PAUSED ~ Division (Alliana, Luke, Natalie, Katy)

[~ ADMIN]

It’s been over a month since the incident on the Oceanic, and the crew are making progress on discovering the causes of these rifts and anomalies.

After a mass tactical movement by the terrorist group R4, it is clear that they are affiliated with these rifts and anomalies – whether they are the sole cause has yet to be discovered.



Leaving the medical team at the school, the other crew members take the ship back into orbit for repairs. Unfortunately, the ship’s engine’s malfunction, and the ship plunges into the ocean, taking the crew with it. As it sinks into the ocean, the pressure begins to strain on the walls of the ship. Can they fix the ship’s engines before the gravity of the water crushes the ship completely?

--------------------------------------------------------------

Posting Order
Alliana Porter
Luke Martin
Natalie Fairholm
Katy Tyler

[Alliana Porter]

For once Alliana had settled into a fairly decent sleep, even if it was just a nap. She needed it and so did her body. Her entire night was spent in the lab, working on new compounds and trying to crack down to identify that one species. It was grueling work and she caught herself drooling it off at 7 am. After being forced into breakfast and more bits of functionality, her pillow began looking like her best friend.

It all seemed too good to be true which is probably why it failed. All of a sudden, the ship took a large jolt and Alliana was tossed from her bunk like a hapless ragdoll and bumped her head on the wall. The ship lurched and was incredibly uneasy. With a now pounding head, she rolled slowly to where she could heave herself up. The only way to hold her feet was holding on to all she could find. What the hell was going on? Thank goodness her head wasn't bleeding, but she could feel the emerging goose egg.

First things first, she had to go figure out what was going on. With the aid of the wall, she stumbled to the flight deck to see what in the world was going on. "Luke..." she called frantically. "is...is everything...." Her jaw fell slightly at the sight at the window. The ship was hurling into an ocean. Her first instinct was to grab onto whatever she could find and hold on for dear life. She dove for the nearest chair and clung as if her life depended on it, because she wasn't sure if it would.

[Luke Martin]

With the ship's engineers making modifications to the ship's systems, he almost permanently had to be on the flight deck to run systems checks from the flight console. Good thing sleep wasn't a necessity, right? Wrong. He'd dozed off a couple of times, his book in his lap, his feet propped up on the opposite chair, then got woken up by the irritated voice of the chief engineer who was getting increasingly more annoyed the more times he had to wake him.

He'd been staring at the same line in his book for at least five minutes now, so Luke decided to give up, take off his glasses and close his eyes for a moment. That's when he heard an all too unpleasant sound. His eyes pinged open and the ship lurched drastically, almost throwing him from his chair. He tossed his book to the side and swivelled round to the console and the ship lurched again. A diagram of the engines were flashing red on his screen, and he could feel the ship begin to turn downwards towards the planet.

"What happened?" Luke yelled down his comms, tapping the screen furiously to try and balance out power to the thrusters - no luck there - or anything else that would stop them from falling out of the sky. He heard Ally's voice, and looked round at her quickly. "Take a seat," he told her, his hands moving like a blur across the screen, transferring power to anything that would help break their entry into the water, "this is going to be a bumpy ride!" He did all that he could, then gripped onto the console tightly as the ship slammed into the water.

He was thrown forward into the console, his rubs groaning in protest, and the lights flickered. Luke looked round at Alliana, "are you okay?" That was when he heard a sound he didn't want to hear. The front screen groaned and began to crack. "Ally, move!" he shouted at her, grabbing her hand, sprinting from the room. Once they were outside, he fiddled with the panel by the door, locking the door, and airlocking it right as the screen cracked and water began pouring in.

[Natalie Blake]

Natalie groaned, feeling slightly light-headed as she leaned in closer to her work, her sight becoming blurry whenever she moved too far back or tried to un-squint her eyes. This was what she got for staying up over the past few days to work on the Venia. Not that she had much of a choice.

If only the terrorists hadn't come down here. What had they done to the poor baby? Her engines were in need of some serious repairs. Luckily, with her and the other engineers' skill, they'd be up and running again in no time. Or at least, that had been the theory. Now no one was too sure. The repairs needed had been more extensive than they'd expected.

