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Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Printable Version

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Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Ghostly - 04-30-2015

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Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Ghostly - 04-30-2015

The captain was on deck.

Kalladrill forged alloy connected with the far less prestigious steel plating underneath it with each step Zasz took, though the heavy thuds from those boots were almost entirely silenced by built in sound dampeners. An indomitable figure the man was to all that saw him, clad in a full plated body suit which gave off a dull sheen. In the long stretch of a room he walked down, sets of oculars of all shapes and sizes peered out from behind translucent paneling, but they were not trained on him; everyone here had more than their fill of Zasz Fenris. The new sight to them happened to be a creature attempting to keep ahead of the slaver's quick steps. On all fours, skin a fair crimson with hair that looked aflame spilling down their bare sides to the floor, they were kept from getting too far ahead by an occasional tug from a leash attached to a collar around their neck. "Almost there, then you can cry all you want." Zasz had little patience for waterworks, and this one's were particularly expressive, turning to a fog of steam upon hitting her heated flesh. Several shocks from the vice around her throat early on begot a pleasant end to any further whimpers. Chain in one hand and a transparent info-tablet in the other, the pair came to an eventual stop to a cell apart from any others that were currently in use. "Occupant, a single female, some kind of Ifrit offshoot. Exact species undetermined. Status temporary. Run class B living arrangements. Keep active monitoring, use of heat suppressants is authorized if temperatures rise above the acceptable threshold." Zasz ran through the protocols with a detached concern, though through the vocal filters it sounded as mechanical and oppressive as always. Moments later like many times before, the clear cell door would slide sideways to allow access to the woman being led into it with a push from the much larger individual's foot. After five warning beeps rang off it would close with an airtight hiss, leash snapping off with a press from his wrist mounted console and pulled out beforehand. There she was trapped and secure, as all of his playthings should be, but this was far from his normal catch.

Temporary, as in he couldn't keep this one, not that she had even caught his eye to begin with, but a job was a job. Royalty apparently, though not even the first heir to the throne. His mission so to speak had been to remove the princess from her home in the dead of night and have her remain missing until what mayhem might ensue over the fight for the crown? The contract he assumed was given by one of her siblings, even under an alias he could guess as much. Politicking never suited Zasz, and he glossed over the majority of details that had been included in the lengthy dossier. What little security that had been there was laughable, if he had been hired to assassinate the girl, she'd be cold in her bed with none the wiser, not that he'd be too inclined to take a hit on a young girl like this for the price he was offered. Clearly, significant offense to this poor alien had not been expected in any way.

The only backlash came from the heiress herself. In a manner of presumed self defense, she sparked a flare in her bedding the moment he plucked her out of from under the sheets, which more than brought attention to the situation. Still, Zasz was prepared for a rapid escape all the same. Off of the complex grounds, was a speeder hidden away to which he hustled onto with a quite unconscious captive in tow. His jump-ship several clicks out from there. What were the guards really going to do, shoot at him with their princess in his arms?

The hunter had not been told how to extract her in any explicit terms, so perhaps this was all part of the plan? Either way, a one Jallee Russlion was now safely stored on-board The Greenhouse, his vessel's call sign if that was ever in question. As he'd walk away, surely she'd be wailing, but like all of the containment facilities here, the soundproofing meant that her sobs were about as loud as the departing stride he made. Behind him, the overhead lighting would shut down leaving only a sky blue glow coming from the occupied cells to illuminate the storage floor.


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Floating through an empty quadrant in space, Greenhouse had no set course, now more than a dozen jumps from the hotspot that had been the homeworld of the Russlion empire. Perhaps empire was giving them too much credit, a lone planet of rule along with a handful of orbiting moons did not deserve such an intimidating title. What he was getting at was that he anticipated no retaliation. If her people were to send a squad of fighters this far out, if they were to even be able to find him at this point, then kudos would have to be given. Zasz was truly alone in this void sector, and he preferred a respite such as this. After all, when else would he find a chance to spend hours reading through his latest novel, Botany IV: Seeding the Stars? A real page turner this one was, as he flicked yet another cigarette butt to join the countless others he had gone through thus far.

At least, he thought himself all by his lonesome out here, not even an uninhabited planet within a single warp away, but a distress beacon proved such a claim false. The reflection of his pale face from the window was blocked by the center screen popping up with coordinates, 'immediate assistance needed' being the generic automated message alongside it. A long sigh escaped him as his options were contemplated. Intrigue aside it would be in his best interest to stay out of anyone's radar, for the beacon's range to ping his comm line at this distance meant that it had to reach others if they were around. The risk might be worth it though, his hulking craft was always in need of parts, and usually he paid through the nose for them through his on call mechanic; Rocket the cunning dealer she was had him by the balls half of the time. Sliding a metal hand across a panel of switches, The Greenhouse hummed to life as a sort of sleep mode was cut short. "Might as well take a peek." An uncertainty in his speech, unaltered without his helm, but all the same a grin crept to his lips and a shine gleamed in sole green eye at the potential for adventure.

At half warp, Zasz reached the site in due course; long range visuals and scans did not pick up another ship besides his own and the distressed craft, but that didn't mean others were not on their way. Better to be paranoid and live than blindly rush in and take a shot to the back.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - danixiewrites - 04-30-2015

Once in a while, there were days when one could expect to be trussed up and tossed into a cargo hold, warped halfway across a galaxy, and thrown to the mercy of spacewolves.

When one listened to as many peepholes and illegal wiretaps as Alex Winger did on the regular, the idea that one's actions might cause such problems seemed inevitable. But expectant as she was, the particular wolves who held her captive, who were responsible for plundering every drop of information out of her mind--surprisingly, about a topic she knew naught of--lacked even an ounce of the aforementioned mercy.

First the sessions were like being caught in the upper atmospheric turbulence of a gas giant, injections of uppers, then downers, in quick succession, driving words from her lips about everything from her childhood--despite being the disappointment, the unwanted child, she would be worth a ransom; they were not interested--to her Agency work--covert missions in engineering completed, information long cashed in. They were also not interested in queries about whether or not she could have opportunity to wash the red hair that came to her waist, thoroughly coppered with old blood, nor whether or not her prison garb could be exchanged for something clean and whole for the vibrawhips to slice through.

The beatings did not continue until morale--or her babbling, nearly delirious intel--improved. They continued. And continued. And continued. Long past any time at which it was determined, by yet another man in her life, that she was useless. At least as far as information went. As far as entertainment? She may as well have been an untapped asteroid of metals.

The criss-cross of hatchmarks upon her backside were not given the dignity of a bio-tank to heal the injuries, rather layering damage upon damage until her tormentors were bored for the evening. Or until they wanted to play with another prisoner. There were many, and she couldn't imagine useful information coming from their split lips and tortured, howling visages either. Alex supposed it was all that a man set out in space for weeks on end without an alternate source of entertainment could find to alleviate the doldrum. And after work was done, eventually even this "play" grew weary, the practice of abusing not just her but the rest of their charges driving some to kill. A final high, lost to the madness of voidspace.

Her co-prisoners voices had begun to fade from the collective screams of the interrogation vessel. Alex could remember wondering at some point if she might be the last one to stick it out--or maybe the only one still capable of screaming. She could remember, because that was when they came for her the last time.

The day/afternoon/evening/whothestarsknew that the scratching started. Outside. Whether it was an enemy, a rogue bot, asteroids, pirates, spaceworms, or WORSE, no one would say. Because they were too busy running, yelling, pounding their feet against bulkheads designed to shield heat signatures from the pressures of nosy spaceport authorities, running with nowhere to go from an attack that went from scratching to punching to rocking to EXPLODING.

Now no one screamed.

Now, no one came to hurt her.

But no one came to tend her either, which meant she lay bound and dazedly determined to escape even as her captors tried vainly to flee. By the time her familiar sea of pain subsided post-attack, and she was at least certain that it had been that, she was almost too weak to act. But act she would. Now. Well. As soon as she could open her eyes.


Anyone looking in on the Diem Vuong cruiser from above, below, or indeed, any angle at all, would see a once-proud and supposedly "entertainment" vessel torn asunder. Within, airlocks and seals were thrown shut, the survivors clinging to final breaths of life--that life being not quite as attached to their mortal coil. Without, hulls were broached, plating stripped handily from its construction, until it was little more than scrap metal drifting in loose configuration around two halves of a former sole structure. And by the time the beacon would be received, for all intents and purposes, the Diem Vuong appeared nothing more than another dead ship met with an untimely accident.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Ghostly - 05-01-2015

Paranoia aside, Zasz was not entirely certain on how this mangled mess of a ship before him could still have a functioning distress beacon to begin with. Even from just a visual assessment of the hull, if anyone had a wish to be saved from whatever mayhem had occurred they were likely left quite disappointed. The craft looked as though it had almost been torn apart from the inside out. In this Zasz weighed a few options. "If that hunk of metal is full of corpses, I'm going to regret picking it up even if it's a haul in parts." That said with a quickly followed sigh of inevitability, Zasz flew the Greenhouse into closer proximity.

