'Firefly: Sidere' A Take Turns Writing Thread
POSTED BY: SoulOfSerenity
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 4, 2006 21:01
VIEWED: 17509
PAGE 3 of 5
Soul closed his eyes and focused inward, activating the subdermal implant above his left ear. He sensed the momentary hesitation as it interfaced with the Cortex, and he prayed that Manti's quick fix job had effectively destroyed any way of his superiors tracking the signal.
First, he set up a broad search, looking for any sort of reference to the word "Reaver". Quite a few results came up identifying the word as an archaic term from Earth-that-was, and Soul surmised that that was most likely the origin of the word. Then he began to search deeper, digging through the folk tales and myths, until he began to uncover Blue Sun documents using the word "Reavers" with greater than normal frequency. Soul focused harder, and the code breaker software embeded in his brain began to pick away at the coding surrounding the most sensitive of the documents.
Finally, he hit pay dirt.
He found a series of documents describing two different millitary programs currently under operation involving human enhancements for warfare. The fisrt involved a list of children with remarkably high I.Q.'s and signs of telepathic abilities, and it described what the begining of a project aimed towards using those gifted children and turning them into mental weapons.
That sounds like the program Manti escaped from...
Soul got a glimpse of the man in charge and his brain was rocked with a sudden recognition.
Damon Talos. So, I guess just being in charge of the Expendables wasn't enough. It looks like you've found an even bigger sick scheme to run.
Soul let his mind clear for a moment and tried to remain objective. He filed the information in his brain, and took a peak into the other project. That one looked as if it had been terminated, but the documents pertaining to it were littered with references to "Reavers". "Physical Gene Enhancement", "Muscle Growth", and "Mental Reconfiguring" were among the phrases used to describe the project. From what Soul could tell, Blue Sun was using gene therapy to try to enhance the physical and mental abilities of soldiers. Apparently the project had turned out too well: the soldiers not only became physically superior, but their mental conditioning began to break down the barrier between their animal instincts and their more human thoughts. In the end, they destroyed the research facility, horribly murdered all of the staff, stole several warships, and vanished. The last report detailed a plan to recapture and destroy the renegade soldiers, and to supress the reports of atttacks, using the term "Reavers" and playing them off as nothing more than urban legends.
He was about to exit when another file caught his attention, this one describing a new project using airborne drugs to calm a population to make them easier to control. Some sort of drug called Paxalin...
A warning flashed through his mind as a government sniffer caught trace of his signal. Soul quickly shut down the Interface, but the quick exit was a shock to his system, and he fell backwards into the wall.
"Soul!" Teela shouted.
"I'm okay," Soul replied. "Just doin' a bit of research on our new friends out there."
Teela raised an eyebrow. "And just how were you doing that?"
Soul paused, considering how much he should really tell about himself. He looked over at Manti who simply shrugged. Soul sighed, and began to explain what he had found out, and exactly how he had found it.
______________________
Soul, Security Chief of the Sereni-Tree, Captain of Destiny.
Mantichorus: "So is there a reason they call you 'Soul'?"
Soul (after a long pause): "Yeah. Because I have one."
http://havenofsouls.blogspot.com/
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Mantichorus hated situations like this. They usually ended with paranoia, due to too little being said, or someone saying too much and fracturing the group. He'd seen it happen before.
Mostly though, he was praying to the good Lord that Soul didn't let slip about his own abilities. Just what he needed, someone asking him for the rutting lottery numbers...
"So...how likely is it that they can trace you?" Teela asked, having sat down a long time ago.
Soul glanced at the floor for a minute. "...I met a surgeon on Whitefall a year or so back. Specialised in ...mechanical enhancements. He managed to muffle it, so I could have virtually untraceable Cortex access."
"Virtually?" Teela asked, arching an eyebrow incredulously.
"Boarder world tech." Mantichorus decided to add. "Nothing's ever 100% certain with this sorta thing, or so I understand. Even less so when it's the level of technology you get on boarder worlds."
Soul nodded. "Exactly. I only pulled out as quickly as I did then because their was a sniffer on my tail... Extremely sensitive documents. Even key members of the Alliance parliament can't access it unauthorised."
Teela nodded thoughtfully. "OK...I'm gonna have to think about how much of this I tell the others." She got up and started to walk off. She paused. "Hey, Soul. Give us a warning if any Alliance show up." Soul nodded his confirmation and Teela left.
