Forums » Sci-Fi Roleplay » Outrun Time: A detective story in space (Open)

Currently open, apply via PM. Let me know what character you want to play, (You can select a passenger or make up your own, or play as a security guard or secondary officer. Let me know if you have a different idea of who you'd like to play)

1: Toyomaru
2: Durgan Carlyle
3: (Open)

Ford stood at the front of the room, his arms crossed. In the null-gravity environment, he seemed like the only solid thing in the room. Though he was floating free as anyone, he gave the impression that he was in control. Everyone else, save for those with some light null-g training, was either flailing around in an attempt to find a handhold, or had resigned themselves to floating aimlessly, bumping into walls and other officers.

The slapstick comedy, combined with the downright severe expression of all of Cassandra's officers as they attempted to retain their dignity, would have been hilarious if the situation hadn't been so dire.

The last officer entered the room: Peter Marek, the security team leader. Like Ford, he projected an aura of controlled professionalism. He floated in quickly, swinging himself around a handle on the wall and maneuvering his way to where his subordinate, Toyomaru, was gripping the wall. Noticing the captain at the front of the room, he oriented himself to face Ford and nodded slightly.

Ford nodded back and turned towards the observatory window. The room was technically more of a recreation area for the ship's passengers, because with the FTL drive engaged, there was nothing to observe out the window but a crushing, opaque blackness. A few computers were fixed to the walls, in various orientations, and a huge screen - which had somehow acquired the nickname, "The IMAX" - sat on the ceiling, above the window. As Ford tapped a button on the wall, the screen lit up to display a logo of several interconnected dots - the logo of the United Transportation Systems' "Alternative Transport Initiative."

“Time is a luxury we lack, so I'll make this meeting as short as possible," he said. "Officers of Cassandra-3, I'm sure you all have at least some vague idea of what just happened. At 0813 hours, we received a warning from Admin to cancel our ship's FTL launch. Unfortunately, we were unable to terminate the launch in time. However, Admin did forward to us a communication that they received before we departed.”

“Admin received this video from a high-velocity object somewhere between Earth and Tau Ceti. It took them some time to figure out what the data was, as it was received in slow motion, in reverse. It seems it was sent from an object traveling away from Earth at a velocity faster than the speed of light.”

“You mean us?” The Comms officer, Hernandez, sounded confused. “But we hadn't left yet.”

“When we break the light barrier, we go back in time a bit,” Shaddid said. It was strange to hear the Nav officer talk about something so incredible as if it were a mundane fact. An object in motion stays in motion. Gravity is inversely proportional to distance. Time dilation breaks when you exceed the speed of light.

“I know, but... can you do that?” Hernandez asked. She glanced at the large screen with a frown. “Send a message back in time?”

“Apparently.” He shrugged, the movement barely noticeable in null g.

“The implications are clear,” the captain said. “At some point during our trip, we will send this video back to Earth.” With that, he pressed a button on the remote.

Three faces filled the screen of a low quality video, flickering with static. The room was dark, but it seemed to be the ship's control bridge. Slowly, the three faces resolved into Marek, Toyomaru, and one of the engineers, Carlyle. The observatory began to stir with soft whispers as the officers recognized their co-workers.

“Admin, this is Peter Marek,” the recorded Marek began. “For the love of God, don't launch the ship. Shit, I know it launches anyway, so just listen; we don't have much time. we're the only ones left alive, but maybe you guys can fix it in your timeline. God, I can't afford to ramble. Okay, someone planted a bomb on the engine. Whoever they are, they're still on board, and they're killing people. You need to find them. Keep Emir and Stone alive at all costs. If everything goes to shit like it did over here, I think they're the only ones who can stop it.”

There was a crash from somewhere off screen, and the three men turned away to see. The officers collectively found thenselves leaning forward, waiting for the three recordings from the future to say something else – anything more that they could use.

