D&D 5E Exodus

Juno's knife plunges into the demon-woman's abdomen. She goes down to one knee, breathing heavily, holding the wound with one hand, while offering her knife to Juno with the other saying something that Mike thinks might be a variation of the Latin word for "Yield."

Juno didn't speak Moon Language, but she knew a surrender when she saw one. Keeping her right hand ready, she grabbed the offered knife from the alien's hand in her left. Once she had the other knife she stepped back and only then did she relax a bit, wiping the blood off her knife with a handkerchief, glaring down at the captive all the while.

"Looks like we need a medic over here," she said. "Lets try to keep it alive at least until it can give us some answers."

Mike starts to yell out that the creature is yielding, but then it's made obvious and Juno stops the fight anyway. Once the creature is disarmed, he moves forward slightly and tries to catch the creatures eye before asking in Latin, "Quid est tibi nomen? What is your name?", followed quickly by "Quomodo huc venisti? How did you get here?"

Trace immediately snaps into medic mode, pulling out his medikit and rushing to the alien's side. He quickly checks the site of the wound, assessing the damage and trying to determine whether standard medical practices will work. The anatomy looks generally the same...and it...no, definitely she...is bleeding. Quite extensively. Okay, first things first, let's stop the bleeding. Then clean the wound and check for internal damage...

Trace settles into the comfortable routines established years ago in the army for dealing with battlefield trauma, tuning out the rest of the room and trying not to focus on the alien nature of his patient. As he places his hands on her abdomen, however, the connection he felt earlier shocks through his system, stronger than before. He can feel the blood pulsing in her veins, feel the damaged nerve endings firing, sending panicked messages to her brain, feel the torn blood vessels....and....there?!?. With a mental twist, he somehow slows the bleeding, sealing off leaking blood vessels, calming frayed nerves. His senses expand to include the people in the room with him, and he feels like he could almost...pull? Siphon? Share? Somehow, act as a conduit for their life energy, use it, funnel it into the glaring wrongness of the wound... He tries to focus, to clarify that feeling, but as suddenly as it came, it's gone again.

Blinking, Trace looks down at his hands, still pressed into the alien's abdomen. He slowly pulls them back, and sees that the bleeding has slowed to a trickle. With shaking hands he quickly cleans and bandages the wound, then stands. "She...should live. The cut was deep, but I don't think anything vital was hit. I think." He shakes his head and laughs quietly. "Though who can know for sure with an alien. If she was human, she would live. But as it is, we will need to keep her under observation...run tests. I just don't know enough about what we're dealing with. Or, for that matter, what pathogens she might be exposing us to. Or which of our pathogens might cause her problems."
[sblock=healing]I didn't feel like I should invoke a full-blown Cure Wounds spell yet, so instead I used Trace's Healer feat and the medikit to stabilize her, with a little magical precursor to a Cure Wounds spell thrown in.[/sblock]

In response to Mike's questions, the demon woman points at the wreckage of the hyperdrive and says a word that roughly translates as something between "prisoner" and "slave." Its obvious that the language gap is still too large for anything resembling a coherent conversation at this point, however. She doesn't offer a name. However, she does point to Juno and then to herself, uttering a word that might mean "servant."

Trace gets the distinct impression that this creature is related to humans in some way. The brief glimpse of her physiology he's seen so far gives the impression that she is nearly identical to humans, except, of course, for the red skin, horns, tail, and cat-like eyes. Once he's done binding her wound, he notices that Carter is gone.

Colonel Harrington arrives and frowns at the wreckage of the hyperdrive. He orders the marines to take the demon to the brig and then looks at Ryota, Trace, Mike, Emma, and Juno, "Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?"

Trace barely has time to register that he hasn't seen Carter since the alien showed up when Colonel Hamilton walks in. He glances at the colonel's insignia and stiffens in an automatic reflex at his rank, then just a quickly chides himself and forces himself to relax. Jeez, get a grip, Trace. You're not in the Army anymore, dammit.

His gaze wanders over the room, trying to figure out where Carter went. Where did that boy get off to, anyway? Then his eyes widen as he takes in all the military personnel present. Crap! I hope no one saw him.

