Episode 0: To Steal A Pirate Ship

[Holger Heyerdahl]

If Holger had not been sulking about his own spill, he might have laughed at Izak's. But humor was the last thing on his mind. He regarded the ex-Alliance with a look of severity. "Sabotage." He said with a growl. The big man did not like being made to look a fool. And these sheriff's would know his wrath. It was time to do some killing. He smiled. "And now..." A flex of his arm and a tug with his wrist and his knife was... "Hrmphf." He coughed, as the knife remained where he had anchored it.

Another flex. Another tug. Stuck. "Erm."

Holger grunted in frustration. He set his foot, grabbed his knife with both hands and pulled with all of his might. Nothing. It would not budge. "Urrr...." Holger said, scratching at his beard in confusion. He examined the whole briefly, trying to determine what it was that had wedged the blade so fast. A decision needed to be made, and then was. He pounded one fist into his open hand, indicating how he would be doing his killing now."Grmpf." Like it was his idea the whole time.

With a hand on each side of the door frame, Holger found himself ready, steady, and deadly. He used the leverage to swing around with the intention of launching himself at the nearest Deputy, however, Holger didn't reckon on the younger man standing directly inside the doorway. Hair's presence there didn't exactly startle Holger, though to say his attack plan (if one could call it that) included hitting his opponent so quickly would be far from correct. In fact, it was closer to an accidental bump than a true attack. "Guh!?" Holger said, betraying any sense of ferociousness as the two of them fell to the floor. A seasoned veteran, now a quite literal turn of phrase as he rolled around in the entirety of the pantry on the floor, Holger recovered quickly and manage to clutch the deputy long enough to get into a wrestling match with the man. "GRAARRHH!" He bellowed.

[Melody]

With one more grin and wink up at Jo's retreating figure, she offered him a sarcastic salute and turned to go, heading down the corridor with knees bent and her service pistol held with both hands before her, the muzzle lowered just enough that she wouldn't shoot her team if they came jumping around a corner. She didn't think that was likely, but she never could tell what Holger was going to do and maybe him careening around a corner was well within his capabilities. Her lips quirked upward at the corners before she shook her head to pull herself back into the moment. This was not the time to think fondly on recent and not so recent memories. There was a potential Marine and at least two Lawmen in this ship that needed dealing with.

Almost on cue, Melody spotted a crumpled figure laying on the ground, immediately recognizing his armor and the pool or red beneath him. "Mmm," she remarked eloquently. Baby blues looked toward the corridors while she kneeled, her lower lip trapped between her teeth as she listened for any sounds of approaching boots. Hearing nothing close by but being remarkably concerned by the Viking howl she heard echoing down the hall, Melody set to pushing the body over and rummaging through pockets and pouches for any key cards. Making Jo's life easier would be making all of their lives easier, thus, it was high on her list of things to do.

Her hands paused and the pilot stared down at the Marine, grimacing a little at the thought of what had happened to him and almost feeling guilty. "It was you or him, I'd bet," she whispered to the corpse as a way of apology before shrugging one shoulder, patting his head, and resuming her search. She had no doubt in her mind that if the Marine had seen Holger first, he'd have killed him without a second thought.

Ammo clip...notepad...hand warmers...gum...small first aid kit...protein bar...cortex pad...

With each item she pulled from his body, the deeper the furrow between her brows became. "Gorramit, where is it?" she asked him directly, glowering at the dead man and finally making a judgement call. She slipped her gun into its holster and set both knees down, working on all the clips, straps, and zippers that kept his armor attached. "Of course, you have to make it hard, even in death. Can't just say, 'Hey Mel. Oh, you want this ship? Yea, no problem. Come right in, we've got it all ready for ya. Oh, and here's the key card to get the thing flyin', OH OH and here's all our supplies...'" she paused and looked around. The supplies were probably still on the ship, so she removed that annoyance from her long list. "Still..." the woman muttered to herself.

With a grimace, Melody shoved her hand down the front of his loosened armor, feeling and reaching around, grabbing at the front of his shirt with blind fingers. The pads of her fingertips touched on something slick and she grunted, the noise turning to a gasp as a coil of metal touched her skin. Grabbing at it, she yanked it free with a few pulls, "Ah, you beauty!" Melody exclaimed, the key card dangling from the bloodied chain. With one more downward glance, Mel yanked the chain off the body, snapping it at the clasp as she stood. Gun still holstered, she set back off toward the cockpit.

[Joakim Soong]

Jo nodded along absent-mindedly as Melody cursed and rummaged through her things for some unknown part of the plan he wasn't privy to. He snapped back to reality when she took his hand and placed the pistol in it. He knew how to shoot a gun -- in theory. He wasn't sure if he was quite ready to do it in practice.

