Crash on Volturnus
By Dr. Mike
Story originally created by Mark Acres and Tom Moldvay with Doug Niles. Story originally edited by Troy Denning. Original story copyright 1982 by TSR Inc.
Daria Morgendorffer leaned her head against the wall of the shower and closed her eyes. She had retreated into the warmth of the hot water ever since the captain of the Serena Dawn had notified her via ship intercom that they were entering orbit around the planet Volturnus. Daria had thanked the captain, paged Dorin to start scans of the planet, and run for the shower. She sighed as she lifted her head and reached for the shampoo once again. Reaching out a hand, she pushed the controlling panel a few times increasing the temperature. She hated cold showers.
The door buzzed demanding her attention. Maybe if I ignored it, who ever it is will go away, she thought while rubbing the creamy liquid thru her hair and rinsing it out under the scalding hot water. There wouldn't be any opportunity to take long hot showers once they landed on the planet. They would have to put up with using sonic showers. Maybe she could get either C'hting or Kurn to rig something up using the engine of one of their explorersƒÝ
"Daria, I can hear the water running in the shower. You're going to be a prune if you don't get out of there," Jane yelled as she banged against the door. "I'm sure that you've washed you hair plenty of times by now."
Daria slammed the water panel with a hand to stop the water and hot air blasted out from all around her, quickly drying her body. There was something about a Wouter shower that just made her feel all tingly inside. She reached for a nearby set of black stretch coveralls.
"Damn it Daria. You can let me in now. I've seen your naked ass plenty of times. You should be proud of it. While just the other day, Dorin was telling me that even he liked it and he's a blob!"
Daria, one hand zipping up the front of her coveralls, reached out with her other hand and clicked a switch on the top of her desktop. The door to her cabin slid open. Jane Lane stepped thru the door, watched it close behind her, and gave a near perfect salute while trying her best not to smirk too much.
"Assistant Team Leader Jane Lane reporting for duty, Madam Ms. Daria Morgendorffer, team leader extraordinaire for the exploration of the planet Volturnus and soon to be rescuer of the lost mission nine months before us. Tell me. Do you want me to kiss your ass now or in front of the crew?"
"Do that again and I'll kick your ass all the way back to the home worlds."
Jane smirked as she dropped herself into a nearby chair, propping her booted feet onto the top of Daria's desk. She wore her normal black stretch coveralls as well but had added the red vest that was standard for Truane's Star Militia units. A towel wrapped itself around her neck as Daria noticed Jane's own wet hair. Jane removed a stylus from one of the many pockets in her jacket, grabbed Daria's tablet off of the desk and began to run thru the information presented on the screen. She took a quick look around the small cabin while waiting for another page to come up on the screen. Daria slipped her boots on.
"Daria, I would have thought you would have been packed and ready to go. It's a five day trip from Truane's Star. My stuff is already down at the shuttle."
Daria removed her own jacket from the back of Jane's chair. Her jacket was green with a big logo for Pan Galactic on the breast, a gift from her Aunt Amy years ago. She paused before answering and placed another stack of coveralls into a bag sitting on the top of her bed.
"I've got Dorin mapping the planet and looking for anything unusual. He won't be done anytime soon." She zipped the bag closed and started work on filling the second bag.
"Um, yeah. He assigned one of the crew members to run the scans since he was kind of busy." Daria turned to see Jane look away as she brushed her hair dry.
"Um, was he a bit busy?"
"A little." Jane acknowledged.
"Sorry about that."
Jane smirked. "Oh, I'm sure we'll be having campfires and the like on Volturnus. And I know how much you love camping."
Daria smirked slightly as she remembered the time her and her family had gone camping. Her father was still complaining over the bill Star Law had sent them for the rescue. Jane gave her hair a final rubbing and tossed her towel into Daria's open bag.
"See? I'm a big help."
"Sure you are." Daria removed the wet towel from the top of her clean clothes and tossed it into a nearby corner. "Pretend you're an even bigger help and tell me where we stand."
"Yes, ma'am." Jane missed Daria's dirty look as she flipped thru a few more pages of information. "The Serena Dawn, this wonderful hunk of 30 year old star craft, will be in orbit around the planet Volturnus in about 30 minutes. You would have thought that explorers of our experience would have rated something better but I guess not. Truane's Star, the system we left five days ago, has hired us and the rest of our crew to conduct a preliminary exploration of this newly discovered planet. We're supposed to map as much of the planet as possible paying close attention to any mineral deposits that we find. Truane's Star is also interested in having us contact and study any intelligent races that we come into contact with. Well, hopefully come into contact with. My bet is that either you or C'hting will probably scare them off first thoughƒÝ"
"I hate you." Daria zipped up her second bag and turned to work on her third. "Jane, I know all this. We also have to keep an eye out for the original exploration team that they sent here nine months ago and never heard another word from." Daria paused for a second as she thought of something. "I still don't understand why they sent us though. The first team that they sent was highly experienced. The six of us together don't have the background that even one of them had."
Jane shrugged. They both had poured over the brief of the original team as part of their brief on this mission. Commander Louis V. Jameson, the leader of the team, was a long term veteran of the Truane's Star military forces, a holder of the Truane's Star Medal of Valor, and the commander of two previous exploration missions. Geeko-sur-Mang, was an Yazirian expert in Geology and computers. Dr. Itklikdil, a female Vrusk on loan from Capital University, had been their environmental and cartographer expert. Grod, a Dralasite, had been their technician and was a genius in anything that had to do with technology.
