(( 10, 9, 7, 6, 4, 3 & 1
4 chi yelding to adversity = 8, 8, 6, 3 & 1
3 chi to Clarity in Openness +10 learning
28 + Learning 25 + AB 10 = 63 ))

"I thought the same, though I really don't wanna judge her by her reputation. Still we gonna have an escort for the intern for Their own safety... and not to lef them wander into places I don't want them to."

"I really haven't got much time to make microscope goggles as before this I really have had no use for those. Adding to the list."

Arky Takes the vial and whilst still keeping his Hazzy on he carefully puts some of it on a petri dish. He also puts some of it in smaller vials and mixes them with different kinds of acids and such to determine more about it's composition, like a proper bush chemist. He then scrounges around for something even moderately resembling a microscope, wires a small camera on the eyepiece and connects that to his PDA monitor for easier viewing. With all the knowledge he gained from this he frantically scrounges around the books from pandora bay for any sort of cross reference. His twilight caste sign now glowing bright as he researches in almost a trance like state.

This is a challenge that might help with his endless curiosity, as this was a perfect opportunity to learn something he had little to none prior knowledge before.

Corduroy mercifully shuts the fuck up as Arky gets to work, staying at the door to the room.

It's neutral, edging towards basic, pH 7.0-7.5.  It's also buffered- adding acid won't change the pH much unless he adds a fuckton of it.  That's exactly equivalent to human blood.  The more he looks the more he's certain this is a blood-derivative.  And, once he gets a view of the stuff with a microscope...

He's absolutely certain that blood cells shouldn't have mouths in the center.  Or fine black hairs.  And they certainly shouldn't be alive and swimming in the acid he's just poured in.

Arky snaps out of his concentration for for a moment and looks at his findings, then looks at corduroy.

"Ok, I got good-ish news, bad news and more bad news."

"Good-ish news, It's not acid so it shouldnt hurt the ship. Bad news, It's a biological agent that EATS flesh. Some sort of fucked up blood cells. And the other bad news, Squigles takes a trip to sanctuary, as he's the only one who's touched it."

He ponders for a while for his options.

"We got two options that we're gonna try. First we try to burn it with fire, then essence. Gotta find a dragon blood or a fire elemental for the latter... Actually let's put the first one to the test right now."

He does some more small tinkering, and with some scraps and a blowtorch he tries to make a simple closed circulation incinerator, and throws the sample in.

"Since it's biological, It shouldn't be able to spread without food as things usually don't appear out of nowhere. We gotta nip it in the bud before it becomes an epidemic. Also I wanna know it if can regenerate from a burnt stage, as im pretty fucking sure inhaling this shit as smoke ain't gonna be good for your lungs and might spread it further. Lets cook this bitch."

He then picks up his PDA and starts frantically texting Spiderweb:

"Yoo... Spiderweb. Just one quick question: Where did you actually get this ship from? No biggies really. Just some man eating black goo in the ducks. #CleaningDay"

The incinerator works a treat.  Once he's thrown the sample in it's well and proper cooked to shit.  There's nothing left but ash.  Dead, Living, fire tends to work a treat against every kind of flesh except elementals.

As he frantically texts Spiderweb, Corduroy listens and seems to puzzle it out.  Eventually he clears his throat once Arkady's finished.

"Boss-man, if you're saying this is fucked up blood, what's doing the bleeding?"

He receives a text via inter-fleet ansible a few minutes later.  "Fuck - was originally the Flowerpot, garden/agri vessel - invaded by ghosts / killed crew - we counterboarded - sanitized by Sanctuary - has sat in void hold for a few months - should be clean so secondary infection - wouldnt give you dirty stuff - never heard of MEBG"

"Well the guys call it BAG as in Black Acidic Goo, but it's not actually acidic so I corrected that. Thanks for the Intel. Let's grab some drinks some day, my treat." He sends a reply and puts his PDA on a table.

He lifts his head and looks at Corduroy and lifts an eyebrow.

"What bleeds it? That's a really fucking good point. Gotta check the ship for signs of intrusion. Either something has snuck on board, or Sanctuary fucked up cleaning this ship. Imma throw some shit at them later if that's the case."

He waves Corduroy to exit the room with him and when outside he takes off his Haz helmet and lights a Cigarette-ish thing.

"Tell the guys to gear up with Flamers and hazzies. Fire does the trick. Burn the Goo and do a control check on the contaminated are hourly for six hours." he takes a long drag off his cig.

"Gonna change to my normal work wear and take a quick swig. then we're gonna check the area. If something bled it, we gonna hunt it down."

