Thrawn's diary - A madman's song

[Tarator]

On board of OCV Tobruk, O'Rhu cell's Osiris light battleship, Omicron Major, Date Unknown

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There's no order without chaos.

Day 2

More than forty eight hours in this slime and my headaches are becoming rather severe. If the sphere does not drive me insane, the pain will certainly do. It took us more than two hours of crawling inside vents but we finally managed to get to Storage. On the way to there we dropped in a corridor leading to the Medical. I haven't been in that area since Toledo. Been there brought back a lot of memories, most of them bad. We had to break few windows, but we've got some medical supplies which use I believe, will be inevitable. We took some painkillers, and infact this has relieved me from some of the pain but unfortunately, only for a short while. I hope we don't get to the point when someone will decide to shoot himself.
I also have no contact with the outside world whatsoever, since the ship's main power is down, all navigation and external communications are cut off, we can only relay on our own transponders for communication within the ship. Speaking of which, I hope Neil's alright, we haven't had a word from him for a few hours now. But I believe he can handle any situation anyway, hes a hard nut to crack, still I should try contacting him.
As we're here, we finally found a good deal of supplies, water, food rations, synth paste, some ammunition and grenades, oh I love grenades, yeah that's what Neil would probably say, I hope hes not in a need of them right now. More and more I get the feeling that I did a mistake by sending him and his men that way. Nevertheless, what's done is done. What we also found was rather.... unpleasant and uncomfortable to see. I'm used to the sight of death and everything that might be left after it, but seeing the corpses of my men.... it's really hard to cope with, no matter if they've been infested or not.
Also the temperature on the ship is becoming a problem as it has decreased, I'm assuming the ship is moving on inertia further away from the local sun and soon we will have to figure out a way to warm ourselves as the ship's life support systems are slowly dying. With every passing minute, our chances of survival decrease and things are looking pretty bad all around.
We've gathered what we could and decided we will use the elevator shaft that connects the decks, to get to the crew's quarters, from there back into the vents that round up around the cooling system and end up in Engineering, hopefully we manage to restore the ship's power somehow or at least to fix the emergency.
We haven't had any encounters with either infested nor survivors, hopefully we'll find a member of the later on the way to there, else.... ammunition will come in handy.





"Pineapples! Pineapples! I've waited so long for you! And now that we are here, we can finally start to mess with the mess!"Kovalsky kept shouting while picking up grenades from a crate.
William: "The hell's wrong with you, keep it down" after a brief silence, Kovalsky walks out of the room and outside in the corridor

Hill sits on the floor, lights a cig and throws a worried look at William "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
William: "I'll go see what he's up to, in the mean time you see if you can link those charges, and for heavens sake! Take that cig away, we're sitting on explosives here."

Hill: "Aye Cap'n" William walks out of the room and finds Kovalsky sitting on the floor in the corridor.
William: "Is there something that bothers you?" He sits next to him.
Kovalsky looks at William and remains silent for a minute.

William: "What's the fascinating?" Kovalsky remains silent for some more time and says "I hear voices."
William: "Are you now? And what is it that they are saying?"
Kovalsky: "It's incomprehensible."
William looks down wondering for a moment "What can you recall from Toledo?"
Kovalsky: "Running down the stairs to get to my ship while the fire was falling down from the skies and later receiving that same fire from large bio-masses in orbit."
William looks back at him "And what would you say about that?"
Kovalsky: "I'd gladly see the scum rot"
William stands up and gives him a hand "You're fine, at least for now. Now lets see how Hill is doing, if we are ready we shall be on our way down to crew's quarters."

They both get back in the room full of crates, where Hill's poking a detonator with a screwdriver
William: What's the word? We ready?
Hill: Almost.... come on you bastard! There, think the last one's ready. The timing's fine, we'd only need to be careful when placing them on the door, one mistake and we're screwed. Unless you guys would be willing to climb back to Storage." he laughs

William: "And this is exactly why you're going to take care about th" suddenly a voice is heard coming from the transponder
Neil: "Ca-"n *static* Sir? Do you h-ar me? William pulls out the device in front of his face
William: Neil! What's your status? Have you found anybody?
Neil: "Inde--d we have, there are two survi-ors that have barricaded thems-lves in the mess hall."
William: Good. Well if you have enough supplies, remain there until further notice, and make sure they stay safe."
Neil: "Understood." *static*
William: "And Neil...." he lowers his voice "....watch out for any signs of abnormal volatile behavior from normals."
Neil: "Aye, wait..." gun fire is heard "....we have visit-rs, let's giv- dem monkeys a warm welco-e guys!"
The signal dies

Hill: "Well at least Neil's having fun there."
William: "Don't worry about that, its almost certain that we'll also have our fun down in crew's quarters."
Kovalsky: "Well, should you need a grenade, you know where to find it." he smiles
William: "Now lets move" he takes some ropes from the table and the three men head for the elevator shaft

William sits on the edge of the floor at the broken elevator door while tying ropes up.
Kovalsky looks down the shaft and sees the crashed elevator cabin at the bottom, then looks behind his back and sees the signs of what possibly was an explosion around the elevator door "At least now I know where I can hang myself."
William: "Don't be silly, its no more than fifteen meters down, just try to keep your legs against the wall and you'll be fine."
Kovalsky: "I guess we can use the elevator door to crew's quarters down in the shaft, if its opened."
William: "That's very unlikely as elevator doors are included in emergency lock down protocols, unless they've been damaged."

After a while, the three men find themselves hanging in the shaft. William gets in front of the door and checks it, while the other two are right above him.
Kovalsky: "Well?"

The door seems to be locked, he points his flashlight in right and notices a ventilation hatch.
Hill: "Its locked isn't it?"
William: "Indeed, we'll have to stick to the old plan. See if you can open up that thing."

Soon Hill cracks the cover while Hill sees a piece of paper at the and picks it.
Hill: "Jeremy Paterson's last words"
Kovalsky: "You're joking."
William: "Forget that now, lets move on."

the three men enter inside the vent.
Kovalsky: "Great, back to the rat like crawling."

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Captain's Log, 822 A.S.