There's no place like home

[Jazzi]

There's No Place Like Home
Dr. T.Thorn

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A finger dressed in a brown leather glove presses on the button of a silver coloured switch and pulls it upwards Moving to the left, it's four compatriots and itself curl around a the stainless steel bar of a throttle and push forwards. A rumbling roar reverberates through the ship as four T-96-E Kyorestsu engines fire up in a furious clap of thunder. Heisenberg Research Station falls away, shrinking with each second, as the bridge speakers kick in. Voyager. Key Puncher.

With course plotted, the woman at the helm gazes out with wide, brown eyes at the starscape beyond. The tapestry of orange, green, blue. She knows she doesn't miss it, but one day she will. The evenings spent with a mug of coffee in hand, sat on Heisenberg's observation decks, mulling over what was. What is. What could have been. What could be.

Alas. It was time. As dear as she held the station and it's occupants to heart, her work was drawing unwanted attentions. Her makeshift laboratory, furnished from the acquisition of two neighbouring apartment units, was no longer sufficient. It's contents, without proper containment, dangerous to those aboard. She needed to test, to experiment, to record and iterate with a risk to them nor the risk of prying eyes. Besides... sometimes a change of place helps clear the cache.

With a small complement of engineers and scientists, friends Thallia had come to know during her time at the Research Station, the Aletheia slips passed Steinfurt towards the Hamburg jumphole. Towards a place they might call home. Dr. Thorn closes her eyes, and taps her mag-lock boots together thrice for luck.

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[Jazzi]

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Hiss. Click. A copper-tinted visor seals fast to the neck ring of Thallia's spacesuit. A large grinder clipped to her waist. A tether securely fastened to a retracting coil in the ceiling. A thunderous roar erupts through the airlock as the chamber depressurises. Currents of air ripped roughly right through the air vents in the corners of the airlock. Silence... ... ... A press of a button on her wrist panel sets music playing within her helm. When Androids Dream. Droid Bishop.

With a sliding of the airlock outer doors and a push off from two unlocked mag-boots, Thal sets herself drifting towards the large asteroid before her. Rapidly filling her vision, a pair of hanger bay doors inset on it's rocky face. As she lazily cartwheels, the Medium Blue star at the center of the system struggles to bleed through the Dark Matter storm between them. Beyond the Alethiea, the tuttle Creek Nebula glistens in gaseous hues of purple and pink. Remote. Concealed. Perfect.

A thrumming hum runs through her ears as her mag-lock boots draft close to the sealed hanger doors. The forceful tug and clang as they're drawn by magnetic forces the last foot or so delivers her onto the derelict station's entrance. With a glance at the laminate map wrapped around her other wrist, Thorn twists herself upwards and waves. Several speaks of brown or tan or white were drifting across, strips of yellow trailing behind them like snake-like comet trails. Clank. Clank. Clank.

Striding in large, arcing bounds across the hanger doors, the four of them take an edge of their chosen panel. Each share a nod as they give agreement to proceed. A quartet of grinders span into life, sending an ear-piercing screech through the plating as they set their tools to part away the plate and gain access to the station beyond. "Stop! Stop stop!" They pause as Thallia fiddles with her wristpad. Patched into a group session, she turns the volume up and hits play. Red Eyes. Zombie Hyperdrive. "Ok, go!" Sparks fly, forming a rectangle of orange and white.

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[Jazzi]

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Ash falls from the tip of a cigarette, caught in a plastic cup below. Half-burnt through, the fingers pressed together at it's base shake with the hand that brings them up to Thallia's lips. A breath in. Eyes closed. Smoke rising from her mouth as she exhales. A sigh of relief. Her body felt coiled, stretched, taut. Like a spring both pressed and pulled. Her temple throbbed as if a chisel was pressed against her flesh, a hammer tapping every second second.

"Certain elements within slag or smog, can have certain dampening effect to certain elements. Certain elements of theirs, anyway."

