This time three chapters... (including the integrated one from Robkelk from Noah)
Quote:‘Airducts... I hate air ducts’ Teela thought while crawling through a small pipe connecting two parts of the asteroid station.
Most Fen space stations had air ducts... or maintenance tunnels... or Jefferies tubes. Everyone had them in some areas of their station. Most times, they’d forget they were there.
Ducts were not that large in most stations, normally it’d be considered impossible for the average human to fit through them...not without making noise like Thor having a fit with a steel drum anyway.
Teela was not an average human being. If there was one thing thick tabby fur was good for, it was for deadening sound.
Teela still recalled her Senshi training.... Twenty meters of tight curving pipes, just to learn that she couldn’t open the other side, it was much too tight to turn around, and she had to crawl back out through the entire thing without making a sound.
On her trip through the ‘forbidden’ part of the station Teela had found a choke point with two guards, and no way to get around it... at least no way through a corridor. And so she was scouting a number of smaller air ducts, designed for modified maintenance Roombas, not normal people.
Catgirls could squeeze themselves into places normal people could only bream of.
‘After this turn I should be in the corridor behind the chokepoint’ Teela reminded herself while relaxing for a moment. Crawling through a maintenance shaft was not easy, drawing the wrapped QED behind her did not made it easier.
Looking around the corner she could see the light of another one of the stations corridors. And another closed hatch where her current shaft should continue, but this hatch had something most others had not... an electronic lock.
‘Ohh... just won a jackpot!’ Teela carefully opened her collar and took the waved microtool out. Getting high end toys from OGJ’s toolbox was always fine. Quickly she drilled a tiny hole into the casing and put the tools fiberoptics through it.
‘Two sabotage contacts, fibre connection to the other side... wow, there is a whole waved phone inside.’ Teela carefully began to connect wires to the phone inside after widening her hole in the casing. After a few minutes she had really short Ethernet cable connected to it. She moved a little bit back and closed her eyes, waiting for Cortana to connect to the system and work her way into the lock.
After a while she was rewarded with the sound of an opening hatch. She opened her eyes again, only to see the LEDs on the QEDs casing die again.
“Damn quirk” she mouthed and quickly unplugged the box. The continuing shaft was dark as usual. It opened out a little more the further in she got . Perversely, that only made it harder for her to keep quiet. Chilled air blew through the ducts, sprakling frost lining the walls. Teela could see her breath turn to ice in the air. Another good thing about fur; it kept the cold out.
Her nose started to tingle.
About six meters ahead, there was another grate with a lock on it. This one, the light was flickering green. She slid along on her fur towards it.
‘Lets see why you need all this cool air’.
The first hatch closed behind her, but the lock didn’t latch closed. The second hatch obediently came open for Teela and let her look into a large pitch black room.
It took Teela a while to adapt to the tiny amounts of light generated by a few technical devices.
On the left she could see the glassy outlines of some human sized tubes. Directly in front of her on the other side was the only light source of the room, a rack of servers and their merrily blinking lights. Other shapes loomed out of the darkness, the outlines of cabinets, tools, machinery. A desktop computer sat on top of what looked to be a sleeping dinosaur, trailing a thick conduit tail.
She spotter a single red laser spot on the far wall, the beam highlighted by the few stray dust particles in the air flickering red as they crossed it. she traced the beam back to a shaded football standing atop a tripod.
‘A turret. And I am thinking in hatchways.’ Teela whispered with a grin and entered the lab. ‘I am sure there is a portal gun in her somewhere,”
She grabbed the QED and edged over towards the rack, her furred feet damping the sounds of her footsteps. She slipped around behind the turret.
It began to sing.
“Ca~ra bella, cara mia bella,”
Cathy stiffled a yelp, clasping her hands over her mouth
“Mia bambina, o ciel”
It kept singing as she kept moving over to the computer rack, moving carefully to make sure she didn’t tip anything over.
‘You have to be our goal, no chance they keep this amount of equipment around except for their madgirl’ she thought and began to examine the rack. It was loaded with waved computer hardware, all hooked up to a watercooling system which seemed to route back into the ventilation. It smelled of hot electronics and hummed with power.