If anything, he was quite a frugal man.

Searching the ID given by the automated message brought up an image of the Diem Vuong prior to its violent end, labeled a civilian class vessel for personal entertainment. Having a scoff at the idea, Zasz had a hard time believing that an "entertainment" starship this far out in the void just happened to run into the wrong kind of trouble. His own aging clunker had a similar sort of classification in its registrar, that did not make it accurate. One day the very same fate could befall the Greenhouse as the Diem Vuong, not that Zasz thought himself a fool enough to let that happen, but few probably did until the moment of. Were his long range diagnostic equipment up to date, he'd have taken a look for life signs, but this ship already had issues with the power grid, and the last problem he needed were all crucial containment systems being tripped from running a bloody scan.

The Greenhouse orbited the wreckage ominously while Zasz prepped to take on board most of what he could in one go. There was the chance that this was all bait from whoever, or whatever had done this in the first place. Zasz recognized this and in the end gave a fuck all sort of attitude towards the situation. He'd come out of his way to do this, so he might as well see the endeavor through for what minimal gains he was probably going to get out of it; if anyone wanted to lay a trap for Zasz, they were picking their battles poorly. Targeting what remained of what he figured was someone's less than scrupulous smuggling cruiser, he flicked the switch to bring his tractor beam online, letting out another exasperated groan as his concerns over the energy pull manifested once more. What few lights that were on dimmed, Zasz having his ocular implant keep a careful eye on critical systems for any loss of power. Nothing failed, but it never hurt to err on the side of caution.

While not visible the beam's radius took hold of the most sizable clump of scrap and whatever else was in its immediate vicinity, and after only a few moments did it begin to move. Slowly but surely, the Diem Vuong lurched towards the substantially larger vessel, hanger bay doors opening like an abyssal maw to devour a small lump of credits to fuel a psychopath's sick fantasies. The process proceeded with static efficiency despite concerns. In an honest worry, Zasz had only ever used the tractor device one before as a test, so the fact that the other ship was safely tucked away in the docking bay and did not collide against his own hull was another minor victory to chalk up.

Disengaging the beam, Zasz wasted no time in diverting the power to the engines and setting a spacial jump immediately. What risk there had been in this venture, certainly there was more so in sticking around after the fact. On an automated course, did the Greenhouse turn its nose from what paltry remains were of the Diem Vuong's graveyard -- like an antiquated automotive vehicle, it lurched forward briefly before a tear tore in the fabric of space and they were gone.

In the slip stream now Zasz unseated himself from the captain's chair and took hold of his helmet, firmly securing it over a face that few have or ever will see. In his completely controlled system all of his suit notifications popped up in his HUD and were swiftly closed as he made the trek out of the control room. There were only two ways down the hanger, either through the maintenance entrance on the bottom floor, or with the service elevator which hit every level of the ship. There was little reason for mobility in a place that had been designed to keep people in a single place. The less access there was to be had, the easier a time the jailor had in shutting down any escape.

Zasz Fenris did not know what he might find within the carnage he had only viewed from a distance. Hopefully, a few parts he could use; what was more likely, was everything would be far too damaged and he'd have to sift through a mess of bodies in the process before venting the entire mess back in to space. The middle ground was the same, only without the strewn about death. Actually, the worst would be if something was still alive, hostile or not. There was only one way to get on the Greenhouse, with a substantial amount of credits in hand, or a collar around the neck. This was his kingdom, his garden, and anyone that had the potential to ruin that was in for a less than copacetic relationship with the slaver.

Riding the elevator down to the hanger was a short trip, and with the door opening he'd get a first hand glimpse of his claim as soon as the lighting in the room flashed on. "Well, this looks promising" Sarcasm, would be dripping if not for vocal filters changing his tone to that of a monotonous drawl. Plugged into the communications through his suit, Zasz opened a line for the room. "To the wreckage of the Diem Vuong, I have picked up your ship from the distress call sent out. If anyone is alive, stay where you are with your hands up. I'm coming aboard." Cutting the signal off, he shook his head at the chance of survivors, but he'd rather give a fright to anyone lying in wait if they happened to be than have them think he was walking in unprepared. "That's if I can even find an easy way in though." The large mass along with the paltry scraps accompanying it had been unceremoniously dropped on to the bay floor, openings from this angle were all a bit of a climb.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - danixiewrites - 05-03-2015

They never broke her. No one ever would. These were the thoughts that had kept her going during the trip on the ill-fated vessel. After all, she’d survived her childhood. It wasn’t a surprise that she had a tolerance for torture. She never once contemplated what would happen if they had.

She just took it as a given she’d survive--remain sane--somehow.

Alex forced her eyes to part. The ship had gone quiet, creaky. The red emergency klaxons were no longer wailing despite the fact that some of the emergency lighting remained on with the usual sort of ambiance. A moment later, she realized she could see just enough to tell if any more light were available, she’d be dry-heaving all over the floor. There were some things one could not un-see, like the sight of an enemy pinned to the prison wall by a plassteel girder. Not just through the chest or between a couple of ribs, rather, his ribcage had been decimated by the damn thing, organs and bones minced like a fresh--not any of that fabricated stuff--clove of garlic.

Her stomach gurgled and a pained gasp escaped around her gag. Do not think of food, ya frellin’ genius. Never mind the fact she actually was quite hungry, her innards chewing on themselves all the harder with acknowledgment; the stew of guts and stench around her would not be conducive to keeping any of it down. Alex wriggled helplessly. Too bad the rotting bastard hadn’t had the foresight to unchain her before his untimely demise. Too bad they’d run into...whatever the hell had caused the ruckus that they’d run into. Asteroids? Pirates? Spaceworms?

She rolled her eyes. Anything that stopped them from wailing on her was probably a welcome intervention. Unless she starved to death. The eyeroll brought into view the tiny remote at his waist. The one that would undo the thick shock bands around her wrists and ankles.

She lurched upward on the uncomfortable mattress...thing. More something to mold around her as she slept and putrefied in her own sweat than a bed. Her fingers twitched, stretched, reached, barely grasping the edge of the device.

Alex squinted into the gloom. Two buttons. Blue. Green. It was always green. Green meant let Go.

She pushed, then instantly lost all muscle control in her entire body as volts upon volts of energy stabbed through the bonds around her extremities. Her thin form spasmed hard, her vocal cords locking tight, and the device snapped off the corpse’s belt to fall to the uncovered bed by her nose.

That was the last thing she saw for a while.

When she came to, she pushed the blue button.

The shackles fell free, and she rolled herself onto the floor.

Was anyone else left alive? Did she care? Was she now floating in space on a ghostship? It would be to her advantage if she was, for Alex was a mechanic. She could fix...anything. Everything. A dead ship would be no hardship. She snickered softly, letting the idiotic pun distract her from the fact she now smelled like piss--and her guard’s chest cavity was oozing onto the floor. One wrong step and blood and guts would squish between her toes.

Come to think of it...another wrong step and bits of plasteel might do the same. The enormous piece of bulkhead overhead that shielded her signature from sensors and her life from the vacuum of space remained largely intact. The rest though...She stared around the prison room, trying to make sense of things that were upside down and backwards, the bashed-in wall beside the door.

...Okay.

...This was possibly a ship she could not fix.

Her priorities shifted suddenly, from finding out if her captors were on their way--they weren’t; the creak of metal, hiss of static and spit of gears, and otherwise otherworldly silence told her as much--to raiding the mess for a good meal--she hadn’t eaten more than the meager nutrients they pumped through the damn IVs in days, another method to keep her weak and reliant--and finally, to ensuring there were no breaches in the outer hull.

It would not do to be saved by a space catastrophe only to be killed by it directly after.

She toed around the guard’s remains and grabbed the breather off his thick belt. “Well,” she rasped into the void of sound, “you won’t be needing this, champ.”

Slipping it over her face but for now leaving it inactive, Alex checked the cap--an hour of oxygen. On a ship this size, it should be enough for her to find a grid, tap it, and patch a breach. A breach. One. If there were more...Alex shuddered, and it wasn’t until she was certain she’d stopped shuddered, yet continued to feel as though she were, that she realized the ship was in motion.

“Oh, frell.”

