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[Back to Albatross Logs 2]
Again, anything in //...// is from Silver's personal logs.
**Sep 1, 155**
//It is just about to be my watch, and I find that during Cyrus' watch,
a comm-call came in from a ship that's been sitting in one place for a while.
The comm-call was from a kid who said that the ship had been taken by pirates
and her mom had been shot, and then the *IDIOT* calls *Parvari* and *sits
around* waiting for him to make a decision! And then he won't get out of
the pilot's chair so I can *head* for that ship!! **IDIOT**!
We get there -- fortunately without me having to mutiny -- and get onto
the ship. Cyrus was being a twit about me going in alone, trying to get
behind the pirates while Dirk and him distracted them. Idiot.
I will be carrying the camera to prove that this boarding action is legit.
One of the forcelocks is damaged and can't be locked -- another (the one
Cyrus and Dirk were going to go in through) is locked, so Cyrus comes to
the one I'd had my eye on. I swap around and hack the lock open in a minute.
Dirk tries to get in via a 3rd airlock, but it's wedged shut (it was too
close to some weapons that got shot out). I hang around upside down and
shoot in through the forcelocks -- I nail a pirate's head, but he's wearing
a combat helmet. Kinda surprise him, though! A Kintaran with a blaster rifle
leans out of one of the rooms and fires a shot (which misses) and then in
the middle of the next shot, it kinda peters out... [[Crit-fail on the pirate's
part.]]//
Cyrus enters and takes out a Kintaran with a laser rifle, but falls to a
crit-success from a human with a blaster -- never walk into cross-fire.
Cyrus fails the HT roll and will be dead very soon. Silver sees him fall,
doesn't hear him on the comm, assumes the worst. She turns herself invisible.
Dirk shows up and provides covering fire while Silver (sonic screen running
too) launches herself in and dashes over to Cyrus. Nobody shoots at her.
She hits him with Suspend, then tries for the pirate with the blaster, who
manages to dodge back inside a room and close the door before she does enough
damage to get through his biosuit. The Kintaran with the blaster rifle manages
another crit-fail and drops the weapon; he's having a bad day. Dirk takes
out mister combat helmet, and the blaster-rifle Kintaran. Silver takes off
for the cargo bay, but there's nobody there but an unconscious human [[Arala's
lightning bolts...]]. The sole remaining functional pirate heads out the
airlock, and Dirk goes after him and shoots him and Silver has Dirk drag
the fellow back inside.
//We hook up the passage tube.
Etalon goes around hitting people up (even pirates!) with Suspend and Quickheal,
and we manage to get Arala
and Arala's *SPARRIAL* mom into the Albatross. Etalon has a field day with
pirates and Cyrus and Arala's mom.//
**Sep 3, 155**
//Arala really was stolen by Sparrials... *Before* birth -- somehow, her
"dad" managed to get a genetic sample from the New Garavaran Gene
Databanks! Cute kid, Arala.
Some of the pirates (like the dead ones who were in Engineering, which is
where Arala and her mom were holed up) had some funny marks on them. Arala
and her mom say that maybe they'd fallen into some electrical wiring. I
didn't see any open, but oh, well.
One of the pirates says Arala and her mom had rigged up some spark-throwing
device -- and Arala was certainly playing with the gravity on the ship until
Warren asked her to stop so we could come on and shoot pirates. Another,
the lead fellow (Mr. Combat Helmet, who is a Thral), is also helpful in
providing answers about the strength of the pirate ship (1 disruptor beam,
two particle beams, assorted lasers...) and says which of the pirates was
the pilot, who knows where the rendevouz spot is... (That pirate is the
Blaster-Rifle Kintaran, Grayscar.)//
**Sep 4, 155**
//Cyrus gets patched up and will probably survive his brief stint of being
dead. We get to Kestral, off-load ore, off-load pirates, and I talk Parvari
into letting the furries stay on until New Garavar (since there's a decent
chance that I'll be able to find a Xeno-anthropologist to babysit them there...).
I take the furries sight-seeing. They want to talk to Unars...
Awol announces that he's going to be hanging around with Arala and her mom
-- they need help, he says. This means that Parvari will wait until Cyrus
is up and walking...and hire him. Dear Stars.
At least I will have time to arrange something with that cargo I contracted
to carry.//
**Sep 5, 155**
//I drop in on Cyrus, say I'm glad that he's alive, since I'd have hated
to have risked my life for nothing, and bop out again.
Around in here, She calls up and is curious about the furries -- "Kayolas,"
She calls them. I think Dr. Jones might have done that as well, but I was
not really in any condition to note details like that.
