Board Thread:The Mech Bay Bar'n'Grill/@comment-24930445-20140526230330/@comment-24930445-20140614214655

Joke & Dylan

The Vextis was in chaos. Everything was was surreal. Several people were running around frantically, the flashing red warning lights making them look as if traveling in stop-motion. Dylan stayed on Joke’s six, picking his dad’s blaster from its holster and keeping him covered. From what, neither of them knew.

It seemed everything powered by the ship was down. They could hear pounding coming from behind several doors, but didn’t stop to investigate. Joke slid to a stop in front of the lift and cussed. The lifts were non operational too. Without missing a beat, Dylan took off in another direction. “This way!”

He ran down a couple corridors, dodging people and jumping bodies before slamming into the doors of the Archeology lab. “Shit.. Dad, help me get it open. Lauren’s in there. She can help her!”

Gently, Joke sat Daisy on the floor against the far wall. Dylan could hear Larry on the other side, shouting that the door had been jammed. “Find something to pry it with from your side. We need to get in there. Is Lauren with you?!”

“I’m here.” Was her response. “Lawrence has a pry bar. Can you help from your side?”

“Yeah. Dad and I will do what we can. On three!” He counted through the door, the fingers of his right hand jimmied into the slit of the door along with his father’s. On three, the doors slowly began to part, showing Lawrence, Lauren and even Korbin putting their backs into it.

Once the doors had slid apart enough, Joke turned and gently retrieved the still unconscious Daisy. “Oh my GOD. Daisy!” Lauren rushed to his side, checking the girl’s breathing while Joke tried to get them both back through the doors.

“Shut that damn thing. I dunno what’s going on out there but it damn sure isn’t gonna get in here!” Joke laid Daisy on the couch and Lauren shoved him aside. “What happened to her?!”

As Joke returned to the door to help Korbin and Lawrence close it, Dylan knelt next to Daisy’s head, smoothing her damp hair away from her eyes as he related the story in monotone. The sight of blood dripping from his girlfriend’s nose, ears and eyes had a profound effect on him and he buried the thought of what he would do if she died.

At the end of his story, he felt a hand under his good arm trying to lift him from Daisy’s side. “Come on, lad. You need looking at too. Korbin said he’d take a poke at ya.” His dad’s gentle smile looked down at him, but Dylan resisted.

“Nah. I think I’ll just stay here a bit until she wakes up.” and with that, he returned his vigilance over Daisy. He never felt Korbin checking his wound.

____________________

“Damnit Jack. What the hell is going on out there? Vextis is running amok.” Joke tried not to scream into the comm, but the stress in his voice was very evident.

“Its all over the place, Joke.” The anxiety in Jack’s voice matched his friend’s  “Vextis, Krita. Even getting reports from Nash station. We got unfriendlies comin in blasting at random. Worst is, we can’t blast ‘em back. They’ve got something to prevent our energy weapons from doing damage. Weird part is, they’re not acting like soldiers or even fighters. There’s no emotion in them. They’re not afraid, worried even angry. Its like they’re running on autopilot. We’ve resorted to hand to hand and whatever low tech we can get our hands on. Where are you?”

“We have one of them, I think. Dylan’s girlfriend. She shot him and was about to finish him off when she went all wonky. Screaming in agony then dropping like a stone. Lauren’s looking her over now in the archeology lab. We couldn’t get to med bay with all the power down.” Joke had been leaning against the wall, a worried look on his face as he watched his son.

“Stay there. Its probably your best fortification. Just remember, blasters don’t work. Find something to beat the hell outta them with. I’m gonna try and.. ah hell, I don’t know what I’m gonna try and do… but I’ll do it. Out.” His friend’s frustration didn’t ease Joke’s nerves.

Closing the comm, he glanced over to Lawrence. The younger man looked worried, but the immediate problem of the door was solved. Lawrence moved around an intricately carved stone pillar-like structure and further into the lab, beckoning Joke to follow him.

Nodding slightly, Joke glanced once more at his son then followed Lawrence to the back of the lab and into the test chamber. “Help me move this back out,” he said, gesturing at a metallic cube, about one and a half feet on a side.