For an indeterminable amount of time, she hovered between decisions. Move, or don’t? Continue on the immediately concerning mission to check for breaches...or hide? Curiosity--and her nose--said definitely get the hell out of the prison room and see what could be salvaged. But then she thought she heard voices--one? Two? She couldn’t make it out--and without further prompting the ship lurched wildly. As the structure rattled she found herself propelled into the corridor, ass over teakettle until her cheek hit the wall. Her stomach dropped out from under her like she’d decided to play on the anti-grav lifts, and though it settled, her nerves decidedly did not.

“...Did we plow into a damn asteroid?” she muttered, crawling instead of clambering onto shaky legs and firmly opting for the “hide” option. Under her former imprisoning accommodation.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Ghostly - 05-05-2015

In the military back home there were strict protocols in place when a squad went in to breech any potentially hostile environment. While he'd broken the initial rule of thumb on handling an unknown foreign payload by blindly bringing one aboard; he was in fact not so dumb as to assume it completely inert of danger. There were few life lessons he took from his rather tumultuous upbringing, but the importance of numerous safeguards to protect oneself from harm was put into practice on a daily basis.

Childhood reminiscing aside, Zasz made a lap around the perimeter of the vessel exactly twice. Once to assess the structural integrity and in turn ball park whether or not it was safe or worth the effort to even attempt clearing the inside. The second trip was to burn time to see if anyone that might have been alive got the bright idea in their silly head to peek their face out and say hello. If the latter had held true, he had a scatter gun on his back with enough shock pellets to take down a Gamoran Rockjaw, and those bastards could bite straight through the hull of a tank. Back where he originally started, the slaver couldn't help but shake his helm and tap a button on his gauntlet. What exactly had happened to this ship boggled him, other than a catastrophic system failure or assault from some kind of enemy few things did such a number to subspace grade metal. How he was going to make sense of the structure never the less determine an appropriate method to board it was a mystery.

One just had to go at it, and from his waist a line with a clamp at the end of it fired off towards the top of the mangled mess. Magnetically securing to whatever made first contact, Zasz cut off the slack with a tug and was pulled rather suddenly forward. Feet easily keeping up with the velocity he reached the vessel an vertically scaled it with surprising grace, kicking his way off the hull as he traveled. Once he was staring down at where he had been but a hop and skip away, the device sliding back into its slot at his hip. Sensors in his helmet went about analyzing what might have been the topside of the craft to see if there had been a more accessible entrance than the one he had decided on before. It did not take long for his reading to bring back an answer, and putting it rather bluntly; there was not. If anything this ship had better armor plating scattered around it than your average fighter. There was no consistency to it though, it was if they were covering up specific areas. Perhaps there were sensitive materials in those compartments? Walking over to an edge he'd turn his back to it and jump back over the precipice. His first ideas were usually best, and not letting himself fall too far, he'd catch himself with a steel crunching grip against a jutting plate. This segment had been blown out entirely; likely it was where a connecting corridor had simply been torn in half as one half of the ship had been removed from itself.

With a swing, Zasz footed himself on less than stable flooring, but thankfully it did not give even under his substantial mass. Here was to the situation turning out better than he perceived. From within his thick, winter style jacket, a stun stick was retrieved and elongated to its two foot length. As much as he wanted to put down whatever might come at him, he'd need the free hand to maneuver around. "Uggh." Quietly, but still an audible groan, the hunter let out a gut reaction of not even disgust, but disappointment. The first sight to for him to lay eyes upon was a bisected individual strewn unabashedly across the path in front of him. What had done this to the man could have been any possible scenario. In the end, his cause of death did not matter. What did was the basic truth that he had indeed grabbed a pain in the ass salvage. Zasz saw enough ruthless behavior and cruelty to even the most innocent souls while traveling the void of space to grind his emotions to a dull edge. Stepping through pools of stagnant blood, which he'd have to remember to clean later, did he cautiously wander the halls.

If there were parts to be had, he was not finding them in here. Each panel he came across was fired, the rooms they'd allow passage to barred behind doors he would not even bother attempting to open. Zasz was here for a brief inspection of his haul, and to clear out any unwanted guests that might still be around. While he could jack into the systems to reroute power to any of the airlocks or cargo holds, or the goddamn lights, a man like him hadn't the patience to do so. Low light optics and thermals would be all he needed to navigate, that and a swift batting arm. Coming to a recreational room of sorts yielded several more of what could have been the crew. These ones were in better shape, as in not brutally mutilated, though still clearly deceased since their heat signatures were long since cold. Silent steps around projecting girders over to a console that still had life in it despite a smashed interface screen, Zasz plugged a data stick into a generic access port. An expensive little number that had a suite of useful programs written onto it. In time it would try--and typically succeed--to repeatedly to brute force its way into the Diem Vuong's central grid in order to data mine whatever had not been corrupted in the wreck, sending any information gathered to a drive in his suit. If there was a command line to controls on the ship he'd have them too eventually, but right now a manifest would be right up his alley. Then he'd have better than a vague guess of the contents of what was on board by running names.

Eerie silence left Zasz to focus primarily on the slow and steady breaths from within his confined domain. Now that the vessel was in controlled gravity once more one did not have to listen hard to hear devastated walls struggling not to collapse in on themselves. A saving grace was that the engines, or at least the core had not hit critical failure and sent the entirety of the Diem Vuong into the slipstream to be ripped apart at an atomic level. There was money to be had in them regardless of whatever else might be damaged. Down another sector of the interior that he could reach without struggling to fit his form through rubble, did he find his first bit of intrigue. A set of doors lined this hallway, but unlike before several of them were not shut tight. Curiosity overcoming him, he brought his back against the wall of one entryway before turning rapidly to get a jump on nothing, because at this point even he had to figure this was a nigh dead ship.

What he was treated to nearly gave cause for another low volume exclamation. Zasz managed to contain himself this time around, for the sake of his own pride. Strapped to a blood soaked cushion was the form of an emaciated woman bared nude to his intrusion. So badly beaten was her face that his facial recognition software couldn't even determine a race. Like every other being that he'd discovered she too was stone cold. Obviously she had not been killed by whatever had gone down, and that made his grip on the rod tighten. Now, regardless of his profession, Zasz had standards in how he treated others. Even a glimpse of her figure showed repeated torture methods, scars overlapping themselves from wounds that never had a chance to heal. Her struggle fruitless despite attempts at freedom; under bindings her wrists had been worn to where he was sure he could see bone. If the Diem Vuong was a slave ship, they were the worst kind, a dark mark against the practice. Funny considering how he considered himself in relation.

He'd pass by the remaining open hatches, only giving brief glances inside to check for signs of movement or warmth on the thermal scanner, in each instance he was either given an empty space in similar design to the initial room, or a repeat instance of the broken captive. One room stood out, an impaled man marking the sight. A heat signature, above anything encountered so far. Standing out in the hall his visuals rested on the mattress, missing what he would guess had a poor soul strapped into it. This might have been the last vanguard that struggled against their captors at the moment of climax. A nice thought, even if there was little evidence to back it up. While the heat signature was surprising, it was still faint. They could be lost along with other parts of the vessel, or one of the many corpses he had yet to come across. With a click, his stun stick collapsed and was safely tucked away. "I might as well dump this back the way it came. I don't think even Rocket wants to take a crack at this mess. I have more than had my fill." Zasz would then start backtracking his steps to leave this tomb undisturbed.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - danixiewrites - 05-05-2015

Survive.

Survive.

Alex breathed so shallowly her lungs barely moved. This wasn't difficult--and neither was it entirely because she didn't think she wanted the owner of the faint footsteps creaking through the ship's corridors to finish her off like the so-called "crew" of this torturous prison. Her lungs and throat burned with each flex and release, the action in itself tiring, and the reek of her surroundings--stars, herself--made her want to crank the oxygen device on far earlier than absolutely necessary.

Did the slow tread belong to someone who'd piloted the ship? Somehow it didn't seem likely. She suspected she was the only one left. Good riddance. At least, where the guards were concerned. The other captives, inmates who'd been imprisoned with her...if they had broken then death was a mercy. If they hadn't--death still might be a mercy. She didn't know what was out there. The fate that awaited her could indeed be worse than her fellows.

So if it wasn't a pilot, the Diem Vuong had been boarded then...but not by attackers, she suspected. There would be many more footsteps were pirates involved, and this intruder was careful. Not in a militant way, but rather in an observational way. Every so often, the footsteps paused, then continued, in the manner of someone surveillant of their brand new cruiser or a potential bidder sizing up a possible creature at one of the open-air markets on Ludech.

Pace, pace, pace, pause.

