The Nightmare Smiths (Closed)

Aramanda

The invading order sounded in my head and made my start, panting heavily. Gritting my teeth, I froze, suddenly furious. What, in all the galaxy, possessed me to allow, to even tolerate another living soul to be in my head. Not only that, but to give orders in my head. With difficulty, I set down the little wooden puzzle in my hand and tried not to think about the implied sinister control telepathic command inspires – what if you mistook a commanders thoughts for your own, believing that you, the individual, where making unique decisions, only to find that you were following obscene orders? – and stood up.

For a moment, I considered not showing up. After all, didn't Psylene enjoy gathering us all together so he could rant and rave about how brilliant he was and... I took a deep breath. No. He can give me orders through his mind, therefore why couldn't he see into my thoughts. The concept that I could no longer nurture rebellious thoughts in the safety and privacy of my own mind was disquieting. Never mind. There was no harm in following these orders. What danger could possibly come aside from being a little bored for a short period of time. And it would be a good chance to meet my fellow crew members for the first time.

I stretched lazily and made my way down the corridor and into the mess hall. There was already someone sitting there with their head on the table. At first glance I couldn't tell if they were male or female, and I didn't recognise them from the crew files. Frowning slightly I took a seat beside them and offered my hand.

“I do not believe I have had the pleasure of meeting you,” I said.

Ray

I jumped as someone banged the table, hand flying to my ears. I stared at Arruna for a moment, unsure how to react. Then the other female member of the crew walked in. This one was human.

“I do not believe I have had the pleasure of meeting you,” Said the new arrival. We were being nice. I could be nice.

I had seen her before. I probably wasn’t in this form though. I couldn’t remember what I had been, and I hoped it one that was visible, but probably not. I decided not to tell her that.

“I’m Ray.” I announced proudly. The name was relatively new.

“Aramanda,” she said. “So you’re a boy than? I couldn’t tell.

Arunna chuckled a little. I just shook my head. I hadn’t known Ray was a masculine name when I picked it. It had just sounded good.

“No. Not a boy.”

Aramanda seemed confused, but so did most people, when they met me. She was being very calm about it, really.

“I was just wondering, because you don’t seem to be in the crew files.”

“That’s because Ray doesn’t officially exist,” Arunna added helpfully.

Both women sat down at the table. The two were very different. The whole crew was. That was good. When everyone was the same it was too hard to stay separate. At the same time, the crew was my new collective. Wouldn’t it be better to be more like them? Finding a balance was hard.

(ooc: feel free to bust me if I made anyone’s character act in a way they wouldn’t)

(ooc: hell yes I will bust you -_-)

Vinn

I sighed when the Captain's order entered my conscious. The ship was in a static orbit over Earth, but still I preferred to remain at the helm as much as I could. You never could tell when the 'authorities' would pass within range of the ship's impressive arsenal of weapons. Tapping a few controls, I hurried away from the bridge and through the labyrinthine corridors towards the mess.
There was a small group already assembled in the room. I paid them little attention, offering the merest of grunts as I sat heavily down on a table seperate to the others.
"What's your name then?" a female voice asked.
Why do you care? "Vinn,"
"I'm Arruna," she extended a slender blue hand. I took it, reminding myself not to crush her handbones as I had with the last new member to join this crew.
The conversation died soon afterwards. The two women conversed brieffly with a man on the other side of the table, but otherwise an awkward silence decended over the room. Good. I figured it was better they knew what life was going to be like on this boat now. Not that it would make a difference. They were on board now. The only way they were getting off was through the airlock.

(ooc: hell yes I will bust you -_-)

Vinn

I sighed when the Captain's order entered my conscious. The ship was in a static orbit over Earth, but still I preferred to remain at the helm as much as I could. You never could tell when the 'authorities' would pass within range of the ship's impressive arsenal of weapons. Tapping a few controls, I hurried away from the bridge and through the labyrinthine corridors towards the mess.
There was a small group already assembled in the room. I paid them little attention, offering the merest of grunts as I sat heavily down on a table seperate to the others.
"What's your name then?" a female voice asked.
Why do you care? "Vinn,"
"I'm Arruna," she extended a slender blue hand. I took it, reminding myself not to crush her handbones as I had with the last new member to join this crew.
The conversation died soon afterwards. The two women conversed brieffly with a man on the other side of the table, but otherwise an awkward silence decended over the room. Good. I figured it was better they knew what life was going to be like on this boat now. Not that it would make a difference. They were on board now. The only way they were getting off was through the airlock.

