11457/GIRL: Return to Rann

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GIRL: Return to Rann
Date of Scene: 12 June 2022
Location: Ghost Ship Graveyard somewhere between Sol and Alpha Centauri
Synopsis: The Rannian Rescue Team gets knocked out of Hyperspace, finds a graveyard of wrecked ships, meets genuine SPACE PIRATES, almost gets absorbed by a two dimensional void creature, and then Irie saves the day in spectacular style! (Also ages 10 years /again/. Seriously no more Speed Force or you're grounded!)
Cast of Characters: Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Natasha Romanoff, Caitlin Fairchild, Kaida Connolly, Keli Quintela, Donna Troy, Irie West




Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
The threat is clear. After busting up an AIM arms auction and finding Rannian weapons, Nadia radioed back to GIRL HQ and Alanna tried to contact her father Sardath. Only the communication couldn't go through and on top of that Zeta Beam travel to Rann proved to be somehow interdicted as well. Not ones to stand idly by, and having every suspision that against the odds AIM somehow got their stolen Zeta Beam emitter working, Nadia and Alanna put together a team of GIRL members with backup from their Titan allies to take the Tereshkova back to Rann and attempt to ascertain the situation there.

The trip was going smoothly, Nadia sat in her captain's chair dressed in her red and black form fitting Waspette armor, minus the helmet studying the engineering readouts on a nearby screen, making sure the Pym Drive wasn't going to get them lost in space/time (again, in the case of some of her friends). When suddenly somewhere in the inky depths between Sol and Alpha Centauri the entire ship begins to shake nearly knocking her out of her chair. "What the heck?! The Pym Field is collapsing, we're returning to regular space. Hang on this is going to be a bit rougher than normal!"

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff is going to yank up the strap of her seat to pull it over and hard on her torso, snapping down the reinforced ends. From there, she's going to pull on a rebreather and oxygen mask just to be on the safe side of things. Going to rapidly slide her hands over to call out, "Readying on sensors and auxilary data systems." Caitlin was a far better navigator than she could ever be, and pilot as well.
    So while she's rapidly sweeping through systems, Natasha is getting ready for damage control, passive data to passa long to the helm and any other systems that need it.. While going to mutter something to herself in Russian about a 'landing you can walk away from'.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's almost thrown from the conn, and the safety straps creak in alarm as her weight pitches against them. She uses the helm console to pull herself up right and then jams a knee and heel into place underneath it for better leverage. "I wasn't me!" she promises the rest of the ship. "Internal inertial dampners fluctuating!" Caitlin calls over her shoulder. "Hull stabilization fields are still supported though! We need full power to the shields the second we drop back into realspace. I'm charging the maneuvering thrusters," she announces. Caitlin's bodysuit is a crisp surgical white, with a band of purple, black, and green stripes encircling her collarbone and shoulders. Her hair's pulled back into a tight braid to keep the bulk of it out of her face.

"Do we know what pulled us into realspace?" she demands of no one in particular.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
There's a major advantage to being small. One can brace against almost anything. So, when the warning comes, Kaida simply drops to all fours and grabs on to four different points around her. The ship rocks and she barely moves. It also is advantagious to have tiny little claws designed to just grip on to whatever.

"Don't know but it had to be pretty advanced to grab us!" She looks over at her own console which keeps tabs on life support and examines the monitors that check on the health of the crew before she glances up to Nadia, "If this isn't natural, we're gonna be surprising some idiots!"

Keli Quintela has posed:
    Keli's wearing her "Teen Lantern" getup complete with mask and gauntlet and battery pack, sitting in a spot to keep an eye on various ships's systems that she could only really pretend to understand. Not that she /couldn't/ understand them, she just hasn't had much experience with them yet.

    She gets thrown from her chair, mostly by dint of being smaller than most people here and not having as much experience with shaking spaceships. Instinctively, she pulls up a green bubble around herself that she kind of rolls back to the chair, and then just hovers above the thing with green light keeping her up. That'll keep her steady. "Uhh... full power... got it!" As soon as they're back in realspace, she'll put full power to the shields; the console isn't /that/ hard to read.

Donna Troy has posed:
    It's not like GIRL normally needs extra security, especially when Caitlin's going along. However Themyscira has a vested interest in this mission, having commissioned a Zeta Beam network from GIRL, so this mission gets double the Amazons. Donna Troy is along too. A useful woman to have along on a mission into space -- she has had a fair bit of experience with space voyages of late. She has also several times now during such voyages thrown herself out into the vacuum and physically attacked enemy spaceship. No space pilot wants to find their spaceship attacked by sword, fist, or lasso. It's disconcerting.