Pace, pace, pace, pause.

She imagined two things after a time, as the steady thumps lulled her to caution-laden comfort: first, that it was one of the large automatons from an ages-old mission, the ones that inspected asteroids brought into a mining facility, the ones who'd stare, cock their heads just so, calculate profit margins, and then press a button to either reject the payload or to drill it down to nothingness. The second was less likely: that the ship had been attacked and then seized in a teched-up net of some kind by a madwoman who was now roaming the halls in admiration of her prowess with a...

...Whatever the frell cripples ships to this egregious degree. Honestly.

Shaking her head slowly at folly and frustration brought Alex's attention to the long, sticky and clumped strands of red hair coiled under her body. She'd always wanted to try dreadlocks. ...Just not this way. Without an intervention from the gods, she'd have to cut the whole mess off completely; maybe try something short, sassy. Spiky and shit. Hold the literal shit. Her nose wrinkled. The fact that her hairstyle, out of everything else she could possibly fret over--over infection, starvation, unhealed wounds, whoever was clomping around out there, impending gagging over the roil of death around her, leaks in the hull, even over her ridiculous amounts of moons-cursed freckles--was the most grating thing on that list at the moment a pair of massive boots came into view almost made her laugh.

No, almost giggle.

In that horribly ill-timed, hysterical way one giggles when one is frellin' screwed up the thermal exhaust port without hope of reprieve.

Her hands clenched into fists, several filthy knuckles jammed into her mouth to stop the ragged breaths from escaping into something tangible. It must have worked, as the boots turned, tapping back from whence they came. Good. Good. For when they faded away altogether, she could make a break for it. Because no matter the tale behind the toes tapping down the corridor...they came from a ship beyond this one.

More than likely, it was one that she wouldn't have to worry about hull breaches on. Something flight-worthy. And while she had no wish to be captured anew, nor spaced, nor flayed and peeled like the hull of the ship she occupied, the notion of an opportunity to escape the moons-cursed dungeons she'd lived in for who knew how long began a frantic scrabbling up her spine, nestling into her thoughts until it was an all-consuming need that dared her to defy logic, sense, and all else.

In the name of survival.

Alex moved slowly, her entire frame stiff from having lain for so long then cramming herself into an unfamiliar shape. Trying to straighten her muscles out once more nearly made her groan aloud--and the knuckles found themselves back in her mouth as a meek sound was uttered.

"I might as well dump this back the way it came. I don't think even Rocket wants to take a crack at this mess. I have more than had my fill."

Smoke-gray eyes widened as gaps in her knowledge were flooded with information from the cold, stilted commentary. The boarding party of one was there to assess the Diem Vuong for valuables. And her ship, this presently stinking liferaft among the stars, was so bad off as to not be worth a dren. As useless as her father thought her to be. Alex staggered to the wall, leaning on one palm, and closed her eyes.

If there's something to be said for these monsters, at least they saw that I was useful to the end.

Her eyes snapped open on the grim thought, all-consuming rejection blasting through her mind. This was not the end. Her casual assessment of the ship's condition had been right, and more, if the mass was ejected, she'd be afloat with no hope of a second chance for recovery.

An hour of oxygen is not enough to rebuild a ship from the inside out.

Which only amplified the pulse of determination at the back of her skull, working its way now to the front. Escape. Survive. Abandon ship. If the person attached to the mechanical voice was leaving, that left her with almost zero time to act on that flight instinct. So Alex moved.

Lurching cautiously into the hallway on bare feet, she opted for a route that led toward a secondary exit--assuming the scrapper hadn't forged a new seal in the hull and come through that to board. She retraced steps from memory, having passed parts of the small craft as she was dragged back and forth to the interrogation chamber. Eying more and more crippled mechanisms and a blast door that looked to have been rattled free during the latest jarring of the vessel, she paused, then configured the oxygen mask to failsafe mode.

Not good, but not yet a prob--The thought sliced off as she stepped into Engineering and stood with her mouth agape, her palms clinging to the frame of the once motion-sensitive doorway to hold her up. Or to hold the ship up.

Because the entire back wall was...missing.

Beyond, she could catch a glimpse of a docking area of some sort--probably the scrapper's personal bay. And since nothing caught at her or sucked her into a vacuum through the gaping structure, Alex decided this exit was as good as any exit. She slipped through the cracks, leaning a little too hard on the wall as she did so. Falling, and in short order half-buried under a cascade of mass of hardware and wall bits, to the floor of the bay.

"Frellin'. Stupid. Ship..." came a weak murmur among the wreckage, as she tried vainly to wriggle her way free. Maybe...no one will notice.

And with that ridiculous thought, the hysterical giggle broke free. Barely there, pained, and, to someone well-integrated with society, sounding perhaps a little unhinged.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Ghostly - 05-05-2015

This was not some cheesy alien horror flick, no monster popped out from the vent overhead to tear Zasz's head off of his shoulders. In fact, he continued on his way back with an expected lull in affairs. There was no pause in retracing his own bloodied footprints with an almost reckless abandon, though not so rushed that he did not stop to pick up the little bit of hardware he'd left hacking the data banks of the Diem Vuong all this time. At this point he was not certain he wanted whatever the tool had gathered for him, but it was all there in storage for him to parse out later. While he had verbally mentioned venting the ship back into space, whether or not that was actually going to happen was another conversation entirely. The quick answer was yes, he would. Right now? Probably not. Credits made Zasz take more than a few risks in his adventures.

He had no desire to talk to Rocket in all honesty. Both of their personalities simply clashed too frequently to warrant anything other than a business relationship. What he would do is send her a voice clip, short and sweet to give her the option of a meetup. Several tonal blips from within his helm and the comm line was established.

"Rocket, I have some salvage that might be worth scavenging for parts. It's a real mess though, can't quite say what tore it apart in the first place, but whatever did left everyone on board about as mangled as their ship. The whole thing could be a crap shoot, but you never know. If you're down, reply, if not then leave it be and I'll get rid of the blasted craft myself." A brief pause as Zasz remembered other mattered he needed to discuses came up. "By the way I have an invoice of repairs that I need done in the near future. I'm on a job currently, so the priority is low."

Click

That was it, the entirety of his message to the rough talking mechanic with a vice like grip that could compete with his own as well as a jarring temperament to boot. The one sided dialogue did bring to light insight to the constant state of disrepair of The Greenhouse. Almost always was there some sort of breakdown in the massive prison cruiser. A coolant leakage here, damaged stabilizers there; by far the most work went into those customized containment facilities. While each and every one of the poor souls he captured were in all terms trapped, they were not mistreated or put into less than satisfactory living arrangements.

There was the landmark of his breach, two halves of a male spread across opposite sides of the corridor, and it still brought disgust to his hidden features over the supposed haul he had hoped to gain. Zasz may have not been the one to win an award for being morally sound, far from it really. The hunter did have standards though, guidelines for how he treated others, and he was no psychopath ripping and beating into the flesh of others for pleasure. That said, business always came first, having he sent off a great many number of marks to people that wanted to do only the most horrific of deeds. Personally he never crossed over that threshold in his personal dealings.

Treated to the sight of his hanger bay, which this pile of junk fit rather snug in, he'd hop over the edge to make the reasonable drop to the grated steel below. The weight of his suit left little chance for those sound dampeners to cover up the impact, the force reverberating all around and through his form. Zasz was an augmented amalgamation of various tech though, never quite satisfied with how his body performed on a day to day basis. Cranial implants to regulate neurotransmitter production, modifications to his skeletal structure to strengthen his resistance to his armor's natural wear on an average body, outright ocular replacements; the separation between man and machine was a fine line danced by the slaver. At this stage in the transition, he wasn't sure if he could even fully remove himself from his enclosure; it had been years since he last tried. Tried being the key word.

Rising from his knees, Zasz turned to return to the upper levels of his home. The elevator still the lone means to get to the flight deck without crawling through maintenance tunnels, which with his size was nigh impossible. As if to spite the low score the prospector had given to the damaged goods, a lengthy support rod snapped off, barely held on to begin with from repeated structural degradation. Were it not for a spherical sensor around his suit to determine threats that his eyes could not, he'd have likely taken a crushing blow. Instead, his muscles moved on autopilot, controlled by the the wiring imbedded into his figure from his suit to go about the best course of action to protect the host. All of this was a fancy way of describing a tumble forward to evade a pillar of solid metal crunching through the floor plates before getting stuck upright at a slight angle. Heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, Zasz always ached after such an impromptu kick in from his augments, but he was unharmed. More upset was he over the fact that he now needed to amend his repair request to Rocket to include this incident. However, it probably did aid in distracting the man from another clash from the opposite end of the vessel.