"Yah, boss, I'm on it."  Corduroy salutes him, "Sanctuary don't fuck up so I say something snuck on.  No reason to pick fights with them, cuz if they fuck up once, nobody ever trusts them again right?  Do you want more than one party?  Cleanup vs hunters?  We got some guys who saw action out there before, but then we got some guys who're no better than kids when they gotta fight."

"Let's split the people into groups. More combat ready go to hunting parties, Less combat ready go to cleanup parties. Ones who are somewhere in between take some guard positions so our quarry doesn't get to sneak off. This would be extra shitty if it got to the refuge. guards near vents and exits."

He starts walking towards his quarters

"Oh. Seal the ship. This li'l shit ain't gonna get away in any other way than in a dust pan. Every squad gets a torch. We also don't know exactly what we're up against, so we gonna do the good ol' sweep and salt like we do with ghosts. We gonna start at the bow and systematically clear towards the stern. The engineering deck has least exit points, so that's where we gonna drive it."

He puts on his regular gear, secures his red star on his hoodie, and brass checks his trusty 1911. His caste sign still glowing, and his eyes have a look Corduroy has not seen before. It's not fury or anger, It's cold, calculated vengeance.

"I've cleared a bataan class practically alone, so this lil fuck chose the WORST fucking ship to fuck around. No one fucks with the Red Star. Get the crew together. Let's do this."

"On it boss."  Corduroy gives him another salute and completely ducks out, shouting out orders.

Within ten minutes the ship is totally locked down.  The Sanctuary troops are shuffled off on the outside so they can work on 'drills'; the last thing he needs, after all, is Sanctuary involvement.  The bags of salt are brought out, flamers dispersed.  There aren't enough flamers but there are a lot of guns and knives and bags of salt.  One enterprising man nicknamed Cubic volunteers up a gel he whips up out of oil and suspended salt crystals, coating anyone's knives who asks.

He ends up with ten combat teams and ten hazard teams.  Combat up front, hazard behind.  Five-man teams.  Most of them look nervous, but he shouldn't feel bad:  part of his combat team includes Corduroy, decked out in heavy leather and wearing the flamer, and Mr. Tyrolite, who doesn't look like that blood is ever going to bother him.

The ducts are the biggest danger.  So that's where Arkady's going to go.

"Ready when you are, boss."

"Itchin to get my hands on some nasty-ass ghosts," Mr. Tyrolite rumbles.

"Alrighty blyat. Brass check, we goin' in."

He draws his pistol and waves the others to follow suite. He's the kinda guy who likes to lead from the front. Makes him look cool.

Also as a Solar exalt he's the least likely to die in an ambush, so that's kinda win-win.

"Adding to the list I need to build: movement detector. I saw one of those in an old movie once. Seems like a good idea in this kinda situations..."

He carefully inches the ducts taking his time with corners by leaning close to the wall opposite to the direction of the turn, so nothing could lash out at him by surprise when making the turn. If you have a gun, keep distance. A good principle.

He's especially careful when passing secondary vents on the floor, walls and up top. If he were a predatory monstrous fuck bucket, That's what he'd use.

"Yeah, yeah, I know what movie you mean,"  Corduroy says with a double nod of his head.

Tyrolite keeps up the rear of the group- a wise place to be in case they somehow get doubled around.  The ductwork, fortunately, is fairly linear.  God bless whoever built these fucking death traps, because they at least decided that if people were gonna die in the damn things it's because they'd have no armor, not because they'd be ambushed by skittering nasties in the ducts.

Sure enough, at the first intersection they see a patch of goo.  Weirdly there's something in it... a circular growth.  Corduroy brings the pilot light up to it and gives it some better illumination.

It's a fist, sticking up out of the goo, clenched.  A big, meaty fist, the size of a ham, fingers the size of sausages, each ending with a long claw-like fingernail.  They'd all seen hands like that before, but never jet-black and covered with writhing black veins.

"Looks like a blood-ape fist," One of his men declares.

And it is.  But it's not dissolving.  No... it looks like it's growing.

Arkady kneels in front of the puddle to take a quick glance.

"What the fuck is this then, hmmh?!"

He looks back at the others, slightly surprised but curious.

"Hoooly shit, blyat. You seen anything like this before? have you ever heard any reports of the dead corrupting demons? Coz if you haven't this is an entirely new scientific phenomena, and also a literal fuck-ton of problems for us."

He scratches the back of his head in frustration.

"I kinda wanna put that in a can and study it further, but *I also wanna burn that shit and forget it ever existed..."

"..."

"..."