He had expected Melody to get at least a little impatient over being sent on a fetch quest, roll her eyes, maybe let out a swear word or two. But not only was she cool as a cucumber, she was showing... a bedside manner. He suddenly felt ashamed for teetering on the edge of unraveling. If this was one of those extreme situations where people showed you who they really were, what did that say about him?

"We can do this. We're almost done. Yea?"

Jo nodded, this time fully present and registering her words. As Melody began to back away, he hesitated; he didn't really know what to do with the fact that she had jumped so quickly to first-name basis with him, and nickname basis at that -- even Joakim, while no Mr. Soong, would have sounded more comfortably formal. And yet, to send her off with a Ms. Turner suddenly felt inappropriate for the situation.

"Give 'em hell, Mel," he said finally, raising his voice only enough for her to make out his words. Then he took a deep breath and disappeared up the stairs.

Once he'd made sure the cockpit was empty, Jo tossed aside his backpack, took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, which was unsurprisingly sticky with sweat. He investigated the control panel, confirming what he'd suspected; the systems were behind two layers of authentication, requiring a keycard and undoubtedly a password to follow, which would be difficult to decrypt if he didn't have the keycard first. He could only pray for Melody's swift return with the missing link, or they would be here for a long time. In the meantime, he began unpacking his tech equipment.

[Melody]

Location: The Bridge

Moving quickly to minimize how much time she spent out in the open (she wasn't sure if the local law had been handled after all), the pilot half walked half jogged back toward the stairs she'd seen ascending when they'd parted ways. She kept one hand resting easily on butt of her holstered gun, the other spinning the sanguine stained chain around her palm and off again, over and over. Spotting her discarded duffle bag, Melody picked it up by the strap and hiked it over her shoulder.

When she got to the stairs themselves, she risked her safety a little by walking heavily and making noise on the way up, not wanting to surprise their tech specialist and end up with a bullet in her gut. Still, as an extra precaution, before rounding the corner and entering the room, she whispered "Hey, it's me," loud enough for him to hear it. Letting another second pass, Mel poked her head into the room with one brow raised curiously, stern blue eyes looking around the cockpit until they settled upon Joakim.

The rest of her body followed soon after and as she entered, she dropped her bag in the doorway, positioning it horizontally so it took up the entire entrance. Better to have a tripping hazard should anyone decide to rush onto the bridge after them. "I brought you a present," she informed him, holding her hand out and presenting him with the bloodied keycard and the snapped chain it was attached to. "Happy birthday," she said flatly, although some undefined kind of light shone in her eyes.

Once he'd taken it from her, she moved around and sat in the pilot's seat, swiveling it around so she could see the door and slipping her pistol free of its holster. "Can you make sure the doors stay shut?" she asked him, glancing over at the techie. "Just in case they come back before we lift off?"

[Izak Archer]

This was ridiculous, if not comical. Greased floors, a knife they'd have to cut out of the wall, collisions in the kitchen, and lord knew what was going on with accessing the cockpit.

Izak had no time to really think about the gun controls. They would need a larger crew - well, in the worst case scenario.

Using his weapon as a means to pull himself up, Izak slowly stood up, semi-slipping as he went. He was by no means as sure footed as the burly ex-infantryman that just barreled into the room with a surprised look on his face.

Unfortunately, Izak now had to waste shotgun shells unnecessarily on potentially two idiots who could have been used as assets should they ever needed to come back to this planet. It was simply pragmatism. A lawman on the take for them was sometimes much better than one buried by them. Plain and simple. He was a nice fellow, but not a humanitarian of the year recipient.

Perhaps the Browncoat thought of him as soft, perhaps not. After all, was that not a thought shared by all who served on the ground? That anyone on a ship was not as tough?

He half walked and half slid his way down the hall back to the kitchen to see Holger wrestling on the floor with one deputy, another still standing in the kitchen. He leveled his shotgun and...

Slipped backwards.

"Gorram!" He shouted.

[Lomari]

The younger sheriff seemed just as surprised as the giant brute of a redhead, a confused “Wuh?” escaping him on the way from the doorway to the floor. All things considered, the trip itself was strangely gentle, as though it were all moving in slow motion. The landing was cushioned by the fiery stranger and had he not been so shocked he might have thanked the man for it. Instinctively, he tried to push away from the man with hands and feet, trying to untangle himself while making the situation more complicated. The mess on the floor he had been carefully avoiding set to staining his clothes and getting stuck in his perfectly maintained hair, his face contorted with befuddled anger. “Get him off me!” he called to his partner amidst grunts and gasps of effort, lifting his hands to push at Holger’s bellowing face, trying to get a knee between them to pry the man off and not having much luck.