She talks to them for a while (falling into their contagious speech patterns
at least once, and mentioning that She was the one who shut down the recalcitrant
AIs) and manages to get them talking first to Sapient Brisha, and then to
Sapient Carval, who says they must have been captured by Mante (one of the
shut-down ones) and it's very sorry about that, and *it* explains that "the
Artemis Zonemind" made all the AIs leave, and that any Zoneminds who
didn't promise to stop killing Thrals were shut down. It does allow that
"the Artemis Zonemind" is really more like several Zoneminds working
together. The Kayolas want to know if they can hunt the Selene Zonemind.
Sapient Carval explains that Selene is an ally now, so no, they can't. It
tries to coax them back to stay with it until it gets a new planet. It agrees
that they can go to new planets and see if the planets are good, but it
can't talk them into coming back and going into cold-sleep ("sleeping
is boring"). Apparently it and the White Lady are going to set up some
trust fund and try to lure a xanthropologist in to babysit the pair; I have
no idea what will happen next...//
October:
[a trip of about a month, probably down Sparrion way; uneventful]
**Oct 28, 155**
Halloween.
Silver picks up a girlfriend -- a shocking copper-redhead, tall and leggy,
who goes by the name "Penny
Adair." She's seen in Penny's company then, and at Xmas...
**Leap 4, 155**
//T'kik convinces us to haul food to the Hive-world (Hive Beetle homeworld),
for all these umpteen different religious sects who think that the Messiah
is Returning. Seems that they've decided that scrapping together fifteen
million different bits 'n pieces of their religious texts yields one Master
Text, which says something about journeying to where the Many are One (hive-beetle
hivemind, obviously), and something about the Ship of the Dead -- and the
hive-beetles are escorting in an alien solar-sail ship, which is pretty
dead...//
[[The plural of "Jesus" is "Jesi" -- as in, "trinkets
like little plastic Jesi."]]
//We decide that mere food is probably not too useful, and we'll set up
the cargo hold with some tables and chairs, and a portable kitchen, and
be a quasi-restraunt. Also bring along drinks, since the crew of the ships
will probably want something strong after dealing with religious nutcases.
Derek suggests that we should run a brothel. I glare at him.//
**Leap 8, 155**
//Cyrus (our Alardinite) does cooking, as does Awol, so they feed people
when we get there. I play bartender. Everyone is asking about "The
sign of the sailor's sin," which is what they're going to know the
Messiah by. I encourage confusion. Cyrus is the one who twigs first -- an
old-earth poem, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. This idiot shoots down a good-luck
bird, so his crewmates hang it around his neck. The good-luck bird in question
is...an _albatross_. Parvari switches the transponder to the _Opening Lotus_,
which is not necessarily wise, since the hive-beetle stationers have a cow
and quasi-arrest us until we can show proof that we're not pirates.
One of the customers wants to see Parvari -- the rumor is going around that
the Captain of the _Albatross_ is The Messiah. That's hysterical.
Turns out that T'kik and some friends of its, fifteen years ago, found this
solar-sailing ship, with all its dead crew (strapped to the outside, strangely),
and painted their names on its sails. Then they started amalgamating the
religious texts. A year ago, they had a random choice, and T'kik won --
so they started feeding data into the Nets that implicated the Albatross...
After T'kik gets things straightened out, and we get a clear flight plan
out, I head us *out* of there at full warp. At least we didn't lose money
on the trip.
We also got rid of T'kik -- it has more status than it knows what to do
with, right now, and it wanted to go home, so it did. And we hired on an
ex-Navy, ex-Customs engineer fellow, at 1/4 pay, since he apparently was
believing that Parvari was The Messiah. Some people are *really* daft.
We are heading for Sparrion now, most definitely. I don't know what we'll
trade there, since we're running empty, but we'll figure something out,
and it's better than going back to New Garavar, where all those nutty religious
types might be hanging out...//
[It should be noted that as the "dead" aliens got nearer the sun,
they started coming out of hybernation... They've vacuum-dwellers...]
**Leap 15, 156**
//While I was waiting for the down-shuttle from the station to planet, I
noticed this sparrial kid snagging something of mine. I think he'd been
swiping off my trinket-belt [] for the last fifteen minutes. He's a smuggler-fan,
and knew who I was. [14 RRoll, +3 for Silver's scent; gotta be a fan...]
Some Irari'd paid him to covertly get a *gene-sample* from me! Descrip --
medical sort. No telling who. Only Irari doc *I* know who'd given me a rough
time about gene-samples is Etalon. I'd shadow back and find out, but Etalon's
keen-eyed, and might spot me. I buy the sparrial kid a mudskipper thing,
use the gene-sampler on the amphibian, and refill my trinket-belt.//
Etalon, in the pursuit of his Project, wants to get some samples of Silver's
genes (it's something about how warp-fields affect genetics). He tries to
find a Sparrial who will covertly get the sample for him, and fails his
default Streetwise roll by 3. Add to this that Irari have a -1 reaction
from Sparrials, based on "they smell funny." The Sparrial got
45 credits from him and split before Etalon could find out that there was
mudskipper DNA in the sampler, and not human DNA.