Teela methodically began to open maintenance flaps at the back and finally found what she had been looking for, a large empty space which had originally been designed for a second uninterruptible power supply unit. Large enough for putting the QED in.
“Nobody will find you here my little toy” she said after she had put the communication device in, splicing it directly into the hardware with a few specialised jumper cables. Satisfied that the job was done, she closed the flap again. “At least not until this whole mess is over and you are sitting in a base on Mars.”
She gave the guard droid at the door a final look, then slipped back to the hatch she’d entered through. Behind her she could already hear the harddisks of the rack server spinning up. The turret was still singing.
Getting back out was a little easier. She knew where she was going, and wasn’t carrying the box.
More than once Teela had to stop, waiting until someone she’d heard outside the duct had moved on. Just sit still and wait, breathing shallow through her nose. Finally, she made it back to the hatch she’d gotten in through.
She was glad to be free.
‘Now back to Cally’ she thought, taking a few moments to orientate herself. She knew the way back to Cally’s apartment, it wasn’t hard to find her way out. She set off, confident she hadn’t been spotted, and glad that the job was done.
The hard part was over.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite catgirl” A sweet voice sneered behind her. “Going out for a walk?”
Teela spun on her tip-toes, every single hair on her body standing on end “I just got a little lost” she replied quickly.
Quattro’s expression darkened into a fiendish sneer. Keen gold eyes regarded her like a fox would regard a rabbit. Her teeth were bared in a hungry smirk.
“Well, finder’s keepers then,” she giggled.
With inhuman speed, she snapped something from her pocket. Teela had barely started to move before she felt something bite into her skin. She had just enough time to notice the two barbs before she felt the shock burning through her body.
Teela yelp, dropping to the floor, spasming and convulsing as the current took hold. She gasped for air, scratching and pawing at the floor despite herself.
A few moments later, she blacked out.
Quattro regarded her for a moment, and started to laugh. Catgirls. Just another puny catgirl. Completely incapable of defending itself. A pathetic little creature.
“It was the rabbits fault it got caught by the fox.“, she remarked, picking the body up, slinging it effortlessly over her shoulder. And it was the foxes right to do what she wills with the rabbit.
Quote:The doors and walls of the office of the President of Stellvia Corporation were soundproofed, so that none of Stellvia's day-to-day operations chatter would disturb anyone working in the office and so no corporate secrets would get out of the office before their time.
And the President of Stellvia Corporation was not known to use profanity, either on a regular basis or under most types of stress.
Which is why everyone in Main Operations was doubly shocked to hear, through the closed doors, Noah Scott yell "Holy FUCK!"
The Gamma 2 bulletin that Kohran Li had flagged "Priority: SuperNova" and forwarded to Noah sat on the middle of the desk as he used his Great Justice OF-8 clearance to cut through the red tape and contact Task Force Butterscotch.
Knowing that he was only human (and thus not able to send burst transmissions), they patched him through to the field team immediately to reduce data transfer lag.
"Jet Jaguar here."
"This is Elite Troubleshooter Noah Scott. You requested information about an entity known as 'Quattro'."
"That's right."
"From what little information you were able to provide, my best guess is that she is a Scott-series android built by Agatha Clay, based upon the most sociopathic character in the anime 'Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS'."
"The team on site indicates she's a 'cutesy bitch', Mr. Scott."
"Yes, she's very good at faking that persona. It gets people to underestimate her. The canonical Quattro appeared to everyone, even her sisters, to be something of a ditz, but she was more than capable of keeping a criminal conspiracy organized while still toying with the lives of almost everyone around her."
Jet winced visibly. "Are you sure of this, Mr. Scott?"
"As sure as I can be without actually coming on site, Mr. Jaguar. And if I was to do that, your operation would be blown. However, your report also said that she's the station's resident madgirl. The canonical Quattro was more of an administrator and power behind the scenes than a researcher, so this Quattro likely doesn't match the canon character exactly. That's why I think it was Clay who built her - Agatha tends to deviate from canon whenever she can."
