The Spaceship (Story / RP)

[Sunlight123]

I guess I was procrastinating this part tbh.

The Spaceship

  Bea stoops down and picks up a flashlight. Pointing it towards the floor, she presses the button to test if it works. It does. Satisfied, she toggles it off. As nice as sitting around with the QM could be, Bea decides she's got to learn her job, it wasn't really a choice though. She felt she would go stir crazy if she wasn't doing anything for an entire work day.

Beatrix Montgomery:
  "Alright let's go." She motions for Dai to enter the maintenance tunnel first.

  As they both step through, the sound of their steps on grates echo through the long metal tunnel. Bea tries to minimize her sound and finds that stepping on areas are louder to step on than others. There are tables of junk strewn about. A screwdriver here, a crowbar there, many items Bea cannot immediately recognize. There are also lockers and metal crates—most empty.
  There's a myriad of airlocks on each side, some with wires or pipes visibly going into them. As they reach the end of the hallway, they begin to head through one door and into another maintenance room. In that room they reach a junction and turn right through another airlock. In that room they go through the left door. And so on, and so on, until eventually Bea feels completely lost.

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  "I don't know the exact path to take," she confessed, "I'm just heading diagonally in the vague direction they were. As long as they aren't dead quiet we'll be able to hear them when we're close by." She accidentally steps on a rat's tail. It must have been nibbling on crumbs, since its head is inside a crumbled up potato chip bag. It crawls out with its fur raised, hissing at the two of them, before running off. Dai does not mind.

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  "I haven't been back here since the last big switch around. You see, the ship is currently docked in orbit around the planet you saw out there. So for now we're basically just a space station. When the ship is actually functioning as a ship, coasting through space, it picks up more rooms from space if you can believe it. It's hard to understand since you haven't seen the ship from the outside, but it's just a giant series of cubes attached together. It's all modular."

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  "Throughout the galaxies are rooms, compatible with this ship, and all other UnionTransen ships. The reason why there are rooms randomly floating around in space is because other vessels have ejected them. They shed them. Maybe the rooms were too heavy, or maybe they took up too much power, or maybe the vessels they were a part of were destroyed." She wrongly enters a room, a dead end housing an electric power controller, and backtracks a bit. "Worst case scenario is a room that was spaced because it was damned. Some exotic alien predator or some genetically engineered monstrosity was there, and now that its part of our ship, now it's our problem. That's why you usually bring a radio, and a friend with you before doing anything professional. We won't be doing anything like that today."

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  "Part of our job description is opening up new rooms that the ship has picked up. We see if there's anything valuable in them we can resell, reuse, or rework. We handle all goods coming in, and they're just another good. Eventually our ship will meet a friendly Returner Ship. Their job is to take the empty rooms back to a local headquarters. So basically, we get rooms, gut them, and then shed them off. They probably get recycled in the end."

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  "All of this is to say, the layout of maints is always changing. And there are always rooms we haven't seen. Don't know how much sense that makes, but you'll get it sometime. We aren't exploring any new rooms today. We're just familiarizing ourselves and exploring."

  After she finishes her explanation, Dai just goes quiet for a bit while walking. She whistles to break the silence. Eventually, they end up walking into a room filled with people. Bea recognizes Sonny as one of them. She also spots two others wearing cargo uniforms, a woman with shocks of curly hair, and a blonde young man. They all appear wordless.

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  "Hey, I thought you guys would be yapping each other's ears off. We’re lucky we ran into you, otherwise we could've gotten lost," she shifts with an annoyed sway, hand on hip, "What gives?"

Other Cargo Lady:
  She gulps. "We... Found this." She holds up a red handheld electronic device. "This PDA was over there..." She aims her flashlight to a metal chair in the middle of the room. Underneath it is a large pile of ash.

  Bea scans the room over with her light. It is a small square room, with no furnishings and nothing else lying around, except for other small piles of ash, and a broken purple-painted canister-drum on its side. Most of the room is black, as if it has been burnt badly. Dai walks over and handles the red PDA herself, powering it on. Basic information on the screen displays.

