Date: April 14, 2012
Game date: November 22nd, EY217
Location: Providence system, Beck
Previous events: Seo found and lost, a beautiful Hummingbird, big booms at Big Boom
There's still a lot to do back at McNeely station before jumping off to Olberman: Malcolm's mother, the load of toxic waste, Madelyn Allen's investigation into Flint Cardesco... hopefully they can get some work flying someone or something to the station from Beck and make a bit of money. The Resplendent Dragon's crew would also much rather spend the last day or so on this end of the system on the much more interesting McNeely than on dry, dusty Beck and both ships agree to meet at the station; given the disparity in flight speeds the Steel Hummingbird should have a day to get things in order before the slower Dragon shows up.
Jillian does find a quick job on the Job Board: six people are looking to go to McNeely as soon as possible. She calls them and arranges a quick meeting between them, her, and Bishop. They aren't at all dubious characters, being four engineers and two managers that are needed on Limbaugh for a rush job. Bishop negotiates a very good price with them, emphasizing the brand new passenger quarters and the new space drive. He gets the feeling that the money is coming from an expense account and they don't especially care to haggle the price much. That's fine with him and Jillian!
The Hummingbird takes off less than an hour later and the flight to Limbaugh passes without any problems. Bishop is intrigued by one of the managers, a young attractive woman, but manages to keep his various appendages to himself and takes very good and professional care of the passengers. Volkova also makes a good impression on them, aided in no small part by the new space drive; the engineers want to take a look at it and Volkova indulges them. She talks to them more than the rest of the crew combined and has a great time. The new drive also works like a charm, which makes her work all the easier. Jillian largely keeps to herself and begins the base coat of her next art project in the new cargo hold.
Two days later the ship docks at McNeely station and the engineers go their own way, quite happy with their treatment on board. Hopefully the crew will get a positive reputation here! Arrangements and plans have been made during the approach and the crew split up on various tasks once the engineers are gone. Bishop and Jillian go to see the Deccan Driller and Madelyn Allen to find any new information about Flint Cardesco, Malcolm sees his mother, and Volkova examines the barrels of toxic waste.
It's not the most exotic of transport, but Bishop and Jillian take a bus to meet the Deccan Driller at a bar. On the way there, while the bus is stopped to pick up passengers, Jillian idly looks down and notices a face from her past in the adjacent black car: Arman Sahlesi, one of her father's underlings in the Black Rose Syndicate back on Zartosht! She blanches, eyes wide in shock, and quickly presses her face against the window, confirming he's who she thinks he is and managing to get part of the license plate number as the car pulls away.
Bishop notices Jillian's sudden odd behaviour and asks her what's wrong. She passes it off as another dizzy spell, hoping to fool him, and succeeds. Unfortunately he offers his standard treatment: crapbark, a piece of which he just happens to have on him. Neither wanting to admit what's really going on nor to suck on a piece of bark in a bus she opts for the latter, thinking it's the easier choice, and quickly finds out that crapbark is usually made into tea to make the taste relatively palatable: the pure stuff is infinitely more wretched. She slumps in her seat and lets the bark dangle from her mouth as casually as possible, enduring the worst taste that she's ever encountered -- worse than when she was regularly dumpster diving for her meals -- and steadfastly not making eye contact with any of the passengers confused by the chunk of wood half in her mouth.
It feels and tastes like an eternity before the bus reaches their stop and they disembark. As the two of them head into the bar Jillian intentionally lags a little behind Bishop and tries to subtly fling the sodden piece of crapbark into a trash can. Unfortunately for her Bishop turns around at just that moment and catches her in the act. Furious, he yells at her for wasting a hard-to-get piece of medicine but she doesn't stop and quickly strides past him into the bar. He uses a handkerchief to pluck the crapbark out of the trash and places it, wrapped, back in his satchel bag for later use.
Once inside Jillian immediately orders and downs a double shot of strongly liquorice-flavoured alcohol at the bar in an attempt to overwhelm the taste in her mouth. She and Bishop quickly find the Deccan Driller's crew -- Bheki, Zethembe, and Margaret, and Madelyn Allen in a booth in the back and they begin talking. Allen doesn't have much to report and is convinced that word has gotten up the food chain that she's been poking around, as everyone who might know something has suddenly clammed up. If that's the case everyone agrees that there's no reason to keep paying her; accounts are squared and everyone says their farewells before she stalks out of the place, trenchcoat collar turned up and hat pulled low.