Standing at the viewport of the observation deck, she gazes out towards the smothering darkness around them all as those words echo in her mind. It had not followed them through the Leed's smoke cloud just as it had not pursued her to Ames Research Station. Perhaps the location of their new project was fortuitous. With pockets of the dark matter field wrapping around them, would they provide some form of protection from this entity as much as it obscures them from human detection?

A glance to the right brought the activities of her compatriots into focus. Crates covered in bright yellow mesh and tethered into a long chain were being steadily winched across from the Dunlin's cargo hold towards the open hanger bay doors. A maw hungry for their resources and time. Having discovered the abandoned base empty, they'd clearered out the unnecessary clutter in the bay and began to fill it with the tools and materials needed to begin the next phase of work. Sealing and pressurising a small section of base and expanding as required was Douglas' recommendation, and whilst hitting the miminum viable there's still plenty to do to make it a reality. Picking up her suit's helmet and stubbing out the cigarette, Thallia makes her way out to the airlock. Time to get to work.

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[Jazzi]

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John Dunder's electronic classic Hagalund plays into the group's helmets via the musicbot that had joined their localised comms channel. A hull-cutting laser was mounted on a circular cutting frame on the wll before them. Its flaming blue beam melting the plating as it makes it circular path inch by inch.

The Aletheia's initial scans of the internal structure had picked up the larger spaces inside. Thallia's team had mapped out likely connections between them. None of them had counted on the chaotic ingenuity of it's previous occupants, Liberty's Rogues. For days, expeditions into the station had gone wayward, struggling to reach their intended section of the station. A survey operation had been launched, only to discover the internals of the station resembled a block of "just-add-water" brick-packed Kyushan noodles as their paths were mapped out on a holo-display. With tight-turns and chokepoints formed of piping criss-crossing walkways, a solution was needed to traverse the labyrinth to the section beyond.

The solution? Cut straight through to their destination. If they chose to stay, the circular cuts could be turned into a sealed thoroughfare. If they chose to leave? Well, who'd give two monkey's.

As the team takes hold of the freshly hewn piece of metal to pull it away from the plating, Thallia gazed into the abandoned world beyond. With debris floating hap-hazardly in zero-g, the spectre of scope creep reared it's ugly head.

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[Jazzi]

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Pushing off with both hands, Thallia glides across the room in the pale white light of the glowstick wedged into a disused light fitting. Catching the corners of the tiled panelling beneath, littered with metallic scrap and sheared piping that collected in the room, her team catch her. Mag-locked to the far wall, they all bend backwards a little to view the scene. The musicbot lowers the volume of Reach, by Unfound, as they begin speaking.

"Looks like we've finally found the sections entrance."
"Quite. Ya'best be feeling blessed that section wall's intact."
"We d...don't know what's beyond that door. Not y...yet. Let's not count our blessings t...to early."
"I'll get that door open, Jasmine will you come with?"
"Sure"
"And th... the rest of us can start getting the kit in to get this passage sealed up ready for pressurisation."
"Do you think the passage we've cut out is going to be big enough for the artifact?"
"W...we've got time to work out and cut some bigger holes if not. We've got to get the life-support and th...the power modules set up first. If they d...don't fit, we'll know it'll need widening."
"Fair point. Let's get to it. My turn to pick a tune anyway."

To a harmony of groans, a grin plays out on Thallia's face as the team get's to it. A bounce in their step. A measure of progress at last.

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[Jazzi]

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The light strips flicker overhead, casting a dim light that matches the mood of the rooms occupants. Sullen, dour expressions from the twenty or so people gathered around a hexagonical table in the centre of the room. Emitted from a projector at it's centre, a bright-blue lined outline of the Fortaleza with orange sections denoting the newly discovered passages and work ducts. For once, the musicbot was silent.

"Look, Thallia. We have to face up to the reality here. There's no way we can pressurise enough of the station to house and power the kind of containment the artifact needs. Few of us are engineers, and none of us have the means to patch up the swiss cheese of a hull this thing has without drawing attention. If you weren't so keen on housing that blasted relic here, it'd barely work. As it stands, this doesn't work for any of us."