    Not that she has technically /been/ Donna Troy for much of the past few months. Outside the immediate circle of the Themyscirans and Titans this just amounts to her being out of the public eye, though there have been rumors something weirder was going on, and thanks to the last mission of the Tereshkova, the non-Titan members of GIRL will have at least /part/ of the story there. However she seems to be Donna Troy again and doesn't seem to be in any hurry to address rumors.

    When things start to go wrong she puts on a breathing mask, and braces for the promised rough ride. "Malfunction? Or attack?" she asks brusquely. "Need an extra hand on the guns?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Alanna, dressed in her full Rannian Explorer Corps attire complete with jet pack and a pair of ray guns, braces herself against the communications station as the ship rocks back and forth buffeted by the collapsing Pym Fields.

    Nadia grips the arm of her chair with one hand, while the other flies across a virtual interface inputting commands as she tries to stabilize the collapse of the fields, so at least they won't be torn apart. The vibranium elements of the hull go a long way in assisting with this as energy from stress is absorbed and redirected. "I'm not sure! One minute we were fine, the next the fields just started collapsing. I've never seen it do this before!" Nadia calls out as she rocks back and forth inputting commands into her console. "Something must have disrupted them somehow!"

    With a final jolt the ship alights back into normal space, just in time to make evasive maneuvers in order to hit the remains of another ship, several another ships. There is no common theme among the ships either. There are Kree ships and Shi'ar ships, even an Almeracian vessel's remains float by, and still others not even recognizable, like some sort of ghost ship graveyard in space. Though what wrecked so many ships in the void between stars is anyone's guess.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff would go to swing up passive sensors, taking a sweep around them and calling out, "I'm not seeing anything similar in their status. Different hull deisgns, different metal compositions.. Different FTL systems.." She's going to consider. "Presuming they all have different jump systems then something has to effect everything. And I'd guess that they didn't survive the reversion."
    She starts scanning for any signs of what might have caused the destruction of each ship if possible, feeding data along the systems to try and look for something in common.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's fingers fly over the haptic holographics, and she brings up the pilot's view bubble around her head so she can twist her neck and look in every direction around the ship. "Bringing shields in to a fifty meter standoff," she informs the rest of the bridge crew. "Maneuvering thruster only."

She watches the graveyard float past, trying and failing to categorize them all. "We must be in some kind of cosmic eddie. I see... six, seven.... at least eight unique ship designs so far. None of them are powered and a few are extremely old." She pitches the ship forward to duck under a battleship floating past. "Some kind of.... intergalactic battlefield?" she hazards.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
"What the...?" Kaida looks at some readings and shakes her head before calling out to Nadia, "Well." Kaida frowns and shakes her head as she looks at the readings, "There's nothing out there." Kaida shakes her head as she looks at the various readings and looks back at everyone.

"Ships, sure, but they are bereft of all life." She shakes her head as she looks over at the screen again and hmms softly, "No signs of life at all. Whatever this is, it isn't alive. At least not in any way we know."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Yes, some kind of /dinis meteora/, a... whirlpool in spacetime that disrupts the transits of vessels passing through this region, that seems very feasible" Donna says. "Unless we should liken this more to a spider's web. A trap. Caitlin, move us well away from any of these wrecks. One or more of them may be less dead than it seems. If signals are masked, this would be an ideal way for someone to plan an ambush. But do not concentrate sensors solely on the fascinating ruined ships -- they make a good distraction for someone hiding somewhere behind us too."

    She gets up from her seat and moves over to stand behind Caitlin, one hand on the pilot's shoulder, studying Caitlin's holographic display. "I do not like this at all," she says. "I don't /trust/ this. If they vary greatly in age some natural phenomenon is more likely. But that does not preclude someone with knowledge of such a phenomenon taking advantage of it. Why would these ships remain here, having fallen into it? Are there signs of battle damage?"

Irie West has posed:
    Iris was here all along! Honest! She wasn't in the cargo hold snacking on Caitlin's stash of baked goods. She comes rushing out dressed in her more mature Kid Flash outfit (the one with Donna's jacket)
    
    After being thrown about for a bit she comes rushing out brushing crumbs off the front of her shirt. "Oh my god! Is everybody okay? What's going on?"