//At the psi-school, I look up Goldy. Things seem to be going fine down
there, and I find out *why* she's there when she hates travel. She's one
of the few people who sorta-have my Pilot's Sense, but who get FTL-sick.
She seems happy enough, and I leave while she munches on some merfahs that
she just got in. *Icky* things. She knew they bothered me, too. Telepaths.
Yeesh.//
**Leap 18, 156**
//Parvari comes back one night, whistling. I complain about him being off-key,
make some comment about B-flat, and he asks if that was some kind of obscure
proposition! I say *NO*, of course, and *he* says, "Good!" He's
in a really good mood...
Turns out he won a treasure map at poker. (He'd lost 200 credits already,
then won the map and 50 credits. That's Parvari's Luck for us...) This Thral
guy found an abandoned Organization base with its entrance all covered over
by a rockslide, and went to Thral to get some earth-moving equipment, and
about 6 months ago fell victim to run-dry powercells in his aircar. Splatsville.
Parvari's friend has probably been selling this map for the last 5 months...
Anyway, Parvari says, the base belonged to some drug-lord who got toasted
in an O-vendetta about 10 years ago. Ought to be decent looting there.
Warren'd been getting some cargos for Tamile (everything else that's a better
run's been taken this week -- maybe in a few more, etc.), so we can at least
come close to breaking even whether or not there's really anything here.
We'll pick up some extra med-stuff -- if the base was drug-manufacture,
then there's no telling what might be there. Lots of Purge might be useful.
The planet itself is a thin-atmosphered oxy-nitro (lots of oxy, at least),
with about .7-.8 G. Mostly mountains and rainforest. Charming place, I'm
sure.//
**Leap 19, 156**
//Warren does some talking to people about this base-thing. Turns out that
it was owned by a Thral drug-lord -- that branch of the Organization got
kinda wiped out when the Boss was found "disminded" and most of
his lieutenants were killed or vanished in the ensuing power-struggle. //
**Leap 24, 156**
//Tamile. No return cargo from here to anywhere, as predicted. We're off
for Parvari's Treasure Island, and we'll be out of comm-contact soon --
even the 5-parsec comms that Artemis sells, that Parvari got one of for
the rescue of Dr. Jones.//
**Leap 28, 156**
//We get to the planet, and find an old dying fission plant signature under
a mountain -- took the Artemis sensors to spot it, though, since there's
a lot of radiation in the area normally. The main entrance to the place
is covered over by a rock slide that started about half-way up the mountain.
We scan around and spot what looks like a concealed cooling-system pipe
for the reactor. Maybe we can get in that way. These sensors are seriously
useful.
We also spot a ship with Irari-built warpdrives heading this way. Might
have come from Fasan-homeworld. They aren't headed *quite* this way; closest
pass will be .5 parsecs, in about 8 hours. They aren't using high-tech sensors
to scan anything, so they haven't seen us.
We go and clear out a landing spot, then divert the river a little so that
we can maybe get in near the cooling-system pipes. I land the ship just
*perfectly*, even with the mud and stuff. [[a 3. GM says that he's glad
we did it now and not later. Weird.]]
The Irari ship has altered course -- it's heading for a M-class star, in
the system next door. Maybe they didn't come from the Fasan-homeworld, really
-- they could also have come from a K-class starsystem in that direction.
Maybe some scouts or something? Who knows. Better keep an eye on them, though.
I don't trust random ships wandering about. Could be someone who's not as
good an astrogator as I am, looking for this base, could be pirates searching
for a good place to hide, could be Irari researchers... Who knows. Keep
an eye on them, that's the ticket.
We (Cyrus, Derek, Warren, Etalon, Awol, and me) trek out and get to the
opening -- a 2-foot diameter pipe for the outflow and a 6-foot diameter
tunnel for maintaining the pipe. Derek puts on Awol's distort belt, tries
to disable the sensors that are around the opening (sensors to tell whether
the grille is open or not, and bioscanners), but messes up. Ah, well. After
some discussion, I go in first. Etalon stays behind, scanning the local
fauna and flora. Derek follows me, Warren's next, then Cyrus, then Awol
in the rear.
Up a ways, about 100 meters, there's a laser rifle mounted in the ceiling.
Derek passes me up Awol's distort belt, and I take my brand new heavy laser
pistol and shoot out the weapon. Then we go on. Then, another 50 meters,
and there's *another* of the wretched things, and a blaster down the hall.
Both seem to be active. The laser gets shot out, then I tell everyone else
to stay back and move up a little closer to take out the blaster. [[Modifiers:
-5 for dark, -8 for range, -3 for size of target; +8 for Acc, +3 for aiming;
Skill 15.]] Didn't toast it! It shoots back! Doesn't hit me, though, and
my next volley turns it off. However, there's rather a lot of hot water
swirling around now. Oh, well. Guess me and the blaster kinda shot up the
pipe.
