Week 24, Day 7 of 113 TA

Alexander turned his full attention to the broadcast when it started. He understood the gravity of the situation and when his HPC started to vibrate, he didn't lose any time and simply got up on his feet, approached the waitress to pay her as fast as possible and then asked the other soldiers in the dinner :

"Do you have a vehicle?"

Zeb certainly couldn't chug that coffee without getting burned, and he wouldn't take the mug with him. Sore that he had to cut his morning meal short, he closed the HPC alert when he got out of his seat. Thankfully he wasn't hungry anymore, and as alert and ready as he could be. "Captain, after you."

"Mr. Wright gave me ride here," he answered when the lone marine hustled over and asked about a vehicle.

Javi gives the Spaceman a shake. "Time to go, Wright. We need the jeep again."

"H-huh? That j-jeep...? Okay", answered Wright as if his mouth was somewhat numbed, and started to walk outside the diner and seemly ignoring the rain while walking towards the jeep, sits on the driver's sit and turns the jeep on.

As soon as the spaceman is sure everyone but Fax is inside, the jeep suddenly accelerates. Alexander, who was still going to sit down, would have fallen had the roof not been in place, but that.

Somewhere in the middle of the way, you all find Fax jogging at a quick pace towards the base. Everyone could hear this sound coming from the jeep, which now comes to a stop besides Fax.

"Yo." Javi greets Fax with a little wave. "Heard you need a ride. Unless you enjoy running like an idiot through the rain. If so, steady on, LT."

Javi's smile indicates the complete lack of seriousness in his teasing.

Fax, without missing a beat, tries to grab the side of the jeep and haul himself in, doing what would normally be an acrobatics check.

Fax easily succeeds on getting onboard the jeep safely, which prompts Wright to now push the vehicle to its limits, but not before alerting the bases' gate guards to clear the way via HPC so he'd have no trouble delivering the Zephyr members to the spacedocks.

It only took about a minute for you all to reach the entrance to spacedock proper. Top-of-line boarding room, APSL windows with all sorts of information all over the place, a few people in 'proper' terran uniforms going about their business in a frantic pace, small floating machines carrying containers about 10 times their size and traveling into the magnetic rapid transit lines and then speed away to their destinations; It felt like being back to reality to those used to the life aboard spaceships, chilling around docks and buying in spacestations back on Sol. Except now reality included a massive alien spaceship closing in to the Zenobia, possibly even capable of destroying it.

Spaceman Wright was still not over on how ridiculous, dangerous and horrifying the current situation was and it showed on his face, yet still saluted all of you and wished godspeed as you board all one of the personel magtrams together with a dozen marines, and your mutual distination being the Zephyr dockyard.

An APSL window in the magtram has a countdown at six minutes and 51 seconds and a distance of 75 kilometers, which reminds you all on how large a spacedock can be when it extends by most of the Zenobia's outer layer, and how secret Zephyr really is, since it's ships are so far from any of the civilian sectors.

One of the marines decide to use his HPC and opens an APSL window in mission mode, which allows only military and zephyr personel to see it. It shows military activity outside the ship. There are only a few ships in jump space right now for some reason, and the unknown, dubbed Megalo-class, is still a good ways behind, and not in full sensor range yet. There are six ships outside, FLT-SIC-01 to 05 and a SSV-X1.

OOC:

Fax eyes the ships for a moment before reaching for one of his spare cigs. Thankful to be out of polite company he lights it up and chomps down on it, leaning back and closing his eyes as per his usual before entering a combat situation.

Zeb leans slightly forward with his forearms resting on his thighs, his right hand over his left. Easily noticeable, but not distracting, it becomes apparent that he's rubbing something every so often. A casual glance will reveal, to anyone paying attention, that he is rubbing two stainless steel rings on his left pinky, with his index and middle fingers, which rest over them when he isn't.

He tilts his head downward and turns his wrist to look at his HPC, but beyond looking, is doing nothing with it.

Alexander watched his HPC for a few seconds,turned it off, then closed his eyes to prepare himself mentally for what was to come.

