badly, "That's a whole hot mess of not good," he agrees, through his helmet's vocoder. "Why the hell aren't their fire suppression systems working? At all?" He hands Tarion a hand held extinguisher and keeps one for himself, but it might be like throwing a bucket of water at a house fire.

"Um... um.... um...." Trillian stammers nervously. Slapping a button on the console, the exhaust fans thrum to life and start sucking up the noxious smoke. "Maybe their whole automated system is down. If somebody can go in and find a dataport, we may be able to jump it using the Mayhem's computer. I think?" Trillian looks at Sapphira for confirmation.

"Don't-" but then smoke is billowing from one ship to the other, and Sapphira brings a hand up to cover her mouth. She coughs into it, turning her face away and shaking her head. "Bad idea, bad idea," she mutters to herself, but even as she speaks, she begins to work. Flipping switches here and there, adjusting a few dials, doing a few scans.

"There's ... a //lot// wrong with their systems," Sapphira admits at last, looking over to the others, such as she can, and back to the screen. "I'm going outside, I think I'll have better luck out there." And she rises, moving away from the console to find a space suit.

So where's Rheisa in this whole bonfire boarding affair? Nowhere near the airlock, that's for sure. Is she the sort to shy away from campfires and scuttle about nervously in the shadows while others have a jolly good time roasting sausages and mallows? No. She's rather soothed by the quiet crackle-spit of a quaint, cozy fire. But THIS? This is not cozy. Nope. Nopenopenope. This is deathfire, burn'em up, funeral pyre times ten. Like maybe if a whole village caught some traveler's flu. Also, it smells wrong. So wherever she /was/ fifteen seconds ago, she's now slunk in to occupy Sapphira's vacating seat, as far from the inferno as she can get. This lands her in fantastically close proximity to all the interesting buttons and knobs and levers and switches she's customarily warned against touching, and of course, Trilliam, where she can watch Sapphira go with an expression that suggests she would advise otherwise.

"This is not good." Tarion may not be a firefighter, but he knows enough to know that this is not good. "Point at like, the base of it. Which might be... I don't know, just spray it! We need to get to somewhere where we can activate the whatevers or just barrel into the cargo room, it's your choice," the hunter replies to Hex, his own helmet doing significantly less vocoding than the Twi'lek's.

Something explodes. The force rocks both ships. Is Trillian paying enough attention to keep the craft from separating?

Whatever Tarion doesn't know about firefighting, Hex knows even less. Which is to say that maybe you shouldn't walk INTO the smoke? But that's what he's doing, by god, stepping forward. "Sure, I'll spray at the base of it if I ever even find the fire. Activate the whatevers," he commands, "If we fail, which we probably will, then we'll go with option barrel in."

"Nooo!" Trillian grabs the controls as an explosion rocks both ships. "Guys... um... this just got a lot more complicated..." she mutters, trying to readjust to the new spin of the freighter. The explosion had changed the inertia of the freighter into a more complicated spin. There is a metal groaning sound as Trillian grits her teeth and steers the Mayhem a little bit closer to the freighter. The moaning sound stops abruptly. "Sapph, check the docking clamp. I hope I didn't strain it too much."

There's a cry from Sapphira as the shifting of the ship sends her onto her ass, sliding across the hall. She manages to catch herself on the bulkhead and hauls herself up as the sound of alarms and smoke fills the area. The redhead draws up her tank top to expose her belly, holding the end of it over her face as she makes her way toward the docking bays between the ships. One hand reaches out to touch one of the clamps ... and Sapphira shrieks, pulling her hand quickly away as a quick scent of sizzling flesh perfumes the air. "It won't hold forever like this," she reports. Then she turns and hurries to where the space suites are stored. She's quick, climbing inside of one and hauling the top half down over her head ala The Martian. "Get the airlock ready for me, Trillian."

Wah. Much wah. When the explosion rocks their boats, Rheisa becomes one with the chair and someone may need to check for tears if/when those nails are extracted. She's beginning to have second thoughts about inviting this crew along on her homeward bound trip. No side trips...just point A and back. That's it. For sure. The Togruta could not possibly be farther from her element out here in the vacuum of space, on fire, and ...spinning? Who's spinning? Both eyes are fixed on Trill now, since she's at the controls and appears to be calling the shots. A valiant attempt's made to wish Sapphira safe travels but all that comes out is this squeaky noice and then a round of sneeze/coughing.

"Just keep spraying it!" Tarion yells, spraying his extinguisher wildly at anything that looks vaguely hot. "We're heading for the cargo hold!" he adds, pushing his thumb into the comm button to squawk out of the control panel Trillian's using. The extinguishers pump out a foam which turns into a soupy gel upon contact with the air, blanketing fire rather effectively. The problem is that this fire is rather stubborn as well, and there's electricity involved, but it does seem to be working despite the sparks that threaten to shoot a thousand volts through your foot if you step into said soupy gel. "I hope they're not all asphyxiated down there." That would suck.