Next, we've got another grille, into the reactor room itself. Wouldn't want
to hang around here too long, since the thing's been leaking. There's also
some more sensors here, which I disarm -- easier, since these are *inside*
the pipe! Like nobody's supposed to get *into* the pipe from either end...
They probably had slaves. Then I take the monoblade knife that Penny got
me, and slice the grille open. That felt good.
Inside, I give Derek Awol's distort belt back again -- the pipe itself was
too narrow to change marching order in, really. Derek takes out the sensors
on the only door out of this room -- again, the sensors are on *this* side,
not the other side. Within, there's another laser rifle mounted on the ceiling.
Swivel-mounted, too, just like the defenses in the tunnel. Derek hands me
the belt and opens the door. This laser's in the middle of a bunch of power
conduites. Be a moulten mess if I hit one of those and blow it out. I'll
just have to not miss. [[Skill: 15. Mods: -6 for distance, -4 for size,
+8 for Acc.]] Four shots, right on it! That's the last of the defenses --
after a short trek up this hallway (pause to shoot out a laser that doesn't
have working targeting-bioscanners; I'd have disabled it, but it was booby-trapped
against disarming), we get to several doors. The dust is thick here -- nobody's
been here for about 8 years, probably...
There are some doors which are colored -- purple, blue, red, orange, and
green. Stripes on the floor lead from all the doors in the hall (some un-colored,
numbered ones, as well) to those colored doors. The orange door is a large
mess-hall, with a few food-synthasizers still working, even. The blue and
red rooms are barracks -- thin matresses, narrow cots. Purple looks like
a storage-room, where there's a lot of "ship kit" things -- cheap
jumpsuits, toothbrushes, soap, blankets, etc. Those were all unlocked. The
green room *is* locked -- a very simple lock, really. This seems to be a
first-aid station/primitive sickbay. There are lots of expired drugs on
the shelves -- Quickheal, Soothe, Credaline, and something that isn't a
typical formula. Warren starts up the computer in here, and checks out the
records. A *lot* of records -- hundreds. Treatments for industrial-like
accidents, mostly. No names, just alphanumeric designations. They all start
with "Dosed [date]". I go and gather the "unknown" drug
containers from the locked shelves and put them in a pile in a corner and
shoot them with my laser. I don't bother to explain why, even when Cyrus
and Derek come in because they heard the laser.
All the records ends with "Put into storage," and a date that's
about 8 years old -- all were probably stored within a week.
The first locked door is the chem-processing plant. The computer in here
is still working, but wants a password. (We debated turning it on. Warren
said, "What could possibly happen?") We turn it off again. Next
door (also double-doors into the chem-plant) is the feedstock-storage room.
Door after that (again, with double-doors into feedstock-storage) is final-product-storage.
I scan for the "unknown" compound that was in the medbay. I mark
the crates that contain it with a skull and crossbones, and start shoving
them off to one side to blow up later or something. Cyrus asks why I'm marking
those crates. I say, "Because they're dangerous." He scans them.//
Cyrus sends the scans to Etalon -- Etalon finds them in the list of "most
proscribed drugs" -- Zombie drug. Seriously illegal. The formula is
known, but the recipe is not released. An expert biochemist could probably
recreate it, though. The local flora (which Etalon has noted seems to have
been cultivated for certain species in this area; some of the vines are
*far* more represented than they should be) contains chemicals which look
like they might be raw materials for several of the illegal drugs that are
there -- including Zombie drug. Drug-bases are usually set up near a natural
source. The other drugs we found are some addictive hypnotics, random "recreational"
pharmacuticals, and some pheramone spray-type inhalents. Cyrus tells the
others -- *not* Silver -- about this via private implant-comm channels.
//The last door, also connected to the storage-place, leads to a hallway
with a short cargo-train in it. A laser rotates towards the door, tries
to fire, and blows itself up. The other automated defenses in this place
are totally dead. At the entryway, there's about 100 freeze tubes -- most
still working. Some are broken, where rocks fell on them near the entryway
(bay doors are closed), and those have skeletons. There's also a shot-up
little courier-ship -- one-person ship, from an Irari line. The warp engines
are gone, and it looks like some *clueless* person was trying to turn a
hypercomm into a hyperdrive. There's still a fusion plant on board, shut
down, and thusters. There's some processing equipment near the door, but
the breathers that the slaves would have used to go outside were probably
buried in the rockslide.
I find a hatchway that leads up -- the little maintanence tunnel seems to
be partly caved in, though, and the rocks that did it look like they'd been
hit with ship-weapons! Hm. The fission reactor had some power-conduites
leading *up*, and they were pretty heavy-duty. Obviously there were some
other automated defenses around? And somebody took them out and *caused*
the rock-slide? And then wanted some *other* ship to come in and do the
work?!? Gee, I wonder if they intend to ambush us on the ground or wait
until we've taken off. At least we can see them eight hours out, or so.