Mantichorus looked at him. "So...what else did you find?"
Soul eyes hardened slightly. "...Blue Sun created the Reavers."
Mantichorus let loose a curse in Mandarin that he had been reliably informed wished a flying elephant with a bad case of explosive diarrhoea should pass over the heads of his enemies.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"There's a lot of stunt men around. That's always a bad sign..." --Chris Buchanan, on the Maidenhead bar scene in Serenity.
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Carla closed herself in her bunk and wrapped up in a blanket. She was pale with fear and continued to shake. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. Deep breath in; deep breath out. Anything to prevent hyperventalating into unconsciousness.
There was a knock at her door.
"Yes?" Carla asked, voice shaking.
"I'm just stopping by to check on you," Teela said.
"Come on in."
The captain entered and leaned against the door.
"You had me worried there, Carla. I thought that we were goin' to have to sedate you."
"I assure you, that's not necessary." Carla was a little ashamed of herself, to tell the truth. She was the only one to react so strongly to the sight of that ambushed ship. She took it as a sign of her own personal weakness.
"I just want you to know that we're keeping a sharp eye out for anyone lookin' to attack us. We got Soul helpin' Ebo in the cockpit, and Glico's firin' up her fighter. If you feel up to it, you can help Manti and Jazaf monitor the systems, but if you're still not well you can just stay in here until the all clear's given. Dong ma? It's going to be okay."
Carla could see why Teela was such a good captain. She knew how to lead and how to keep a cool head. Carla thanked Teela for her assurances as Ebo's voice came in over the intercom. "Cap'n, you better make your way up to the bridge! We've got a ship coming in on the radar screen."
Carla groaned and hunkered down further.
-----------------------------
OOC: Yeah, I know. Carla's such a wuss.
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OOC: Did I kill the thread? 
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Quote:OOC: No.
Originally posted by Carla:
OOC: Did I kill the thread?
This has happened a couple of times before...there's been a period where we all just can't thing of a gorram thing to add.
If you think of something before any of us do, you can update anytime...even if you were the last poster.
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Carla heard shouts ring out throughout the ship, orders being given and received. The Reaver ship that had attacked earlier had returned.
"Carla! Come on to the cargo bay! We need your help!" Teela's voice crackled over the comm.
Everyone was running around, adrenaline making them impossibly efficient. Manti nearly knocked her over on his way to soup up the engine, and Ebo's colorful swearing echoed throughout the bridge. Ebo was the only person Carla had ever met who not only could swear in English and Mandarin, but also Hindi, Tagalog, and...was that Farsi?
Teela and Glico were in the cargo bay waiting for Carla, and panels torn from the walls littered the floor. Glico pulled another long box from the wall and set it near a few others.
"Carla, I want you to open these boxes and shove them into the airlock." Teela ordered, then continued to argue with Soul over the commlink.
"I don't see why we have to dump our gorram cargo!" He yelled.
"Soul, we need to make this ship lighter if we want to outrun the Reavers. Besides, I figure the bodies might distract them if they're looking for a snack."
"Fine Teela, but when the buyer decides to make some bodies out of us to cut his losses, remind me to thank you. Soul out."
"Eeep!" Carla exclaimed when she opened the coffin, but one look from Teela and she decided to just grit her teeth and keep shoving bodies in the airlock.
When the three of them managed to get all the bodies into the airlock and shot into space, they ran to the bridge to see if they managed to speed themselves up, or slow down the Reaver ship at all. While the Sidere had a little extra push, the Reavers just sailed right through the dead.
"I think they prefer freshly-killed meat." Ebo said.
"I'll freshly kill them!" Glico muttered. "Cap'n, why can't I just get in my fighter and blast them?"
"You see that control screen there? Says that the Reaver ship's leakin' radiation out the core like none other--"
"Like gorram Three Mile Island--" Carla added.
"--and if you blow them up, we'll die a death even worse than if that ship had caught us." Teela continued.
Jazaf's panicked voice came up over the comm. "Ai ya! Guys! Manti just fainted and cut himself up real bad on some of the engine parts. I'll do what I can down here to make the engine go faster, but someone has got to get 'im down to the infirmary."
"Carla, you go." Teela ordered.
Suddenly, Ebo's eyes went wide as she felt more power come from the engine than ever before, and she pushed little Sidere into a sprint faster than was even possible under full burn. "Whatever you did, Jazaf, it was brilliant!"