"Well maybe they were just waiting for us to come along, Daria. And it's not like we're that short of experience. I seem to remember us having a few adventures since we paid your aunt a visit."
Daria thought back over the last few months. She and Jane had traveled to Capital City to visit Daria's Aunt Amy. There had been an issue with Ms. Li, their high school principal, and a poster that the two of them had designed together. Daria's mother had decided that a small vacation had been in order to allow things to cool down. Aunt Amy worked as a middle level planet manager for the megacorp Pan Galactic. Little did they expect to interrupt a Sathar agent during their tour of the building. Amy had been knocked unconscious before being able to raise any alarm and it had been up to Jane and Daria to stop the spy. After a hair raising chase thru the city, they had finally caught him just as he had tried to board a shuttle to escape from the planet. Their training in Ms. Barch's self defense courses had actually paid off that day, much to their surprise as well as the agent's. They doubted he had thought that two high school students would have taken down a well trained agent such as himself. After Amy had been awakened, luckly with no bruises, just a nasty headache, she had offered both Daria and Jane jobs as trouble shooters for the summer. Since then they had had to rescue themselves from a shuttle crash in the remote jungle while they had been escorting a package to another base, defeated another security breach within Aunt Amy's compound, captured an alien creature after it had escaped from the Capital Zoo, and rescued survivors from yet another shuttle crash.
The strange thing was Amy, Daria and Jane had thought that these missions were connected in some way. While they were too busy just trying to get rescued after the first shuttle crash, there was plenty of evidence at the site of the second one. One part of the bomb that had brought down the second shuttle bore a red marking of some sort. Also the men who had conducted the second security breach all wore the tattoo of a red devil surrounded by a circle of stars. A hypo found by the cage of the zoo creature that had escaped had also been marked with the same logo. The three of them had tried to make the connection over many dinners of pizza but it was still nothing but guessing. Well, that and the extra pounds that they had added due to the pizza.
Daria admitted one thing to herself. Both she and Jane had learned a lot in the past few months. Both had received a small amount of martial arts training while in high school that had seemed to serve them well. Jane had picked up some medical skills from having to watch over Trent, her brother, all the time. Jane had also put into practice what she called her "social" skills. Daria still remembered how Jane had convinced that businessman to loan her his speeder so that they could catch the Sathar agent.
Daria had found herself having to put into practice what she had learned in their biology classes. Jane wouldn't be alive today if Daria hadn't stopped Jane from drinking that contaminated water on one of their missions. Daria wasn't too bad with a laser pistol either. She had found that out when she had had to weaken the escaped alien creature so that they could capture it. Jane had looked on in near awe as Daria landed shot after shot against the creature with her laser pistol. Pity that the alien's hide was reflective and had bounced off Daria's shot but she had still hit it over and over again.
Jane brought her back to the present. "OK, now that I'm finished with Dorin, he's busy checking up on the mapping of the planet and getting the medical supplies together. Since the steward of the Serena Dawn locked up all of our weapons and captain won't release them until right before planet fall, Bakchu's worried about them not being in working condition."
"Is he that concerned? I know the probe didn't record any large creatures on the planet when it went thru a couple of years ago."
Jane shrugged. "You never know. I still have those scars on my shoulder from where that astrotiger attacked me that you had to shot off when we were looking for that crashed shuttle. That mission was supposed to be a cakewalk. Anyway, Bakchu is helping C'hting and Kurn make sure the explorers and the jetcopter are packed and ready to go. When they're done, the only things left to do is get out skeinsuits out of storage and our weapons out of the ship's locker." Jane looked at the chronocom on her wrist. "Hmm, we should have made orbit by now. I wonder why they haven't paged us yet."
"I'm sure they'll let us know soon enough. For the last five days, we've had nothing to do but explore their ship. How many times can we look at the recreation areas, the observation dome, the cargo bay, the lifeboats, the gallery, and the living quarters. I'm sure that they'll be happy to get rid of us," Daria said as she reached out for her laptop from Jane and placed it along with her environmental gear into her third and last bag. This was a small backpack that she now placed on her back. "Sounds like we're set. Can you help me down to the shuttle with my stuff?"
"Damn it, Daria. You packed more stuff than Quinn would have."
"It'll be at least three months before the Serena Dawn picks us back up. At least I left the hairdryer at home." Daria handed Jane one of the bags while she picked up one herself. She paused to have one more look around her cabin. "I always feel like I'm forgetting something."
Both of them lifted their heads sharply when a small thump was heard off in the distance.
"Did you hear that?" Jane asked.
"You've probably worn Dorin out again and he dropped something in the cargo hold."
Jane smirked. "Oh, I wasn't that hard on him. Plus with that rubbery skin of his, I seriously doubt I'll ever wear him out."
A worried frown appeared on both their faces as a pair of thumps is heard again in the distance along with the sound of scuffling from just outside Daria's cabin.
"Help!"
"That came from just outside, Daria." They both turn towards the door as a short scream was cut off by a loud thud.
Daria pushed the door release. The bloodied body of the ships' steward laid on the floor before them, the handle of a vibroknife stuck out of his chest. Both Daria and Jane gasped at the sudden sight. They had both seen dead bodies before but it still came as a shock to them.
"Well, well, well. Lookie here. I guess I'll just have to knock both of you off at the same time. Save me the trouble of finding you later." Another crewman stood in front of them. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a long knife.
Both Daria and Jane noticed the tattoo underneath the man's coverall. It was the mark of the Star Devil!
Team Leader Daria Morgendorffer uses Alpha Dawn Shampoo and suggests everyone should try it.