Session 1: April 18, 2010
In-game date: August 1, EY217
Events: Collisions in space, bureaucracy, inadvertent condiment purchases
The Steel Hummingbird is on its way to The Ashram, the space station that orbits Vishnu-3 (Shiva). Its cargo is a load of piping for Shiva's eternal water supply issues. Not the most exotic of cargo, but enough to pay for fuel for a month and then some. Malcolm is piloting, and the only person on the bridge doing anything necessary. Volkova is also present, but smoking, or at least smoking until reminded by the captain, Jillian, that smoking isn't allowed anywhere on the Hummingbird. Jillian is putatively on sensors, but in fact has a large stretched canvas over her console on which she is painting a bear tea party. Bishop is down below, scrubbing away at what he first thought was smear marks on the floor -- likely left by that filthy Volkova -- but which he is now starting to suspect may be some of the captain's preliminary sketches.
What should have been a smooth trip is punctuated by something smashing into the Hummingbird, and it's immediately obvious that this is a serious collision. Malcolm sees the most expensive part of the sensor suite, ripped free, sail off into space. Out of the corner of the windscreen he can see a portion of the ship that ran into them, which seems to be adrift. Volkova is excited to get a chance to perform salvage operations. Bishop reports on the ship's commas that there is a notable crack in the hull where he is and also asks what happened. Malcolm can get the engines to fire after a fashion, but can't do any steering; the ship is effectively a rocket until they can get them fixed. Volkova heads down to engineering to see if there's anything she can do. The mysterious ship that ran into them won't respond to hails, and Malcolm calls The Ashram to get a tow back to the station, where proper repairs can be effected. Jillian is feeling quite guilty over not having actually been using the sensors, but hides it well.
Volkova's method of repairing things seems to mostly consist of hitting them with an oversized wrench that she calls "Khnuta". It's a crude technique but surprisingly effective, with two unintended side effects. The first occurs when Khnuta bounces back off a particularly stubborn plate and strikes Volkova in the eye, causing immediate swelling. Looking around for some eye protection, she finds protective goggles, but they have a large hole with flecks of dried blood in them and the name "Thom" written on the strap. Bishop is able to help Volkova's eye with some worms/maggots (the two differ over what they actually are) that drain much of the fluids in the swollen part of her face. This, like V's banging, is not standard practice, but seems to be the way that medicine is practiced on his home planet of Ubuntu. The second side effect of Volkova's repairs is to widen the crack in the hull. With only two EVA suits for four crew, this is going to be a problem if it widens to the point that they lose significant amounts of atmosphere.
Jillian calls The Ashram to try to speed up the tow back to the station. She's been talking to Leena, the head mechanic there, to make repair arrangements, but when she tries to contact the station proper things don't go so well. No one picks up and she gets lost in a phone tree, possibly having made a purchase of some sort before finally giving up. There is a brief and cramped confab on the bridge, where Malcolm and Jillian are perturbed by the worms surrounding Volkova's eye until Bishop removes them and replaces them with a dark paste made from some ground leaves and herbs. They decide to risk Volkova's repairs, since no one knows when the tow will actually arrive.
While Volkova continues to bang away at the engines with her beloved Khnuta, Bishop thinks that he hears another banging on the hull, coming from outside. It's moving toward the front of the ship, and up on the bridge an EVA-suited figure appears in the window, silently shouting profanities. Jillian and Malcolm recognize the face: it's Xao, the captain of the Resplendent Dragon, another courier in this system. Xao is quickly let in through the airlock, and he immediately assigns blame for the collision to the Steel Hummingbird, who choose to blame him in return. Once the accusations die down, Xao tells them what happened to the Dragon: it was badly damaged by pirates off of Ganga, the dwarf ice planet that is being mined to hydrate Shiva. The Dragon managed to evade the pirates, but their communications were lost and their engines damaged in the fight. Their plan was to fly in the area with all of their lights on and do whatever they could to make themselves visible to even the most rudimentary sensors, and Xao is surprised that the Hummingbird, with its high-quality detection equipment, didn't see them. Jillian is unable to muster enough fake outrage to properly threaten Xao for repair costs, and settles for his crew buying hers a drink. There still being no sign of the tow from The Ashram and Malcolm's attempt to call resulting in him being put on hold to the tune of Bollywood music, a plan is hatched to have the Hummingbird tow the mangled Dragon back to the Ashram once Volkova has the engines repaired. Xao jets back to the Resplendent Dragon in his EVA suit to tell them the plan, and once Volkova has the engines fixed they jet to the Dragon's side.
With the two ships next to each other, Bishop and Xao connect the two with cables, and while they are working on this the tow from The Ashram arrives. Jillian tries to convince the tow driver to tow the Resplendent Dragon instead of the Steel Hummingbird, but he refuses, holding up a copy of the request form to his window. Giving up on trying to get the tow driver to do anything useful, Jillian cancels the request, knowing that there will be a tow cancellation fee to pay. The Ashram station was never this bad before!
As the Steel Hummingbird tows the Resplendent Dragon back to The Ashram, Bishop tries to convince the rest of the crew to force the Resplendent Dragon's crew to pay for a good chunk of the repairs and not just a round of drinks, but is ignored.
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