Javi pitches his voice low and says to Fax, "Hey. Looks like there may be more to this than they are letting on. Look at the way the Sirocco's ships are deployed. It looks like they are waiting for something else."

Fax's eyes don't open, but you can tell he's paying fairly close attention and lowers his own tone.  "You thinkin' reinforcements?  Or..." he chews on his cig a moment.  "You thinkin's theys watchin' to see what our bogey'll do first, let 'em get close or sommat?"

"Maybe." Javi calls up the fleet deployment on his own HPC and chews on his lower lip a second while he studies the image and thinks. "Or they are getting ready to drop out of jump space. I mean, where is the rest of the fleet? Shouldn't they be in the jump with us?"

Alexander listened closely to what his colleagues were saying. To Javi last comment, he proposed this idea :

"Maybe that's all that's left of the fleet."

At this Fax chews his cig a bit more, scowling a bit.  "I'd feel better in the cockpit right now," he mutters.  For the first time it occurs to him that he doesn't know what exactly he'll be piloting, and he wonders if he can pull that info up somewhere.

Zeb stops fiddling around to give a response of his own.

"The Zenobia itself causes strong distortions which weaken the node frequency enough to allow those other ships to move out without having their atoms split during the jump," he added, "but they can't move out too far without their integrity getting compromised."

"It's a safe bet that cutting edge ship core tech is involved in the making of the Zephyr fleet, 'cause that's Zenobia's best goin' out there. We're all she's got, boys."

Alexander stayed silent and waited to arrive at destination while also trying to ignore the discussion the others were having. It didn't reassure him.

The marines themselves start talking about their own take on the situation. One of them looked spooked for a moment, saying something about the Megalo-class  moving, which was followed by a few chuckles from his comrades, as it was obvious it was moving, otherwise it wouldn't be approaching the Zenobia, which he promptly accepts and sighs in a bit of a relief.

As the floating counter started to reach one minute left, the magtram starts to slow down, stopping in front of a tram-sized gate, parallel to your previous route. Outside, there were 4 unmanned turrets that kept their aim at the magtram you are boarding right now.

It took about 10 seconds of nervous silence from the marines until the gate suddenly opened and the turrets went into patrol mode. As the magtram continues its journey, you all can easily see the gate was made of a single 1 meter-thick door, which Zeb identifies as being made of Denobium Steel, a lightweight and somewhat durable alloy that is also cheap to manufacture. Zebedia wouldn't be surprised if there was an array of these cheap barriers ready to replace the first one in the scenario it was destroyed, buying time for the turrets to stop whatever is trying get inside, not to mention any outside squads and drones that would quickly gather in such a case.

You all finally reach your destination, a smaller version of the station where you boarded this tram, but nobody is around. The magtram's doors open, which prompts the marines to disembark, some of them wishing good luck to your group's mission. They start walking towards one of the station's exits to your left, an APSL window identifying it as 'Pathfinder'. There are many other exits like that one, about 16 of them, but only 4 seems to be open to access at the moment.

OOC:

Fax takes a long draw on his cig, chewing at the tip habitually as he mulls.  One eye raises a bit as he turns to Javi deferentially.  "Orders?"

Zeb starts doing a little detective work in his head to try and figure out where to find the Reliant, one very important and basic part of that being finding out which ships the other 4 open exits are labeled for.

ooc:

"We report for duty," Javi brings up a map of the area and searches for the duty officer so they can do just that.

Fax, without hesitation, heads in the direction of the duty officer.

Zeb finds where he needs to go with ease, as they are all clearly labeled. The labeled exits read from left to right: 'Courageous', 'Reliant', 'Pathfinder' and 'Celestial'.

Javi gets from the map that there's no duty officer, and a quick database search gives him the information that the Zephyr has no duty officers, and instead they must report directly to their ship's captain, remotely if needed, but only once they are on-board their designated ship.

The map also shows that the 'changing room' is right ahead following the labeled exit. They should be able to change into their working uniforms, weapon and armor there before boarding the Reliant.