Chapter IIa: Absolute Disaster

"Moira, please hold this." Zlam almost stutters as he hands his helmet to her. A wierd expression is growing on his face as he is swiping through a datapad furiously with his bottom two hands. the one remaining hand that is not handing over the helmet is wiping the Nemurlian equivalent to sweat off of his brow.

"Marbo has a solution to the nerves. As a doctor, it is my job to cure all ailments whether psychological or physiological. This might work.




"All hands. Zlam." The shipwide PA system echoes.

"A reminder... As we fly towards what may be certain doom... These foes we face today are not civilized members of the greater collective of mankind... These are savages... Ruthless pirates.. who would probably not spend a second thought wondering whether it was morally wrong to send you flying into space as bait to catch a gas cloud whale!
Treat them as such... Show them no fear in the same way that they do us... Show them the tooth and claws of the consortium... Make them know what we do to outlaws and brigands...

and most importantly...

let us bring back our brothers and sisters from their clutches."


Anybody in the same room as Marbo can see he is clearly reading off a script he found on the ships open file server, Stammering due to his own nerves. but the determination in his face is intense. He is absolutely ready to face these pirates, but not without the help of all the men and women he has spent almost his entire adult life flying with.

Moira dutifully holds Marbo's helmet and beams with pride. He's a weird little frog...thing, but he tries so dang hard.

Well said, Doctor.

Kendall raises the pirate ship: "Hail friends! I noticed a distress beacon from this ship. Can I assist you in helping these poor souls?"

She is kicking herself that she didn't ask Cass how long the crews needed to finish their ruse. Oh well, she thinks to herself as she awaits a reply from the Star Flare.

Cass reads the report and frowns. It's weird that so little turned up; if Darcy, the acting first officer, is so out of control that she shouted "If I die out there, you'll get demoted" at her acting captain on an open comm link, something more than "slightly elevated levels of stress" and a minor excess of blood alcohol should have been detected. But this was just a preliminary psych analysis - perhaps the full analysis will reveal more.

As for the intoxication reprimand, well, that's on Darcy. If she hadn't engaged in such flagrant insubordination, there would have been no medical exam ordered in the first place. And frankly, it was good to have an objective unfitness metric to support Cass' removal of Darcy from the strike team.

Sending an acknowledgment of the report to Dr. Belka, Cass dictates a brief account of the incident that prompted her to relieve Darcy from duty and files it in the captain's log.

Kendall responds to this captain. "I thought that was the Star Flare. What happened to my friend, Captain Hudd?"

"Cassano to Away Team One. You are cleared for deployment to the pirate vessel. Courage and success. Transporter room two, beam the first away team to the designated part of the pirate ship's hull."

"That is marbos cue. Good luck all." Marbo dons his helmet once again, hoisting the gas device onto his back, and arming himself with an autoinjector full of antidote to the sleep toxin, a modified plasma cutter, and his tranquilizer dart gun.

He proceeds to the transporter, and asks them to beam him and his team about 20 feet away, and he grabs one of the fire extinguishers off the wall. He instructs the other man to hold on to him as the beam, and once on the other side, 20-25 feet away from the hull, Marbo will use the extinguisher to propel himself towards the hull of the pirate vessel.

once they have landed and lashed themselves onto the hull marbo will start installing the device on the oxygen filter system.