Instead, he carried on towards the elevator doors, still open from prior use. The ship still had at least an hour of warp to go through, perhaps he could read another chapter in his book? Back to the wall of the cramped box, his gaze was on the Diem Vuong in all of its shame. What a waste of his efforts.

Door closing, a hysterical laugh echoed the spacious hangar, and diligently his auditory analyzer picked up on it almost immediately. Zooming in on the pile of rubbish the noise originated from he could see a lithe frame intermixed within.

Someone had survived.

This had not been one of those fight or flight moments for Zasz. Unfortunately for him, there was no way for him to bolt out of now shut doors. "Well I'll be dammed." A sharp clang of his hands roughly colliding against the immobile entrance. Patience was a virtue, or so they said, and typically Zasz had it in spades. Right now though, there was an intruder on board. Regardless of the fact that he had brought them to him, or even if they were of no physical threat. This was cause for alarm.

He'd be counting the two minutes by each second that it took for the ride up, then back down.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - danixiewrites - 05-06-2015

Alex was frelled. Beyond frelled, really.

The aches and pains in her body were beginning to make themselves known and she couldn't afford an adrenaline crash now.

But in the precise series of moments during which she plummeted toward the bay floor, her breather dislodged with the collapse of scrap metal, her body trapped in the heap of former prisonship, she was also--however temporarily--free. For the spanse of two or three moments after, she was breathing great gulps of freshly cycled, non-guts-laden air between exhalations of hysteria. Sounds less amusement and more...profound relief. The enormity of freedom crashed over her like a turbulent wave of nullspace during a clean slipstream jump.

Just as dangerous, too, because she had no clue whether the scrapper who'd collected the Diem Vuong and summarily dismissed its worth would be nearby or long gone; whether he'd be pleased or displeased...or displeased to the point of violence at finding a stray aboard his ship. Her laughter, such as it was, faded when no one hurriedly turned a corner to blow her fool head off with a laser. It became grunts as she quickly shoved free of the detritus, moving a metal shield over her head to help lessen both her heat signature and her visual from anything that might have been monitoring the wreckage. Finally, it moved into silence as her calculating brain, the technical part that figured out how things worked and how they could be fixed settled on the problem of likely being unwanted in a stranger's ship.

She cast a tired gray gaze along the walls and ceiling of the hangar for surveillance equipment and was not pleased with her odds. Outdated though some of the tech appeared to be, what little she could see from the metal she lay underneath said she'd be--likely had already been--spotted.

It left her options. Few of them, but options regardless.

She could come right out and greet whatever crew the metal collector's ship had to offer. Maybe seek to secure some pity--and a bath; hot, solid food. It would be clear that she'd been imprisoned on board the Diem Vuong. What might not be entirely clear to a stranger however, what with her body covered in...everything...was that she was not responsible for the ship's fate, its crew's demise, nor even her own survival among the wreckage. She'd been on enough missions for the Agency to know most people assumed one imprisoned had done something wrong or belonged, legally, to someone else. The lack of intergalactic regulations on such fronts made these safe assumptions that precluded confrontation and kept ship captains from suing station masters. Alex decided, shifting to get a clearer look around the bay, she could not afford someone else's assumption that she was incarcerated for such a reason, nor the assumption that she'd taken freedom into her own hands.

Leaving her fate to strangers again did not fulfill the survival need rampaging inside her brain.

So, she would not greet the crew. She could instead blend among them. Large doors set into the walls provided the only obvious means of escape into the inner ship. If it hadn't been lit up and in use, it would have been her best option, because she'd have been able to override any attempt to stop it, spoof its level stops so no one could tell where she got off, and, as an added bonus, no one would have expected a motion so bold. She'd steal a uniform, fit in among the engineering team, wait until the next stopover at a station or some-such. Unfortunately, only seeing the hangar wasn't an indication of how many levels the ship had--nor how many crew and how tightly contained an operation she faced.

Even if she had time to break it down and try the tube to get around the ship, the problem of too many unknowns remained.

That left outright disappearance. And though maintenance tunnels could be flushed to present a one-way ejection out an airlock, though the surveillance in the hangar would show her point of entry, Alex knew maintenance tunnels. All it would take was a bit of dismantling, all quick glitch that would close her off from detection and reappear as normal after a time. She could burrow in like a spacerat, make a little nest of her own until the ship hit port.

As good a solution as any, only she had to act fast on it, because now her right leg was beginning to throb.

She didn't care that she slipped and stumbled on a hurried, scrambling way to the grate, that her handprints and footprints and someone else's gore--or maybe her own--tracked a clear path. She assumed she'd be seen regardless. Once inside, she'd vanish. No crew with less than an engineering genius aboard would shake her loose. Until docking, she could be a Phantom, like the one of musical inclination in an old Earth opera house.

Wouldn't the crew just throw themselves into a snit if she started sending demands and playing some variety of music from the bowels of their ship? A sound crossed between a giggle and a sob escaped a few feet from a clean getaway. Between that and her overactive flight response, her senses were tunneled to opening the grate, and nothing else. Alex had no hope of knowing if she'd be discovered before she could find out how very Phantom-like she could become.

She registered between somehow working the grate free in record time and hunching before its entrance that to make such a plan work, she'd have to have tools. Alex did not have tools. She'd barely kept hold of the oxygen device in her hand, barely did so now as she clambered inside the tunnel entrance. In a blinding flash of red-orange-black-then-red-again, her right leg seized. A moan echoed into the only hope she had of retaining her freedom, and then waned. Her breath came in pants as she tried to push past the pain.

One dainty...blood-and-guts-smeared...bare foot stuck out of the tube, disappearing inside by tiny, almost immeasurable degrees as her adrenaline flat-lined.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Ghostly - 05-07-2015

A number of scenarios ran through Zasz's head in careful calculation. He had not so much seen, as caught a glimpse of a very much living, breathing individual. Someone who could only have come from the Diem Vuong. This one had to have been right under his nose in that room with the heat signature. It did not take a genius to understand how bizarre this entire encounter has been thus far, what with the type of freight Zasz had discovered and the mysterious nature surrounding its aggressive demise.

Who the person could have been came down to one of three options, and each had a straightforward response from Zasz. First off, they happened to be a member of the crew, in which case they'd be vented along with their ship. Second, they were one of the unfortunates held captive by the prior. Of course, Zasz had sympathy for their plight of how they appeared to have been treated, but at the same time knew nothing of their cause for imprisonment. There was always a reason, and likely was no simple story to tell, especially if they had escaped. Either way, he probably wouldn't shoot on sight depending on the reaction gotten towards his presence. The final option could have been any of the past listings, or an outlier, they were the one responsible for the state of the Diem Vuong. Whoever this had been posed a natural threat solely for their skills in taking out their captors as well as the craft itself. With the crew dead did they have any need to shy away from Zasz, other than the fact that he too was a slaver?

Point taken, perhaps all of this did not deserve such a cut and dry reply from the captain.

The ride up had finished and Zasz hurriedly slammed the bay floor button the second he could sending him on his way back down. The lone survivor's choices were further diminished when compared to Zasz. They could either face him, and a lovely chat could be had, or they could flee. The latter would provoke a less than amicable retaliation from the armored man. Fear he could acknowledge, and even respect. He dealt with others experiencing such an emotional outburst regularly. That did not mean he would allow it without repercussion. The best scene he could hope to view with those doors opening was the person still in the pile of rubble, or collected and waiting patiently by it. Was the a realistic expectation? Probably not. Still, a man could dream. He had enough problems on his plate now, this newcomer only escalated them.

Patience thin and with nothing but a few valuable moments that he would not allow to go to waste, Zasz went about sorting out the data package he'd gotten off of the Diem Vuong. A manifest would help immensely in separating who was affiliated with the ship personally, and who had been a part of the cargo. If there was by chance a record of those poor souls then all the better, not that he had any easy way of lining up all these frayed strands of information into one cohesive thread. With how many systems had been compromised in the incident it was impressive that this much info remained uncorrupted. Text scrolled down the side of his helmet's screen at a rapid fire pace only registered by the ocular implant, getting sifted and tossed by relevance. The issue that blockaded further progress into the endeavor were that the files themselves had been encrypted. Depending on what level of security the captain of the Diem Vuong had over his personal business, the task at breaking through would provide a bigger hassle than his suit could properly managed. Assumed as such, Zasz left those particular documents be until he could set up a proper station to work on them.