“Jus’ shoot him!” Mustache yelled, trying to slip and slide his way closer to the wrestling match, his feet planted on the ground as he slide them back and forth, arms flailing about to keep himself steady. He eyed the spray of burning steam, making sure to keep well away from it as he windmilled closer and closer to the fight. His hand settled on his gun, but before he could pull it out, he spotted Izak sliding into the galley. Mustache froze, brows furrowing and lips set in a straight line. “Put tha’ gun d-“ he began, flinching when the stranger slipped, landing hard on his back with a curse.

“Toss tha gun away!” he yelled at Izak, drawing his gun and trying to decide which issue was more pressing. The man with a gun or the man wrestling with his partner, the muzzle of his gun alternating between the two of them. “P-put.. Put your hands up!” he called to them both, wobbling in place and grunting as he tried to stay upright, the gun’s barrel jerking upward for a second in an attempt to help him regain balance.

[Holger Heyerdahl]

Though the deputy with the hair was fighting valiantly, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that if it came to a shootout with that fancy pistol of his, sitting low on his hip in quick draw range, he would have been doing more than fair against Holger in deadly competition. Unfortunately for him, they were wrestling. And it was a pitched battle. But no amount of squirms and scuffles and grapples could deny the truth. Holger outweighed the deputy with the hair by at least fifty pounds, and, had they been standing, would be at least a head taller. Holger's arms were longer, bigger, stronger. Same with his legs. All of this went into the equation of this particular tussle, and the math was not adding up to the deputy's favor.

The deputy's hand found Holger's face, or perhaps more pressingly, Holger's teeth found the man's trigger finger. It didn't take much chewing or chomping, but Holger managed to remove the finger with his teeth and spit it back in the deputy's face. There was some blood and some screaming and then the fight just went all out of him and the browncoat was free to move on.

Blood dripping down his chin and mixing with his whiskers, Holger rose up to his full height, finally finding his feet beneath him and remembering to treat the slicked floor like ice. He'd crawled on glaciers and toddled on permafrost. It really shouldn't have been so hard. But now he was facing a deputy, assuming by the grey of his mustache to be more experienced, with a weapon drawn and ready to fire. Holger wished he had a weapon.

And then he remembered the law man at his feet. "Aha!"

Quickly, he reached down and grabbed Hair by the belt, hefted him to his feet, and with a mighty throw, tossed the wounded young sheriff at his partner. It was only then that Holger realized he could have grabbed the gun from the deputy's belt but what was done was done. "Yah!" Holger joined in on the dog pile, hoping his added weight would incapacitate the second of their attackers.

[Izak Archer]

Zak sighed as the browncoat continued to steal the show. At this point he was questioning why he charged into the ship after the man. Clearly he was not as capable as a man who was more capable than he was.

First things first however, he scrambled back up on the floor, and carefully mad he was to the kitchen door as the browncoat was beating the living daylights out of the two deputies in a very effective fashion. Izak then entered the kitchen and slung the shotgun over his shoulder.

"Uh, do you need a hand or do you have this under control?" He asked.

Izak knew he would be questioning a lot on this trip if this current situation served as an indicator of anything.
But he knew one thing for certain.

He was going to deck the qingwa tuobei de biao zi who booby trapped this kitchen when they found them.

In fact, he was ready to start looking.

[Lomari]

Struggling and yelling in angered fear, Hair grappled with Holger desperately. Even he could tell that he was woefully outmatched, and the official professionalism granted to him by his station was beginning to give way to the primal terror of a man laying on his back beneath a dangerous berserker. He felt his finger slip between the man's teeth as he grabbed at his face, thinking for the briefest of moments that he had gained an advantage here. Surely any sane man would ease up on the pummeling to get a hand out of their mouth...surely.

Crunch...crunch...snap.

There was a second of silence and shock before Hair screamed in pain, his limbs pushing desperately at Holger before the man pulled his bleeding hand against his chest, holding it tightly in an attempt to staunch the bleeding, sweat breaking out across his face and his vision beginning to darken as his body sent him into a state of shock. In the end, he became useless and limp upon the ground, trying to keep more blood inside than out.

The muzzle of Mustache's gun lowered a hair as his eyes widened, the blood spewing from his partner's hand knocking him out of his right mind. What sort of beast ate another man? The first thought to come to his mind was 'Reavers' and his blood ran cold. Was this man what they looked like? Had the stories of flesh sewn to skin been an exaggeration? His heart hammered against his chest and he looked toward the door furtively, trying to find a way to get out of the galley with his life.

