<a class="link link--internal" href="https://bluemoonroleplaying.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=83335&amp;pid=2015179#pid2015179"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#dda0dd">Iona Knutesdottir<br/>
</span></a>Unknown Ticonderoga Class Ship<br/>Morning Watch<br/>Tagged: All<br/><br/>Violence and danger to the ends of rescuing a shipmate or righting a wrong - the crew of the St. Anne had a surprising depth of morality for all they might be considered scoundrels - and dealing with the gruesome aftermath of their actions was one thing, but stepping into a grove of corpses in a cemetery ship was another.  Iona had seen this sort of thing before, though not when she explored the eerily empty St. Anne on her salvage mission, and was not surprised by the reactions, even from Dr. Khan who had likely seen more carnage and death than any of them, even her orange-eyed angel Donovan.  Shipwrecks occupied a spooky place in the human soul and always would.<br/><br/>"Stand in place," she ordered.  "Everyone reach out and touch a shipmate."  Her own hand settled on the cook's suit and she shook the woman slightly, to apply comforting pressure on her inside the suit.<br/><br/>"We're alive.  We're alive and we have each other," she said after everyone obeyed.  "Every grumble you've made, every time you've cursed my name when I've rolled you out of your bunks or the crapper  or from diddling each other or your hand with a drill has been because of this."  Iona turned her body to shine the twin lights of her suit into the hold.  A man's silently, eternally screaming and vacuum flash frozen face drifted across one corner of their figure eight, followed by his claw like hand.  "This shouldn't have happened.  Hatches should have been secured, but people left them loose or worse dogged open to save time and for convenience.  Bubbles or gumby suits should have been available, close and in enough quantity for some of them to have gotten into them.  Shipmates, somebody was careless, careless and stupid, and that's why I'm so hard nosed with you about safety."<br/><br/>"Bitch all you want but damned if I'll let my crew or passengers wind up like these poor souls."<br/><br/>Once she was sure the lesson had sunk in Iona pulled herself inside and pushed a few corpses away from the hatch to make room for the others, seeming not to care that their stiff bodies tumbled and knocked into others.<br/><br/>"The Doctor is right but we don't have the manpower to waste right now securing bodies.  Do the best you can but they're just bodies.  They can't hurt you."  Except to give you nightmares she added to herself.  "And I don't want anyone plugging in a power cell to anything until we figure out what happened.  She's dead and I want her to stay that way until I know we're not going to bring her back to the same state that caused all of this damned foolishness."<br/><br/>From a pouch on her suit Iona took a marking pen, fat and thick as a cigar, and painted a large circle on the bulkhead by the hatch.  Glowing bright neon yellow from the chemicals in it, the circle would show where the exit was for several days.  They were commonly used in damage control situations or in evacuations to mark pathways to safety.  "Remember to mark as we go.  Big bold arrows pointing back here.  Add notes underneath."