Play date: May 24, 2014
Game date: October 12, EY218
Location: McNeely Station, Providence
Previous events: Trying to get to Crapworld but Jillian's neuroses keep slowing them down
It's finally time to really head off to Crapworld. Their captain no longer missing in a dumpster and with all the equipment and supplies they came for, the crew of the Steel Hummingbird say goodbye to the Dragons and board their own ship. Malcolm lifts off and they fly towards the jump gate. At nine and a half AUs away it will take them eleven days to get there if they take a mediocre path; since they'll have to wait until the 28th for the gate to open Jillian makes no particular attempt to plot an efficient path. Malcolm and Volkova still do their best to save fuel and minimize wear and tear, though.
With a lot of time on her hand and yet more distress about Xao and her life in general on her mind Jillian spends much of her time on creating art. This time it's an abstract sculpture of a beating heart that she wants to put together with sand that she's somehow manage to squirrel away at some point in the past. Pink dye dissolved in solvent and lots of glue will colour and hold the sand together, respectively. She spends an awful lot of time on it, inhaling solvent in her poorly-ventilated quarters and not noticing what the gritty sand is doing to her when the solvent lets it fuse to the partially-dissolved skin on her hands.
By the time she's done with her oeuvre her hands are barely functional. She's too embarrassed to get Bishop to help her and she spends a few more days in her room, pretending to continue to be focused on her art, but when her hands don't get better she finally breaks down and goes to see the ship's medic. He's shocked at the state of her hands and with Volkova chiming in on what she knows about damage by solvents Bishop mashes up a paste of fermented craptree leaves and slug slime that gets the swelling down and makes her skin quickly expel the sand. It takes three days for her hands to become functional again. While he treats her they speak in Grob to keep fluent.
The sculpture is given pride of place on the mess table, where its horridness can't be even remotely hidden. Samiksha doesn't bother to hide her disdain of it and laughs whenever she enters the room but Ester wishes out loud that she had some artistic skill. Jillian's own crew have their usual reaction to her art.
October 23, EY218
Arriving at jump gate Ferret, there's nothing to do but wait for five days for it to open. The day before the gate is slated to open the bloated gas transport ship Dorset shows up, ready to fill up in Piccadilly and bring more gas to Providence.
October 28, EY218
The gate opens and both ships slip through. For what feels like the first time the Steel Hummingbird is in Piccadilly. It's one of the stranger systems that humans have colonized: a main-sequence star (Beorna) is orbited at extremely close range -- a mere 0.2AU! -- by a relatively tiny companion star (Bryne). A ringed gas giant (Whaelmas) is the first planet out, followed by Brittania, the terrestrial planet that holds pretty much everyone who lives here. The largest objects in the system by far are the rings, though. Huring and Temring are a full AU in diameter and spin on perpendicular axes. The largest artificial objects known, they're made of a mysterious metal that researchers have managed to mine and build many of the structures on Brittania from.
As much as they'd love to spend some time on Brittania -- Malcolm most of all -- they have a mission and don't want the Black Roses to learn any more about them. After a quick refuelling at the Prince Albert station, a large bulge in the side of the circular Victoria gate. Jillian plots a course as if they're going to head in to Brittania and with a radioed farewell to the Dorset they quickly pull away from the pokey transport. Once out of sensor range they pull up and head to the slide point.
October 29, EY218
While on the way to the slide point Bishop feels something coming through the "egg" but there's no location nor emotion that he feels. He tries to contact Chig through the "egg" but isn't sure if anything got through. Concerned, he retires to his room and focuses on the Dreamscape to find out what's wrong. From his visions he's fairly sure that Chig tried to contact him but is still suffering from what happened inside uBuntu. Hopefully the Grob will recover soon...
October 30, EY218
Arriving at the slide point, everyone prepares for a rough trip through. When Jillian asks the Black Roses if they've ever been through a slide point she finds that they haven't. Not wanting to have them freaking out while inside the slide point she suggests that they let themselves be tied up to their beds; it will be reasonably safe and they'll be out of the way. They agree, obviously worried about what's going to happen.