Now, over a month later, they were still finishing up. Thankfully, though, they were finishing. Shaking her head dizzily in hopes of sharpening her focus, Natalie was just about to set back to work when the Venia lurched violently. As a result from the jarring impact, she found herself sprawled out on the floor, emergency lights flashing and alarms blaring all around her.

"Son of a tied-down..." she grumbled in annoyance, pushing herself onto her knees. She was just about to make her way over to the comm on the wall when she heard distant groan of the ship's hull. "Oh, that can't be good."

Natalie hastily stumbled over to the comm, punching in the code to set up a link with the flight deck. All she got was static. Swallowing her panic, she rushed out of engineering and, as quickly as she could, made her way up to the flight deck so that she could find out what was going on in purpose. She slowed and spun around when she heard someone coming towards her, blinking blearily to try and bring the figure into focus.

"Hello?" she asked cautiously. "Who's there?"

[somerandomhippie]

Katy was having quite a good day today. She was on the Venia, with a little free time on her hands and the knowledge to actually work one of those food-machines-things. She was quite proud of herself. Plus, with a little fiddling, she had figured out how to use the virtual closet. She now had clean clothes, including her favorite T-shirt, one of those ancient souvenir ones from back in the old days. Thelonious Monk was pretty cool for a monk.
She got herself a cup of tea, and went and sat in her room, near the front of the ship. Kicking off her shoes, she decided if she was wearing a Thelonious Monk shirt, she better watch some holos of him. He had the coolest hat.
She had been in the middle of a good dance when the ship suddenly stumbled. Her tea knocked backwards, spilling all over her shirt. Grumbling, she changed, into something blue. Those engineers would pay for that. Then her holo shorted out. Odd. As she looked on the back, she suddenly felt the sensation of wet feet. She looked down, and saw her floor was wet. Not good. She pulled on her boots, and squeaked her way to the flight deck.
"Next time you decide to convert my room into a swimming pool, remind me to take my socks off first," she commented to the people on board-- the raven-haired one, the kid with the Star Wars name, and Nate. Good, someone's name she could remember. "I sound like a dog toy. You owe me a Thelonious Monk shirt, by the way." She trotted over to the food machine, and made herself a cup of tea. "You guys don't look too mellow-- have you been listening to that free jazz stuff again?" Free jazz was only good in small doses, and not when you were dead on your feet, as these guys looked. Bad idea.

[Alliana Porter]

Alliana clung to Luke as he rescued her. When they had a moment to stand still, she found herself, wringing tightly to his shirt, and her heart beating faster than she could manage. She was still shaky and as soon as she let go of the fabric, held her hand to steady her erratic heartbeat. She looked down the hall to a frantically shook up Natalie. "It's just us Natalie, Luke and I..." she replied in a breathy tone, letting her thick Australian accent hug the syllables. She was somewhat familiar with the woman, she had a nice smile, kind eyes. At least she had some sort of idea of what was going on. The other woman....well, not so much.

Alliana hadn't met her, but had observed her and her snarky ways. The only smart think to avoid conflict and emerging into a super bitch, was avoidance all together. She turned up one side of her upper lip and raised a curious eyebrow, not understanding one word the woman was talking about. She looked upset and wet, and that didn't seem like a good combination here. She looked up at Luke with a slightly confused face, mouthing a 'what' to him., before turning her attention back to the woman in front of her. Alliana squeezed her fingers, only realizing that she was still holding Luke's hand. She guessed after the flightdeck incident, they were sort of...together now. But there were more important things to worry about than warm fuzzy feelings, they were now in heaps of trouble, dangerous trouble.

[Luke Martin]

Luke finally had a moment to breathe and realised that Alliana was clinging to him like a koala to a tree. Not that she could be described as a koala. He felt her remove herself, then turned his attention to Natalie, who approached them. "Yeah, just us," he reiterated, before glancing back round at the air locked door. It was keeping the water in, for now. He hoped it held out until they could do something about this.

Next Katy joined them, armed with her snark, as per usual. She'd made it clear that she had no idea what his name was; once she clicked her fingers at him, trying to remember, only to call him Han. Close, not close enough though. "Yes Madam," he said, "next time, instead of trying to save the ship as it plunges head first into the ocean, I will get on the comms and advise you to go barefoot, and also to wear a different t-shirt."