"So you don't actually know who or what Quattro is, then."
Noah thought for a second. "Maybe not, but I'm willing to bet a share of StellviaCorp stock on this."
"You're that sure?" Everyone knew that owning even one share of Stellvia Corporation stock was enough to let you retire to Pallas.
"I'm sure that Quattro was based on the character. I'm also sure that you won't be able to predict her actions with complete accuracy by comparing her to the canon character, but I'm having Kagome work up a personality profile of Quattro even as we speak. Expect to receive it within the hour. Do you need any additional troops?"
"Surely it can't be that bad."
"That depends on who else is there and what strings Quattro has been pulling behind the scenes. And don't call ..."
"... me 'Shirley'." they finished in unison. Jet continued. "If you're making jokes, then the situation can't be that dire, Mr. Scott."
"I'm making jokes because the situation is that dire, Mr. Jaguar. I don't want to start swearing at you over the radio. If it's at all possible, could you send me a copy of whatever data you manage to retrieve about Agatha Clay when you storm the base?"
"Why?"
"As you can probably figure out from the fact that she can build my sort of androids, I have a certain responsibility for her. I'd like to bring her to justice eventually."
"Right," Jet responded. Something was clearly bothering her. "We plan to try take the computers intact anyway, I'll send a courier with a copy of what's on there."
"Thank you,"
"Thirty seconds Jet," a very British voice offscreen advised. Thirty seconds until the Destiny Nova was within line-of-sight of Nehallenia. Thirty seconds before their transmissions risked being detected.
Jet looked away for a moment at the source of the warning. "I'll have to cut this short. Just so you know, based on what you've told me, it's clear Quattro is too dangerous to be allowed off Nehallenia. If we can't capture her, I plan to kill her," she said.
"I was about to suggest the same thing, Mr Jaguar."
The screen flickered and went blank, the transmission cut off automatically at the other end. Noah sighed and relaxed back into his chair, pondering for a few moments. He glanced at Jet Jaguar’s profile, scanning through character notes. A little different from the usual he noted, but by all accounts someone who could be counted upon to do the job.
It was mildly reassuring to see that Jet tended prefer taking prisoners where possible.
Maybe, if she was taken alive, she could be helped?
The more ruthless part of his mind noted that if she was taken alive, she might know where her mother had gotten to.
He sighed. He knew he’d feel a hell of a lot more comfortable having someone he actually knew personally handling something this sensitive. Infact, he knew exactly who he would’ve preferred to have handling this.
Noah made sure that the details of the mission where shared with those who needed to know about them, but decided against asking anyone to take charge. It was too late for that, much too late.
He decided to hope Jet would live up to his reputation.
Quote:Aboard the Nova Jet drew a long breath, staring at the blank screen. She was tapping her finger rapidly on the console. Tat-tat-tat-tat... sharp and metallic. Ceramic fingers met metal console.
“You’re worried about Ford, aren’t you?” Desmond asked her.
Jet glanced over at the speaker from where the voice had come, then at the fisheye lense observing her, then out the forward windows at the rock walls.
“I sent her in there to that mad thing,” she said, her voice soft. “And I can’t even warn her.”
If a speaker could’ve smiled reassuringly at her, it would have. “I’m sure she knew the risks,” he said. Ever the proper British stiff-upper lip spy. Who the hell on Hephaestus had been responsible for him?
Jet didn’t say a word. She glared at the screen, visibly tensing up.
“Jet, Jet, this is Cortana,” the speaker came to life once more.
“Jet,” she answered with a bark, “What is it?”
“I have a connection to a new computer system. It looks like it is what we are looking for.”
“Good. Forward it on through EMCON as it comes in. I want the details back before we go in.”
“I will. It could take some time, it’s a huge amount of data.”
“Just get it done.” Jet snapped at her.
She just had to trust the Ford knew what she was doing. The plan was good, Everything so far was good. it was just a matter now of having the nerve to stick to it and see it through to the end. Ford could really look after herself.