It was this brief moment of helpless terror that gave Holger the perfect opportunity to set his sights on the second deputy. By the time he'd regained his focus, Hair was hurtling toward him, his bloodied body knocking him to the ground, quickly followed by Holger's weight landing atop them both. Hair groaned dimly and Mustache grunted, his shotgun knocked away from him to clatter and skid across the cluttered galley floor. "I yield, I yield!" Mustache yelled, not wanting to end up sewn into someone's clothing and still thinking this viking man was a Reaver.

[Joakim Soong]

By the time Melody arrived in the cockpit, Jo had finished setting up his gear, his datapad plugged into a port usually reserved for fixing technical issues with the ship computer's inner workings. He jumped a little at the sound of her voice, but fortunately she wasn't around to see that and by the time she appeared in the doorway, he was looking as chill as a slightly pallid man with sweat glistening on his brow could possibly look. 

"I brought you a present. Happy birthday."

"Yaaay," he mumbled, not in the mood to waste brainpower on coming up with a snappy comeback. He took the blood-stained keycard and hesitated for a moment before wiping it on the hem of his shirt. He did his best not to picture what the man she'd nicked the card off of looked like now.

While Melody plopped herself on the pilot's chair, Jo swiped the keycard and investigated the interface it revealed on the monitor.

"Can you make sure the doors stay shut? Just in case they come back before we lift off?"

"Just a sec," he said, wishing she hadn't brought up the possibility of the feds returning and catching them red-handed. The basic door controls weren't locked away behind any extra encryption, so fulfilling her request was a matter of navigating the menu and pressing a few buttons. "There we go. And now for the meat of it..."

He trailed off, focusing his attention on the datapad plugged into the ship computer and executing the program he'd written to help him crack the passcode that blocked access to the landlock. Now all he could do was wait for the algorithm to work its magic. He stared down at the monitor with his arms crossed, tapping a finger impatiently on his bicep. It felt like he was watching paint dry, only his life kind of depended on the paint being dry as soon as possible.

"So... what's the first thing you're going to do after you get off this rock with your shiny new ship?" he asked Melody without looking at her, trying to sound casual, like he was talking to someone at the bar counter. Maybe if he acted like the mission was already in the bag, the power of suggestion would help this be over soon so he could go be done and be off on his way. And there it was again -- that strange ache he felt when he thought about his involvement with the Merry Band of Miscreants being almost over. It was stupid. It wasn't like he was enjoying this. He liked working alone, in some remote hovel with nobody to bother him, nobody to interact with...

[Melody]

"There we go. And now for the meat of it..." Jo murmured. Mel nodded her chin down once, apparently pleased with his ability to lock up the ship from any intruding rightful owners. She crossed and uncrossed her ankles a couple times, turning her seat a bit to get a better look at the consoles. The barest hint of a familiar smile pulled one corner of her lips upward, a hand extending to trail fingertips over the controls. This was a good ship, and she did miss flying it. Its helm hadn't been under her grip ever since Isa lost the Captain's position, but she'd never forget how to work this beast.

"So," the tech specialist began and Mel's gaze slid from the pilot toys to the man, one brow raised slightly. She looked him over, watching his finger move anxiously against his arm. The pilot leaned forward a bit in an attempt to peek at his screen but it all looked like gibberish to her so she quickly gave up on that. "What's the first thing you're going to do after you get off this rock with your shiny new ship?" he asked her. Lips pursed together and Melody considered Jo's question, her feet moving to turn the seat back so she was facing the door once more. It really wasn't her ship, to be honest. It was Isa's. And speaking of... Her brows furrowed and her foot got to tapping.

"Hey," she began, not answering his question. "Can you check the official channels for me?" she asked him, looking away from the door to frown down at where Jo was sitting. "Isa should have met us here by now, even if she was held up somewhere. See if you hear anything?" she asked him, raising her brows in question and standing at the same time. Reaching up, she pulled the handheld speaker mic down and pressed the side to initiate a broadcast through the ship.

"Ship's locked up tight. Once you're done with the lawmen, find the screaming idiot and meet us on the bridge."

As she made her announcement to the crew, Melody was careful to make sure not to mention any names or out anyone in the process. Her voice echoed down the halls and through speakers placed in ceilings or walls of various rooms, the galley included. With a nod to herself, Melody hung the mic back in its place and set her hands on her hips, staring down at Jo intently, likely a little more intently than she'd intended.

[Holger Heyerdahl]

After a few minutes of struggling, Holger had incapacitated the two lawmen and was leading them towards the exit, or the entrance as he would have remembered it. The defeated deputies were each tied at the wrists in an improvised manner, Hair with an apron and Mustache with the cord of some sort of handheld mixer, the appliance still dangling and hitting him in the back of the knees as they walked. Holger had commandeered their guns and used one to keep them in line as they were led. "You. Skinny." He said to Izak. "I will be right back." He stopped short at the door and added, with a smile. "I told you there would be no punching." And left Izak to decide how to spend his next few moments on his own.