Jillian has a few more drinks to decontaminate her palette but not enough to get drunk. With no new clues the only thing to discuss is the possibility of the Telushkin, the gas-extraction platform orbiting Prager that was thought destroyed five years ago, could have something to do with all this. It's a slim chance that Jillian would like to check up on but she and the Hummingbird don't have the time. She starts to work on the Deccan Driller's crew to convince them to go to Prager and see if the Telushkin is indeed still extant. They have a much more robust craft and as a prospecting ship they would no doubt be interested in the minerals -- some of which are no doubt very valuable -- that are ripe for the picking amongst the shattered former moon. Bishop joins in and the two of them find that the Driller's crew is surprisingly easy to manipulate: the manage to not only get the Deccan Driller to agree that it's a good idea but to think that it's their idea. The Hummingbird will pay half the travel cost, cementing this as a good idea in the Drillers' eyes. This will not be a very quick journey; the Deccan Driller is a very slow ship, only a third the speed of the Hummingbird, but Jillian's not in any real hurry to find out about this.
Bishop's in a fine mood on the bus ride back but Jillian's pensive. Why would someone go to any effort to protect Flint Cardesco? His operation couldn't possibly be lucrative enough to make putting any effort into threatening people into silence worthwhile, and if that's the case why would anyone go to the trouble? More troubling, what is Arman Sahlesi doing here?
While the Deccan Driller is being taken advantage of Malcolm visits with his mother in Victoriaville. He thanks her for coming to help but he's no longer in trouble with the law -- for now -- and with the Hummingbird leaving town for an extended time there's no real reason for her to stay on the station. She agrees and the two of them spend some time together as mother and son. Thinking about the gang of strays that they have in the apartment he asks if the Devereaux Daredevils might need any more help; he knows about some people who could possibly use a job. She thanks him but as it turns out they don't have any space at the moment.
Volkova has the least pleasant task of all. She checks out the state of the barrels of toxic waste and is relieved to find that despite the haphazard origin of the barrels themselves nothing's been leaking. The ship is berthed as close to the storage area as possible so after paying the steep storage fee she rents a bipedal cargo loader and lugs the barrels onto the Hummingbird in several trips on a trolley that she pulls behind the loader like a very dangerous child's wagon.
When everyone gets together that evening they share their experiences of the day. Jillian later tells Malcolm and Volkova about seeing Arman Sahlesi; she's still reluctant to let Bishop in on her past and keeps it a secret from him. They all agree to get rid of the toxic waste by dumping it into the sun, something Bishop recommended long ago. They won't be going to Crapworld any time soon and the barrels have been enough of a pricey albatross to make them all itchy to get rid of them. No one wants to fly around with them on board! Jillian plots out the safest nearby place to drop it off without flying all the way to the sun while Volkova works out how to give it a push and have it fly true.
The Resplendent Dragon shows up the morning of the 25th and contacts the Hummingbird. Xao will spread the word about Seo Yee to his business contacts while Neet and Olivia enjoy the cosmopolitan station.
Malcolm decides to spend the day with his mother, seeing as it's the last time that he'll see her for a while. He'll keep her updated on the situation with Flint Cardesco if anything new shows up, of course, and she gives him an updated tour schedule for the Daredevils.
Jillian contacts the Roberta Kirshner on the Eggen Observatory and plans a visit for the 30th of November. She decides to spend the rest of the day tracking down Sly Fox and Bishop and Volkova both decide to help her. After all, the wealth of records in a place as busy as McNeely might well be enough to find out which craft Sly Fox actually ships out on and then Jillian will hopefully stop going on about this. She gets them all access to arrival and departure records and they get to work. Ironically, Jillian ends up not being much help, distracted by seeing Arman Sahlesi the day before. Bishop applies himself to the task and is much more focused. He adds some new ships to the list but strikes far more off it. Volkova also puts in a strong effort and by the end of the day they've managed to narrow it down to two possible ships: the Ashoka or the Deccan Driller! None of them know the first ship but Jillian tries to work out who it could be if it's the Driller. Their navigator, Zethembe, is a pretty funny guy. If only she had a sample of his handwriting...
The Resplendent Dragon and Steel Hummingbird share breakfast in a greasy spoon the next morning and plan. Embarrassed by the toxic waste situation the Hummingbird is vague about why they need to fly to the observatory in such a roundabout way but the Dragon's a slower ship and it doesn't make a difference in terms of timing, so Xao lets the matter drop with a minimum of rolled eyes. They'll all meet at the observatory in four days.
The Hummingbird spends the rest of the 26th flying perpendicularly out of the elliptical. Jillian has planned out a location that will allow the toxic waste to get pulled into the sun without any chance of the planets dragging it off-course or some ship traveling between typical destinations getting pegged by it. Volkova lashes down any loose items in the hold and ties up the barrels and pallets into a single stable mass. Once that's done she works out how she's going to overpressurize the cargo hold so that the whole pile gets sucked out in as straight a line as possible.