If the Greenhouse were not an aging relic, the elevator probably would have not taken so long to make the voyage, but that was on Zasz for his frugal ways and obsession with never letting go. When the doors did slide open to the hanger, his scan went right to where he had seen movement before. Hopes dashed right quick, the bits of scrap were still present, only without limbs flailing about in them. It only just occurred to Zasz that he could have been viewing the cameras in the docking bay with his suit, and he had to stop a pained groan from escaping his throat at his own shortsightedness. His feet hit the floor in lengthy strides, sweeping motions of his helm looking for any sign of life. It didn't take long. Almost comically did they find their target not too far from where they had come from. Optics zoomed in almost immediately as he approached from a distance, and now that he could see the individual for what they were he almost seemed surprised.

Appears human, exact race uncertain. Female. Young. Emaciated and covered in filth, blood most likely. No visible weapons, though clutching a sheet of metal over her head. Danger presumably low.

Zasz rattled off a checklist in his mind as though she were a mark, not that she was fit to be in one of his cages. Still, this was his process, and clearly with the shape she was in had to be one of the prisoners on board the Diem Vuong. Zasz let Alex continue her slow struggle. Curiosity getting the better of him to see what plan they had concocted, or how they might react to the imposing figure looming in the background. At nearly seven feet and covered from top to bottom in dull black plating, he could be seen as anything, though most likely a threat to her. There was nothing to be done about that other than stuffing his hands inside the pockets of his heavy coat as a sign of assurance that he'd not put her down on the spot.

What Alex started to do did startle the hunter right away. Perhaps he was unprepared for her prowess, but she went to work in tearing off one of the grates to get into below the deck. If that occurred then she'd be as lost to him as a rat behind a wall. With his stature, trying to crawl through the narrow shafts in maintenance would be nigh impossible. His pace quickened into more of a dash, hands coming out to aid in his movement. "Wait." Would be all he said initially, in that same static filled tone she had heard before, though it would echo across the spacious area. Maybe she heard him and didn't care, or was too focused on her task, because she started to disappear little by little into the darkness below. Now in a full on sprint, Zasz dove to the ground. The collision of steel against itself caused a screeching wail, sparks flying as he thrust his arm down the shaft in an attempt to grab hold of Alex's foot as it slipped out of sight.

He did not succeed.

"I know your frightened. I saw what those people did on that ship. I can't promise much, but I can say that you will be safer with me than trying to survive down there." Zasz prided himself on his honesty with words. While stretching the truth was common, or withholding information to get another to believe in him, he meant whatever left his lips. Alex was better off with him than on her own. Unless she proved herself deserving of a violent altercation. "Take my hand and I'll pull you out." Zasz did not deserve her trust, hell, he'd be lying if he said anyone should place their life in his hands, but he was hoping he wouldn't have to send Rocket through these tunnels to pull out a corpse and fix whatever damage she caused in the process.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - danixiewrites - 05-08-2015

Alex was dazed and fading fast, half-slumped and legs entangled in the rungs of a surprisingly little-worn ladder that presumably led between decks. One of her arms jammed into a hole which presumably led toward another area of the ship and not, in fact, outerspace. Her head had knocked against metal and her ragged breathing echoed upwards and downwards in a tube a lot smaller than galactic standard decrees for the engineer's Guild. This, therefore, was either an old ship or an unsanctioned ship, belonging not to a company who employed through usual channels--guilds, training salons, station rosters--but rather one which worked sans fleet. Dangerous, because the possibility of a captain and crew working outside recognizable boundaries meant it might not be up to regs in other areas, too.

Because regulations, more than what manner of ship and crew I'm dealing with in the first place, are SO important.

Why she was suddenly worried about regs at a time like this--or ever, because Alex only knew all of the rules to the letter so that she could definitively work around them as needed--made just about as much sense as her fuss over the toxic wasteland that was her hair. It was the kind of nonsensical logic that made her roll her eyes. And then hastily close them as the tube entrance overhead haloed thickly in her vision. The stilted voice came again--the one that'd said the Diem Vuong would be ejected. Rejected.

Useless.

As useless as she'd be in a series of maintenance tunnels...without her tools of the trade.

As useless as she'd be in moments, if her adrenaline kept plummeting and she lost her grip on the ladder in a bout of unconsciousness.

Frightened, he'd said. Was she? Alex pondered that sluggishly. She had been, and had burned that fear up in her scramble to get out of the bowels of nullspace--the horrifying wreckage and memories of the prison ship. But her body was no longer screaming at her to run like she had a comet trying to ram itself up her ass. It, like the passengers on the Diem Vuong, had ceased screaming completely.

That was a problem.

Forget 'Fight or Flight'. She was about to merely Fall.

"'M not scared. Happy. 'Live, a'least." The presently reedy tone sounded nothing like her own, lacking its usual lyrical muster and slightly slurred in the way of one teetering on the edge of a tragic mix of exhaustion and delirious relief. She sounded like Standard wasn't even her native language. Frell it anyway, I sound like one of those stereotypical spacepirates they put on the really bad vids on those econ skytours. The way her tongue and teeth refused to cooperate quite right to get more Standard-forged words past her tingling lips added a frustrated edge to her words. Maybe a little hostility. "More'n I can say fer the monsters a'like 'a hit."

She was speaking about her captors. He sounded as though he knew what had happened, and disapproved. It would be a point in the scrapper's favor, except...every word he spoke kind of sounded like it'd been filtered through a disapproval machine. And how much did he know? Had he really seen? Were they just patronizing words, or did he know the ship wasn't what its designation would have portended to be? Did he watch the hours and weeks of footage that held nothing but people screaming, begging, swearing they had no idea about this political regime or that high-ranking businessman? Did he know about her?

A rock of shame lodged somewhere between her shriveled stomach and the middle of her throat. It burned, and she was too dehydrated to let the rivers of sobbing, sniveling tears run free. She'd survived torture for entertainment's sake alone in the end. The cutting, the slicing, the laughter...the screaming...Had he seen? Had he heard?

A new thought struggled to make itself known through the haze of self-directed horror. What if his ship had been responsible for her freedom? Wouldn't that mean she owed him? No, she decided as the haze made her head loll against the ladder; if he'd blown up the ship to try to save people like her, he'd mucked it up. That damage had been done by someone or something intent on utter, all-consuming destruction. Even bringing her aboard, giving her the chance to breathe air sans restraints and interrogation techniques--it had been an unintentional save.

"No' sure I b'lieve safe anywhere," she said then, her sentences fracturing inward with a noticeable increase of shadows around the edges of her vision. "Could ya pass down a spanner? I'll jus' make a li'l nest down 'ere til we land; ya won' even notice I'm a'board." She flailed toward the voice with the arm that wasn't stuck, disappointed the sarcasm and bitterness that accompanied those words in her head hadn't made it up her throat. "Don' wanna impose."

Really, she had two options: Go up, with the stranger who despite the cool tone to his voice was in fact offering assistance rather than firing down the tube. If one presumed this wasn't because he had a bad angle to do the latter. Or she could go down. Tuck herself onto a solid platform under her own power before she simply collapsed.

Food. I should ask him to send down some of that too.

If she was completely honest with herself, the motivation of which direction to take was decided not by her brain nor her usually insatiable curiosity, but by her stomach. Only one of those options might get her to food faster. The same option might get her dead faster too. Either way, the gnawing hunger would be put out of its misery. Having decided "up", however, Alex found she had deliberated too long. Now she lacked the strength to get herself untangled and out of the shaft on her own.

"Ah," she said faintly, and smacked her hand high overhead against the tube, "can't move. Sen' help."

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Ghostly - 05-11-2015

Zasz kept his arm down the hole for a good spell longer than he probably had to, considering he did in fact not catch the quick whit of a lass. It wasn't until she replied that he pulled himself free, though he continued to lay flat with his chest to the grate so he could continue speaking without having to amplify his outgoing verbal volume. There were few opinions he could hold for the girl so far, considering what a brief encounter they had thus far. What stood out and that he could respect her for, was that she lived through what had to have been a hell of an ordeal. Not only did she survive the near complete destruction of the Diem Vuong, which one one else aboard had achieved, she was a captive of a vessel that was either some sick man's pleasure yacht that traveled the more twisted realms that men fantasized, or a ship that served as a mobile torture facility designed to rip information out of others.

The latter seemed like the more probable. Zasz did not have to see the video logs to understand this. He would though, considering he had invested more time into this endeavor that it's overall value was likely worth to him. Those files were locked away behind numerous encryption methods that he had not the moment or skill to break into. Perhaps the reason he'd sift through them at a later date was just to see if he could direct a finger at one man to could blame for all of this, if only to throw them into a deep dark pit filled with horrors far worse than the ones suffered at their orders.

To be on the receiving end of his ill was not a plague anyone would wish upon their most vile of foes.