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  "Security Cadet?" She pauses in a ponderous pose, "Was there any ID here?"

Other Cargo Lady:
  "There was nothing else here. It's... Worrying... To find this. You don't think the ashes are? Well, you know?"

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  Evaluating the scene, she asks, "Did you call anyone?"

Other Cargo Young Man:
  "We haven't called anyone yet. Should we?"

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  Dai presses a button on her headset and says, "We need a detective to our location. We found personal property of a security cadet in a... Suspicious scene."

  Bea can see the message being sent to the [general communications] tab on her headset's virtual text-chat. After what feels like an eternity of awkward silence, a reply message sent from a detective is received:

General Communications:
 
  ...

  Salvager - Dyani Dancer:
    "We need a detective to our location. We found personal property of a security cadet in a... Suspicious scene."

  Detective - Jethro Bruno:
    "I'll be there PDQ."

  The atmosphere seems generally uncomfortable.

To be Continued

[concertsrule]

Bea's face twists with confusion, she turns to Dai, opening her mouth to speak but decides against it. She grips her chin with her free hand. 'Did someone burn to death here?' she thinks, she usually wouldn't jump to that conclusion but with everything in front of her and the tense feeling in the air she figures this must be the answer.
Bea leans over looking at the PDA in Dai's hand she feels herself reach to take it from her hand but quickly corrects herself and puts her arm back to her side. From where she is she does her best to inspect the PDA.

She leans away from Dai, she stares at the piles of ash with her brows knitted. She falls deep into thought her eyes occasionally flicking across the floor to the chair to the walls back to the ash. She has the idea to feel the ash but discards it seeing as she wouldn't know what to feel for and would just get her hands dirty and possibly a stern talking to for disturbing a crime scene. The four other people in the tunnels could be talking but she wouldn't know she's completely focused on the scene. Suddenly she feels a hand on her shoulder gently shaking her. She jumps slightly.
"wha- huh?" she whips her head towards Dai who shook her. Bea's face flushes slightly, clearly embarrassed about the situation.

[Sunlight123]

I'm slow at responding.

The Spaceship

  Bea's face twists with confusion, she turns to Dai, opening her mouth to speak but decides against it. She grips her chin with her free hand. 'Did someone burn to death here?' she thinks, she usually wouldn't jump to that conclusion, but with everything in front of her... And the tense feeling in the air.. She figures this must be the answer.

  Bea leans over looking at the PDA in Dai's hand. She feels herself reach to take it from her hand, but quickly corrects herself and puts her arm back to her side. From where she is, she does her best to inspect the PDA. She has never seen one so far. It was a small rectangular device, with a large screen and a slide-out keyboard for input. The screen was still on, but it only had some basic details.

  On the screen a large logo of handcuffs was present. Below that looked to be some basic details. Perhaps the time and date up top. Below that were three lines of text—Likely ID card information—'Name', 'Job', 'Station'—But Bea could not make out the name from here. 'Job' looked like it did in fact read "Security Cadet" like what was said. 'Stationed' looked either the same or similar to hers and everyone else's IDs.

  She leans away from Dai, staring at the piles of ash with her brows knitted. She falls deep into thought, her eyes occasionally flicking across the floor, to the chair, to the walls, and back to the ash. She has the idea to feel the ash, but discards that thought. She wouldn't know what to feel for and would just get her hands dirty along with a stern talking to for disturbing a crime scene. The four other people in the tunnels could be talking, but she wouldn't know, she's completely focused on the scene.

Beatrix Montgomery:
  Suddenly she feels a hand on her shoulder gently shaking her. She jumps slightly. "Wha- Huh?" She whips her head towards Dai who shook her. Bea's face flushes slightly, clearly embarrassed about the situation.

Cargo Salvager Lady - Dai:
  "You didn't hear us? We were talking things over. Lommy wanted to introduce herself over there," she says pointing to their female coworker.