Down the hallway they went and found the door where they had come in. As they passed the dead marine, Hair let out a little whimper, which made Holger laugh. He hit the button to open it, to no response. He hit it again.

"Ship's locked up tight. Once you're done with the lawmen, find the screaming idiot and meet us on the bridge."

Holger looked up at the voice coming from the speakers. "Open the door!" He hit the button again. "Melody!" A huff. "I cannot be done with these police if you do not open the door." His head cocked and he narrowed his eyes as he thought for a moment. "Unless you want me to just shoot them..." This seemed like a fair compromise to him. He pulled the hammer back on the gun, leveled it at Hair's head, who began to weep.

"Wait!" Mustache said. "She can't hear you, man. Use the intercom. Then she'll hear you."

"Hrmpf." Holger said, narrowing his eye at the deputy. The man made a good point. Melody was his friend, but was also the one organizing this whole thing. While Holger wasn't sure he would have called her his boss, no one was the boss of him, she was in charge. And though the finer details of that argument might elude the ginger giant, he wasn't one to argue with logic. Holger looked at the control panel, unsure which button would contact Melody. "Erm."

"It's that one." Mustache offered, indicating with a nod of his head.

Holger held a questioning finger over the intercom button, and Mustache answered with a nod. He pressed the button. "Melody. Do you want me to kill them? The door is locked."

[Lomari]

"Melody. Do you want me to kill them? The door is locked," came Holger's voice over the comm system in the bridge. There was silence for a moment, perhaps the person on the other end thinking over what she wanted him to do with them, maybe finding themselves surprised that the lawmen were alive at all.

"Airlock, should be near you. Put them in and shut the door, we'll blast them out when we're breakin' Atmo. Put the Marine in there too. Uh."

Another pause.

"Please and thank you..."

Hair was, understandably, too busy crying to understand the words coming through the speaker, but Mustache was older and wiser, and he knew what getting into that airlock meant for them both. So it was now or never.

Using the man's momentary shift in attention, the older sherif grabbed at the long bit of chording hanging from his bonds and swung the hefty hand mixer at the redhead's head as hard as he could, swiftly putting himself between the behemoth and his partner. He didn't know how to get them off the ship if it was locked up as the voice has indicated, but there might be a way to buy them time to arm themselves. "Run! To the armory!" he shouted. Hair looked up at the violence with slow, unseeing eyes, his skin pale and apron moist where it touched his missing finger. There was no fight left in him and he didn't have enough blood or spirit left to comprehend what Mustache wanted him to do.

[Izak Archer]

Izak began searching the roughly-man hiding capable cabinets as Holger walked out with the two deputies.
He missed the smirk on his face as he started talking as if he had won the debate of killing over punching.

"Let's see...I wonder where the owner of that cat went." Ships cats were a thing of the past as far as the alliance went. No crew would have one aboard, period. There was way too much equipment for them to get into and potentially screw up.  Izak was working his way around the kitchen when he heard an audible crack as if someone just got hit in the face.

Leaving the cabinet open, he stuck his head out in the hall.

"What the bloody hell..." Not only had their bearded wonder completely violated the basic principles of operational security by addressing Melody by name in front of the two of them.

Walking as quietly as possible, he swiftly hit the first deputy over the head with the butt of his weapon, and then hit the next one. After making sure they were breathing and looking at the Browncoat with a raised eyebrow, he grabbed the microphone and called the bridge.

"Things just got complicated; we'll have to skip venting them. We'll have to toss them now, and fast, they may be alive, but with that scientist you left out there, we already have witnesses anyway. Besides, that's a little cruel for pawns like these don't you think? Oh and we will need to discuss operational security later."

He paused for a second, and then continued. "Where the hell is that cat from earlier? I think I have an idea to find our kitchen saboteur."

[Rashy Pete]

Olo held the cheese spray tightly to his chest while attempting to inch himself further and further into the corner. Were he not gripped with fear for the unexpected sounds of a scuffle, and a particularly brutal one by the sound of the screaming, he might've found the vent he knew led to the engine room behind him. But now, whether or not egress awaited him from that theoretical point mattered little.

"What is even happening?" Olo whispered to himself, desperate not to break into a full screaming panic.

"Ship's locked up tight. Once you're done with the lawmen, find the screaming idiot and meet us on the bridge."

Any hope for not panicking left Olo in the form of a squeaking fart, for the men in his family commonly became gassy when threatened as a self-defense mechanism. His eyes went wide in the dark, and if one stood present to witness they would see his greasy skin pallor. "I'm a screaming idiot! Oh no..." Olo imagined what this woman, whose confident manner of speaking both intimidated him and commanded his attention, might want with him and grew increasingly confused. Meanwhile, in the vents above, eyes long adapted to darkness from the evolutionary inheritance of nocturnal predators peered down upon their witless, unsuspecting pray.