Cytana

I was in the Tech Lab, cleaning my armour when the command came. "Damn it, Psylene," I mumbled, "Can't a Sangheili clean his armour." Leaving the Tech Lab, I went to go to the mess hall. I managed to get there without incident. That's the problem, I thought, with being in the weapons lab all day, damn I need to get out more. I was the last to arrive and just about. Psylene came in and said, "Before i say what I was going to say, can anyone tell me what you think I am or was going to say?"

"To, once again, say how great you are," the blue skinnned alien replied.

"It was going to be that and actually still is, I am great, but what I was going to say was that the Nightmare Smith is ready to leave Earths orbit."

The crew seemed enthusiastic about it. "What you waiting for?" Psylene asked, "Get to your stations."

"What, are you waiting for? Get to your stations!" I ordered. "No, wait, hold that command. First, Cytana, I need to talk to you, and Cathar, you can return to the solace of the cockpit.". With that, everyone except Cytana left the hall.

"No lunch?", Cytana asked.

"When we pull away from satellite over earth." I replied, "But that's not what I need to talk to you about."

"Then what is?"

"Our next stop is the planet Doisac to intercept the cargo of Thorn Beast Hide, a rarity on the milky-way galactic market. It's a minor raid, but Jiralhanae have a very aggressive attitude to Sangheli such as you..." Cytana remained silent, but I could hear his deepest thoughts. He didn't like this one bit, but unfortunately, I was not going to change target, not with a customer like Sierranard.

Aramanda

He had only called us here to tell us that were were leaving? Trying to keep my thoughts calm and neutral, I got up and left, feeling a little disappointed at my lost opportunity to get to know the rest of the crew. I had noticed the sangheili within seconds of him entering the room and had tried not to react. Thoughts of the forced labour and endless payless hours invaded my mind, but I stamped them out with every loud clanking step back to the engine room. Not all of them are the same, I said over and over in my head, my eyes scanning the display screens. Everything working normally, everything running smoothly.

Of course that was always the case. When the engine is idling, it would run nicely. It's only when the captain wants us to move. That's when things will start going wrong. I thought about the strange woman (man?) Ray as I fired up the cylinders, wondering why I had a distinct impression of a blank slate.

Ray

I heard someone grumble about not actually being fed. I didn’t mind, but actual nourishment wasn’t required for my survival. I liked to eat though, when I had the right form.

I lost track of Starkrath. That wasn’t good. He was the other infiltrator on the ship, and we worked together often. I liked to follow him, but I could never tell what he felt about that. Lots of people don’t like it when I follow them.

I went about my tasks, the miscellaneous things required to get a ship into space. Some of these things were familiar to me now, but most were things I had seen others do. I could fill in if anyone couldn’t do their job, but it was better to rely on other people. “We wouldn’t want to forget anything, now would we.” And I forget a lot.

Arruna

Vinn... I hadn't seen him before. I'd seen his species but not him... A Cathar, a very powerful and brutal people. He must be new, although I did spend a lot of time in either my bunk, turret room or engineers deck. Also, no food, again! What was that Chiss doing with his time? I wondered back to my turret room and sat in my gunning chair, a little something I'd managed to smuggle aboard, thinking about how arogant a captin we had at times. Honestly I'd didn't really care about the fact he might hear me or might not. Then it occured to me as the ship began to pull away from the docks, Vinn must be our piolet. Kicking at a switch to lower the chair down into the glass orb that was my turret chamber, I cracked my knuckles ready for targets.
"This should be fun," I muttered as I noticed an alligence ship in the distance.


(If not okay, let me lnow and I'll change)

Vinn

I pulled the ship out of Earth's orbit with relative ease. The engines were misaligned, but I was sure the mechanic could fix that before they would encounter the asteroid belt. The ship was not in the best condition, but I had definitely flown worse. I opened up the fuel inlets fully, feeling the roar of the powerful drives shake the ship.
Scanners were beeping, indicating space debris in the vicinity of the ship. I payed them no heed. A meteorite bounced across the main viewport, but it was so insignificant I barely noticed as I got the engines warm before blasting off into space.

