Authority

<ooc>First of two - apologies for the quality, had to rush this out</ooc>

Who: Everyone except Yasmin and Seymour
When: While everyone was still locked in the hangar
Where: Hangar

Alex banged through the silent shuttle
"Cass" he yelled "Cass?"
He found her, curled up in a chair on the darkened bridge poring over a handheld computer she had managed to find from somewhere, the light of the screen palely illuminating her face
"Cass?" Alex repeated gently
She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his in the gloom
“Yeah?” she croaked
Her voice sounded funny; it was hard to tell in this light, but Alex thought he might just have intruded in on her crying again
“It’s Jay” he said simply
“What about him?” she said dully
“It’s that virus... He’s just collapsed” Alex paused to let this sink in “I don’t know if he’s going to make it”
Frowning unhappily, Cass closed her eyes for a second and shook her head
Her eyes remained downcast when she opened them again
“Can’t I even just be angry with him?” she asked in a low voice as she swung her legs down from the chair and tapped the handheld’s screen a couple of times
“We need your help” Alex said gently “He needs you – You probably know more about this virus than anybody”
Sighing, Cass stood abruptly and still looking at the handheld terminal, pushed past Alex to haul a locker door open and pull out an emergency medical kit
“C’mon” she murmured, smiling humourlessly as she pushed the bag into Alex’s hands “Let’s go...”


Hurrying down the shuttle access ramp and out into the main hangar, Cass could scarcely believe the scene before her: Smashed up machinery, scorched walls, and what looked like a variety of badly engineered torture instruments – some of which someone had managed to mangle by smashing a circular saw through them
It was as if an engineer had taken a look at a seedy bondage dungeon, and had decided it would be much better if he automated the process with power tools and big spikes
Cass’s heart lurched when she saw Jay lying prone and paler than anyone should ever look
“Aw, Christ...” Jade hissed, checking each of Jay’s pulse points, one after the other “We’re losing him”
“Damn it Wolf!” Katrina shrieked in frustration, an almost equally hysterical Max screaming in her arms “We need to get him out of here now!”
Not even pausing to look up from the mass of electronics he had torn from the door access panel in an effort to override the locking mechanism, White Wolf bared his teeth and twitched his whiskers in anger
“I’m trying my best” he snarled “Pancake, for once, has made a good job here!”
Running the short distance across the hangar towards Jay’s side Alex offered the medi-kit to Jade; the doctor gratefully tearing the bag open and quickly sorting through its contents as Cass tapped her way through a few menus on the handheld terminal
“Hol?” she asked, tentatively, and was relieved when the AI’s head bobbed onto the screen a few seconds later
“’Sup dude?”
“Thank smeg” she breathed, half watching in ghoulish fascination as Jade jammed cocktail of drugs into Jay’s neck
Shaking her head, she focussed back on Holly
“I’ll overlook the fact you let Pancake have access to so many low level systems”
“Well, it was a bit of a giggle wasn’t it?”
“Whatever” Cass snapped dismissively “We’re taking Jay to the med training facilities; I want a full spectrum sensor feed of planet Fernando’s EM fields piped thought to the main monitors in there” she paused to lower the handheld “Alex, Katrina and White Wolf” she called “Since the stasis pods are smegged, I need you to help me try and recreate those EM fields in the medibay – Hopefully we can use them to stabilise Jay”
“Everyone else...” Cass yelled “We need magnets, induction coils, fusion plant, and enough other kit to create a series of magneto-gravometric interferometers!”
“Yeah, that’s bloody great, but we still can’t get out of here!” White Wolf snapped irritably, still fiddling with the doors electronics
Seconds later, he leaped back, startled, as a massive impact on the other side of the door creased it inwards
“What the smeg?”
“You?” Cass pointed impatiently at Jamie “What do you do? What’re your skills?”
“Whoa, wait just wait a minute missy” Jamie bristled, folding his arms and defiantly raising his chin to glare at Cass “Who put you in charge?”
Another massive impact on the exterior of the door, smashed it through into the main hangar, making it clang loudly as it skittered across the floor while a huge, three metre high, bipedal robot ducked under the doorframe, its forearms bristling with weaponry
Cass frowned at Jamie as the massive machine thumped across towards her
“I’ve always been in charge” she shrugged “Welcome to my ship”
Turning her attention to Doctor Black, Cass nodded towards Jay
“Is he okay to be moved?”
“He’s going to have to be” Jade sighed “The drugs I gave him will help, but he needs proper facilities”
“You” Cass turned to the robot and pointed towards Jay “Take him to the med training facilities... Carefully!”
“Kill anything that gets in your way” she added