"This was a fools errand, and you're the fool Thorn."

"Jasmine, wai-"

"Darren, I'm serious. Thal, we came with you because we believe we'd be studying this K'Vosh relic. That we'd be doing our parts to protect people from wayward A.I.... and all we've been doing is scrounging about in the dark like a pack of Junkers looking for a score. Now, we find out we can't even get that to work, and you're becoming a nervous wreck."

With elbows on the table edge, Thallia nursing a newly lit cigarette between two fingers, glances up at Jasmine with a sharp glare. Pressing it to her lips, inhaling, she moves her attention across the room. Nods from most of the others present.

Leaning back in her chair, smoke rising from her mouth, she looks down at the ashtray catching the spent end of the cigarette with a melancholic frown.

"You're right. This ha...hasn't worked out as I had hoped. As we had hoped as a sanctuary for our ambitions." Closing her eyes for a moment or two as she rubs her temple in thought, those watching hestitate with any response.

"I'm go...going to go to Newport Station. Perhaps there is an op...opportunity to start things up there. Anyone who wants to come wi...with me is welcome. For those of you who don't, we'll swing by Cologne first. Sound good?"

"What about the bloody rel-"

"That's my concern now. Busy yourself with packing up, Jasmine. We're headed to Heisenberg shortly." Thorn stands up swiftly, cigarette leaving a faint trail behind her as she leaves the briefing room.

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[Jazzi]

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Thallia lets out a long, drawn out sigh and closes her eyes as the steady beat of Finding Atlantis begins playing in her helmet's integrated sound system. Another classic from Newport Radio. With a gentle push, she feels her body drift from the hull of the Aletheia. Brought to a stop from the tender tug of her tether to the vessel, her sigh is laced with melacholic bliss as she feels her world shrink to the confines her weightless mortal form.

A turn of her head to the right, eyelids unfurling to allow the bright blue hues of the Crow Nebula to shine through. The green and blue stars of Sigma-13 standing vigil over the Station , illuminating the work of dozens of repair teams and construction crews. To her right, further down the Aletheia's starboard side, Darren and Lydia continued the work of installing Energy Field Emitters in the space between the layered hull panels. Difficult, skilled work but the pair displayed a proficiency that she admired. Her job? To follow them up and weld the outer panels back to their frames. Her lips curl at their corners, a soft smile growing on her lips. They had chosen to stay where the others had parted ways. Echoes of the same betrayal she had felt then rippled through her now, but with a deep breath she acknowledges the ripple of anger and casts it aside. Hindsight is twenty twenty, as the saying goes. She had pushed them away. Kept them all at arms length. It had felt rational at the time. Sensible, even. Prudent. You blind fool.

Curling a hand around her tether and tugging hard, Thallia reels herself back in towards the Aletheia. The sensation of sudden movement helped to smother that gnawing guilty feeling growing within. Fear. Fear of loss. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. Ever since that fateful flight nearly a decade ago, where harvester near assimilated human, fear festered fiercely at every turn. She's been privy to some truly awe inspiring secrets. She's seen threats in every one og them. Has she really been trying to save people, or has she been on the run? The people she's hurt... The damage she's done...she cant take it anymore. This needs to stop. Let go.

Coming to rest against the metal shell of the Aletheia, she takes out her welding torch and sets to fusing metal to metal. Her headphones fill with the sounds of Beneath a Birchen Moon as the image of a red-robed man sat upside down comes to mind. A hierophant reversed.

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[Jazzi]

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A taut yet mild pain from the feel of her teeth giving a gentle bit to her lower lip brought a degree of focus as Thallia keeps a steady, subtle forward thrust on the throttle. Brown eyes, narrowed and sharp, were fixed on the vid-screen showing the camera mounted to the welder arm's downward view. A fountain of bright blue sparks erupting from where the tip of the welder meets the outer hull of the Aletheia. Absolute concentration and the rhythmic beats of Revolving Door, Mungolian Jetset, to fill the mind. Nothing but the work in front of her, and the will to do it. That 'Little Book of Happiness' she'd found in Newport's public bathroom said something along those lines anyway.