"Thanks, but Manti here deserves all the praise. Now who's gonna help me drag this big damn hero to the infirmary?"
Carla rushed out of the bridge to make herself useful.
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Carla mopped the blood from Manti's forehead before placing a bandage over the cut. It wasn't a deep cut, but it was ugly; any head wound has the tendency to bleed alot.
Jazaf had already left the infirmary, returning to the engine room to get it running back to normal, when Manti regained consciousness. When he sat up, his nose started to bleed, and it dripped on the infirmary bed's upholstery.
"Here," Carla said, handing Manti a tissue, "tilt your head back and try to stop the bleeding."
"Thanks."
"That was some trick you pulled, back there," Carla mused, "Whatever you did to the engine sure snatched us from the jaws of death. You've got a skill I could never have."
Manti grinned behind the tissue. "It's all about intuition. You've got to know the engine so well that you don't even have to think about it. I'm sure you're intuitive in some way too."
Carla smiled back and began rummaging through the medication in the infirmary cupboards. "Do you need any pain medication for your head?"
"No. I'll be okay."
Carla was about to dismiss Manti from the infirmary when Ebo came in with an announcement.
"Hey guys!" Ebo began,"Um, when we were escaping the reavers, Sidere got hit by a piece of debris, and our main fuel cells were damaged. Don't worry, the auxillary fuel cells will keep us going, but we have to go to a station six hours out of our way to get the main cells fixed. So it'll be a few more days until we get to Shadow, rather than the day and a half we had left. Anyway, we'll be going through some safe space to get there, so I've got the ship on autopilot and the entire crew has downtime for the next six hours. So, anyone up for a game of mancala?"
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Mantichorus lay on his bunk, thinking. For once, the blackout hadn't been caused by a precognitive vision, but a flashback.
Ironically, it was the Reavers. They'd been at two turns in his life that had led him here.
Barely a month before he'd left Shadow, the first Reaver raiding party hit planetside. He'd been there fighting alongside the rest, his father's shotgun in his hands. Del had been right next to him with a pistol that he'd brought himself.
Mantichorus had learnt more about how to shoot then than at any other time.
Then was the second time he'd come across Reavers, just a handful of months after he'd first met Soul.
Sometimes, he wished that the Reavers had caught him that time.
The ship he'd been on was saved from the Reavers by the timely intervention of an Alliance cruiser.
And that was when he'd met him.
The big man, with the hard eyes. The one who was only ever called 'Sir.'
"So...alias Mantichorus. Do you know, I'd heard you were dead? It's true, I had. Interesting that you are still alive... But it lets us test a theory. A soldier reported that you were able to dodge bullets..."
And then it began. The big man's assistants seemed to take a perverse pleasure in their work. The myoptic dwarf with the penchant for Shan Yu, the one called 'Professor' all the time.
But there was another... Dr Crescent, who'd released him. She must have gone into hiding, he supposed from what Herald had said.
He got up, and walked through to the kitchen. He needed some water.
"Hey, Manti! Like the bandage." Glico called from the crew's game.
"Thanks." He replied. "It's a fashion statement."
"What, as in 'I don't have a gorram clue about fashion' statement?" Ebo asked.
Mantichorus picked up a roll of bread and paused for a moment. "It'd be a waste of a good bread roll to throw this at you." He said and bit into it.
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Carla looked up from her game with Ebo as Manti bit into the bread roll. "We were trying to bake fortune cookies, but we put too much flour in the dough."
Manti laughed and started choking on the roll. "You make mistakes quite well," he said as he regained composure.
Manti stayed in the dining room as Ebo brought up her mah johng tiles and started that game. They played for a few hours until Soul called Ebo up to the bridge; it was almost time to dock at the station for repairs.
For once, Sidere's arrival was uneventful and the crew gathered outside the ship in the station's docking bay while the captain laid the ground rules.
"Alright folks, here's how it's gonna be," Teela called. "Ebo and I will stay with the ship to supervise the repairs. The rest of you can go off and do your own thing. Don't get arrested or lost, and come back to the ship sometime before one o'clock tomorrow morning. The repairs should be done before tomorrow afternoon, and I want to get back in the Black ASAP. Dong ma?"
