IF YOU'RE PLAYING IN THIS GAME, DON'T READ THIS!
(This goes for Judd, John Moore, Vince, Mike, and anybody else who has
played or might play... Go read the Albatross logs!)
[Back to Gaming War Stories]
[Back to March - April]
**May 1, 155**
On board is Etalon, the new Irari medic type, who wants to get genetic scans
of everyone and study the effects of warp drives on genetics. Forget *that*
one. My genes stay unstudied, thank-you-very-much. We also have passengers
-- Dr. Sydney Hill and two grad students, Mitsui Korvanoff and Paul Taylor.
Dr. Hill. Yeesh. I drop a brief note to Mom about it. Turns out that she
smuggled him onto a Thral-claimed world to do some xenoarcheology stuff
a while back (and did some entertaining maneuvers when a Thral ship discovered
them on the way out). And of *course* he was paying his way partly in "barter."
I really must acquire a comprehensive list of Mom's memorable snuggle-partners.
We are going to be toting a little cargo around, and taking Hill down to
look at various planets down FAR TOO NEAR KAA-SPACE FOR MY LIKING. But he
is paying A Lot, and Parvari needs the cash to pay us... *sigh* Hill is
on this ship because Parvari is cheap, and Parvari has Artemis sensors.
At least we will be able to see the Kaa coming *long* before they can notice
us.
Warren talks Dr. Hill into a "rent-a-missile" trick with a couple
of antimatter missiles. Hmmm... Those are not cheap. He's got more money
than just a grant... The Kaa have been quiet lately -- too quiet? Probably.
I wonder if we're supposed to be sort-of scanning the border with our spiffy
sensors, as well as looking for Stalker Precursor bases?
When we look up the grad students, Taylor has a sparse record -- former
scout, he was; this is his second degree. Kelly also informs me, later,
that Taylor is a powerful telepath-type -- she wanted to get an emotion
reading from him, and didn't get past his shield very much... [[And then
he started avoiding her...]]
**May 3, 155**
Nonetheless, he and Hill are both cute (Mitsui wants to kill me -- *she*
is ga-ga over Hill, and does *not* appreciate my questioning leer at *her*,
either), and they will both flirt with me, and I am having a ball. I have
a Quicksilver persona well-established, for when I'm *close* to Taylor.
Three months of these passengers? We'll let Taylor hang a week, at least.
"Mitsy" and I get into some cat-fights, of course, which I think
are quite amusing, even if Parvari *does* tell me not to harass the paying
customers. I am not doing that, of course, since "Mittens" is
only a grad student. Taylor is a spook, and is probably the reason we got
the cash for the missiles. I have no proof, of course, since I don't want
to break cover to bug the passenger cabin, and it doesn't really matter
to me anyway: he's not likely to be Ungodly.
Mittens (Dr. Hill calls her "Mitsy" and I cannot imagine how she
thinks this is anything but a Bad Sign) also thinks that Taylor is (like
me) far too free with who he sleeps around with. (It's probably because
he didn't make a pass at her.) Well, Taylor allegedly used to be a scout,
and spacers usually make the most of things. Besides, he's niiiiiiice.
I told Mittens that if she could get Hill to quit calling her "Mitsy,"
I'd keep my hands off him. He quit for the rest of the afternoon, but that
did not last.
Dr. Hill has a silly hat he wears all the time, which is great fun to swipe
and wear oneself -- I dropped it on Mitten's head once, just to see what
she'd do if I, the hated evil pilot, put her beloved's hat on her. It's
too big for her.
Mittens and I had a little astrogation contest -- she did some very impressive
stuff. I won anyway, but I do not want to repeat that because I am not sure
how well I'd do on another go-around. She's good with the computer, and
delving up stuff -- not so good as the White Lady, I very much suspect,
but certainly a proto-version.
If all I have left is this "Living Legend" for a persona, plus
whatever I can make myself, then I had fragging well better be able to live
up to my reputation -- outfly, outbrawl, and outnavigate anything in known
space. If Mother could be everything *she* was, all at once, then surely
I can be Quicksilver alone, even if I am but her Shadow....
**May 20, 155**
We let off several orbital drones to scan planets -- some of the stuff,
Warren thinks (and which Taylor did *not* talk about), would also scan well
for hidden bases and things like hyperdrive stuff and other strategically
useful things.
Finally we find a Stalker base -- with a flat airfield that hasn't been
disturbed for a long time.
However, when the inside of the base is examined, there have been some relatively
recent *repairs* made...
That is getting ahead of myself. We find the base -- Taylor appears on the
bridge to get some better scans after we've released the drone. Dr. Hill
and Mittens show up soon after. (Mittens and I have some words, of course,
and T'Kik cuts the grav -- I, Taylor, and Dr. Hill do well, of course, while
Mittens shows that she is obviously not a spacer; at least she didn't make
a mess, and she landed just fine when the grav came back on.)