Aramanda

The engine room was beginning to get hot. I started to sweat as I paced from control panel to control panel. An insistent flashing light was nagging me in the corner of my vision. My thoughts were dark and morbid. It was so typical. We probably wouldn't even make it there. I had never met the pilot before, but I wouldn't put it past the captain to hire someone who would drive us straight through the asteroid belt. Looking out of the window, I cursed. Yes, I was right. That blinking red light would not be ignored any longer.

Striding over, I observed that the engines were misaligned and cursed again, this time more violently. Typing into the computer interface and preparing to get on my hands and knees to fix the problem, I reached for the telecom.

“Calm it down up there – we're only taking off, not going into warp drive. No need to ram up the gears this much, it's starting to get hot down here”.

Not waiting for an answer, I took out a wrench and set to work, getting lubricant and grease spattered over my hands and face.

Ray

There didn't seem to be many tasks for me today. So I slunk down to the engine room. Hanging back, I paused to admire the way Aramanda threw herself into the job of keeping the machines running. Eventually she looked up and saw me.

"Do you want something?" she asked, still mostly absorbed in her work.

I nodded, but I don't think she saw me. "I wanted to help."

She stopped long enough to wipe some grease from her face and eye me cautiously.

"Do you know anything about engines?"

"I know enough," I replied, concentrating on her, and what I'd seen her doing.

Aramanda

I straightened up, wiping the grease from my forehead with the back of my hand. Ray, standing there, observing me in a most interested fashion, his eyes taking in the wrench, my overalls, the flashing computer screen.

“You want to help?” I asked. I had never had any aid down here before. It was mostly just me racing around from one console to another. I couldn't even think of any job to give him. That is, if he knew the first thing about engineering. I handed him the wrench. “Do you know what this is?”

He looked at me, not seeming to take offence. “It's a wrench.”

“Good enough,” I confirmed, taking it back. “See that screen, just keep watching it and tell me when the status changes. It should tell you in big red letters around here...” I gestured in the general area where a warning was already flashing, telling me that Valve C was overheating. Grunting, I got back under the mechanics, wincing as I seared the side of my hand on the hyper-heated metal.

Ray stood there, vigilantly watching the monitor. Although I would never admit it, there was something pleasant about him standing there, having his company. Sometimes it was easy to forget there were any other crew on board at all, that it was just you, the vast machine and that little voice from the intercom barking orders at you like you were an insect.

“I'm just saying, but the third engine is looking grim... we might no make it out the asteroid belt... not a big deal or anything – but we might as well be realistic.”

Vinn

I remained at the conn even though the ship was on a fixed course. Being a raider was not an easy task, and there was no margin for error if we were ambushed. Earth was not much of a planet, but its inhabitants could be very protective.
A small light beeped on my console. There was a problem with the third engine. Unhappy with the problem, I adjusted the flight pattern to compensate. I switched to manual for a brief moment to stop the ship from listing, but once I had the craft back into autopilot.
I sat back in my seat. It was a decent chair, unlike the metal benches in the mess. I figured it was installed to ensure the pilot wouldn't be thrown across the bridge during high-speed evasive manouvres.
Another light started beeping. I cast my gaze uninterestedly towards the readout screen. Probably just a little warning to tell me that the engines were falling out of alignment again.
It wasn't. I sat bolt upright and switched to manual, pulling the ship onto a new course and accellerating. The proximity alert continued to blare. I felt Psylene's mind invading my consciouss.
Whatever was out there was changed course to follow us. It was hitting speeds I could not conceive of matching in the Nightmare Shroud.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the invasive object dissappeared. I let out a breath I hadn't realised I was holding, performing every scan I could think of to find out where it had gone. Nothing.
Must have just been a meteor, perhaps containing some magnetic material which had attracted to the ship. I chastised myself for being so stupid, and set the Shroud back onto autopilot.

Arruna

It looked like we were almost out of the astroid belt when I jolted sideways out of my seat. Cursing in just about every language I knew I climbed back into my chair and spun around a few times looking for what had caused the unexpected burst of speed. After several rotations I'd decided that either the engines were malfunctioning, which wouldn't be the first time, or that our pilot is just insane, it was then I caught sight of something in the distance half hidden behind the meteors. Something moving fast and gaining. I would have tried to shoot the damn thing down but it was still out of range, and as soon as it was... it vanished. I couldn't tell what it was, at points I think it looked like a ship and at others all I recolect is just another space rock. Sending out a mental shout to Psylene, hoping that once he was listening:
"What the HELL was that Psylene?!"