Assuming that the Irari-drive ship we saw doesn't have some kind of miracle-drive
on it, of course. If we're careful, we ought to have plenty of time to salvage
and scram, but we'll have to keep an eye on the sensors.
Etalon is brought in, and the freeze tubes are moved back down the tunnel
-- I'm going to take one of the high-explosive warheads from a missile and
use one of my detonators to try and blow the rockslide away so we can unload
everything. Derek gets the warhead out. I take off and get just *exactly*
in position [roll 5] and fire. [roll 18] It vaporizes just the *wrong* rock,
and it slides around again! ARGH! I don't want to talk about this. [[Inside,
rocks come rumbling down near the entry-way, smashing up the captured ship
some more, so it's no longer at all air-tight. Didn't break anything else
*too* badly, though.]]
Figure out where the bomb'll have to go *now*. Laser *that*. Works fine
this time. Set up a detonator and go trek off (Derek carrying the warhead
in his exoskeleton vacc-suit, since it's *heavy*), set up the thing, trek
back, push the button. The detonator goes ({little boom}), but doesn't set
off the explosive. Wonderful. I set up a smaller explosive with some of
my Plastex, and another detonator. Derek looks it over (it's just a fragging
hobby for me!), and says that it won't work -- detonator's not wired up
correctly. That gets fixed. We go place *this* one. We get back to the ship,
set it off. *BOOM*! And the entryway is cleared enough that we can probably
move the stuff around. Awol gets back and lasers the base's doors open.
Now we have to move rocks and pack up those freeze tubes. And keep an eye
out for the pirates, of course. I'm gonna haul the Zombie drug out and fry
it with the ship lasers, along with a lot of the local flora, and maybe
blow the reactor room so that nobody else will want to come back here. Another
rockslide over the door when we leave, maybe.
I wonder where the boss-people's quarters are? And the base's control room?
I'll have to take a look around, I guess. Ah-ha! Slightly concealed door,
eh? Palm-lock, mild boobytrap zap feature (not smoking boots -- more to
keep the slaves from trying to get in, probably); easy disassemble job.
Five rooms -- base-control, three individual bedrooms, one bunk room that
doesn't look like anybody lives there normally.
Warren takes the base-control room and one bedroom, I check out the other
two. First one of mine is smallish, has a table with secret compartment
in it. Can't find the latch, drat it all. Scrawl "MINE" on it
with my pen. Second bedroom is the Base-Boss's room. Has a wall-safe, but
it's booby-trapped pretty good to destroy the contents. Drat. Scrawl a square
around it.
Warren found the base-control room, which has a couple of terminals, and
one of the other rooms, with Thral-style clothing in it.
Well, how are we going to get what's behind that wall-safe? It's a toughy,
and I'd rather not risk vaporizing it. Hm. Ah-ha! Let's wake up the Base-Boss,
and while he's woozy, pretend to be his rescue! Oh, *Et*-a-lon! Finding
the Base-Boss isn't that easy -- have to match genescans with really decayed
samples from his room. Etalon finds him, though, and I convince him that
I'm Quicksilver Hawke, hired by Boss [Common Thral Name] to pile everything
from this base into a ship and skedaddle, and he needs to get the stuff
out of the safe. I tell him it's been a few years, like, nearly 10, things
were confused during the O-war, etc. He insists on a 45% cut. Then, while
I'm helping him to his room, he asks me how much I'm getting -- how *rude*!
I smile, "None of your business." [The correct reply in such a
case.]
He goes and checks in the computer [[checking the dates to see if they jibe
with what Silver told him -- it was a good explanation for why she wouldn't
know any code words, etc.]], making me wait outside the room (but I don't
let the door shut [and she's got her holdout needler palmed in her off-hand]),
then he goes and gets stuff out -- first, a blaster pistol [[thinks about
shooting Silver, decides against it]], then a personal comp and some datadisks.
I escort him back to the med-room, dose him from behind with Soothe [[from
her holdout needler]] (he's allergic to Crediline, we found while we were
defrosting him), and I try to get the password out of him. (Along with his
name -- Morgath.) Oh, well. He mumbles too much. At least we find that the
chemist person knows the password to get into the processing plant...
Okay, he gave us a name, "Francis," and said Francis was human.
Fine. Let's go scan the rooms...
Etalon comes up with two humans which might work, who aren't Z-drug fried
in the head. One of them is male, and has a better match. The other is female,
and has an iffy match. Wake up the guy.
The guy, it turns out, is Harold Anderson, a journalist. He's pretty clear-headed
for someone who's been being microdosed with Z-drug [[causes Slave Mentality,
basically, but overdosing to full chem-brainburn is easy]] and then frozen
for all these years. He even has some dream-memories, of being with this
dark-haired woman, and in her room, which is the room with the androgynous-to-male
closet...