Instead, the officers in the room gasped as two loud cracks split the static of the recording, and a thin spray of blood found its way onto the camera. Marek's head snapped back and he went limp. Without gravity or thrust to pull him down, he slowly drifted out of frame, leaving behind a small path of floating spheres of crimson. Toyomaru went next, making a grab for his gun a split second too late. Carlyle shouted something that wasn't discernible over the low quality video, and reached for something out of frame - presumably the button that would send the recording. The video cut out a second later, leaving behind the bright blue ATI seal. Silence.

Immediately, the room burst into shouts and arguments as all the officers started to talk about what they had just seen. The room stunk of fear and confusion. The panic rose before a loud whistle silenced the conversations.

“As you can see,” Captain Ford pointedly brought the attention back to the front of the room. “We have an incredibly dangerous situation on our hands. In just shy of twenty-six hours, our ship will arrive on Tau-Ceti. At some point in between then and now, a bomb will go off on the ship, and we will all be killed either by the explosion, or by the bomber, who we can assume from the video, is still on board."

A long awkward silence, and then, "Any questions?" It seemed like the wrong way to end such an important conversation.

This was Durgan's first time in extended zero g and it was making his stomach as volatile as the FTL drive that was carrying them along. With the sight of his own murder taking place in front of him pushed his nerves to the extreme and he couldn't hold it back any longer. The sensation of his stomach contents floating back up his throat was a unique but alarming sensation, grabbing the elastic collar of his space suit he pulled it open. Pitching his head down into his own suit Durgan let loss, the distinct sound of puking muffled out from his suit. Durgan pulled his head up, about to speak but felt himself wanting to puke again he hide his face away again.

“YUCK!” exclaimed Durgan with the nasty taste of his lunch coming back up.

Durgan released his collar sealing the contents of his suit within it, using his sleeve he whipped his face.

“I'm ok... sorry about that Sir” Durgan said to Captain Ford to let me know he was done interrupting.

Ford looked at Durgan with a blank expression. "If there's no questions, then I think we should get straight to work. I want at least one security guard paired with every engineer on the ship, and I want them to search the ship top to bottom - or bottom to top, rather. I think it's best we start in engineering." He glanced at Marek. "I'll leave that to you. In the meantime, I want Stone making final checks on everything, and I mean everything in the engineering section. Hernandez, run background checks on all our passengers-"

"Can't do that, sir," Hernandez shook her head. "Comms don't work at lightspeed. The only info I've got on our passengers is the portfolios Admin sent us a month ago.

"Work with what you have. Maybe you can dig something up, I don't know. Check over the crew, too. Actually, check them first." Looking around the room, Ford seemed satisfied. He nodded. "Let's all get to work."

"What about me?" Shaddid raised his hand - a mistake that send him slowly tumbling away from the wall he had been floating next to. He snatched a handhold before he could become zero'd in the center of the room.

"Just keep yourself safe. Remember what the recording said - if the bomb goes off, you and Stone will have to get us to safety in a damaged ship. Nobody's more qualified."

"Yessir."

With that, the officers began to file out of the room. Peter stopped Durgan and Toyomaru as they started to leave. "You two will be paired together for the ship search, alright?" Glancing at Durgans... less than tidy appearance, he added, "Get yourself cleaned up, first." With that, he floated out the door to hunt down and pair off the other engineering and security teams.

Durgan wasted no time pushing past everyone gathered outside of the observatory. He could feel the contents of his suit floating around spreading and it made him feel gross. Durgan didn't even look back or check if Toyomaru was even with him, time was short and getting change was a priority he didn't have time to worry about. Moving quickly through the guest cafeteria Durgan pitched up into the guest lounge, a large open area filled with luxuries and eye candy to keep the passenger happy, Durgan didn't care to look to closely as he floated through it to the elevator. Smashing his finger into the call button as fast and as hard as he could in hopes the elevator would arrive sooner.

“Ugh, HURRY UP!” Durgan said frustrated smacking the door, as he bounced back the door swung open.

Pulling himself in Durgan swiped his badge across the scanner and punched in his code giving him full access to the restricted section of the ship. Grabbing a rail Durgan pressed the label for the crew quarters, Durgan felt the elevator taking off and slightly pulling him down as it ascended. Durgan was excited he had been assigned his position on the Cassandra with it being the most advanced transport in the fleet, but with his pending death it had kinda lost its luster.