Everyone having prepared, they slide into the point. While Bishop, Malcolm, and Jillian strap themselves in Volkova stays on her feet to be able to deal with any stress to the ship as it occurs. Jillian and Malcolm will take care of getting them through to the other side while Bishop will do his best to deal with the psychological trauma that will no doubt occur. Sadly, the slide points seem to be totally disconnected from the Dreamscape, so he can't help them in terms of physically getting through.
The actual trip is psychologically damaging more than physically so; Bishop keeps the insanity to a minimum and everyone's bruised but not much more. Psychologically, Jillian seems to have a strong need for a strong drink and Volkova's grumpy but fetches her one. Seeing as they're not out of the slide point yet Malcolm switches off the artificial gravity for a second while Jillian's trying to chug and she ends up with a wet shirt and dry mouth. She's annoyed until she notices that she can actually make out something in here on her sensors! It seems to be the location that she and Arba deduced and from what she can tell it will take the equivalent of the trip they've already taken again to get there. Another time, maybe, when they don't have spies aboard and she's had a goddamn drink.
October 31, EY218
Through! The trip seemed easier now that they've had some experience and indeed they're not nearly so banged up as they were the first couple of times. Checking her charts Jillian works out that they've only spent fifteen hours or so on the trip. Volkova gets her a damn drink, she drinks it, and feels much better.
Bishop checks on the Roses and finds that Ester has some minor bruising and a need to be protected after feeling so helpless on the trip. Samiksha's in a spacey frame of mind and her boney frame took much more of a beating than Ester: she's got a bad bone bruise on her left arm. Ghost has survived the trip as she usually does, by hanging on to Jillian's sheets with all of her claws.
With the ship in fine shape and no one too badly injured Jillian plots a course to the Port Royal refuelling station, halfway between the Kingston jump gate and the gas giant Phantoqle that Crapworld orbits. She plots out a path that makes it look like they've come in from the gate, timing it so they'd appear to be coming through a little slowly from the gate from Aiscapo.
November 2, EY218
Port Royal refuelling station is unimpressive and they're the only ship around when they get there. Malcolm tops up the tanks on the ship and Jillian convinces the still spacey Samiksha to let her come along and meet the contact. The informant's name is Gary and it's obvious that he's just passing on information in the form of a plain envelope and doesn't know anything about their mission. There's a quick exchange between him and Samiksha that Jillian misses and the envelope is passed to her and then it's all over. On the way back to the Steel Hummingbird Samiksha explains that Gary will erase any trace of them having stopped here. As they head towards the gas giant everyone takes a look at the contents of the envelope. It looks like their target is named Mi Kyong Choi, originally from Aiscapo. There is a photo of her, a crude map of the planet showing her last known location, and detailed information about the defence grid around Bashois.
Over the next couple of days Jillian pores over the defence grid information. The moon is surrounded by three space stations (Caguaramas, Crown Point, and Piarco) and eight satellites, all with sensors that point both down and up. The stations have some interceptor craft, apparently, and there are also three larger ships that orbit the planet: two destroyers (Mama D'Leau and Mama Malade) and a frigate (Papa Bois).
Once past the outer defence grid they'll have to then descend to the surface; the current arrangement of the grid means that they'll have to insert into atmosphere well away from where Choi was last seen. The presence of military bases on the planet (crudely marked on the map) means that they'll have to drop down near the surface quickly and then fly in a slightly roundabout way to -- hopefully -- not be spotted by the military or even civilians on the surface.
The path that Jillian plots does indeed take them past the space stations, satellites, and ships without being spotted, or at least no one hails them or gives chase. The flight along the surface of the planet likewise seems to go unnoticed, helped by Malcolm's nap-of-the-earth flying.
