Date: March 3, 2012
Game date: November 11th, EY217
Location: Providence system, Beck
Previous events: deciding to make the cultural re-exchange early
Once Jillian reads the fine print and finds that the hull paint is not just glittery but also fluorescent she's more than sold. She buys enough to cover the whole ship and then some and has it delivered to the shipyard, brimming with ideas the whole time. She passes the rest of the afternoon sketching at home and waiting to tell Malcolm and Volkova the exciting news about the ship's upcoming paint job. When they walk through the front door Jillian immediately blurts out her purchase and ideas. Malcolm is cautiously optimistic about it; perhaps his therapy is working after all.
Dinner that night is leftovers and there's a bit of talk about what to do about food now that Bishop's gone. No one else is a very good cook but they've been on ships or in industrial settings long enough that they're all used to at least occasionally eating reconstituted freeze-dried food and gnawing on meals that came vacuum-packed.
Their meal is disturbed by a Detective Mumbly who has come to take a look at their safe. His manner matches his name and he pokes around the safe for a while with a lens and tries to get fingerprints but to no avail. Whoever opened it was a real pro who didn't leave any clues. This isn't much of a surprise to the gang and they take advantage to ask him exactly what the law is like regarding how much force one can legally bring to bear on intruders. Beck has a general "your home is your castle" set of laws and lethal force is fine, especially if the trespasser gets at least one warning. They also ask him if there have been a lot of break-ins in the neighbourhood lately but they're the only ones in a while; the bigger problem by far is vandalism by the unruly children around here.
The next day Jillian decides that she's going to track down this Sly Fox person that has been a minor obsession since she started seeing those notes starting about eighteen months ago. If she can gain access to the records of the ship landings and departures at the Mechanicville spaceport and correlate those with the dates of Sly Fox's notes -- which she has been keeping track of -- she should be able to work out which craft the mysterious navigator has been shipping out on. She and Volkova walk to the spaceport together in the morning to check this out after making a bit of a show at the door of Bishop supposedly staying home just in case anyone's watching. On the way they talk about recent events and what the future might bring.
Malcolm leaves the house on foot as well but goes his own way, ending up at a Selden auto and motorcycle dealership where he purchases a Selden Goshawk street bike and spends the several hours before his therapy session tearing about on the highways around town. It's a pricey bit of DIY therapy but he enjoys himself thoroughly.
Jillian and Volkova spend hours at the spaceport going through the badly-organized flight records. Volkova eventually has to leave for therapy; Jillian keeps plugging away and by the end of the day she's crossed a few ships off of her list but hasn't narrowed it down too much. It's obvious that the more spaceports she visits the sooner she'll find out who Sly Fox really is.
Therapy is more of the same insistent probing about relationships with parents and parental figures and eventually everyone is home again. Volkova hasn't been doing any work to renew her standard greasy coating and wasn't thinking about sunscreen, as she doesn't usually need it. As a result she's beet red from having been in the harsh Beck sun for so long earlier that day. Without any real food in the house the crew decides to head out to for dinner. There are several pubs, restaurants and bars in town. They decide to visit The Manifold, generally frequented by engineers. The decor is fairly classy, with sequestered booths and dark wood, and the food is definitely above average. No one's feeling like mingling too much and the booths make for an intimate atmosphere. Jillian and Malcolm immediately start drinking a fair bit and once lubricated start talking. Volkova keeps quiet, continuing to eschew alcohol by dint of willpower and letting her crewmates be the ones to open up for once.
Malcolm's revelations wander all over but he begins by telling about his youth growing up as part of the Devereaux Daredevils. It was an extended family with children being raised by the group. Everyone gives him a hard time about being a "carny" but as it turns out show really did have carnival attractions like a freak show and strong man (or woman, depending on who was hired at the time). He wonders aloud if Bishop has written to Whang about the guns they're carrying, making Jillian and Volkova blanch. He knows that everyone accuses Bishop about not thinking but he thinks that it's a general problem with the group and brings up their "rescue" of Emily Varnsen and Volkova attacking Alexei Rusanov as examples. His final revelation is that he's had relationships, including one very serious one that he refuses to go into details about and more than a few while he and Jillian have been flying together. This surprises everyone: to all appearances he's been completely celibate the whole time!