I land pretty close to the base's opening. Dirk gets out with Awol and looks
around. A bunch of squirrel things throw stuff at him, and a bear-like thing
is watching from a ways away. Dirk shoots his blaster at the squirrel-things
and we discover that the clumps of trees are highly flammable. Dirk seems
to be unhurt, though he got knocked down.
Etalon (Et-a-lyn) declares that there is something plague-like out there,
and we will have to undergo decontamination for 20 or so minutes before
we get back on the ship. Ah, well. The passengers all get off, and so does
Warren. Awol heads into the base after swiping Dr. Hill's silly hat without
him noticing (Hill asks for it back). Awol finds a nest of little "cute"
scalies, and a mama scaly squeaking at him from a little ways away.
But it seems safe enough and everyone goes in. This is where we discover
that the base has suffered from some repairs by an unknown agency. Taylor
seems interested in this. Hill, Dirk, and Mittens go deeper into the base,
and Taylor and Awol head another direction.
Hill, Dirk, and Mittens run across a fire-spitting dragon. It does not eat
Mittens, which would have killed it instantly, but instead spits fire at
Dirk and gets its head vaporized in return.
Besides the Cerulian Death Plague, there are far too many scalies around
for my tastes and I am very glad I've stayed on the ship.
Dirk manages to land his exoskeleton in the floor, and T'kik has to send
a drone to help him out.
Kelly wanders down a while later, when they've found apparent signs of a
human ... cast-away? Who knows. He'd patched up the reactor, apparently,
and lived there for a while. And then he left, Kelly says, doing some of
her witch-stuff. Says he felt happy about something and then she doesn't
sense him any more.
Later in the day, a few things of interest occur. 1: Etalon discovers that,
silly him, the Cerulian Death Plague isn't here after all. 2: a ship with
a few Unars and a battered human arrives. One of the Unars is *also* a xenoarcheolgist.
The human (and some of the Unars) go poking around, and Kelly goes and pokes
around in the poor fellow's head, and finds that he's *looking for something
he left there* [[when he was hiding from a Kaa ship or something]]. So Kelly
goes and finds the spot, and determines that one of the scalies maybe dragged
the thing away. So we go scanning. And we find something!
It's in a scaly-den, of course. Derek/Dirk and T'kik manage to retrieve
the things, which turn out to be ceramic plates. (Dirk got "active"
when the den's resident mom-scaly flamed him; the kid-scalies just wanted
to play with him. YUCK!) While there's some debating about whether or not
we're going to tell anybody about them, Mitsui and Hill start studying them
sixteen ways from sunday...
[[Derek goes out hunting with the Unar captain, they find a scaly critter
which seems rather friendly to the Unar.]]
[[Summary: Mitsy finds a starmap. We go there. Jackpot -- several Stalker
bases, in very good repair. Also Kaa. Kaa are shot down, killed, etc. The
human fellow who came with the Unars tries to say that the Kaa surrender-signal
was a "fight to the death" signal, but we convince the Unar captain
to cease fire and let the Kaa shuttle land -- then we blow their drives
after the Kaa exit. We find the original Kaa base, with some surviving Kaa
(who get stunned) and a couple of Kaa slaves. One human, Jacque St. John
(telepath and healer), and one Thral, Warrik (bad- tempered). Jacque gets
along quite well with Kelly. Warrik takes apart a Kaa prisoner while Derek
is on the surface playing bodyguard. (Silver lets Warrik do so, though insists
that he clean up afterwards.) Mitsy and Silver go investigating the various
other bases. They find one that's severely working -- when Mitsy tries to
turn on the lights, it starts up a solar-tap. And then little satellites
around the gas-giant in the system start up solar taps. And they're building
up power... There's also a nice holo-pic of a place in the other galactic
arm.... About 7000 parsecs away or so. Kelly finds out that there's an AI
in this place, and contacts it before the stargate (!!) has a chance to
materialize. But not before it knocks the Kaa ship out of hyperspace (!!).
Kelly says something that makes the thing declare that it's going to shut
down and it wants everyone out of the base. It gives Kelly something, and
asks her to give the something to any other operant Stalker bases or live
Stalkers she finds. [It D/Ls a copy of itself into a small cube of living
metal computer.] Kelly makes the mistake of saying that it gave her something,
and gets badgered. The spook tries to pick the lock (Silver'd set up a bug
to monitor the outside hall, and got a pic of him doing so), etc. Finally
Kelly says she threw it out the airlock, but the records only show T'kik's
tampering. So Kelly contacts the thing, and it makes a dupilcate of itself,
and Kelly goes and opens the airlock door at 2am, and puts the "duplicate"
{actually a game, and *not* of living metal} in, and pretends that she was
just an ignorant savage and didn't cycle the lock properly. So Taylor recovers
it a bit later. And Kelly says that she threw it out the airlock again (as
a "last request"), and Taylor checks the records and *backs her
story*, and he and Hill start discussing the search pattern required to
retrieve it.]]
[On to August - September]