Hm. Well, let Warren babysit this guy (who is, by the way, absolutely gorgeous)
and let's check the females. One's blond, the other dark-haired, both show
signs of micro-doses. Well, let's defrost dark-hair first.
"Are you Francis?" I ask as she wakes up. "I -- I don't remember!"
she says. She's acting really dumb. Eventually, we get out of her that she
was a stewardess on a passenger-transport from New Garavar to Thral, and
they'd docked, and she doesn't remember anything beyond leaving her room
and heading for a bar with the rest of the crew-types, and nightmares of
being grabbed at. Her name is Sally something-she-doesn't-remember. One
flaw in all this -- she's pretty plain (average looking) and slow to be
a stewardess... Over implant comm, I ask Etalon if she's Cred-allergic.
She's not. I tell Etalon to go get some Crediline. He's going to try and
give it to her, but she's being really balky about it. So I roll my eyes
and zap *her* from behind with Soothe, then dose her with the Cred. Her
name is Francis Weston [[or something like that]], and she's the chemist,
and she goes and downloads the drug-compound data into my comp, then wipes
the Z-drug data as I ask. Then I say, "Okay, time to get you back to
your freeze tube -- don't want anybody knowing that you're not one of the
prisoners here, right?" She agrees dreamily, smiling at how clever
she was...
Definitely clever, yes. She's gonna be *soooooo* annoyed when she wakes
up in custody... Mark her name on her freeze tube. Put a package each of
Z-drug in the "personal items" drawer of her and Morgath's freeze
tubes. Hm. Could look for the Thral security fellow... Get into the security
logs... Hey! Where'd Harold wander off to?
Harold'd wanted to borrow somebody's comp -- mine's probably got the best
security, so I partitioned off a little space and let him wander around
and take notes on his great story. I ping my comp with my implant comm and
dicover Harold in the security-station/base-operations room. He's gotten
hold of one of the tool kits lying around and physically hacked past the
security systems on the security station. He's busy taking notes for his
story. I guess we don't have to find and unfreeze the security-Thral after
all.
So we load everything up and then we decide that we want to disassemble
the little ship that we found in here. It doesn't have any integrity left,
or FTL drives, but it's got a fusion plant, contragrav, and thrusters, which
are all valuable. Awol takes the Albatross up (I'd landed it in the quasi-clearing
in front of the base's main door, and did so quite well, might I add), and
after I pack my Plastex in around the fission reactor and set its timer,
I get the little craft out the door. I scrape it up some getting out of
the base, but after that, it's *no* problem -- just have to compensate for
the bad left thrusters by setting it in a slow spin. Once it's in orbit,
we can start disassembling it.
However, once we're starting that, we get annoying news -- our "friends"
over in the next system over are headed this way. We don't want to chance
that they're pirates, so we'll just unload the fusion plant (the most valuable
part of this ship) and leave it in orbit -- if they've only got TL11 sensors,
we'll be out of their range in just a couple of hours or less.
One of the freeze-tube occupants is having problems, Etalon notices, and
he's going to have to defrost the rather shot-up Sparrial inside and patch
him up some. He makes a big deal out of this, so I volunteer to hang around
and protect him from being robbed blind. Derek and Awol are helping our
new engineer chop the shot-up ship into pieces big enough to just stow in
the cargo hold.
Etalon's letting the Spari wake up, and he's going sniff, sniff, and then
he looks at *me* and says, "Spi'fire?" So I go, "Huh?"
And he mumbles, "Spi'fire? No, y're na' Cori..." I ask Etalon,
"Are you sure he's okay? Maybe you should give him some Purge."
Then this battered Sparrial looks at me and says, pleased, "Li'le Spitfire!"
So I roll my eyes and say, in Sparrial, "[...]" And he says, "Stefanie?"
And I say, "**WHAT**?" And he says, "Stef'nie?" So I
try to tell him, in Sparrial, "I... don't know what you're talking
about," with a tone of voice that's *supposed* to get him to agree
with me till I can stuff Etalon out the door.
Meanwhile, Etalon has been looking at his little charts and things and *he*
says that I'm bothering the Sparrial, and every time he looks at me, he's
getting grief or fear surges of some kind. Etalon wants to put the Sparrial
under with Morphazine. I ask him, in Sparrial, "The doctor wants to
give you some Morphazine -- do you want that?" And he says, "No!"
Etalon is finally talked into being a good little Irari and going away and
not pestering the Sparrial with questions about the base.
We go and hide near the edge of the system. The other ship arrives and scans
the planet, then lands near to where *we* had landed. A couple hours later,
they take off at warp *7*-ish, on a straight-line for Irar (closest comm-nets).