Jillian's revelations are more detailed; it seems like she's wanted to get this off of her chest for a while and with the Grob and news about the D'vor and having downed copious amounts of alcohol she's finally ready to tell the tale of her past. She was married back in Zartosht, her home cluster. It was an arranged marriage but she didn't mind, finding her new husband Rashid to be exciting and handsome at first. As time wore on he revealed himself to be smoking too much hashish and to be both erratic and dangerous. She left him behind when she left the cluster.
Malcolm brings up his suspicion that she was more than just the bit player in the Black Rose Syndicate and Jillian's drunk enough to admit that he's right: her real name is Nikoo Zandi and she is the daughter of Hassan "The Scimitar" Zandi, the Syndicate's second-in-command of the eastern continent of the planet Persepolis! Her arranged marriage was to the eldest son of her father's boss. She was being groomed to take her place in the upper echelons of the Syndicate before she realized exactly what that meant and her morals forced her to flee. Once she realizes what she's said she begs the others not to tell Bishop, terrified that he'll end up bringing it up in a letter to Whang. The others agree without hesitating.
Volkova has long ago freely admitted to her past and doesn't have anything more to add this night. She does enjoy finding out all this information and is proud that she's managed to resist the temptation of all the alcohol that's been flowing at the table.
By the time The Manifold closes Jillian and Malcolm are well and truly hammered. Malcolm's honestly in no shape to drive safely but Mechanicville is a small place and he keeps the speed down. In the end they make it to the house in one piece just in time for Jillian to throw up on the lawn as she stumbles drunkenly out of the minibus. Some of the neighbourhood children start mocking her for this -- what are they doing out at four in the morning? -- but Volkova scares them off. She seems to have a frightening reputation among them, hearing them refer to her as "The Brute" to each other.
Early the next afternoon Jillian wakes up with a massive hangover. Malcolm has a smaller one but any hangover is too much hangover. He manages to whip up some of his anti-hangover tea mixture that somehow works once again. It's not that the two of them aren't in pain but its intensity has dropped several levels. Jillian is worried about what the others think of her now but Malcolm reassures her that it's fine. He doesn't bring up the nightmares of her family killing everyone on the Steel Hummingbird that plagued him that night.
In another show of opening up Malcolm shows Jillian a photo of his ex Lilith. He was quite in love with her but it ended badly and that was part of why he ended up leaving the Daredevils. He sadly puts the photo away and then without another mention of it drives himself and Volkova to therapy.
Alone in the house Jillian calls the message centre. The shipyard has called; apparently Hoax has pressured them to speed up the work and it should be done a week earlier than expected, on the 19th. Good news for the wrong reasons. Hopefully Bishop's mission is going well.
Jillian spends the rest of her time alone finishing up her ideas for the ship's new paint job now that she has sparkly, fluorescent paint at her disposal. The idea is to have the viewer think that the Hummingbird is in water; from below it would be like looking up under the ocean's surface with a hint of squids up above. From the sides and above it would look like the sun sparkling on the surface of water. The call number would be shaped out of the bodies of several aquatic creatures. She's quite pleased with her idea and when Malcolm and Volkova come home they're amazed. The idea is great and the sketches look really, really good. Perhaps telling everyone about her past has released some massive artistic block or something. Volkova offers to do the actual painting and Jillian happily agrees.
On November 14th, the next day, Volkova is told by her therapist at the end of her session that she's done. Congratulations! As happy as she is to have a clean bill of mental health Volkova is also relieved that she'll now have more time to read the technical manuals on the new space drive; she's been feeling guilty about not having memorized them yet.
While Malcolm and Volkova are at therapy Hoax's Inspectors How and Wen drive up in a black chauffeured car to pay Bishop a visit. Jillian stalls them by telling them that they're on shore leave and he could be anywhere; she's not his keeper. She asks if they know anything about the money that was stolen from their safe but How is stonefaced when she claims to not know anything about it. The inspector demands that Bishop contact them as soon as he's back and the two Inspectors leave.
When all three crewmembers are reunited they agree to keep playing dumb about Bishop. Maybe they can tell Hoax that they're worried that the Varnsens may have done something to him? It would be delicious to have Hoax and the Varnsens at each others' throats.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 13)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 1)