    After looking out the windows and the scanners she scowls. "Yeah. I don't like the look of this. If something doesn't immediately attack us, do we want to go and search one of these ships for clues?

Keli Quintela has posed:
    Keli peers at the various readings, though she's mostly focused on making sure the power works the way it's supposed to. She bites her lip, frowning thoughtfully.

    "This is just /weird/." A pause. "I thiiiink usually the Green Lanterns can fly in space just fine. I could... well, I guess a few of us could go check things out more directly. Whoever's here might not be expecting that."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    As if the ghost ship graveyard was not enough weirdness, or perhaps confirming some of Donna and Natasha's fears. The Tereshkova's sensors begin to pick up an approaching vessel, a rather large approaching vessel, easily the size of an Earth galleon. This is perhaps because it actually seems to /be/ a large Earth galleon, but in space and with numerous high tech fittings grafted on to it, like someone found a galleon and was like I want this to be a spaceship! Not only that, the ship is somehow flying a flag, a Jolly Roger flag! The vessel comes sailing through the void beyond the graveyard from the aft direction of the Tereshkova.

    "Umm what?" Is Nadia's supremely eloquent reaction as she just kind of stares at the screen with the incoming ship alert. "How does that even... But there's no wind..." She has SO MANY questions right now.

"I will try to open communications." A much more focused and rational Alanna informs the others. "Maybe they're here to help?" Optimistic to the end.

Meanwhile a strange energy signature that might have easily been missed if they weren't on such high alert begins to show up on the Tereshkova's sensors, but seems impossible to pinpoint.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff goes to start to call out warnings, "They look like they've arrived herea t different times." She's going to mvoe to then brace herself overw hile going to speak quietly to Troia over along the ship, "Just to be safe please do target all weapons over at them." Better safe than sorry. Presuming that Nadia doesn't overrule her, Natasha goes to start the work of trying to rotate teh weapons ystems around to passively lock on if need be.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
"I'm with the others on this one, it seems rather..." Kaida trails off when she notes that others are talking about another incoming ship and she blinks when she sees it. Then she starts to bounce from foot to foot and her tail goes out straight. Her nose twitches and her ears start to do the same before she laughs and claps her hands!

"PIRATES!!!" She yells and then laughs maniacally and then spins around twice before zipping over to Nadia and bouncing still.

"Did we do it? Did we install the hollow torpedo system? Did we?! Did we?! I'll go over there right now to say hi!"

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "Nadia," Keli says, "Kaida's right. That's a pirate flag. And like, /maybe/ they're just another ship that's gotten stuck here, but I'd be /really/, really careful."

    She can't help grinning, though. "But... pirates in space! Space pirates! Guys, this is /so cool/. Do you think they'll board us? Oh, wait, should we board /them/?! Hollow torpedoes, we could fire ourselves at them?!!" She should not be this excited about a potential space battle--but, then, she hasn't been in many battles at all, just yet.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Yes - Lantern rings can protect their wearers, and others, in vacuum," Donna says to Keli. "But I can't say I've ever asked for details. Space is not a forgiving place, Keli. Unless you're absolutely sure of yourself, you better suit up if you're planning to leave the ship. You too Kaida, hollow torpedoes or not. Not much point firing yourself in a hollow torpedo if you can't get out at the other end."

    She's not discouraging Keli and Kaida. In fact, Donna's got her eyes on the airlock herself as she moves over to take the gunnery console and start targeting. All weapons, as Natasha suggests? No, not all weapons. The short range guns can target the visible ship, but the longer range missiles get reserved for target acquisition in the vague direction of that mystery energy signature, should its source be pinpointed.

     "Unlikely, Alanna -- as they say, that emblem is traditional for pirates. On Earth, at least. But it's certainly worth a try -- and if they respond with threats, well it's only polite to offer them a chance to surrender."

    Why would space pirates be flying a Jolly Roger? There just aren't that many humans in space to even know about the flag. It does seem like the kind of thing that Quill might pull, but it doesn't look like his style of ship. "There's a high possibility that unlikely-looking galleon thing is some kind of ruse. Irie, wanna take the guns? Your reactions could be useful if we need to retarget things in a hurry."

Irie West has posed:
    "Maybe solar wind?" She looks about the windows and sees no suns. "Cosmic... wind? I don't know. I mean. It /is/ suspiciously on point there. Look at the skull and crossbones on the flag! They're /definitely/ pirates." She looks thoughtful and muses to herself, "I wonder if they've got laser swords."