  Lommy waves hello awkwardly. Her hair is white, hopefully dyed, because she is quite young, and very curly and massy, as if she had been electrocuted recently. She has eyebags. Bea can't tell if it is because she simply looks tired, but she seems anxious. The other coworker is a blonde man about the same age and build as Sonny. They just seem to be in conversation with each other silently.

  Metal footsteps come from outside the room, and in comes, what can only be assumed are two officers of the ship's law. One is in a brown trenchcoat and a matching fedora. The other is in a navy blue police uniform. Bizarrely enough, they are a lizardman, with reddish or pinkish scales. That one seems to be holding the cargo boss, QM Jakub Jones, in handcuffs.

Detective Jethro Bruno:
  The detective’s hands were buried deep in his trenchcoat pockets. He raises a hand to say, "Alright, nobody move an inch. Everyone, quiet. You, Salvager Dyani. You called me, right?"

Cargo Coworker - Blonde Guy:
  "Hey! What's the deal? Why's our boss in cuffs?"

Detective Jethro Bruno:
  "I wasn't talking to you—kid," he turns to Dai again, "Again, you called me, right?" He plucks the PDA gently out of her hands, overlooks it, then passes it to his scaly co-officer who does the same. He paces back and forth, examining the scene.

Cargo Salvager - Dai:
  "I did. We thought something suspicious happened here and it was best to call you."

Detective Jethro Bruno:
  "And who found this first?"

Sonny Sunlight:
  "We all did. As a group. They were showing me around and we stumbled in here by accident. Well, except Bea and Dai came in later. We were here first."

Detective Jethro Bruno:
  "Hmm... So you guys found it first, yet, Dyani was the first to actually report it?" He looks everyone over real careful-like. Nobody looks too happy about the comment. "I'm just trying to get the facts straight. Not accusing anyone of anything—yet."

Cargo Coworker - Blonde Guy:
  "Then why's our boss in handcuffs?"

  QM Jakub Jones doesn't say a word. He's just quiet underneath his cowboy hat. The lizard officer holding him looks annoyed.

Detective Jethro Bruno:
  The detective halts his pacing. "You talk an awful lot for someone who just stumbled onto a murder scene, Roland. How about you come with me to interrogation?”

Cargo Coworker - Lommy:
  "We’re calling this a murder already?!?" she yells out shocked.

Detective Jethro Bruno:
  ”Calm down, Lommy. Look, now that I’m looking this whole group over, how about everyone comes with us? I see two people I don't recognize here. Five people total. I figure at least one of you has to have something interesting to tell me."

Cargo Coworker - Blonde Guy - "Roland":
  "I'm not moving an inch until you tell me an answer."

Detective Jethro Bruno:
  The detective audibly breathes through his teeth. When he does, Bea can smell the scent of alcohol and pineapples on his breath. "Your boss had an illegal gun on him. Well, actually, he still has it on him, on his hip here," he lifts up the QM's denim jacket to reveal a gun holster with what looks like a revolver in it, "Of course, he can't use it while he's cuffed. I would hope none of you have the same. If any of you do, it's best to tell us now."

  Nobody says anything.

Detective Jethro Bruno:
  "Now with that settled, it's best we go." The detective whips out his own PDA, a similar kind. He scans the airlock quickly, once scanning simply, and once scanning all over the door. "Don't make us fight you guys. Come along and we'll all have a talk at security."

  Dai nods at Bea and the rest of the gang that they should follow. Roland, the blonde coworker, shakes his head no to Sonny, but Sonny seems to ignore and follows Dai and the detective. Roland caves and comes anyway.

Cargo Salvager - Dai:
  Dai whispers into Bea's ears, "Jethro's usually a pretty nice guy. Just tell him the truth with whatever he asks," she puts her hands on her hips and sighs, "It's a long walk. Is there anything you want to know before we get there? Anything on your mind?"

To be Continued