That's right. Jet has to have good kinesthetics or she'll rip people's arms off trying to shake their hand.
Gina and Quattro? There has to be a way of getting those two into a room together.
Meanwhile... Jet is worried about Ford. (While I hardly think Ford counts as a 'dependent' Jet still has to roleplay the disadvantage. I think it works out nice if we see Jet stressing rather than being coldly logical and professional.)
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Gina and Quattro? There has to be a way of getting those two into a room together.
Meanwhile... Jet is worried about Ford. (While I hardly think Ford counts as a 'dependent' Jet still has to roleplay the disadvantage. I think it works out nice if we see Jet stressing rather than being coldly logical and professional.)
Quote:Mari was on the Nova’s bridge when the alarm went off. Half dozed, she shot awake launching out of the chair, near hitting her head off the ceiling.________________________________
“What the hell?” she asked no-one
“The Stargazer just went dark.” Desmond responded. “She sent out a single pulse of microwave radiation, then lost connection with our systems.”
“Shit. Powerful enough to be detected at range?”
“Most likely not. It appears to have been directed internally. The overspill was enough to be detected by our main sensor array.”
Which was right above the shuttlebay.
“A power surge?”
“Possible. I can’t tell from sensor data. And I cannot get an answer from Cortana. She has power, but the connection is down.”
“Fire risk?”
“None.”
Mari sighed. AI must’ve glitched or something and accidentally zapped herself. The downside of human-level AI’s was that they sometimes made human mistakes. She crossed the cabin to the comm’s station, silencing the alarm on her way. She pulled down the handset.
“Luka, Luka, you awake down there?”
“Yeah Captain,” he answered, taking a few moments “Just had something right royal weird happen down here.”
He sounded just a little bit annoyed. Mari thought she heard a panel slam.
“What?”
“Coupla our routers just died. Some sort of power surge down the ethernet cables zapped ‘em,”
Mari grimaced. If that AI goofed it up, she was paying for the hardware replacement.
“I could put her into Desmond’s backup switch, but I have to recut the cable and everything. Should have gone to fibre when we had the chance. Old piece ‘a Boskonian junk.” Another panel slam. Something clattered to the ground. “Fuck!. Everything’s shorted out back here. What the hell did she do to my gear, stick a sparkplug to it?”
“It seems like a microwave burst,” Mari answered. “I need you to go forward into the launch bay and make sure she didn’t zap herself by mistake.”
“Yes ma’am,”
In the hanger the Stargazer was still standing motionless as before. There was slight a smell of charred electronics inside, but no smoke in the air. He rapped on the cars windows
“Cortana, is everything all right?” he asked.
“Ahh, good to hear someone...” the AI answered. “ I had a few rough moments, but the worst parts are over.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Quattro tried to hack me through the QED. I had to break the connection somehow, so I redirected my radio output onto some unshielded cable and destroyed the router,”
Luka looked cross. “Well you destroyed half the switchgear in the next room at the same time, ”
“Oops,” said Cortana. She wasn’t sorry. “I am running some systems diagnostics. I have lost my connection through the QED to Hedwig, and most of my network hardware has been damaged. I hope the QED itself is still okay. The one in Nehallenia appears to have been destroyed.”
“Damn,” said Luka.
Mari was busy on the bridge, working with Desmond to try get some signal out without being detected. A quick burst transmission to Butterscotch to let them know they’d just had a hardware failure, that they hadn’t be blown off the rock by a sneak attack.
The comm panel chirruped.
“Bridge, Luka. It’s a goddamn mess down here. Cortana was nearly hacked by our target, she blew out switches to break the link. I think I can patch everything in through Desmonds switch. Gimme five minutes to see if we can get our link to Hedwig back. Anything else... I dunno.”
“Get about it,” she ordered.
“Butterscotch has acknowledged.” Desmond interrupted her. “We are not aligned with Nehallenia at the moment. The directed transmission should be undetectable at current power levels.”
“Good,” she replied, “Now get Jet to the bridge. She needs to know about this.” A few moments went by. “She’s on her way.”
They could hear Jet running, heavy metal feet thumping on the deckplates. It stopped for a second, followed by a heavy slam as she hit the top deck. The hatch near came off it’s hinges.
“What happened?”
“Jeez, somebody’s tense” Linda snarked.
“Cortana has nearly been hacked,” Desmond explained. “She cut off her connection to Nehallenia. There was some collateral damage in our network equipment. But we still have connection to Butterscotch.”
“Chigusho,” Jet growled. “If they hacked Cortana, it won’t be long before they get the QED.” A pause. Jet thought. Jet searched for a justification she could write into a report.Bingo. “Get us in the air, we’re going now. Signal to Butterscotch; Showtime!”
“Butterscotch acknowledges.” Desmond said. “Twenty Five minutes until curtain up.”
“We can’t wait that long.”
“It’ll take at least five minutes to preflight,” Mari said. She could understand at least what had lit that fire under the cyber’s butt.
“Not good enough,” Jet barked at her. “If they’ve got the QED, it won’t take a genius to figure out who fucking put it there.”
And I’ll never forgive myself if Ford gets killed while we’re on this rock twiddling our thumbs
“We’ll go as fast as we can,” Mari said, keeping her voice calm. “Provided it doesn’t endanger this ship or it’s crew. It won’t do them any good if we blow up in mid air.”
For one brief moment, Jet looked ready to kill her. Jet looked ready to rip and tear her way to Nehallenia. Jet closed her eyes, taking a long breath in through her nose. She held it for a few pregnant moments. The whole body seemed to relax, a tension flowing out of her as she exhaled.
“You’re right,”she said, brushing some hair off her face. “You’re right. Just.... be quick.”
“We’ll try.”
The comm panel alarmed once more.
“Signal from Nehallenia.” Desmond reported, gravely. “It’s the emergency code. It is authentic.”
Jet went visibly green. “Fuck!,” She glanced to the speaker, almost wild-eyed with fear, then at Mari “I’ll be in the cargo bay. Get us moving.”
Mari keyed open the intercom. “This is the Captain. Take-off stations. Take-off station. Now,”
“And this is why you should never be in love with your undercover agents,” Desmond sighed privately. “It always introduces complications,”
Jet had already disappeared below decks.
----
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