Trace also notes that those same military personnel are in the process of escorting the alien woman - his patient - his test subject - to the brig. Stepping towards the Colonel, he resists the urge to salute, instead holding out a hand. "Dr. Trace Martin-Davies, Colonel. I'm a member of the Xeno-Biology team, and just finished treating this...alien's....woman's...wound. I...we're going to need blood and tissue samples for our analysis, and she...it...she is going to require constant observation. I also strongly suggest that she and everyone who has been in contact with her, ..." He grimaces. "...including myself, be kept in quarantine until we can determine whether she is carrying any infectious diseases." Oh, God, Carter. Did he get close enough to her? Do I need to tell the Colonel...? He mentally crosses his fingers. No, this is so not the time to mention a stowaway. I'll just have to hope for the best.

Juno snapped a salute and stood at attention when the Colonel announced himself. She let Trace say his piece, then delivered her report.

"Sir! I was escorting Private Dawson to medical from the briefing when I heard something from engineering. We investigated and found these civilians gathered around the hyperdrive unit. One of them moved like she was going to touch it, and I stopped her...but I had to let go of Dawson to do it. He jumped on the hyperdrive and..." She shook her head. "The drive was wrecked, Dawson disappeared, and this alien appeared. I called for backup, tried to keep the noncombatants away. One of them seems like they understand the alien's language though, and told us it wanted to duel one of us."

Juno shrugged at that, a little uncomfortably. Technically speaking, taking the alien up on that had been pretty dumb, even if it had worked out all right in the end.

"It was offering compliance. I figured it'd get itself killed trying to escape if I didn't, and...it wanted a fight, so I gave it one, sir."

Doctor Emma Sanduine watched the end of the fight with eager intensity. This was history, unfolding right before her eyes! Such a familiar, ancient ritual unfolding before her on the deck of the engineering department. She held a holo-recorder in her hand, trained loosely on the fight, but her mind was elsewhere. Her focus was zeroed in on the battle before her. On the struggle. This was all too interesting to think of anything else.

As the fight concluded, she wondered what would happen next? It looked like the beastie was kneeling in surrender, pledging herself maybe? She saw Trace working on the wounds; a brave man to think he could cure alien anatomy, she surmised, but it was good that the creature would not perish. As Colonel Harrington arrived and began to bark orders, it never even occurred to Doctor Sanduine to announce her presence. Instead she stood on the catwalk, watching everything unfold. She saw Trace and Juno step forward to fill the man in.

If only someone had recorded it for others to see, she thought.

She paused, glancing over at her right hand, still aiming the holo-recorder at the scene below. "Ah. Right," she said to herself, flipping the recorder off, and tucking it into a pocket. She sighed, and moved for the ladder. "I saw the whole thing, sir," she called as she climbed down the ladder. "Right from the strange collection of people who happened by, all the way through to ancient ritual. She was speaking a very old human language, I couldn't quite place it." She stepped off the ladder and walked over towards the military gathering.

"I have it all recorded, if you like?" she offered, and began to check through her pockets for her holo-recorder. The video would show an impartial view of everything that had happened. It would also, quite possibly, reveal everybody who had been there. Even those who weren't supposed to be.

Hearing Colonel Harrington's voice, Airman Babington spins to face him and snaps to attention before saluting briskly. After being acknowledged by the Colonel, he explains, "Sir, I'm Senior Airman Babington. I speak Latin and the creature seems to understand some of it. Enough for us to get basic concepts accross at least. The creature said it was like a prisoner in the hyperdrive somehow, and now that it's been bested in combat, it says it is a servant to Juno here who fought and beat it."

Harrington grimaces at the mention of a possible quarantine situation. He takes in what the others have said and then makes a decision, "Alright, a quarantine will cause a panic so let's assess the danger here before we resort to that. You four are in charge of the alien, for now. Babington, learn its language, figure out how to communicate with it. Doctor Martin-Davies, get your samples and pull whoever you need to get a complete look at this thing's anatomy. Find out if its a danger to the crew and passengers. Doctor Sanduine, find out why its speaking human languages and if there's any connection between this alien and the ones that attacked Earth. You're authorized to pull whichever specialists we have on board to assist you. And Reyes...keep it out of trouble. You get to babysit that thing." He turns to address all four, "I want everything you've learned ready for a briefing to the senior command and civilian leaders by 1300 hours tomorrow."

He holds his hand out for Emma's recorder and then orders another marine over, "Get a copy of this to everyone on security detail and round up everyone on this video. I want a statement from each of them."

He raises his voice so everyone in the room can hear him, "You all have your orders. Dismissed!"