As with many aspects of the man, Zasz had a two faced view on justice. While he defended a select number throughout his days, those that he would stand for were not who needed it most, but rather deserved it in his eyes; Alex might have been one of the lucky or unlucky few depending on one's point of view. While earlier he boasted about tossing anyone that belonged to the Diem Vuong back into the endless reaches of the void, he would not be doing so to this one--at least not yet. He admired that through all that she'd been through, she still had fight left in her to escape yet another slaver.

Finally rising from his less than advantageous position on the ground, Zasz activated the thermal optics in his helm to take sight of his guest down below, her limbs each through different rungs of a ladder in what he guessed was a means to keep from slipping. Unique was her accent, many gutter trash across the stars had broken standard mixed with alien dialects learned from gangs forged in melting pot spaceport cities. This one had intelligence behind those lips tiredly fumbling to get out every sentence. He didn't need to be a medical chief to realize her muscles were going slack from the expenditure of what little energy they had, likely active on what little adrenaline she had left.

Her banter, while a nice change of pace from how a fair few treated him at a glance, did not give him cause for one second to believe that she'd be coming out willingly; this was not an outcome that Zasz planned on accepting. From the sound of it, she'd rather take a suicidal attempt at sheltering herself in the refuge of winding, narrow crawl-ways. Alex would be sorely disappointed if that was her plan, his mission had at least a scheduled month of blackout from all contact with active sectors of the galaxy; if she thought herself capable of living without food than she had truly lost her marbles.

Zasz did not concede to threats or demands, especially in his home, even if they were not exactly worded as such.

Alex did seem to have a fracture in her determination to keep away from the captain of The Greenhouse as the last words spoken after a brief moment of dead air from the woman were that of a weak plea for help. "That...might be a problem." An unwanted pause on his part as he contemplated options to rescue the tunnel rat from either falling to a crumpled mess in the maintenance hatch, or scurrying so far into the depths of the ship that he'd never pry her loose. In each scenario, there was one red headed corpse to be had. "I'm a crew of one running this craft, and as you've seen, I can't fit more than my shoulder down the shaft." One for more practical solutions, his fingers traced over the clasp tucked in his suit; there remained a relatively simple solution to both of their woes. Manually releasing the device, he toyed with it in his hands for a moment thinking about what he'd said. While he was not lying about being the sole pilot of The Greenhouse, there were in truth many others kept under lock and key. While one could most certainly climb down to safely retrieve Alex, every second at this point was of the essence. That, and he did not know how well she'd take to the fact that he was keeping others in cages akin to how she had been, sans the horrifying psychological and physical violence. The last issue in he needed in an ever piling stack, was to come back only to be greeted with the silence of death, or desertion.

The cable it was.

"Here, I have a winch that I can lower down. If you've got anything metal it will latch on its own, if not try and find a way to get a hold of it and I'll raise you up." Hopefully she'd be able to get out of there without fault, a pleasant thought as he dropped down the cable a foot by foot. However, in his experiences, rarely did things go so smoothly. "Just think, a hot meal, a bath to get yourself cleaned up, an actual bed to rest in." Zasz rambled off what he assumed were luxuries that anyone in her situation would give their all for, here was to it providing just enough mental incentive to push her body that last step it required. If she could just get a grip, he'd have her out in moments.

No one was safe in this dreadful existence, but they were all alone out in this null zone without a star in sight for light jumps.

Right?

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - danixiewrites - 05-14-2015

She didn't much like the sound of 'problem'. But by now more than just Alex's limbs had gone sluggish. Her brain was trying to contemplate how far of a secondary drop she'd soon be facing--and the math was coming out with colors--instead of numbers--for answers.

Squishy red? Or bluuue...

Her head lolled toward the tube entrance again, and she watched the blur of light overhead streak across her vision. "One?" she asked, and the 'n' dragged out for a century it seemed, as her tongue felt too thick to remove from the roof of her mouth.

And he must've had really broad shoulders to go with those boots she'd seen earlier and the heavy steps besides. Gray eyes shuttered slightly at that. Everyone on the Diem Vuong had been bigger than her, too. It was an affliction, it seemed, that she be made to be small and unnoticeable and unwanted. One she tried to counter with carefully honed skills and a less carefully honed than naturally present, saucy personality--so people didn't step all over her. Literally and figuratively. She giggled, and it was because she was now envisioning the man in charge of her rescue--crew of one and stranger who didn't want her crawling about the tunnels, no doubt--as a giant alien with four arms and feet large enough to squash her flat, should they ever be seen without boots.

Squiiiishy red...

Wait. Crew of one? Her brain rolled back to the pertinent information finally, though it didn't hold it for long. One was interesting. She'd never heard of a solo operated salvage rig. There was something about that which should have made her concerned.

Frell it, my toes are numb.

"You're not into salvage at all, are you?" is what her brain said she asked next. What came out was more like: "Yyya nnnnnata saaaallllvaaaaa all, ryaaa?"

In full shut-down mode from lack of nutrition and hydration and general systemic torment, Alex failed to process his useful suggestion. The string of words were interesting enough, like raw bits of metal scraping against each other. They reminded her of fixing panels in the belly of a space station, all clangy and riotous until the shift manager hollered for the engineering team to be more frelling careful with the delicate equipment. Why they were always so uptight about denting what were already broken panels, Alex never could figure out. Maybe they just didn't like the sound. It hadn't bothered her. Metal and metal on more metal still was the sound of industriousness. Usefulness. Hard work done well.

Admittedly, sometimes she worried so much about getting that one thing right, everything else fell by the wayside. The Agency had gotten to the point where they no longer made her aliases--she always gave away her real name at some point--and never stuck her in a position where she'd be anything but tackling engineering tasks as her 'cover job'--because they'd tried making her be a maid once and she'd wound up fixing a bad guy's vidscreen and upgrading all of his equipment so the Agency could no longer hack into it. Because she'd been bored and needed to tinker, and the bad guy had had really cool new tech that she'd wanted to play with.

She wasn't in the mood to play at present, though. She was in the mood to sleep. Maybe for the next year. Which is why she snorted as the string of industrious but nonsensical sounds continued and a cable dangled in front of her nose, then swatted at it like a cat with a loose coil of wire. "Hisssss?" was uttered. Which should have been "This?" and should have meant "What do I do with this thing?"

It tapped against the ladder and she vaguely noted it was some kind of cable. OH, her brain said loudly, and it seemed like it might have echoed in the tube as well. Climbing up could still be good. If I can remember how to do that. Alex yanked on every last shred of energy she had to wrestle with it. With one arm she tugged it under an armpit, then tried to turn so she could tie it to itself. The process took ages, and by the end she could barely lift her head. Soon though, it was snug around her chest and had a big, massive knot--which was definitely overkill and probably going to result in someone being very angry somewhere, she thought with a very quiet, exhausted giggle at her handiwork--but it seemed to hold. Well. She figured if she tried to climb and failed, it would suck less if she was still attached to the cable.

And now was as good a time as any, before everything at such low levels in her bloodstream decided to make themselves known.

Her vision blanked out for a moment and she shook her head. That's bizaaaa...

Then her limbs went slack and she toppled backward off the ladder.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - Ghostly - 05-16-2015

While Zasz had the capability of understanding Alex mere moments prior, albeit requiring a slightly sterner attention to each syllable, or lack there of, what dribble came off of her tongue in her current this state made little to no sense at all. This was not a sign of fortune for the future. Still, if she kept her mouth moving, at least he knew she was still alert enough to not be plummeting to her end. Zasz only hoped that the girl had her wits about her currently to tie herself safely to the life line he provided.

That said line suddenly went taut.

Interrupting his train of thought, Zasz made sure to keep his grip firm to prevent any slack forming in the cord from Alex losing her hold on the ladder. It wouldn't be much of a rescue if she fell a few feet, snapped back against the cable, and slammed into the wall of the tube. What incoherent mumbles that had been floating up to him had ceased abruptly alongside with the added weight pulling against him. That had been close, if he had went to get one of his slaves to assist in the matter, Alex likely would have ended up a lovely shade of crimson spattered across the cold metal far below her dangling figure. Which would have been one acceptable outcome to this encounter, giving piece of mind that the problem had indeed been resolved without further issue. A prevented and needless death however would not have sat well with the slaver. So here he was, raising the mechanic a foot at a time with each measured drag of the line across his hands. The extra length of cable continued to retreat into the confines of his suit, and sure enough that scrawny woman that had been so illusive throughout this debacle came into clear view without the need for enhanced optics.