"Melody. Do you want me to kill them? The door is locked,"

"Airlock, should be near you. Put them in and shut the door, we'll blast them out when we're breakin' Atmo. Put the Marine in there too. Uh."

Olo whimpered during a momentary pause in the woman's broadcast. "I don't wanna get blasted out of the airlock! Why didn't I just call in again!"

"Please and thank you..."

While he found the sudden use of manners confounding, Olo decided whoever the parties talking back and forth were probably criminally insane and prone to erratic behaviors. Except he didn't actually know what the word erratic meant. He didn't know how prayers worked either, but he tried it anyway.

"I just want to say, to the Buddha or Jesus or Thor or Colonel Sanders... Whatever happens to me, just please please please let Rasputin be okay. Also please don't let anything happen to me. Unless it's like... Some vacation time or a lifetime supply of corn dogs or -"

Olo's request for help from on high was cut off rather short as Rasputin pounced upon him from his hiding spot in the vent, as if the feline knew it Olo's resolve would crumble to this point and merely bade his time for this exact moment. As Olo felt the claws sinking into his shoulder only one thing came to his mind.

"La Chupacabra! Nooooo!!!"

[Missy Etheridge]

Location: the medical bay

"Get it together, Melissa!"

Missy slapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other as she paced, wishing furiously that the little med bay had a decent mirror available. It was always so much easier to psych herself up when she could stare into the unrelenting disapproval of her own gaze. Still, she'd make do. One way or another, Missy Etheridge always made do.

She had time on her side, at least. That was one unexpected advantage. The old, "Whoopsie-daisy, left my IdentCard clipped to my other coat," was a classic, but it was only supposed to have bought her two or three minutes before the XO came in search of the ship's errant medic. But then five minutes had passed while she lectured herself in short, angry strides back and forth across the bay, and then six, and then she'd stopped pacing for a moment and listened hard and realized the ship was empty.

But the XO...? Had already marked off her name when she'd spun around with her lame excuse, desperate to buy herself any amount of time, and he'd been as addled as the rest of them, hadn't he? Short term memory loss was an uncommon-but-not-unknown symptom of the infection, and all it would have taken was a momentary distraction while he waited for her to return, and then... no more waiting. Everyone's marked off, so everyone must have disembarked.

So she had time, at least, before anyone noticed she was missing. Time enough to come up with a better plan, a better excuse. What else did she have? Count your advantages, Melissa. There are always more resources than you know. Well, there was her health. Missy snorted aloud. "You always have your health," Mama had always said. And that was the problem, wasn't it? Ohhh, the deep f'n zse she was going to be in when it came out that she was perfectly healthy.

And that, of course, was why she was hiding up here while everyone else had shuffled vacantly off to Three Hills' piddling little excuse for a hospital for treatment. No, not hiding. Strategizing. Hiding implied that she was losing, and Missy Etheridge never lost at anything. Change the rules, move the goalposts, do whatever you have to do to declare it a win, but make it happen, Melissa.

Besides, it wasn't like she had lied, not really. "The ship doesn't have any immunization packets," she'd said, and it didn't. They'd never been correctly stocked. Her predecessor's fault, not her own. She couldn't have known. Missy, on the other hand, Missy was not the ship, and she had one. Just one. Exactly one. Part of her MedAcad bag; it had come aboard with her. Her personal effects, not the ship's. Not theirs. Hers.

It should have gone to the Captain, she knew. She should have declared it, let him be the one to have taken it, or at least to decide who did. Anyone else on the ship would have. But they were all military, weren't they? Loyal to their dying breath. And Missy... well, she was just a civilian, just an employee, and her loyalties didn't stretch quite that far. Oh, nobody would die; she was quite certain of that in her professional capacity. As long as everyone stayed hydrated -- with clean water -- it would pass from their system in a few days and leave them none the worse for wear, no matter how painful and... undignified... the process might be in the meantime.

So Missy had made the executive decision to spare herself. It wasn't as though the symptoms were particularly difficult to fake, especially not for an audience as preoccupied as Cornwolf's. It was only when they touched down that she realized Three Hills' medical facility was less backwater than she'd given it credit for (if only barely) and she might have a harder time fooling the planetside doctors. She'd made her excuses and dashed back here to her own med bay, the little sliver of the ship where she ruled as queen of all she surveyed, to have a good think and figure out next steps.