    "Wait. Hollow torpedoes?" She looks down to Kaida, "Yeah. I guess if we get Kaida over there then the fight is practically over." She looks about her, "Are they big enough to fit a full sized person though?"

    When Donna asks her to take the guns she fistpumps. "Yes! My years of training on the Playstation will finally pay off." She slides into the turret's seat for the guns and expertly gets all systems go. "Yesssss," she hisses. "This is /just/ like Star Wars!"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    "Pirates?! I've heard of pirates! That's so cool! I've never met a pirate before!" Nadia grins leaning forward in her chair, but behind the cheerful smile her mind is racing trying to figure this out. She squints for a moment at that anomalous energy reading again, it seems to be slowly increasing in intensity, but they can worry about that after they manage not to walk the plank or whatever it is pirates do. At least that is Nadia's impression from those Caribbean Disney movies.

"Pirates? Like space bandits?" Alanna who does not actually speak English without her Menticizer tries to make sense of the unfamiliar word. "I've opened a channel, they're contacting us."

    <<Unidentified vessel, this is the Sargasso Gale. You appear to be having some difficulty, are you in need of assistance?>> There is amusement in the feminine voice, like maybe they know something you don't, or perhaps they expect a big 'reward' out of this, or maybe they're responsible it is hard to say. But she definitely sounds like how someone from Earth would expect a pirate to sound.

    Nadia blinks "We have hollow torpedos?! Those sound cool! Did Val make them?!" She may have missed a memo while lost in Wonderland. Flipping through the tactical loadout, they do indeed seem to have 'hollow torpedos' though.

    Captain Nadia overrules nothing, she's too busy being excited about pirates, though she does tap into the comms from the Captain's chair to reply to the mystery woman. <<We're fine! We just need to get our space/time manipulating field working again and we'll uh, be on our day. By the way do you really have secret maps to buried treasure?>> This is probably not the time Nadia... <<Oh and do you know what this strange energy reading is?>>

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff goes over to move to slide to the targeting console, adjusting the sensors and targeting data for input by the weapons arrays. She goes to flip her fingers over some of the panels. At the ranges they're at they hvae the options of the railguns, the short range kinetic launchers.. She goes to flick her way through the sensor systems, moving to highlight the opposing ship. She goes to start feeding data along of it. Structural integrity, engines, cockpit, maneuvering thrusters, weapon bays.. Moving to highlight each of them in turn for the others working the weapons to target if need be.
    She's aligning the sensors up while also murmuring, "Adjust pitch along the forward Y Axis by a few degrees. Turn us to port slightly and tilt on the opposite axis." She's letting the ship maneuver to just a little point if the Captain agrees that they can get in a full broadside effectively.. Then also rapidly spin around on the thrusters to in turn bring the -other- broadside to bare as she feeds in trajectories for maneuvering the ship.

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "Dios mia," Keli grumbles. "Those things are so /bulky/. I need to practice more and make sure I'm in tune with the gauntlet more." Despite the grumbling, she goes ahead and pulls on a suit, just in case. She'll be more use one-on-one than much other way.

    She's still pulling on the helmet while she goes back to the console to check over the power readings. "Should we sneak up on them or wait and see how things go?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Bandits is about right," Donna says. "Remember those raiders from Zared, Alanna? Think that, with spaceships. Unlike Nadia, Caitlin and I have had a couple of run-ins with space pirates before. They can be dangerous."

    "But..." she frowns and gives a soft sigh. "This is... weird. The Jolly Roger, the accent, and... 'Sargasso Gale?' This is all far too /Terrestrial/ to make any sense. I suggest we flip the script on them and see how they react. Can we send a stealth probe some ways out and use it to relay a broadcast to them, so it seems like there's another ship out there that's the source? If so, I'm going to suggest..."

    She leans over the console and flips a switch to record, but not broadcast /yet/, a message aimed to be just as confusing right back to these possible pirates. "This is the HMS Invincible and HMS Valiant of the Royal Navy -- we have heard reliable reports of pirate activity in these waters. Stand by to be boarded, and have your letters of marque or bills of lading ready by the time we arrive. If you are simply innocent merchants, you have nothing to fear from her majesty's navy." She does quite a decent British accent.