The crew dispersed, and Carla was glad to be able to stretch her arms and move about slightly freer. Her experiences with interplanetary travel were limited, so while she wanted to explore her surroundings, she also wanted to get the knots out of her muscles first.
She leaned against one of the far walls of the docking bay, stretching her leg out in front of her and wiggling the tension out of the muscles in her calves. She started again on the other leg when she heard snatches of conversation from the 'Rent a Suit! Guided Spacewalk Tours!' kiosk nearby.
"...are you sure you saw him?"
"Damn sure. Came in just now with that Firefly. Still carries that rutting sword of his. Loves it. Dotes on it. Unnatural, it is."
"Let's pay him a little visit. I'm sure Niska would be just thrilled to see him again."
Carla moved in closer to see who was talking--two big, burly, rough-looking men, grinning from ear to ear. She didn't know what to make of them, or of the conversation--who was this Niska character?--but she figured that she'd better find Jazaf and tell him about the people looking for him. Niska could be a jilted lover or an estranged sibling or something, and Carla had enough experiences with that kind of awkward situation that she felt inclined to give Jazaf the heads-up.
And speaking of jilted lovers, Carla thought, after I find Jazaf I should look for a little cafe that I can send a wave from, check in and see how Hernando and our daughter are doing.
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In a seedy little bar, in the middle of the town, Jazaf sits in a darkened corner trying to strike a deal.
'...I'm telling you no one will ever figure it out.' Jazaf throws his sales pitch to a balding Arms merchant.
The merchant becomes skeptical, 'If it works so well.....why give it to me?'
'Because my creds are all grown up and having creds of their own.' Jazaf recites back with a smirk.
Still not satisfied the merchant decides to recap. 'So you're saying that if I take this ....code and apply it to a single business, I can get a fraction of their earnings?'
Jazaf nods in agreement, 'Every time they make money you make money.', and leans back satisfied that his deal will go off without a hitch. The merchant thinks on it for a while then answers
'And what are you asking for in return?'
Jazaf leans in, 'A 10mm Double Eagle is all I ask.'
The Merchant smiles thinking he's gained the better part of the bargain.
Five minutes later Jazaf walks out of the bar with a new (at least to him) toy on his hip. He strolls into the town center whistling a decent tune, but not carrying it very well, when he is stopped by Carla.
'Hey there Carla. Enjoying the shore leave?'
'Yeah, I'm on my way to send a wave to some freinds and family. By the way,' Carla says as she passes Jazaf ,'There are these two large guys looking for you. They said Niska would be happy to see you again. Maybe you should send Niska a wave too?'
Jazaf pales for a few seconds. Ai-ya! Is there any place I can run to without his gorram thugs popping out of the woodwork? he thinks to himself.
'Maybe later' he replies to Carla. Then heads out of town thinking he may have over stayed his welcome.
The sun sets as Jazaf exits the town, hoping no one had tailed him. Just as he reaches the outer limits for the town not two, but five burly thugs had set themselves between Jazaf and Sidere.
'Gorramit!' Jazaf says under his breath.
'Hey Jazaf!' Shouts a man with a striped shirt, 'How've ya been!'
'I was doin' just fine, before you clouded my otherwise shiny day.'
'Ya know, Niska weren't too pleased that you cut up on his brother like that.'
'That bounty he placed on your head is a mighty nice pot.' Another man, in a Dark brown shirt, adds.
'So I noticed....' Jazaf mutters eyeing the five men warily.
Striped shirt spreads his hands as he motions for the four to start toward Jazaf, 'Me an' the boys reckon we'll beat you something fierce before we turn you over to Niska. As it turns out you crossed one of the locals and He would like to be .....recompensed'
'Come try it then.' Jazaf growls as he brings his gun up to bear. He fires four times, then draws his sword and rushes the thugs. Two of the shots rip through the knees of thug in the Dark brown shirt. The third hits another thug in the shoulder while the fourth passes the striped shirt thug by.
In a flash of movement Jazaf drove his sword into the first thug that got too close, piercing a lung. He yanks the sword out and arcs it across another thugs' chest. Slightly disoriented by the fast movements, Jazaf leaves himself open for the striped shirt thug to connect a right hook. Jazaf loses his sword and the remaining thugs jump on him.
Before Jazaf succombs to an overwhelming darkness he thinks he hears something... gunshots?
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Mystery Man on the Sereni-Tree 
Navigator on Destiny 
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