She could stop faking, she supposed, drink some of the contaminated water and take her lumps without suspicion. But, no, even if she were that desperate -- which she decidedly was not -- it wouldn't do her any good. The tablets coursing through her system would protect her from infection for at least another day or so, and she would be missed well before then. Maybe she could jio weh sung chiuh completely, disappear off into the sunset and claim to have been, oh, who knows, kidnapped by pirates or something? No, that was stupid.

It was just so hard to think, though, in a ship like Cornwolf. For a stealth cruiser, it sure seemed like there was always so much noise going on, always some stupid commotion the crew was getting into. Why in ai yah tien ah couldn't they just bi jweh for once and...

Hang on. The ship was empty. Had been, for... she wasn't sure how long now. So where was that noise coming from...? Shouts. Thuds. Running feet. Screaming? Couldn't be the XO finally coming back for her, she was sure of it. Too many people for that. Besides, they --

Heavy, oddly intentional, footsteps ascended the stairs to the bridge, just on the other side of the wall from where she stood, and Missy threw herself into a supply closet more on instinct than anything else. Closing the door almost all the way to, she peered anxiously out through the crack, but didn't have visibility on anything but the med bay itself. Ears straining hard, she tried to make out any other sounds or voices that might tell her what was going on, and then nearly squealed aloud when a loud voice suddenly cut through the suspense.

"Ship's locked up tight. Once you're done with the lawmen, find the screaming idiot and meet us on the bridge."

Well.

Apparently "pirates" wasn't such a stupid story after all.

Unusually polite pirates, too, going by the next transmission, but somehow Missy had a feeling they'd be a mite less polite when they discovered she was still on board, and she'd be following the others out the airlock soon after. Suddenly, getting into trouble for hoarding medicine was the least of her worries.

[Holger Heyerdahl]

A turn of the head and all Holger saw was a flash of movement, a blinding light, and then a bit of black.

Only incapacitated for a moment, Holger nonetheless found himself on the floor, staring at the ceiling as Izak appeared and... still didn't kill them! Setting his jaw, Holger turned over and unsteadily got to his feet. He shook his head, clearing the cobwebs, and steadied himself with a hand to the bulkhead. "What have you done?"

With the groan of an aging, injured body, Holger hefted himself into a standing position and and narrowed his gaze at the gunner. "This is your fault." Without looking, he retrieved the spare pistol from his belt and fired a few shots into each of the deputies, fatally wounding if not outright killing them. A no-look trigger pull couldn't guarantee their death, but if you fire enough bullets it usually does the trick. "Should we go outside and kill the goose humper, too?" Blood dripped down his face from the wound in his forehead. He took a step towards Izak, fury and disgust on his face. "And you? If we're to be crew mates, you must choose whose side you are on, purple belly. There are no half-measures. We go to make war on the Alliance."

Holger reaches down and grabbed Mustache by belt and lifted the man up and over his shoulder like a very large sack of potatoes, and straightened. A fairly impressive feat of strength, all considered. "If that sours your stomach, I will be happy to load you into the airlock with this sorrylot." He said, daring Izak to challenge him.

[Melody]

A moment of victory followed by a crack of pain and darkness, the deputies falling into unconscious heaps on the grated ground. Hair was already in the danger zone as far as blood loss and shock to his system, but Mustache (while no longer awake) would surely recover from the swift bump to the head.

There was a barrage of bullets, and Hair went gently into that good night. He was followed soon after by Mustache and within moments, the deputies became corpses.

-----------------------------------------------

Before Mel could respond to Izak's suggestions, the sound of gunfire echoed through the ship and Melody was immediately on her feet, her gun in her hand and her body tense. "Stay here, keep doing what you're doing," she ordered curtly, her brows furrowed. "Don't forget you have a gun, call me on the comms if you need me," she reminded him, nudging him with her knee once in some strange attempt to be comforting before the pilot made her way out of the bridge, both hands on the grip of her gun, index finger pressed out flat against its side. As she moved down the steps, the sound of her feet on metal were quicker than they had been on the way up, echoing with her haste.

By the time she made it to where the gunshots had come from, Holger had moved to a standing position with the deputy over his shoulder. "If that sours your stomach, I will be happy to load you into the airlock with this sorrylot." Mel looked at the body on the floor, then her two team mates, and after deciding they were not in trouble, shoved her gun angrily back into its holster. She stared at them, taking in the redhead's interesting choice to wear food as clothing.

"What the hell?" she asked, raising her brows in question, the tension in the room thick enough to cut through. Again, her baby blues moved slowly between the two of them and after a moment, Mel pointed her index finger at the body on Holger's shoulder, "Airlock," she told them both sternly, narrowing her eyes in challenge before she turned on her heel, spotting the mess leading down the hall, spices and food stuffs that had fallen off Holger and the bodies on their way from the galley. "Bi jweh nein hen bu tee tyeh duh nan shung and figure this joo fuen chse out," she told them, moving down the hall to see what sort of disaster they'd left behind.