"Fuck it. Let's put it in a can. Burn the rest. Sanctuary are gonna go nuts about this. Maybe even flip us a few coins to support our future scientific discoveries, huh?"

"I ain't never seen this, no,"  Corduroy mutters as he looks at it, "But yeah, boss, fuck-ton of problems sounds about right.  Ya sure you wanna tell Sanctuary?  Because far as I concerned, they see this shit, they hit the hammer down hard and we never get the Bogatyr back."

Mr. Tyrolite has a mason jar.  Wait, why the fuck does the giant rock elemental have a mason jar?!  But he has one and he offers it- slightly dirty- to Arkady.  "Ere you are.  I ain't touchin dat."

One of his other men flinches back, "I think I saw it move!"  It did indeed; two fingers twitched.  One of the veins bulges with what must be a clot of ichor, the clot eventually disappearing up the arm.

"Oh for fucks sake, gimme that." he grabs the jar and tries to catch the hand in the jar, making sure not to expose any of his fleshy parts to the gunk.

"And yeah Mr. Corduroy, better keep this hush hush from the Sanc's. I'm gonna study this a bit to get to the bottom of this. If, or actually when we gotta tell sanc's, we found it in the exterior hull, near the vacuum dock..."

He sighs and tries to slap the hand in.

He pulls the hand into the jar with a loud and viscous *SCHLORP!* that makes just about everyone cringe.  The hand twitches and spasms against the glass, but he's quick to close it up.  It taps one or two more times and then goes silent.

"Boss,"  One killteam calls him over the com, "We found drippings just down the hall from you.  We think there's a big pool.  Brigand Billie almost got a splash in the face, she arright though."

"There's a cistern there for collectin AC water,"  Another voice chips in from the com, "Big circular pan, almost.  Shouldn't be leakin though.  Half the point is to collect accidental water..."

Arkady pushes his com-link against his ear to focus a bit while still eyeing the contents of his jar.

"Horosho, I copy. Burn the smaller pools and keep an eye on the entrances to the cistern. Something in my gut tells me that would be a perfect spawning ground."

He puts down his hand, but hastily pushes the PTT again "Oh and by the way, the black gunk spawns shit, and I'm not sure if our prey is alone anymore so watch your six, Blyat. Burn on sight still applies. I'm heading to the cistern." He cheekily hands the jar back to Mr. Tyrolite and waves the group to follow him. "Technically ya ain't touching that. you're touching the glass... as long as you don't break it, so umm... please don't" .

"Fuck, cistern?  Copy,"  They respond.  He can hear the WHOOSH of flame on the other end of the line.

"Tanks boss,"  Mr. Tyrolite takes the jar back, very careful not to break it.  The giant rock elemental holds it like a gorilla might try to hold an egg.  This is the second time he's seen raw panic on the elemental's face and it probably hasn't gotten too old.

Once they all step away there's a WHOOSH as Corduroy burns out the spot.  By the time he's done there's nothing left but soot and a little bit of glowing metal.  Fire is the great purifier and it purified the shit out of that.  One of his men takes point, holding up a six-shooter like a cowboy.  They reach the edge of the vent and look down.

"No ladder here, Captain.  Not really accessible... I got some rope, we could lower each other down."

"Hol' up just a second, blyat!"

He leans over the edge of the cistern and looks down the vent.

"We got any chem lights or flares? we godda pop some light there before anyone fucking goes down. lets get the rope ready though."

He then turns his arrention to Mr. Tyrolite, slightly amused to see the hulking elemental shivering like a cat in the cold. Sill, he couldnt abuste his crew like this... for much... mainly only to make the point that he's in charge of this sorry bunch.

"Pass the jar down the line Mr. Tyrolite. We don't need the jar here. Pass it to one of the new guys and tell em to haul it to the lab deck. Oh, and cover it up so they don't freak out. OH! and tell them not to fucking break it."

Mr. Tyrolite duly does so, QUITE happily.  The person who takes it shoots him a glare, implying that Mr. Tyrolite is going to have to owe him some shit later for this.

The vent is dark, so it's a good call to drop a chem flare.  Six-Shooter starts pulling out his rope but nods twice, "Good thinking, that's why you're the captain... here." He hands Arkady a pair of flares, "Never enter the mines without one."

Once the flare is dropped he might notice a squirming lake of sludge, with a few little hands sticking up.  Not all of them are Blood-Ape.  Some of them look like organic weapons, others like a elegant slender hands with sharp nails, some spiky things with spines.  All of them writhe and grasp at the flare, trying mindlessly to pick it up.

"God-fucking-damn it. Now our cistern is a cesspool. I fucking knew it."