With his legs on both sides of the the maintenance hatch, Zasz lifted her out of the tunnel with one last tug until she was hanging still in front of his armored form. With her unconscious and not running he could take a closer inspection an obviously exhausted, malnourished, and quite abused young lass. What did not happen though, was Zasz taking the said closer look. He more so glanced her over, then eyed the complex knot she had managed to create in the grappling hook around her torso with a sigh. His fingers inside this enclosure were not suited to minute, detailed maneuvers. They were more like fat sausages that curled into a real mean right hook. From his outer leg, a vibroknife flew magnetically from its position to his free hand held at his side, and with swift, but delicate motions he cut the harness she improvised loose. Scraps of his grapple that would undoubtedly have to be replaced lying around him, but Alex out of the mess of sturdy cord, he hauled the smaller woman over his shoulder and turned towards the elevator for what he hopped would be the last for at least a few more days.

"What to do with you?" Was the primary question he directed towards the one that he'd yet to get a name from, or honestly nothing more than a few sentences in garbled common trying to secure her survival. Whether or not she was out like a light brought little change to her situation at the moment, she'd not be ducking away into a dark corner of the ship as long as he could put even the briefest touch to her skin. Those gauntlets could course such a high voltage current through someone's system to outright kill them, not that he had done that in any fashion more than an accident or to protect his own life. The point of most of his equipment was to incapacitate and detain, not to bring about the loss of a those beautiful gems he works so diligently to collect.

Tossing her inside a cell came to the forefront of his options, but thinking on it, once she saw what kind of cargo he himself was carrying aboard the Greenhouse what choices he had in dealing with Alex became quite simple. Either she accepts it, or she doesn't, and each had consequences.

The best he could do was confine her to the living sector. All he had to do was wait out his self imposed blackout while the fallout from whatever chaos may have befallen the Russlion people over the disappearance of one of their princess ran its course. After that he could find a spaceport to send her on her way. There was at least a week before any information came his way though, and to tell Alex that she could not go anywhere more than a few quarters, especially when her first instinct had been to burrow beneath the decks, might be a hard sell.

There was no incident on his way back to the upper floor, not that he expected there to be any. Checking the Greenhouse reports on his HUD still showed their spacial jump underway, barely halfway through. If some force could attack him in this plane of existence, then he was already beyond all hope.

Where he finally came to a stop would be one of the largest rooms to move about in apart from the containment facilities which spanned nearly the entire length of the vessel. Around him were the basics for sustaining an almost indefinite stay in the stars without requiring to do more than refuel at a station. While there was a kitchen in the off on the edge the distance, Zasz also purchased a matter replicator for the purpose of cutting out the need to cook a while back. He wasn't entirely certain on the process it used, only that it broke down organic material into low impact, nutrient heavy bars. One bite could practically fill your body's caloric intake for the whole day. This was perhaps the most advanced piece of equipment around apart from his suit. Everything, even at a glance appeared worn an weathered, especially the couch he laid her across. Info screens lining the walls by consoles were lit up if only for a light source, no data scrolling down the illuminated glass.

Zasz positioned himself across from Alex on an equally worn cushioned seat, sinking into it like it was filled with water. With his mass thrown about, data pads, books, and overall a general pile of various materials were knocked to his feet. Keeping a clean house had never been a priority of his as even the holotable between them had clutter to it. What did rank as important, was to have her ingest something, anything to keep her body from shutting down, but not only was the ability to get an IV into her arm a difficult, if not impossible task while inside his armor, he didn't think she'd take kindly to having a needle shoved inside her.

All he really could do was wait until she woke up--if she woke up--and have her suck on a nutrient stick so he could get some damn answers for all of this shit he's had to put up with today. Which in the long run, was probably quite a bit less than whatever she had to tell him.

Welcome to the Greenhouse [Closed] - danixiewrites - 05-17-2015

"What are you doing with those socket wrenches, Alexandra?" came his question, neutral as ever.

She was building him a new ride. A better one, one that didn't have to go so slow and could outpace crazies who tried to fire off a shot at her daddy when he went down the street. From scraps she'd hauled out of the junkyard herself. Pleased, and perhaps missing warning tension in his stance, given the fact she'd wedged her head and half her upper body under the hovercraft, she started, "I'm--"

"Shut up and get out from under that piece of trash. You're a lady, not a fucking mechanic's whore."

It was usual to hear her upstanding father say nasty things when the cameras were off. Under the auspice of his words, she'd watched her sisters and half-sisters go from making decisions to playing dress-up and leaving forever with men, women, and aliens who'd made her nose wrinkle. Why would someone want to move in with a person who wasn't very nice? Even if they were nicer than the man who towered over her grease-streaked face with a scowl that could turn into a smile his family never saw outside of the vidfeeds, that brought entire continents and poverty-riddled, rioting moon-bases to heel?

But it was the first time since she'd discovered tools that he'd nosed into her private affairs. Which meant she, too, was probably heading for the dresses and due for an absconding via stranger. Unfortunately for her father, that was a life young Alex had decided she had no interest in--and he'd waited too long to begin focusing on molding her into anything that might resemble a meek, obedient waif.

"It is not trash," she said quietly, her head hanging low over knees brought up to her chest, red hair scraping free of its clip to drape over her like a shroud.

"Did you just talk back to me?" He reached for her arm and hauled her up, her back smashing against the hood of what would have been his hover. "What did you say, Alexandra?"

"I said," she said with far more force, and this managed through the hiss of unfamiliar pain that she realized must be another part of having his attention, "it is not trash!"

She regretted ever trying to build it for him, though, and had she had it to do over at this point, she would have made it slower and more laser-susceptible.

In her temporary unconsciousness, she would thrash weakly and then go preternaturally still at this point of the dream/memory, because here her 8 year old self had rebelled against the family's system for the first and last time before her eventual grand escape--or rather, before the Agency "relocated" her. She'd flailed as any child would in a temper, except her hand still clutched a spanner and thus she swung it toward his head while yelling something about doing what she liked and not marrying anyone who didn't think she'd made a fucking piece of art. His fist didn't plow into her nose until she cursed.

When she came to, it was on something that cushioned her like a cloud--not at all the biotank she was used to after that part of the memory.

Not at all the Diem Vuong, unless they'd moved her for a different kind of torture. Well, they weren't going to get anything new out of her than the memories she'd already fraggin' shared...

Alex rasped in a breath, blinking blearily to take in her surroundings as she struggled past memories of her father and his staff's attempt to create a sycophant out of a daughter who, once noticed and discovered inept at every single fraggin' thing they'd thrown her way--except metal and wires and tinkering and tools--and despite how very, very hard she tried, was marked a lost cause. Better to have never been noticed at all, happily tinkering, than to have been put through the increasingly disappointed expressions and increasingly creative methods of berating. It had taken the Agency a long time to get her to show confidence in her work--but once it emerged, there she excelled.

...the ceiling was higher overhead and far more open-plan than it should be. The overall aesthetic wasn't sterile and pristine and spotless-military, either. She couldn't have been moved to someone's personal quarters so where...

Her head swiveled restlessly to the side, taking in piles of junk and sprawls of things, and it took her a moment for her eyes to communicate to her brain what--who?--was sitting in front of her. And then a moment longer for the past several hours to reconnect to her short term memory. Which hastily shoved her damaged past back into its box.

She wasn't lying dead at the bottom of a maintenance shaft, nor had she been shot.

That was nice.

"Ya mus' be Cat'n. K. Puh! Tunnn." Swallowing was difficult.

Everything was difficult. Her chest felt like it had been squeezed in a vise. Her back felt less like it lay in a trough of fire than usual though. That was nice, too.

"Shinnny." She tried swallowing again. Words came out a little better, but she couldn't tell if she was imagining herself speaking slowly or if it'd actually come out that way. "Thisumm drek, eh?"

Whether that was in reference to the disaster area of a--living area? Common area? Bio-hazard waste deck? How did one person go through so many cigarettes?--she now found herself in, her unintentional rescue from the Diem Vuong, the wreckage of said ship, or the voyage that led her to this point...she'd leave that up to him. Probably if her brain was working right, she'd have applied it to all of the above.

Shaking her head, she froze as the room coalesced around her, wavering in then out like some sort of multicolored gravity function was in play. Then slowly she faced--him, her, it? Stars, she had so many questions and her throat would not work right!--again and made a motion that she thought was universal for drinking but in her present state missed the mark entirely in a decidedly vulgar manner. "Alex," she said, though her ears had to be malfunctioning, because she could have sworn her own voice had drawled out, "I lick. Ssss--" and was cut off only by the unfortunate fact that moving her arm had made her back remember how very much life on her prior method of transportation had sucked.