Luke squeezed Ally's hand, then let go of it, walking away from them for a moment, putting his hand to his head. They were lucky that they hadn't all drowned by now. There was another groan and the ship shuddered. Great, we're sinking. He needed to get a grip and think. "Okay, here's how it is. Our engines gave out, not sure why, and we crashed into the ocean. The flight deck is off limits, and apparently the sleeping quarters are beginning to fill with water," which meant that there had to be a small crack in the hull on the other side of ship too, "and we're sinking."

"Any idea what happened?" he looked at Natalie, seeing as she had been in engineering at the time.

[Natalie Blake]

Natalie sighed a little exasperatedly as her friend Katherine joined what had turned out to be Luke and Alliana, ranting about her wet feet and spoiled t-shirt. She was a good and reliable girl, it was just that sometimes she got a little too relaxed about situations like this one. Which, while sometimes good to keep the ones around her calm, could also get somewhat annoying to others. Apparently, "others" included Luke and Alliana.

When Luke gave a quick run-down of their current status, Natalie muttered curses under her breath and ran a hand over her face. So the engines had failed. And she'd been right there. Too tired to take note of anything that could've been wrong. Well that was absolutely frigging peachy. Before Luke had even finished asking her if she knew what had happened, she started shaking her head.

"I honestly have no idea," Natalie admitted in defeat, slumping against the wall and sinking to the floor. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, trying to recall everything that had happened that night. Nothing she could remember should have caused the engines to fail. "We were just wrapping up repairs," she told the others despondently, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. "We'd fixed most of the larger issues when we first started, I don't see how..."

She trailed off into silence, pressed her fingers against her temples. There had to be something. There just had to be. Maybe one of the other engineers had accidentally done something? But what in the name of all that was holy could've done this?

"All I know was that I was working over one of the main consoles and then the ship jarred and next I knew it was all flashing lights and alarms." She uncovered her eyes and looked up at the others apologetically. "I don't know. Maybe we should go down and see if we can find out what happened?"

[somerandomhippie]

Katy cringed as the others snapped at her hello. Not the time for humor, it seemed. They had probably had a really long night-- they were all specialists with the ship's equipment, and so they were in charge of the re-- wait, sinking? Since when?
She got up, balancing her tea precariously on her chair, and went over to one of the main windows. She cupped her hands, and looked out-- yep, that was definitely a waterline. It also explained all the water in her room, and the jarring crash. Titanic, much. Seemed she had missed a lot during the last few minutes. No wonder everyone was on edge.
She walked back to her seat, and took another sip of tea. This was probably the worst thing that could happen to an almost-repaired ship, she realized. Water plus open components equaled bad times. She nodded with Nate's idea of checking the engines, unable to do anything else politely due to the tea in her mouth. Plus, she had a feeling talking would not go over so well, considering her rather naive entrance. So, she sat back and listened instead.

[Alliana Porter]

Ally placed her hands on the small of her back, listening in between Luke and Natalie's explanations. She sort of knew what they were talking about, but machines were not her specialty. She looked over at Katherine and offered an attempt at a friendly smile. Since there was no clear leader yet in the matter, Alliana decided she would...well, sort of step up.

"Luke, Natalie, since you know how this beast of machine works, do you think you could see if you could figure out what's up with the engines? Try to get it started?" She turned back to Katy on the couch with her tea. "Katherine...is it?' she paused a bit, trying to make sure she got her name right. "Do you think you could come with me, and we'll try to get some of these holes filled so we don't get anymore overflow of water?" It was worth a shot. Either they would attack her for trying to be the big bad leader, or just see the opportunity to work together, not to mention the crew bonding. As big of a bitch as she was, she was trying to kill that reputation and be friendly for once. She cast her grey eyes at Luke, offering a faint smile and turned to Natalie with a hopeful nod.

[Luke Martin]

Luke listened to each of the ladies in turn, leaning back against the wall, scratching his forehead with his fingers before nodding, showing that he had understood both of them. Katy was keeping quietly, probably because he had snapped at her. It wasn't like him to go off at someone like that, but they had almost drowned, and he didn't appreciate being shouldered with blame which he didn't deserve.