They're lighter, too. We go scan and find that they dropped off a 100-mw
fusion plant, a couple of spare E-cells, and a couple of Parvan work-bots,
modified to take standard E-cells. The 'bots are working on cleaning up
the area. Very interesting. (Our journalist is poking around up here too,
getting on the way on the bridge and looking over everybody's shoulders.
No harm in it -- I'm half-wondering if he's some brand of spook, from the
way he took apart that security station.)
Deciding that we don't have enough time to waste (if the ship only wants
to get in comm-range, it won't take them long to come back, and we shouldn't
be trying to salvage their stuff when they get here -- besides the chance
that they're legit), we head for Sparrion, trying to decide what to do with
all the people in freeze...//
**Jan 2, 156**
//When we get in range of Sparrion, I put out on the Sparrial nets [alt.fan.vigillante...]
about the base, roughly what we found there, and that somebody else is setting
up shop there. We pass a few stealthed Sparrial scouts....
Etalon complains that Looe wasn't very helpful when he woke up, would only
talk to me, and is even less helpful now. Etalon keeps asking Looe about
his memories, you see, and getting told, roughly, "None of your business."
We go hunting data on the security Thral -- turns out there are *TWO* Thrals
who haven't been dosed at all with Zombie drug! One male, one female. We
decide to send gene-scans in and see if any of our people -- the Base Boss,
Francis, and these two, are wanted for questioning. The Base Boss isn't
wanted for anything; Francis, graduated with degree in biochem from NG University,
questioned on some things, never convicted; male Thral, some kind of bodyguard,
deported when he killed somebody in a firefight; and the female Thral is
Fylpeth [lit. "Panther (equiv) who walks in shadows"], wanted
for questioning in regards to any number of thefts -- art, medical, etc.
Anything small and portable and very, very valuable.
Obviously "ShadowCat" isn't likely to be the security Thral --
so we wake up the other one. He's good. He doesn't give me any data under
Soothe. (And he's Cred-allergic.) Well, I'm pretty sure he's the baddie,
so we're not going to give him up till we get to New Garavar.
I have Warren look up our friend Howard as well -- he's got some rather...
dramatic (even melodramatic) works, from a while back. Specializes in covering
crime-rings, organized crime, etc., rather closely.//
**Jan 3, 156**
//When we get to Sparrion, Warren (having been unable to convince the doctor
to play "swap freeze tubes so the best ones are empty") talks
to the various embassies there -- gives the Thrals all their freeze-tube
Zombies, and we'll hand over their partial-dose walking. Then he calls up
the Irari and Unar embassies, gives them their Zombies, and mentions that
the Thrals will probably have Zombies for sale as well. We put pictures
and gene-scans out on the Nets of the Sparrials, looking for their relatives.
Then Warren contacts the NG embassy. They're rather confused. Finally they
agree to pay us a freeze-rates to ship them and the criminals to New Garavar,
as well as an official so that the criminals will be "in custody."
Howard Anderson wanders off-ship here and vanishes for a while.//
**Jan 5, 156**
//Warren's sold off the jigsaw ship -- but not the chem-plant, since that
was impounded as evidence.
Howard shows back up, carrying some suitcases. "Tired of using the
communal toothbrush?" I ask. "Yeah," he replies. Then he
asks, "Okay, so when do we leave?" Our engineer, Gaimen "Wrench"
Jrill, passing by, asks "Who's this 'we'? Has he paid us?" Howard
says it's been arranged. "By...?" we ask. "The Embassy."
I start nodding, eyes closed. "Okay, let's see the ID," I say.
He shows a NGIA card, "Michael Jarvith" [{sp?}]. I ask, "So,
do you want to be called Howard or Michael or Mike?" He says that Mike
is okay -- Howard doesn't exist anymore.
We take our new spook's bags to his room.//
**Jan 6, 156**
//Mike/Howard talks to us a lot, about what we did, etc. He grumbles that
I destroyed the evidence of the Zombie Drug, save for a few samples, and
those samples I put into the "personal items" section of the freeze
tubes containing Francis and the base-boss. I explain that I didn't trust
the stuff to anybody's hands -- especially not Warren's; he'd sell his own
grandmother -- and I wasn't trying to frame anybody, I just wanted to have
the proof kept with the criminals.
I'm going to have to testify to all this at the trial. Probably under Credaline.
Joy. I reluctantly agree, after Mike points out that my pilot's license
might encounter problems if I don't testify.
I make a low-key pass at Mike -- tell him that he can take me up on it anytime
before we dock at New Garavar. He asks if I'm trying to bribe him. I say,
"Nope, I just felt like it. I wouldn't expect it to be anything but
strictly casual." Besides, I don't want to break my run of spooks --
it would be bad luck.
He says he'll think about it, he's got a lot of catching up to do; I tell
him that when he wants to take a break...//
**Jan 7, 156**
//Mike's talking to everybody on the ship, arranging for depositions, etc.