    "Nadia... can you get that rebroadcast from a stealth relay, and see how they react? If they're properly dedicated to their theme they'll turn tail and run." She takes the loop of rope hanging from her belt into her hands, and it starts to glow. "Keli, want to join me in the airlock? That way we can wait and see how things go, and rush them if they go badly without having to wait for the airlock to cycle."

Irie West has posed:
    Irie is grinning from ear to ear. "Space pirates! On a space galleon! How cool is that?" She hooks the guns up with the targeting sensors so that she can get a tactical readout up in the turret. "I'm ready to go if they decide to attack," she says.

    "Maybe this is some kind of illusion," she muses. "Like.... they look into our heads and project what we *expect* pirates to look like." She shakes her head. "No, that wouldn't make any sense. Why advertise that you're a pirate?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    There is a short silence over the communication channel, one can sort of imagine the face a stranger not used to Nadia's at times seemingly random but genuinely inquisitive questions might be making right now. The silence is broken by the same female pirate's laughter <<You are an interesting one. No maps to buried treasure. Been long time since we had the occasion or need to bury any of it.?>> Though as she relays this another voice can be heard in the background. <Captain what about the old map from before before.> <Quiet idiot.> The female voice asides at whoever spoke up. <That's a memento and likely long gone anyway.> She clears her throat coming back on the Comm proper. <<What is this about an energy reading? Someone check on that!>> She calls, presumably to her crew.

    "Probes we have!" Nadia mutes her comms so they can talk without the space pirates overhearing them. "Let's try Donna's sneaky plan first. I'm sure we could make one sneaky, only take a minute or two. Though how sneaky, we don't know what kind of sensors they might have, I mean at a glance I would say wooden ones, but probably not wooden ones."
        Nadia is up out of her chair and grabbing something from a crate in the cargo bay with Alanna trailing after her, a veritable flurry of tools later they are dragging the newly modified probe over towards the airlock. "To launch it as stealthily as possible, we probably shouldn't use the regular cargo bay mechanisms or torpedo tubes." But Nadia's pretty sure Donna and Keli can handle that. "Once it's out there and in position, I'll hit the broadcast button."

    So far at least it doesn't seem that the pirate vessel has clued in to any weapon locks or at least is not making a big show of reacting to them. They might be playing it cool, they might have an ace up their sleeve, they might really not notice. It's anyone's guess.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Weapons are all out and ready to fire. As the ships are drifting towards one anotehr, Natasha makes more adjustments, going to feed the sensors more information. For now, with the arrays, she's letting the Amazon go to Uhura mode while she goes to just watch.
    "If they don't react well to the parley, what's our next step? While we probably do outgun them, at short range we'll both take damage. I'd suggest we try and take them intact, their ship doesn't seem to have the damage that the other craft around here do. We can likely seize their drive unit to use to repair our own."

Keli Quintela has posed:
    Keli nods to Troia sharply. "Si, senorita! Umm. Ms. Troy. Ms. Troia?" She's not sure how to address Troia, really, so she just shrugs and gets up to head to the airlock to join Troia. "No mas, I'll be right there!" She flexes her right arm as she goes, and easily projects a green shield in front of her.

    "Todavia funciona," she murmurs to herself. "Bueno." The green light disappears as quickly as it came.

    She bounces on her toes a little, grinning at the conversation and Irie's idea both. "It's about /fear/ I think," she notes. "I mean, the flag and everything. Which means so long as we're not afraid of them, we'll have the upper hand!" Well, she's got /something/ of a handle on being a Green Lantern.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Got it Nadia," Donna says. "Cait, set the ship rotating very slowly and give us the word when the airlock is facing away from the pirates so we can send the probe out under cover." She strides over to where Nadia and Alanna are preparing the drone, and when it's ready to go, she picks it up and hefts it under an arm.

    Donna gives a nod to Keli. "Donna will do," she says. "Let's get ready. If necessary, we're going to make them afraid of us. Shock and awe comes before violence, okay? You can do constructs, right? Plenty of opportunity for scare tactics."

    She steps into the airlock with Keli, sets her breather mask, checks Keli's, and starts the airlock cycling. As the Tereshkova makes its slow rotation, she switches to radio to respond to Natasha. <<If they're pirates they're likely hoping to take this ship without damaging it either, for similar reasons. They will board without firing, if they think they can. which suits us fine. >>

    Caitlin gives her notification that the hull has rotated enough, and Donna and Keli manhandle the probe out of the airlock before closing it up again. <<Probe away. Start the message broadcasting when it's a good enough distance, Nadia.>>

Irie West has posed:
    "Maybe they're actually from the Caribbean, and are actually ghosts. /Ghost space priates!/ Or skeletons! Or skeleton ghosts!" At this point Irie is just rambling to fill the silence in the turret. On the one hand she wants to shoot something. On the other she hopes it doesn't come to that.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Probe away! The sneaky stealthy probe has been fitted with paneling that makes light waves just seem to slide off it and once it is released it seems to just vanish against the inky backdrop of space.