"Well, if they are, we'll just go through their pockets and say we tried," Hex replies to Tarion, right by his side, ineffectively firefighting, spraying that soupy goop. Chicks love firefighters. Who let these two go anywhere without an adult, though?

Trillian reaches under the pilot's chair and pulls up a small durasteel container. Opening it and rummaging through it quickly, she pulls out a small cylinder. Reaching across the panel, she hits another series of buttons and waits for the lights to turn green before hopping out of the seat and rushing over to where Sapphira was struggling with the space suit. Taking a hold of her hand, she liberally sprays a light mist of bacta over her hand before helping her into the bulky suit. Cross checking all the seals, she nods at Sapphira and holds her thumb up before scurrying back to the cockpit. She toggles a switch on the control board, "Sapphira, do you read. Comm check, comm check. OK, airlock is set. Don't forget to set your tether!"

"Just leave it!" Sapphira tells Trillian, not waiting for her hand to be sprayed before she hauls the suit top down and disappears inside. There will be a little more adjusting and finnicking, getting her comms online and sealing her helmet. She offers a thumbs up to step into the airlock, responding over her comms. "Loud and clear. I'm going to make sure that airlock doesn't burst until we're ready." As the first door closes, Sapphira latches her tether easily and with practice. It's science-fiction, after all, everyone's used to spacewalks. And, in a few more moments, Sapphira leaps in a lumbering sort of way, sailing silently through space to cling where the two ships meet. The intercourse point, if you will. And she begins to work. The hot latches on the inside suddenly start to steam as Sapphira flushes the hydrolics, pushing cool water and air along the joists. And then there are loud thunks, indicating manual latches are being attached to hold the whole thing together. It holds. For now.

"How she can hold together two ships?" Rheisa queries worriedly to the remaining, reasonably sane individual on board.

Firefighters are sexy. This much everyone agrees on, including Tarion, who is too busy extinguishing to nod, slowly beating a passable path to the cargo hold. Sapphira's work above ensures they're not going to be sucked out into the vacuum of space, as well, which is a good thing. When the flames have died down enough, the hunter darts forward through the heat, his suit's helmet protesting loudly. Inside the cargo hold, four survivers are gathered, and the hunter strikes a heroic pose for them with his extinquisher, which promptly kicks back on, coating the whole of them in the thick gelatinous substance. "Shit. Uh, hello," he greets, switching it off after a brief struggle. "We're here to rescue you." The smirk he grins does not admit that that whole 'sprayed with choking chemicals' thing happened.

"Tarion, you garbage," trooper-vocoder Hex says to employee of the month, because you can say things like this to Tarion either IC /or/ OOC. "Your ship's in bad shape," he continues to the survivors, "Up and out, ok ka, before something new starts burning or your crotting ship breaks into a few more pieces. The pathway is clear." He never succeeded any firefighter rolls, though. "Probably."

"Sithspit," Trillian mutters under her breath. Slapping the comm transmit button, she clears her throat. "Um... not to hurry you guys along but... things are getting very complicated out here. Could you please hurry the krif up please?" Trillian swearing can't be a sign that anything is going well. Klaxons have just started blaring in the cockpit. Trillian shoots Rheisa a glance and then turns back to the controls.

"The bindings out here will burst when you release the hold and disembark," Sapphira's voice crackles over the comms. "I'm on my way back in." And indeed, she is in fact on her way back in - the sound of fussing in the airlock will soon be heard.

Rheisa swallows her next question and closes her eyes against the shrieks of klaxons. Deathgrip on chair remains for another six-point-2 seconds, then she self ejects and scambles out of sight to whatever cargo/lounge space exists on this ship where logically any survivors will be stowed. She's useless up front. She cannot fit into a suit and is useless in space. She can, however, do the hospitality thing and rummage through Hex's stuff for refreshment. Aka water. And a blanket.

"Alright, fine, I'm trash," Tarion admits, trying to figure out a cool way to holster his extinguisher, but there is no cool way. There's no way at all, really. Instead it just hangs there lamely in his hand. "Okay, you heard the man, let's move!" Herding them along, the hunter heads back towards their hatch toward the Mayhem, and there's some more extinguishing on the way, but somehow everything works out and they get the four loaded onboard; the blue woman, a blue man, and two humans.

"We didn't start the fire," the blue woman offers apologetically to the Mayhem's crew.

"We tried to fight it," Tarion replies, nodding at his 'friends'. "And I think for that we deserve a rew- re-gratitude," he corrects, glancing at Hex. FADE TO BLACK