Space drives primarily work by reducing the effective mass of the ship by means that aren't understood, allowing very weak thrust to produce great speeds but for some reason not limitless acceleration; there is some speed beyond which no additional force is provided by the drive. No one knows exactly how this works although concepts like variable Reynolds numbers and the presence of a non-Newtonian aether are bandied about at the sorts of conferences that the crew never go to. When the drive is turned off the ship keeps its momentum but with a mass that's suddenly huge in comparison to the relatively weak momentum it slows to a crawl. Objects that leave the ship slow down in a similar fashion, so there must be some extra thrust imparted. Hence the need for overpressurizing and using vented atmosphere to produce thrust.
On the 27th the ship is in position. Malcolm adds a bit of stability to the waste's trajectory by spinning the ship and when the cargo doors are opened and the toxic lump sucked out into space it seems to be on target as far as Jillian's sensors can tell. It will be a good long while before the cargo reaches its target so there's plenty of time for something to go wrong with the process but they're about as confident as they can be. Toxic waste voided, the ship flies off on the three-day long trip to Eggen Observatory.
Approaching the observatory on the 30th, Jillian notices that the Resplendent Dragon is also in sensor range and by the time that the ships are close to each other calculates that both ships will get to the Observatory at the exact same time. There's no way that Malcolm can allow this to happen and kicks in the afterburners to pull away from the Dragon, cutting across their trajectory at fairly close range. It's a dangerous thing to do when they are this near to one another but he's sure that Neet is a good enough pilot to deal with it and -- more importantly -- his hotdogging gets them to Eggen first.
When they've tied themselves up to the choice docking port and entered the station they find that, as with their first visit, the space drive is down and the gravity is off again, the observatory running on emergency power. Roberta Kirshner is waiting for them in her bathrobe and magnetized walker/slipper combination, accompanied by her two assistant researchers, Pramath Desai and Klaus Krause. With the exception of Kirshner everyone's floating, also like last time. The station was watching the approach and Kirshner finds Malcolm's showing off jolly good fun but Pramath is, unsurprisingly, not so amused. Klaus is harder to read.
Volkova immediately takes her leave to help with the space drive and Malcolm, remembering their last trip here, goes to the galley to make some proper tea before that drunk Kieran Hughes pumps some vile week-old simulacrum of the stuff into squeezy bags.
The remainder of the Steel Hummingbird's crew briefly tells Kirshner about what they've been up to since they last met: taking the Aiscapo University researchers to Ingraham, exploring the ruins and meeting the Grob there, Seo travelling with the Iof, Bishop's friendship with the aliens, and the danger of the D'vor. Pramath is derisive about the existence of the Grob and even the interspecies group photos are dismissed as airbrushed fakes. Kirshner is neutral on the matter. Bishop shrugs at the nonbelievers and starts to send the Iof "happy" emotions with the egg, hoping to get them here soon; once they're done here they want to go to Olberman as soon as possible, and their presence will settle the matter pretty decisively.
Jillian also emphasizes what happened with Seo and Kirshner is more than willing to help draw attention to the issue. She works with Rolf Fisher back at Aiscapo University and shares pretty much everyone's negative opinion of Hoax so she doesn't need much convincing to lend her aid.
Down at the space drive Volkova offers her help to a grateful Jörg Bauer, who remembers how helpful she was last time. When they get to talking about the decrepit state of the drive she offers to get some parts from the Hummingbird -- parts that were removed from the People's Freedom back in Aiscapo, as it turns out -- that will help to keep the place running a bit longer. He remembers her "hitting" approach to repairs and asks her about it. She agrees to sit down and tell him more details regarding her technique later.
By now the Resplendent Dragon has docked and her crew come on board the observatory. Neet is understandably and predictably annoyed with Malcolm's reckless flying behaviour but Jillian's prepared and proffers him a bottle of wine that she's brought with her; his emotions are somewhat mollified by the gift. Kirshner calls her staff on the intercom to assemble so they can make proper introductions. Five of the seven are available: Jörg is still working on the space drive with Volkova and Ester Weiß is off flying the shuttle on a supply run, but everyone else gets introduced. The Hummingbird's crew has met pretty much all of them already but one notable exception is Claudia Schmitz, a young attractive technician that they didn't see last time. She's obviously attracted to Bishop and starts to openly flirt with him. He's a little apprehensive about this, especially with Olivia standing right next to him, but Olivia just seems to find the whole thing amusing.
When the Resplendent Dragon's crew also vouches for the existence and friendliness of the Grob Kirshner finally seems more or less convinced, though Pramath remains skeptical. At the Hummingbird's urging the sensors and comms of the observatory are taken offline to keep official records of the interactions between the crews and the Iof blank once it shows up. Those who have spent time with the Grob describe their experiences in more detail, telling Kirshner and those who would listen everything they know about aliens both peaceful and malign.
The exposition takes some time and before it's completely done strange sensations wash over everyone, feelings that the Dragon's and Hummingbird's crews know. Sure enough, the Iof can be seen out one of the windows.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 13)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 1)