    Nadia and Alanna return to their positions. Nadia opening the main channel again. <<Yes, we've been reading a strange energy signature since we got here and it still seems to be getting stronger." Indeed several additional sensors are now picking it up. "But for some reason we can't pinpoint it, I think it may have something to do with this place.>> She is both talking to buy time for Donna's plan making things seem normal and also sincere in her growing curiosity about this strange energy signature.

    When the stealth relay probe is in position, Nadia hits another button on her console and the sneakily relayed broadcast begins playing across open channels, just as Donna recorded it. <<<This is the HMS Invincible and HMS Valiant of the Royal Navy -- we have heard reliable reports of pirate activity in these waters. Stand by to be boarded, and have your letters of marque or bills of lading ready by the time we arrive. If you are simply innocent merchants, you have nothing to fear from her majesty's navy.>>>

    Boisterous laughter can be heard from the other end of the comms as message plays. <<Oh, well if that isn't a good laugh. You must be from /Earth/. I guess we finally made our own star sailing ships. There's no Royal Navy anywhere out here, we left them behind a long time ago.>>

    No sooner has she finished talking than those very insistent energy readings spike through the roof. As they do so, the first thing the crew of the Tereshkova notices is the galleons weapons preparing to fire, it apparently has energy weapons, lots and lots of energy weapons. What is less immediately apparent, but soon becomes impossible to ignore is the fact a creeping shadowy blackness, like a segment of space itself becoming animate has begun closing around the Tereshkova as if to swallow it whole!

    The Sargasso Gale's weapons all unload in unison, but none of them strike the Tereshkova, instead they all hit the blackness trying to envelop it, to seemingly little effect. <What the hell is that!> <Shoot it more!> <Use that torpedo thing we picked up on Knowhere!> Chatter can be heard in the background of the link, the pirates apparently still have not figured out the mute button and are just as surprised by what is happening as the Tereshkova's crew!

    "What the heck is that?! THAT IS THE ENERGY SIGNATURE?! FUCK!" Well Nadia is going to have to put some money into Caitlin's swear jar later, in her defense this is the first time anyone present has ever heard her use such language. "CAIT GET US OUT OF HERE! NAT FIRE EVERYTHING AT WHATEVER THAT IS!!"

    "It's not working! It seems to have hold of us somehow!" Caitlin calls back as she uses every trick in the book and a few more to try and wrench the Tereshkova free of its predicament. The ship lurches and groans with false starts, but it appears whatever this thing is has already gotten a firm hold of it as inky blackness seems to close in around the ship.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The ship rocks, even as Natasha Romanoff goes to yank over for her rifle on instinct, "Is there anything else that can be ejected out at them? Debris?" Then she goes to brace on the console, "If it's a singularity, keep us in arc with it!" She goes to do the math in her head. And it's not pretty.
    "Take us along the edge of it with the thrusters and spin to build up momentum. When we're going away from the arc put them to full power and jump!" Presuming it is a sudden micro-pulse of extreme gravity coming into existence.
    But in any sort of maneuvering, slingshotting around a large gravity well to build up speed and launch is a very, very basic trick.

Keli Quintela has posed:
    Keli swears, a lot. In Spanish, mostly, so maaaaybe she won't have to pay up to Caitlin's swear jar? Admittedly she doesn't even know Caitlin's swear jar is a thing. But 'in the airlock' is /not/ where you want to be when a ship is being fired on.

    She looks to Troia with wide eyes through her helmet and says, "What do we do?! Do we go out there and wrestle the... darkness?" She sounds like she's game for doing /just/ that, and peers out the airlock to see if she can spot some way to... what, to wrap the ship in Green Lantern energy?

    "Hey, I could wrap the ship in a shield of Green Lantern energy! I bet it couldn't get through that!"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Hold off firing everything at it," Donna disagrees. "It's rather... close now. I'm not sure a missile barrage would be idea... but if we go outside we can spy out a path to loop the missiles around and hit it from the far side. Irie, give it a few shots and see how it reacts to some kinetic damage though. It seems to be ignoring energy weapons. And Nadia, try /communicating/ with it. It's possible it is something conscious and doesn't know what we are."