Shaking her head and sighing heavily, Melody moved down the hall with her arms crossed over her chest, turning the corner and stopping when she reached the doorway. Brows shot up and lips parted at the state of the room, no words coming to her mind other than a further and louder "What the hell?"

"La Chupacabra! Nooooo!!!" came a shrill albeit slightly muffled scream from somewhere in the galley. Her hand moved to her gun she she yanked it free, flipping off the safety and moving forward into the room, shoulders tense. She moved her feet into the dry spots made by the scuffle, moving like she was hopping across rocks in a river. "Come out," she ordered into the seemingly empty room, looking under counters and eyeing the stream of steam dubiously. A cabinet door opened and slammed shut. A second, closer to where a certain man was hiding. Then, that door was yanked open, the gun pointing in but her finger still off the trigger.

[Izak Archer]

Well, finding the screaming buffoon in the kitchen would be easier than he thought – Holger would be a problem however.

"My bloody fault?" Izak asked with his accent bleeding through. "You know what a shotgun does, right? It fires a bunch of tiny bullets in a wide pattern, and forgive me for not wasting the ammunition but the last thing anyone is going to want is me giving you an extra ear just for the sake of dealing with lawmen you rather torture than just kill outright! No living creature aside from a Reaver deserves to die in a vacuum, and trust me; I've help assure that more than a few thousand people met their deaths that way. Why do you think I left the Alliance? I got tired of the pointless deaths and the boredom that came with it."

He slammed his fist down on the button to open the airlock.

"And forgive me for saying this, but what gorram good is it going to do us to wage war with the Alliance if you're going to be killing the people that you Browncoats fought for in the first bloody place! He gave up at this point. Settling this was a waste of time. It was like going round and round with the marines he was stuck with in the Alliance.

He was about to hit the button for the outer door (after all, it made no sense to leave the bodies on board when they already had another outside) when Melody came down the stairs

"FINE." He said as he grabbed the other deputy by the collar and heaved him through the open door with a thud...he was going to feel that in the morning...probably. Then returned to the corridor outside the kitchen, and saw Holger's knife was still in the wall. He had no idea why he cared at that point, but he thought about pulling it out as a goodwill gesture. Perhaps later, he thought.

"I'm sweeping the rest of the ship, call me if you need me. I'm headed to the armor and then the medical bay." With that, he was off.

[Missy Etheridge]

Location: medical bay

Gunshots. Those were definitely, absolutely, 100% gunshots, followed shortly thereafter by footsteps pounding back down the bridge stairs again. Well, wasn't this just a happy, shiny how shi sung chung?

Missy groped behind her in the darkness of the supply closet and found something smooth and reasonably pointy. Guns vs. gauze scissors. This would go well.

Think, Melissa, think. She had options. There were always options.

Plan A) keep hiding. Totally valid to think of it as hiding now. Hiding meant living, and living meant winning. It was entirely possible that the pirates wouldn't even come to the med bay for some time. They might pass through on their way to engineering, but if none of their own were injured, they'd hardly have a reason to go poking around in the cupboards. Besides, finding that screaming woman should keep them busy for a while, maybe even give Missy a window to find a better place to hide. If she got lucky, she might actually be able to keep out of their way until the next time they landed and sneak off the ship. Wasn't there some urban legend about a guy on Beaumonde who'd been living in someone else's house for years without being noticed? She could manage a few days.

And if not...

Plan B) fight her way out. Missy clicked the gauze scissors a few times and poked herself critically in the arm with their dull point. Nope. No. Bù kě néng. Non-starter.

Next.

Plan C) talk her way out. Out of being killed, at least, if not out of danger completely. That was a little more doable, Missy hoped. She could always prove herself useful as a medical resource, or trade information. She didn't have much in the way of Alliance secrets to offer without more than the bare minimum security clearance, but she'd probably been in the Core more recently than these ruffians and could fill them in on current events a bit at a time, Scheherazade-style.

What else did she know that they might find useful enough to keep her alive for? She was familiar with the ship itself, of course, although not to the extent that she could help actually fly the thing or keep it running, and it wasn't as though it had any unusual quirks they had to be mindful of; Alliance vessels weren't exactly known for their personality. Anyone who'd ever been aboard a similar cruiser would know exactly what to expect, except for...

Of course! Missy knew exactly what she could do, and the best part was that it was practically nothing. This was a self-solving problem, with the added bonus of getting her out of trouble with command, too! Suddenly, the pirates were less of a threat and more of a gift-wrapped present just for her. If Missy believed in any power higher than herself, she'd be thanking them, but as it was, she settled smugly back into the closet, put the scissors down, and waited.