It looks like the sneakiest path will take them onto the large island where their search will start along a deserted valley ("Orange Valley") that will lead to the settlement ("Minty Alley") that Choi might still be living in. It will be best to hide the Steel Hummingbird in the valley and head in on foot if they want to keep things subtle and so Malcolm finds a cave in the valley that will barely fit the ship and lands in it. Everyone helps cover the ship with the camouflage netting and after an hour of stowing, covering, and packing they're ready to go.
When it comes to sticking out or trying to fit in the decision is to fit in. For most of their gear this won't be a problem. This might be a planet of criminals but it's not one where most people have assault rifles and grenade launchers, however. The heavier weapons are hidden in bedrolls and the like; they won't be immediately available but they won't be completely inaccessible either.
Ready to head off, they are equipped as the survival guide provides with additional gear as follows:
Bishop: first aid kit, Grob "egg"
Ester: assault rifle, heavy pistol
Jillian: map provided by Gary, pistol, shotgun, sketchbook and pencils, Volkova's magnifying helmet
Malcolm: assault rifle, Blingmaster, portable teamaking kit, sword
Samiksha: pistol
Volkova: Electric Eliminators jacket, Irina (grenade launcher), Khnuta, mechanic's tool belt
The map that Jillian has to hand is crude: not surprisingly, accurate maps of Crapworld are hard to come across. There are several valleys wending through the mountains and which one the settlement is at the end of isn't obvious. The physical reality of a moon orbiting a gas giant doesn't help. Tidal pull from the other moons makes for a dynamically shifting landscape; not to a huge extent, nor too quickly, but enough to be potentially confusing. Light comes directly from the sun but it can also be reflected from Phantoqle during night... or blocked entirely, depending on where the gas giant is relative to the sun. At least the gravity, at 0.7 normal, makes walking with a full load much less of an effort.
Orange Valley is well named, for the large talus deposits are mostly covered in a leafy orange lichen. Jillian gets everyone to help her identify which peaks correspond to what she can see on her map -- her massive magnifying helmet isn't great when switching from looking at the map at hand and distant peaks -- and in the end she makes her best guess and everyone starts trekking. On the way Volkova can't help but taste some of the lichen. It doesn't taste very good and gives her a stomach ache, so she warns the others off of trying the stuff.
While it's difficult to tell when it's really night here but the sun goes down with light only partially reflected from the gas giant and everyone eventually gets tired enough that they decide to set up camp. Bishop finds a good place to pitch tents and after a meal of delicious Iron™ rations they set up watch shifts and settle in for the night.
During the first watch, Jillian and Malcolm are surprised to hear a scream from the tent that Bishop and Samiksha are sharing. They race over to find orange arthropods of about 30cm length swarming the tent, evidently attracted to the partially-opened Iron™ rations container. Jillian throws a fist-sized rock at them and manages to hit Bishop, who's struggling to get out of his sleeping bag. Malcolm tries to skewer them on his sword but their darting movement makes them hard targets. Samiksha kicks at the ones inside the tent but only manages to "accidentally" kick Bishop, who's not happy at all the abuse he's receiving. Jillian throws herself on the food to protect it and Malcolm eventually grabs the whole box and hands it to an awake Volkova, who makes use of her strength and the low gravity to leap out of reach of the creatures. With their food out of their reach and Ester and Malcolm trying to do them in they give up and skitter into the cracks in the landscape.
The food is more safely stowed -- the tent looks like its door wasn't properly sealed -- and things calm down in the night until Bishop and Samiksha take their turn at watch. There is a growing omnipresent groan accompanied by water making its way up the valley! Jillian, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, realizes this is probably the tidal stress causing the valley floor to drop below sea level. Everyone's relieved when the water stops about a hundred metres away and thirty metres down the slope from them. Satisfied that they're safe from inundation, those not on watch go back to sleep and the rest of the night passes uneventfully.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 17)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 7, rounding up)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 4)