Wesley Richter

[Zapp]

The containment teams onboard the Karlsruhe stood around Wesleys Wrath, Hazmat suits on, with various implements designed to safely remove and dispose of hazardous materials on a trolley between two of them. The leader of the six-man team, face covered completely by a white material that could resist radiation up to a thousand times more than a human could survive, gave a hand signal that told the two men with the trolley to proceed first. They nodded and began moving up the ramp to the cargo hold, where they saw immediately what they had been told to remove. To one side of the bay was an escape pod of a Das Wilde, scored from some near-misses. Next to it was a scarred Nomad gun, which would go for examination. And in the far side of the bay was a blue sphere a few inches in circumference, glowing brightly.

The leader approached slowly, as if rapid movements might set it off. Nobody knew what it did or what its purpose was, but it was obviously of Nomad origin, given where this ship was rumored to have been. Rheinlanders had a fear of Nomads since the Nomad fear possessed a large portion of their fleet, transforming them into Das Wilde. He pulled an implement off the trolley, what appeared to be a tong, though the end closed into an anti-radiation box that was fully enclosed.

He reached forward, stretching his body almost parallel to the ground in an effort to keep his distance while doing his job. Right as the tong-like apparatus was about to enclose the Nomad device, it shook and darted away, sliding across the deck to another side of the cargo bay. This made him jump, and call in the rest of the team. They clamored in; loathe sharing the ship with an obviously active Nomad device. They approached it from all sides, cutting it off from escape. Just as their tools were about to ensnare it, it melded with the ship, simply melting in.

The team, suffice to say, was cowed. They all but ran out of the cargo bay, assured that they were dealing with a Nomad-infested ship. A marine lounging nearby all but jumped into the air when the Hazmat team ran up, telling what had happened and expecting him to do something about it. He called in the Admiral.