Arkady's fuming. This is a bigger clusterfuck than he'd anticipated.

"And the worst part is, It's in the air vents. If we light that shit up now, the entire ship is gonna be full of smoke that might be hazardous... We could do a closed burn if we seal the cistern, throw in some incendiaries and then pump in oxygen to stoke the fire and vent the smoke through some filters at a single point. MotherfuckBlyat this is a hassle."

He scratches the back of his head, shuffles his pocket for a "Cigarette" and lights, thinking furiously on how to pull this out.

"Let's isolate this area and clean the other vents. Once they're checked we can turn our mind to this shithole. However, keep your eyes and ears peeled even in the cleared vents since we still haven't found the... whatever the fuck it is that caused this mess.."

"Could evacuate almost everyone off the ship, get into low-atmo gear, light a fire, then vent it,"  Corduroy says, sucking on his teeth.  "Would cost a pretty penny for the oxy but..."  He nods twice, "You're the boss boss."

"Cap'n, you're saying this is new?"  Mr. Tyrolite asks, "Says to me we call in the speshulists.  Cuz if somethings' in here, my experience is, the dead ain't all mindless.  They got a plan or sumfin."

"Nah some ghosts run on autopilot,"  Revolver shoots back at him, "Animal cunnin, sure, but otherwise just sneak-sneak-sneak murder-murder-murder."

"Point is,"  Mr. Tyrolite wonders aloud, "We fix this without figgurin much out.  Then could happen again."

"Now actually Mr Tyrolite here has a fairly good point." He looks at Tyrolite genuinely impressed.

"We still have no fucking idea how or why it got on board in the first place, or what it is, so we gonna change things up a bit."

He pulls a long whiff off his ciggie whilst he thinks.

"Lets go with the containment plan first. Contain the cistern and clear the corridors so we can survey the phenomenon. Evacuate non essentials off the ship, but screen everyone who leaves so we won't spread the contamination. Then we gonna hunt down this little shit, dissect the ever un-living fuck out of it until we know what makes it tick, and why it would be here... Imma start with the hand in the jar while I'm at it."

He turns back to Tyrolite "What speshulists did you have in mind? And If you gonna say Sanctuary, that's going to be an extremely firm Fuck no. They'd impound my ship and box us all for months, so that's my reasoning for the fuck no."

...

"How the actual fuck did it slip Last refuges radar or screening? It should have shown up in the... oh hoh ho Blyat... When it arrived, It was too small to be picked up by the equipment... We are dealing with an infiltrator. The dead learned from the absolute fucking they took during my our last Op."

"Think we're all essenshuls at this point, boss.  This our ship."  Mr. Tyrolite remarks,  "I don't mean the Sanctuary types.  I mean the rarer ones. The Combat Epidemiologists.  There ain't many of them, amirite?  Like six, including one Exalt?  But they won't shut down an entire ship.  They gotta understand stuff."   Mr. Tyrolite taps his forehead, "Just like you, boss.  You got friends in dem I think."

"That's actually pretty smart. Got anyone specific in mind? Like the exalt? Who are they? I wonder If i could just give them a call. Don't really feel all to comfortable leaving this ship to prance around finding people. Shit, phones were invented for this exact reason."

He drags one last puff off his ciggie an proceeds to dump it down the cistern, but he doesn't. He instead puts it out and puts the stump in his pocket.

"Corduroy, see that the plan so far gets executed while I call in the expert. Meanwhile, don't throw anything organic in there. Those were a lotta weird armr sticking outta there, so I at least have doubt that I might be able to replicate DNA. I don't need no murderous clones runnin' around."

He turns back towards Tyrolite

"So how do I get in touch with these experts?"

"Nope.  I know they exist.  I don't know who they are,"  Mr. Tyrolite admits.

"You got it boss," Corduroy tells him, "We'll set up flamers with motion detection too around the cistern.  Anything climbs up it gets roasty-tasty!"  His dependable right-hand man starts to work!

"Uhm.  Well." Mr. Tyrolite mutters, "There be an, um.  Ex of mine..."  The rock elemental has the good grace to look embarrassed, "Here, this is her CORE number...  she gonna find out I still got it and I'm gonna get thumped..."

With that Mr. Tyrolite gives Arkady his ex Amythyst's number.

"Ex's number? Really? You dog!" He bumps the elemental's rocky arm.

"Gonna start with her then. We gonna solve this clusterfuck, blyat. Don't die on your first day. Take this as a test. Stay frosty gents."

He leaves the group and starts making his way towards his quarters, still with his trusty pistol in hand, his other hand ticking the number on his PDA, and calls her. "I hope she picks up."