“Finally!” Durgan exclaimed as the doors swung open to the crew quarters. Durgan pushed firmly against the back of the elevator propelling him directly towards his bunk on the far end of the crew quarters. The open air barracks style quarters made getting to his belongings easy. Durgan reached his locker, pressing in his code he gained access to his locker and pulled open the door grabbing a new suit and cleansing whips. Durgan looked around at the nice clean pristine white ship and felt bad for a moment that he might be about to unleash a vile substance into it. Carefully peeling his suit and underwear off Durgan quickly placed the contaminated clothing into the disposal system and thoroughly whipped himself down to rid himself of the residue. Pitching the used whips away and the unused back into his locker Durgan quickly redressed. Letting out a sigh of relief he was clean again he looked around to see if he could find Toyomaru.

((Until our other player shows up, I'll be assuming temporary control of their character. Sorry in advance for playing your character poorly, Kaid, I hope you understand ))

Toyomaru entered the quarters after announcing his presence with a sharp knock on the doorframe. He floated into the room and glanced around before finding Durgan.

"El Tee Marek assigned us the starboard half of the cargo bay." He held out his PDA, which displayed a map of Cassandra. The cargo bay was flashing blue. "You ready to go?"

The two of them maneuvered their way to the elevator, which slowly descended to the engineering level. They drifted up until they touched the carpeted ceiling, turning themselves around to stand. After about ten seconds, Toyomaru broke the silence with a sigh. "That was... That was creepy." He glanced at Durgan, then at the "floor." "The broadcast, I mean. Watching us get killed."

A grim look came over Durgan's face again for a moment, “Yeah it's pretty unsettling, But I'm not going down like that.” Grabbing his multi tool Durgan cracked the seal on the first crate.

Peering in with his flash light Durgan could see freeze dried rations stacked all the way to the top of the crate. Scanning the label with his PDA, his screen populated with details on the crate which showed it was only rations. Satisfied with his search of the first crate Durgan pushed on to the next one, “This is gonna take up forever to check, I hate to say it but there is no way we can thoroughly search every one of these before we run out of time.”

The dauntless task of searching the crates, finding the bomb, or even finding the bomber was almost enough to make Durgan cry. Driving on Durgan scanned the next crate, once again the cargo matched the contents.

Bumping into the next crate up Durgan floated there for a moment, “You know what we should do.” Durgan chuckled a bit, “ We should just jettison this all, open the main cargo bay doors and let it fly... most of this is excess supplies for Tau Ceti anyway.” The idea seemed like a good one till he remember they were at FTL and there was no way of knowing what would happen if they opened the doors. Smacking himself on the forehead he waited for Toyomaru to respond with a smart comment or point out the flaw in his idea.

((Sorry if posting slows down for a while. NaNoWriMo has begun, and free time is becoming a luxury. Edit: Well, we're just a whole boatload of apologies, Toyomaru and I Sorry.))

"What do you think would happen if we dumped the cargo?" Toyomaru asked. "I mean, I guess we could ask Emir or Lynda. They're the experts on how all this works."

Toyomaru stopped at the next crate and opened it up. "You know, you shouldn't just be going off the scan returns. If I was hiding a bomb, I'd put it at the bottom of the crate. You wouldn't be able to see it, and the scan wouldn't pick it up too well." He started digging through the pile of clothes inside.

"Seriously, check that crate again," Toyomaru insisted. "If we run out of time, we run out of time, but it'd be stupider to die because we didn't look hard enough." He finished checking the clothes and moved on to a crate of chocolate and other luxuries for the passengers.

Durgan didn't really have much of a choice - his companion made a fair point, after all. He bent over the crate he had just scanned and started shifting the rations aside, looking for anything unusual.

Something glinted at the bottom of the crate. Durgan froze, watching his flashlight play over the metal surface of the object.

He had found the bomb.

(Sorry bad internet connection.)

Sooo... planning on posting? Anybody?

Dang, this died quickly.

I'll have a go if you like?