"That's probably the best idea," he said with another nod, willing to follow Ally's suggestion. It was the next logical step anyhow. "We can try making our way to the auxiliary control room, seeing as there's no way we're going back in there," he jabbed a thumb towards the flight deck, "and do a damage assessment before we launch in and try and fix anything."

He held out a hand to Natalie, offering to help her up. "You two ladies keep on the comms, let us know if you find any sections of the ship which need sealing in order to stop the whole ship from flooding." That wouldn't exactly be the most pleasant way to die.

[Natalie Blake]

Natalie listened as Alliana took charge, suggesting that Natalie and Luke go to see if they could figure out what had happened while she and Katy went to patch up any holes in the Venia they might find. Luke agreed easily enough, telling them to keep on the comm systems in case they found anything.

Accepting Luke's hand up, she nodded. "Okay," she consented simply, glad that someone had taken control of the situation. She'd never liked being the leader much, and she was glad that Alliana had stepped up. "Should we be looking for others, too?" she asked uncertainly, glancing from Luke to Alliana.

It made sense to find the rest of the crew, but then again there wasn't many people left on the Venia. Some were on an undercover assignment, others back on Beta Cygni taking care of the sick children, and Ben and Penn were off on some high priority mission or whatever. There wouldn't really be anyone to find.

"Let's go. If we find anyone, we can always just send them back here, right?" With that, she threw a dubious look at the air-locked flight deck door and sighed. Hopefully they'd be able to sort this mess out before they all drowned. They had to. She shook her head. "Lead on, Luke."

[somerandomhippie]

Rescuing her untouched tea biscuit, Katy set her dishes on the food machine, letting them disappear. She waved after Luke and Nate, as they left to go to check the engines out.
"See you later," she called. If they weren't too busy dashing around. In which case, there might be cause for worry.
She turned to Alliana, happy she could remember her name. She tore off a corner of her biscuit, and munched on it. It was actually pretty good, for synthesized food. "I'd be happy to help," she told her, slipping into a more serious mode. "Biscuit?" She held it out. It would be rude to eat without offering some. And they might be too busy later to bother eating-- it was hard to save the multi-verse on an empty stomach.

[Alliana Porter]

Well, it worked. Alliana gave firm nod to Luke. "Be safe..." she said with direct eyes. Losing him would definitely leave a scar on her heart. This was a dangerous situation and she prayed he would make the right choices. She clenched her jaw watching him leave. With a small sigh, she turned back to go fetch two com links for herself and Katherine.

"Huh? Oh...yes..yeah, thanks." she replied, still hazed from the growing headache and rude awakening from the ship's lurch. She ran her hands down her face, still trying to wake up. "Sorry, just..not awake yet." Alliana gave a faint smile, taking one of the biscuits. Holding in her mouth, she preceded to pull her hair up in a rather messy ponytail. this was all happening so fast, and she was still barely awake. It was still one hell of a rude wake up call, and now, she had to function without coffee? There was something seriously wrong with that.

[Luke Martin]

"You too," Luke told Ally with a small smile before gesturing for Natalie to follow him. He set off at a light jog, making his way to the auxhiliary control room, making sure Natalie was keeping up. It was funny how they kept getting thrown together in these situations. Hopefully, this time, he wouldn't end up with a gun shot wound to the leg, and her with her life in danger.

Unfortunately, the control room was on the other side of the ship. It took them a few minutes to make it there, keeping an eye out for the rest of the crew on the way. They were a bit thin on the ground at the moment, a lot of the crew were out on missions, which was why they'd been able to take the time to fix up the ship in the first place. In a way, he was grateful more people hadn't been on board, but they could have come in handy right about now.

When they finally got there, Luke opened the door and was glad to see that the room was in tact and waterless, for the moment. "Right, we need to do a system's analysis first, see how much damage was caused by the engine blowing out, then the impact with the water." He made his way over to one of the consoles. "This is nuts," he muttered to himself as he began the scan, glancing round at Natalie. "I never asked, are you okay? You weren't hurt on impact or anything?"