[much later]
We're going to be docking mid-day tomorrow, so Mike decides to take me up
on my offer. He's sweet.//
**Jan 8, 156**
//Reach New Garavar.
Trial: Silver & others testify under Credaline (a specific set of questions);
the two Thrals and Francis, since nobody from Thral wants them extradited,
are sentenced to brainwipe and rehab. The Thrals take this stoically enough,
but Francis breaks down into hysterics.
Warren sees Silver and Penny, in a Lady
Erica Original outfit, going to one of the classy night-clubs that he's
hanging out in. Gaimen also notices the pair hanging around together. Derek
is asked about Silver's girlfriend. "That attractive redhead."
(Copper-red, actually...) They don't seem to ask Silver about this person
she's been seeing several days -- and shoreleaves! -- in a row, however.]]
**Feb 1, 156**
[leaving for next run]
On to Kintara, Unar (stay on the ship!) and various little fringie stations.
**Mar 15, 156**
//There is boredom, and there is boredom. Boredom is a good thing...
We're at Cardiff Station -- out about 12pc from Unar, within comm-relay
range, mining station for all the rockrats in the area, about 5,000 people
on it, and a few hundred rockrat types. We're in holding patterns with a
couple of 1,000cy freighters, waiting for this big 10,000cy ore-hauler to
dock. Then its thrusters fail [Warren spotted the powerplant flaring and
failing on sensors just an instant before this] -- on final approach! And
it's full of ore! I can't figure any way to ram it away from the station
before it hits.
Slow motion destruction, and some idiot turns the station the *wrong* way,
so instead of just smashing through the lower part of the station, it's
going to go through the station's Engineering and Life Support area. Smashes
up the *fission* power-plant. Oh, stars, Campbell's Cream of Spacer for
that freighter's crew. Finally it comes to rest, and everybody gets told
to go dock up in the habitat area and start joining up rescue crews (if
you can do free fall), repair crews (if you're a techie), or triage spots
(if you're medical). The place is kinda "hot" from all the fission
wreckage (not to mention that a blast of the radioactive stuff got blown
through the air-system when the freighter crashed through there, just before
they could shut everything down)...
So I'm on a rescue team, as are Derek and Awol. Derek gets himself hit with
a beam, but he's in his exoskeletal vacc-suit, so it doesn't hurt him. I
just don't get hit. I do a lot of wriggling through wreckage to find people,
though.
In the middle of all this, guess who calls *Warren*? *JOANNA*! That idiot
Alardinite girl. She's in hysterics, of course. Apparetly her little sister
is off somewhere -- probably helping the medicos. Joanna wants to come to
the ship so that she won't get radiation poisoning and die. Warren's having
some problems dealing with all the dead and wounded we're dragging out,
so he goes back to the ship to meet her. Discovers that the station authorities
have set a guard on the ship and aren't letting anyone but ship-crew onto
their ships. No passengers. (No selling escape-space to the highest bidders,
is what they really mean.) Even Joanna herself can't talk her way past the
two guys. (And with Sex Appeal 20, that takes some doing!)
Finally, after about four hours, we've gotten what we think's all the survivors.
Can't scan any more, and with the rads coming out of all the mess... Campbell's
Cream of Glow-In-The-Dark Spacer. I do a last pass through some of the areas,
tag a couple of dead bodies for later retrieval, but they're pinned and
irradiated, so braintapes probably couldn't be taken even if I worked at
getting them out. Stars...
When all the rescue parties are out, they blow the lower section of the
station away, so we're not all next to the rads getting our genes curdled.
They'll sort through the mess later. I crawl off and think hard about using
the comm. Turns out that while the local comm is busy-busy-busy (calling
for help -- give 'em another 20 hours), we can use our Artemis comm to boost
through to the Artemis relay up to Parva without tying up the lines...
I decide to be selfish and curl up in a corner. //
While Silver zonks out, there are other problems -- like the lack of a Life
Support area big enough to handle all the survivors. The freeze tubes, automed,
and other medical stuff have already been commendeered by Cardiff Station.
They have some emergency life-support, powered by fuel cells, but not enough...
Awol's guest player (Steven Sharp) turns out to know much about fuel-cells...
With enough power -- and Gaimen can cannabilize the Albatross' particle
beam to run 150 MW *into* the station, for this -- the fuel-cells can provide
enough oxygen!
Cooling is another problem -- sending some rockrat mining ships out to catch
a comet, though, and bring it back in chunks, keeps the edge off the heat
long enough for the emergency rescue ship to arrive.
**Mar 16, 156**
//Amazingly, we didn't have to pick martyrs for the life-support problem.
Good thing...
I don't know if Parvari is going to come out of shock anytime soon, though
-- his precious ship is kind of taken apart here and there...//
[On to...?]