    Donna switches her own radio to broadcast the pirates. <<So you /are/ from Earth. Interesting. And it looks like you're not planning on taking Woodes Rogers' pardon. The good news is that no, there are no Royal Navy vessels in the vicinity as far as we know. The bad news is, you've run into something much more dangerous.>>

    She mutes her radio and gives a nod to Keli. "Try working some under the shadow and see if it works. But... can you also aim a large green canon at the Sargasso? It sounds like they've been around, let's see if they recognize Lantern constructs. "

Irie West has posed:
    Iris takes a note from the Pirates and turns the short range guns on the black thing that's engulfing them. "Weapons aren't doing anything to it!" she shouts. "Ummmmm...." she says watching as the black blob engulf them, her leg bouncing in a panic.

    "Okay. I've got an idea! This is.... This is gonna be rough." She unbuckles herself from the turret and joins everybody in the cockpit. "Donna! Keli! Stay inside! Naida, turn up the thrusters! Everybody make sure you're touching the hull! I'm gonna /phase/ us through this."

    "The hull is made of a vibranium alloy which means that I /should/ be able to get it to resonate with my frequency when I phase. I just have to...." she takes a deep breath and places her hands on the hull of the ship, "use more power than I ever had before. Easy-peasy."

    "Alright. Hold on! This is gonna feel weird." She closes her eyes and starts to concentrate. At first the only thing that you can see happening is that Irie's form blurs, and Speed Force lightning arcs out fingers touching surfaces and people near her. When she squinches her eyes shut, the lightning arcs all bend, as if magnetically attracted to the hull.

    Soon, you can hear a hum as the hull of the ship starts to vibrate with the speedster. It starts out at about A3. Not an unpleasant note for sure, but when the whole ship is doing it you can feel it in your bones. Irie grunts and pushes on the hull and the note starts to rise higher and higher in pitch, up into the high notes that makes it feel like you've got tinnitus of the body.

    When the pitch goes higher than the human ear can hear, Speed Force lightning begins to arc /from/ the hull. At first it's just the area around her hands, but it spreads out faster and faster as Irie puts more energy into it. "Almost.... there...." she groans and grits her teeth pouring even /more/ energy into it.

    At last /everything/ seems to be engulfed in the speed force. It's a strange tingly feeling like all of your atoms have suddenly shifted microns to the *left*. Nothing feels quite connected to anything else, yet the hull remains as solid to you as it ever was.

    "Go..... now....!"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia just kind of stares at Donna for a moment when she suggests talking to the shadowy void thing trying to envelop their ship. "I'm going to take a guess that whatever this is is related to all those wrecked ships!" Then she's looking at Irie as the formerly sixteen now twenty-six year old, but really five? describes what can only be called a crazy plan. But with the weapons not doing what they're supposed to be and her lack of a better one, with only seconds until they are fully in this thing's grasp, Nadia makes a snap decision.

    "Irie do it! Cait punch the thrusters and see if you can break us free!" Nadia begins barking orders as she pulls up her own virtual console seeing if she can get the Pym Field active again and plot a remotely safe jump out of here, assuming Irie can get them free.

    Lightning begins to arc across, well everything, it is a miracle of the Tereshkova's insulation and a minor miracle of the Speed Force that this lightning does not actually fry all of the electronics on the bridge. The humming sound gets louder and louder as the ship vibrates all the way out of physical space and as it is enveloped by the power of the Speed Force, something truly remarkable occurs. The Pym Drive seems to take on a life of its own, springing to life and radiating power beyond anything it has ever demonstrated to date as the Speed Force and Pym Particles comprising the Pym Field seem to enter a symbiotic exchange sending the Tereshkova bouncing like a skipping stone across Hyperspace. It isn't the most pleasant of journey's but it is over in the blink of an eye.

    Once everyone has picked themselves up off the floor the glow of Alpha Centauri's binary stars can be seen in the distance on the monitors, the ghost ship graveyard and Sargasso Gale having been left far far far behind.

    "What happened?" Nadia pushes herself off the floor of the ship, still unsteady "Are we alive?" She asks steadying herself on the arm of the Captain's chair. "I think we're alive."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
As they warp out of and then back into existence, Natasha Romanoff would muse. "Having been there, I'm reasonably sure we are." As close as she ever gets to stating anything meaningful on that time she went through the sea of bodies.
    All of them her's.
    And never knowing at the end if she was the original one or just one of those that scrambled out of a vat with someone else's face and mind.
    Some things were better left not reflected on.
    "Running through systems diagnostic." Business now.