Time was ticking to get the Aletheia ship-shape as soon as possible. Such pressure usually came with stress and the sense of existential dread. Yet, with her hands on the controls of this CUV-39M "Mender", that dread didn't find purchase. How could it? Before her was a problem, and in her hands the solution. She need only apply it.

"Clouds like souls in a stolen sky~ You're like a tear in a stranger's eye~ Like a treasure in an old dime store~ You disappear then arrive once more~"

Was that it? Was that why she'd been so stressed? So wound up and tightened up like a spring ready to launch? She'd allowed her fear to have her chasing problems with no solution. Mysteries with no answers. No answers that she could find on her own, anyway. Perhaps. that book had something to say on that too... "Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy."

A bright, beaming smile slowly slowly creeps out across Thallia's lips. With her head bobbing side to side with the bass vibrating the flight seat, she pauses for a moment to drink from her flask of coffee. Her hand moves to the pad holstered at her hip, yet she hesitates before leaving the pad be. Whatever that is, it can wait. "Everyone deserves a little joy. Even me."

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[Jazzi]

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"How about th...this for the plan then LEXI? Now we've reinforced the hull of the Aletheia and installed a c...containment unit equivalent to that in Lab Thirteen's vault, we loop by Heisenber, pick it up, and head homeward bound via Copernicus. As we're passing past the central Asteroid field, we launch the containment unit and it's contents it's the Br...B...Brown Dwarf at it's centre. It hits the sun and skablaamo~ No artefact. No reason to pursue us."

[:: Query: What if the artefact is not destroyed within the Brown Dwarf? ::]

"Surely it would be... but if not, it is then at the center of that star isolated within a radioactive dust cloud. I doubt anyone will be able to reach it."

[:: Statement: You are uncertain, Thallia. ::]

"I am st...starting to realised we can never be certain, LEXI. Besides... we destroy this artefact, the likelihood is another will be found somewhere. What matters is that we delay this however we can and, ur... well, free ourselves in the process."

[:: Query: What will we do afterwards? ::]

"Rebuild. Rebuild ou...ourselves. Re-find who we are. Do what we want. Work with the Starfliers, SLRC...and who knows who else, but we ge...get back to our roots. Scientific endeavour. Building things that help people. Protect people. How it sh....should have been when we set out into Sirius nine years ago."

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[Jazzi]

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A thunderous roar bellows through the Aletheia hanger bay as the bay doors unfurl onto the dull magenta's of Copernicus. Like a single, solitary eye, the system's solitary Brown Dwarf returns the gaze of three crew within the bay.

Thallia signals to her colleagues, Darren and Lydia. Suited and booted, the three of them were mag-locked to the bay decking sheltering behind heavy plated radiation shielding at one end. Sharing a glance three-ways, Thallia presses her finger down on the simple button pad control in front of them. A container box is lifted up on a slide rail mechanism up off of the floor and carried to the entrance of the hanger bay. Raw, Meute, begins playing on their comm-linked musicbot as thrusters welded to the containers rears and sides flutter and flare into life.

Straining on the sliding rails, the rear thruster bursts into ignition sending vibrations through the bay. The container picks up momentum guided by the rails until, with a crescendo of brass, the container rockets out of the bay out towards the radioactive dust cloud and the Brown Dwarf within. As the metal casket carrying the DKV artifact hits the cloud, the object bursts into flame as if it was kareening into re-entry. The thruster packs disintegrate, evaporating into the aether. Hurtling towards the star, accelerating as the star's pull increases, a rocky fragment smashes into a corner. The container begins spinning violently, hitting more fragments at velocity, until it disappears into the haze of the Brown Dwarf unceremoniously.

"Stick that in your p...pipe and smoke it."
"That was bloody reckless and coul-"
"Oh shhh... we had fun, di...didn't we?"
"Close the doors, and let's get into Decon quick!" "Quick!" "Quick!"

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