The two men got a grip on the device and between them managed to muscle it back out into the main room. Lawrence nodded at a work table near a bank of equipment and they carefully set it down.

“What the hell is this?” Joke rubbed his bicep as he looked the thing over skeptically.

“Last years model,” Lawrence told him. “The fabricator was just about to spit out a new one when we lost power.” The device had begun to gently hum when they had disconnected it in the test chamber and the sound was steadily getting louder as Lawrence pulled a panel from the front of one of the nearby machines. He yanked a power lead from inside and carefully began separating out wires, carefully connecting them to the cube.

Folding his arms, Joke stepped back and watched the man work, silently wondering if he should have left the doors open.

“After Korbin left with Stinel, Lauren and I kept working,” Lawrence explained, speaking as he worked. “We managed to increase the size of the field and improved Korbin’s power transfer idea. We only made the one prototype though. We’ve been running simulations up until this morning and finalized our new schematics about two hours ago. The new model solves a lot of problems.”

Joke looked at him blankly, but Lawrence was absorbed in his work.

“Wireless transfer of the absorbed power back to the Vextis power grid for one. The field should cover the entire ship. We heard blaster bolts a while ago. That should shut down the attack, but we’ve got to get the damn thing built first.”

He wasn’t an electronics expert, but he knew enough to build some pretty damn good explosives. “What can I do to help?”

Lawrence made his final connection and the bank of machines lit up. “The old unit can supply enough power to keep the equipment running, but its field extends past this room. If these attackers get too close and start shooting it’s going to burn out and take this equipment with it. We need to draw them away somehow.”

Joke thought for a moment, then flipped his comm open. “Jack. You got a Raider or someone on Vextis besides me? I need a distraction and I need it now!”

“Bloody hell, Joke. Ya don’t think I’ve got enough… “ The sound of a fist connecting with flesh cut Jack off for a moment. “Ya bloody right bastard. Stay th’ fuck down er I’ll be cripplin ya!!! Joke, y’asshole… Fix it yerself!”

“Good to have friends you can count on in a pinch,” Lawrence said, not a trace of irony in his voice.

Joke chuckled, closing his comm. “Yeah. Like a brother he is to me. Alright. Looks like its all us. Not taking kindly to leaving you all here alone without a fighter of some sort…. “

“I’ve got this handled, dad. I’ll keep them safe.” Dylan’s arm was in a sling and he looked ragged around the shoulders, but his eyes held a fire that made his father proud.

“If you’re sure lad. Jack said blasters won’t work on these things. They’re almost like mindless drones. No emotions, no nothing.”

Dylan frowned. “Daisy. Just after she shot me, I remember thinking there was no emotion in her. What she said… she should have been pissed, hurt… something, but there was nothing. It was almost like she was repeating a bad script.”

Lauren looked up from the scanner she was running over Daisy for just a moment before she focused back on her work. “A lot of the scientists assigned to the base were experts in neural patterns and energy,” she said. “What if Jos wasn’t as interested in suppressing blasters as she was in suppressing people? Daisy’s brainwaves are almost nonexistent. It’s not like she’s asleep or unconscious, it’s like she isn’t there.”

Dylan winced and closed his eyes at Lauren’s words, his right hand moving to his waist where his father’s blaster sat. “She was there. For an instant before she screamed, she was there, Lauren. She said my name. I could see her…. being… in her eyes.” He opened his eyes and glanced between Lawrence and Lauren. “It was like someone flipped a switch. One minute she wasn’t Daisy, the next she was.”

“Alright kiddies, looks like I’m bound for the outside world. Dylan’s in charge. What he says, you do, understand?” He looked pointedly at Korbin. “I find out you gave him any flack or died because you didn’t follow his orders, I’m comin back and kicking your bloody arses back ta Dublin, ya hear?” Dylan could tell his father was trying to stoke up the troops, as he called it and he smiled softy at his father’s bravado.