Keli Quintela has posed:
    Keli nods sharply, then adds, "Also, can I say what an /honor/ it is to me working with you, Donna? You're /great/." She grins, briefly, then turns her attention out the airlock window, furrowing her brow.

    First, she creates the large green cannon, because that one's easier. She affixes it to the side of the Tereshkova's hull, muttering, "Let's hope you don't need me to fire anything at you, 'cause I'm not very good at that juuust yet." But, hey, it's a very large and intimidating and /obviously/ Green Lantern-created construct.

    But then, before she really gets a chance to see if she can aim a barrier at the weird folding space darkness thing, Irie's vibrating the entire ship through... something... and Keli yells, "Que mierda esta pasando?!?!" She's going to owe Caitlin /so/ much swear jar money. So very, very much.

    When it's all over she starts to poke her head back out of the airlock and into the ship proper. "Did we survive? Where's the pirate ship? /What just happened/??"

Irie West has posed:
    Something about the interaction between the Pym Drive and the Speed Force lights Irie up like a christmas tree. Yellow and red light, the colors of her Speed Force pour out of her mouth and eyes, and seemingly out of every pore, too, lifting her off the ground and into the air. She's hangs like that for a second or two, long enough for the Tereshkova to skip itself out into Alpha Centauri before all the energy sputters out and dies, causing her to drop to the floor, unconscious.

    She looks rough, like she hasn't slept for a week. Deep circles under her eyes and a pale complexion, and her hair... oh God, her hair. It'll take months to comb it back to shape. She also looks... older. Her face has lost all of the baby fat that one keeps around in their teens and twenties, giving her face a more definitive shape. Crows feet are beginning to show at the corners of her eyes, as well as the hint of laugh lines. All in all it looks like she's aged another ten years.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna keeps staring out through the airlock, trying to peer around the blackness at the pirate ship. She responds to Keli with a distracted nod, followed by an equally distracted "Uh... thank you," followed by a "Good work," when the green cannon is summoned.

    There's too little time to see if has the desired effect before the effects of the speed force send the Pym drive into turbo overdrive and it's out of range, but that doesn't stop Donna from quickly resuming her staring in the direction they'd come. Amazons have pretty good vision, but there's no chance even a Kryptonian could see anything at this range. Finally she breaks her silence to say, "Quick thinking, Irie. But..." she glances towards the speedster, and sees exactly what she feared she might. A momentary wince spreads across her features and she quickly steps over to Iris, scoops her up and puts her in a seat. She gives Caitlin a wide-eyed look.

    Donna returns to her own seat. "I think we might have to encourage Irie to stop using the speedforce for now. It's accelerating. Uh... I'm not entirely comfortable with letting those pirates go," she says. "But... Nadia, it would be a good idea to drop a Hyperspace beacon back there, broadcasting a warning. Kind of a hyperspace lighthouse, if you know what I mean. Natasha, how are we holding up? Good to continue on our way and hold off repairs until we arrive at Rann?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    The Tereshkova is a testament to the engineering skills of several girl geniuses and while there was indeed some hull damaged sustained where whatever that thing was made contact, thanks to Irie's quick thinking it is relatively minor.

    Nadia is still helping Alanna back to her feet when her eyes catch sight of Irie and she just sort of stops, nearly causing Alanna to tumble back down again. "Oh no. No no no. I mean we were in danger but at this rate /she's/ in danger." Who she is talking to is unclear.

"Maybe my father can help her? We can see if he knows anything when he get to Rann." Alanna rests a hand on Nadia's shoulder, looking between her and Donna. She is clearly forcing herself to remain optimistic that Sardath is fine, but there is a chance Rann's greatest scientist could help all the same.

    "Yeah, you're right." Nadia nods to Alanna and Donna. "We should do that, both things. The beacon very very carefully. But if we can stop any more ships from getting wrecked, we should definitely do that. Maybe eventually we can figure out what that thing is and how to deal with it. Maybe we'll run into those pirates again someday. For now though, Rann needs us." Not wanting to distress Alanna further, she doesn't vocalize the bad feeling she has about what might be waiting for them there, and what Monica Rappaccini and AIM could be up to.