Chapter 1: Carnath

Chaos has descended upon the shuttle. Dr. Mullins frantically tries to communicate with the pilots of the shuttle that things are amiss, while at the rear of the transportation vessel a small number of prisoners who have seemingly been plotting an escape/hijack of the vessel at hand make a desperate attempt at escaping the cage they are confined within.

As the prisoners push and pull against the cage's moorings, Corporal Riggs stands up and throws a blast of flamethrower at the inmates, which runs disastrously off-target, and blasts beyond the rioters. Luckily, the flame hits the plasticated wall behind the inmates. The wall melts and runs drippy down the back of the shuttle, but remains intact, though likely compromised. Dodger immediately dashes and takes cover behind a row of seats.

Ellos-11 fires at the inmates. She's never been anything less than certain that her aim is true, but recent anomalies in her access and programming has left her off her game and as she squeezes the trigger on the escapees. The shot passes between the large man called Elmo and the smaller, long-haired man, and one of the smaller inmates sitting on the floor suddenly collapses, blood bursting from her throat. Elmer looks at Bud's scattergun and grins, wholeheartedly unafraid of the man's threats, or at the very least, less afraid of the scattergun than one should be at the prospect of spending the rest of your life on Prison Station Echo. He stands with his hands grasping through the cage's mesh.

From the front of the cabin, Dr. Mullins is barking desperately into the speaker, something-something about if you value your job, this and that...
"If you value your positions, I wouldn't provoke the ire of XeroCorp. They wouldn't take kindly if the ship lands and all of their new hires are dead. Now do something!"

"Eh, heh, heh, heh... You hear this asshole?, Mullins hears from the speaker, as one pilot seems to speak to his counterpart... Dumbass thinks XeroCorp cares whether him or his buddies, or any of the inmates even make it on-asteroid at all. Ha!
Mullins hears the other pilot chuckling in the background.
The pilot moves his mouth closer to the intercom speaker. Alright listen assholes... I don't know how the hell any of you boarded this shuttle with weapons on your person, but you should take a moment to realize that this entire cockpit is basically a freighter-class escape pod with a bus welded to the back. We could sit here and watch you all fire off every round you morons have and you'll likely decompress the cabin, set yourselves on fire, or otherwise murder one another, and I'll have five or six days of much-deserved vacation time while XeroCorp "investigates" the death of a handful of janitors, rapists, murderers, and malfunctioning droids nobody gives a shit about.
"I strongly suggest you stop shooting guns and flamethrowers inside our fracking ship, and either handle whatever shit-show you have going on back there, or space yourselves.

As chaos continues in the shuttle, much to the pilots’ implied indifference, Annalise’s foam gun discharges at one of the inmates that was rattling at the cage and the foam hits the cage’s meshwork, passes through, and immediately coats the hands, chest, and face of the inmate, binding him to the cage. The inmate quickly tries to retreat from the attack, but the foam molecular structure bonds immediately with the air in the room and becomes a solid mass. Annalise can only stare as the man struggles to pull away from the cage, unable to free himself, or even breathe, and his muffled screams are only barely perceptible through the hardened compound, but for as slowly as his breath is in escaping the dried foam, it’s even slower at being drawn back in, and the man begins thrashing and convulsing uselessly, his feet kicking spasmodically as he struggles for breath.

Annalise immediately gives warning to the other inmates that they are at risk of triggering events that could compromise the integrity of the ship’s hull. Elmer only stands and grins defiantly. The long-haired inmate looks to Elmer for guidance, takes note that his companion ins;t to be persuaded, and begins pushing at pulling at the cage again, ignoring the thrashing of his fellow that’s suffocating in the foam encasing his face. But the other inmate that Elmer recruited for this attempt at escape first looks to the suffocating man, turns to the melted bulkhead behind him, considers Elmer’s scattergun, and promptly sits down, looking shamefully up at Elmer as if he knows he’ll have to answer to Elmer for his cowardice at some point in the future.

Elmer and Long-hair continue working in tandem at the cage. With only two of them now, their attempts at escape might take a while longer, but with probably close to a full twenty-four hours before their arrival on Prison Station Echo, time is still on their side.

Those not watching the prisoners’ escape attempt, or the man slowly suffocating as hardened foam covers his mouth and nose, notice Ellos-11, already an unsettling presence aboard the ship, acting twitchy as if whatever her processors are trying to make sense of is causing her distress. Nothing good ever comes from an Android acting twitchy or erratic, and nobody wants to be sealed inside a small metal tube for twenty-four hours if said Android goers full haywire.

@Ysolde: Annelise attempts to fire the foam gun at the inmates again. This time the device malfunctions as one of the compound mixing lines splits open under pressure. Instead of discharging a quick-drying foam at her target, the side of the gun and Annelise’s forward hand are suddenly covered in the entirety of the foam canister. A large mass of ochre-colored glue, almost taffy-like in consistency, and extremely sticky, covers her and the gun, though without the hardening compound mixed in before discharge, it never solidifies. Annalise’s will have to repair the rubber line and give the gun a thorough cleaning, inside and out, before it’s usable. Until she finds some means of cleaning this compound off, everything for the next twelve hours is sure to be a sticky, uncomfortable mess.@gtg626q: Dodger, seeing a brief lull in the shooting suddenly steps calmly forward and grabs hold of the man’s head and pulls it back from the cage work. The foam is really fastened to the mesh and for a moment Dodger can only hear the muffled scream of the prisoner, as he uses the very last remains of air to protest what he’s sure is his face being ripped off. Indeed, Dodger can see skin tearing at the sides of the inmate’s face and he continues to pull. Just as he begins to think perhaps it’s a lost cause, small fractures in the foam appear, and suddenly the dried foam compound tears away.
The man gasps as suddenly fresh air fills his lungs. One eye is still covered in the compound, as are his nostrils. Blood courses down each side of his face near his ears, and his freed eyelid as badly torn and bleeding as well, but at least he can get air. As he quickly stumbles to the rear of the cage, near the melted bulkhead, he looks at Dodger, perhaps with a look of astonishment at being assisted, and perhaps a degree of gratitude on his still-foam-caked face.

@MicrotheMacroBear:@MaJunior:

Bud’s scattergun discharges at the big man at point blank, but to his dismay, somehow the gun kicks and the shot misses the mark entirely, buckshot shredding into another inmate sitting on the floor, tearing a massive hole through the man’s abdomen, as he slump to the side dead.Having watched two of their fellow prisoners cut down, mostly due to sheer ineptitude on the part of the workers wielding firearms in the cabin, the majority of the inmates now retreated from the cage at Annalise’s threats. Some have begun cowering behind seats, or use one another as shields. Even Long-Hair stands a step or two back. The big man called Elmer, is not to be dissuaded, not even flinching as Bud’s shotgun blasts at him from only inches away. Instead he grins and starts attacking the cage with a renewed vigor.

The doctor looks again at the door. There’s no point of entry that looks as if it could be pried or forced. There’s a keypad with a palm reading mechanism installed, and presumably it’s programmed to read the hand prints of the pilot and co-pilot, but the door has been secured soundly against any attempted hijacking. No matter what chaos descends into the cabin area of this spacecraft, it’s designed to make a safe landing at it’s intended destination where presumably a team of beefy prison guards then takes over and gets everything under control while the pilots sit confortable inside the cockpit and wait for orders that the matter’s been resolved one way or another.