Lawrence had taken a few moments to check the fabricator before moving across to the other side of the lab. “I think I might have an idea. You’re not going to like it.” An array of cubes were lined up there, most of them charred or warped in one way or another. He moved to the end of the row, picking up a cube slightly smaller than the one Joke had helped him move, maybe a foot on a side. He hefted it but was able to move it to another work bench without any help. He set it down and started pulling things off of a nearby shelf, setting them down in order next to the cube.

“Of that, I have no doubt. Do I wanna know what that is?” Joke eyed the pack cautiously.

Lawrence glanced at him, looking him up and down before turning back to his work. “You’re a big enough guy. Older, but you look in decent shape.”

Joke arched an eyebrow as Dylan let out a short laugh. “A bit personal there, eh?”

Lawrence didn’t laugh, but gestured at a large battery pack on the floor nearby. “Can you bring that over here? That’s about ten kilos I think.”

Still frowning, Joke moved to the the battery and lifted. It was solid, but no more than he could carry for a bit given the right circumstances. He set it on the table next in line. “Alright. Now what?”

“There’s some duct tape in the cabinet over there. We’ll want that.” Lawrence carefully positioned the battery pack on top of the cube and started connecting wires.

“Duct tape? What the hell for?” He moved to retrieve the item even though his question and the look on his face spoke volumes of the doubt he was suddenly feeling at this man’s supposed plan.

“Generally you use it to stick stuff to other stuff,” Lawrence smiled just a bit and accepted the tape, pulling off a long strip and securing the battery in place.

Dylan chuckled softly and shook his head.

“You ever do one of those military runs with the fifty pound rucksack?”

“Did a dash from an angry husband with a beer keg on my back. That count?” Joke smirked proudly. “Bastard never did catch me.”

Lawrence stopped working for a moment and stared at Joke. “Really? Was it full?”

“Not by the time Jack and I got done with it, it weren’t… but yeah. Guy was a brewer and it was one of his best stock. I’ll be damned if I was gonna run with an empty one on my back!”

Lawrence shook his head to clear away the vision. “You’ll be fine then,” he told him. The cube was humming like it’s larger sibling across the room but not nearly as loudly.

“Wait. You’re proposing I put that thing on my back?” He glanced at the others sitting on the table. “Um. You don’t seem to have a very good track record with these things.”

“To be fair, we stopped making them after we figured out how to keep them from blowing up. Only need one working one to play with at a time,” Lawrence assured him.

Joke snorted in disbelief, but waved Lawrence on.

Lawrence slapped the battery pack he had duct taped to the cube. “This thing has a nice big capacitor in it. Should be able to handle the load from a blaster bolt and dump it into the battery.”

“Ok.. that one little word in there is not very comforting.” Joke sighed.

“Let me put it this way… You can’t take any blaster bolts by yourself. Should seems pretty comforting to me.”

“Point. Alright. Where’s the switch?” Joke moved closer, looking the whole Mickey Moused thing over.

“No switch. The field is self sustaining. As long as you don’t get shot more than once in a couple of minutes, you should be able to take three hits before the battery fills up. After that the device will overload.”

.”Wait. WHAT? One hit in a couple of minutes? This isn’t going to end well, is it? Dylan, tell your ma… ah never mind, the bitch never liked me anyway.” Joke grumbled.

They found a bag with shoulder straps sturdy enough to carry the contraption and Joke helped Lawrence secure the device inside before slinging it onto his back.

Before stepping to the door, Joke took Dylan aside. “I love ya kid, ya know that, right?” Dylan nodded. “If Jack shows, tell the bastard he owes me an Irish Car Bomb for this. Hell, make it a whole pub full of ‘em. We’ll get through this, kid, and your girl will be alright, ok?” Dylan smiled then gave his dad a one arm hug before letting him go.

“Give ‘em hell, dad.”

“You know I will, lad.” And with his patented maniacal laugh, Joke charged through the door Korbin, Lawrence and Lauren had just opened for him screaming “Ba mhaith liom a bheith ina saoiste airborne!”

Dylan frowned and shook his head before helping to close the door. Turning, he gave Lawrence a questioning look and said “I want to be an airborne ranger?”