Play date: December 13, 2014
In-game date: December 28, EY218
Location: Providence system, the Colt naval base
Previous events: A disastrous slide point trip and a promising meeting with Vice Admiral Egan
The meeting concluded, Egan quietly invites Jillian and her crew to the officer's mess. Jillian agrees and indicates to Malcolm with a gesture that he should hold up Inspector How. While everyone shuffles out of the room Malcolm intercepts How and apologizes profusely for breaking her sculpture, making such an issue of it that everyone else makes a perfect getaway.
Egan sends the mechanics off with an escort to the regular mess while she leads the rest to the same meeting room as before, with paintings of the former and current King Shark battleship still adorning its walls. She orders some food to be brought and then demands that Jillian spill the information that she didn't want How to know.
Jillian, aided by the others, tells Egan about the slide points: about their utility, their dangers, and about the modifications to space drives that makes such travel possible. She's deliberately vague about the origin of this technology and apologizes for how long it's taken her to tell Egan about all this. She reveals her fear that Hoax -- which has been acting strangely of late and isn't to be trusted -- might find out about the slide points as her reason for being so reticent in the past. As much as Egan would have liked to know about this earlier she's happy to have the odious Hoax kept in the dark.
More detailed information about the slide points is transferred as well as the location of the Clegship that's 1AU above the orbital plane with a modified space drive. The Steel Hummingbird is willing to share all of their notes and plans about the modifications and the Vice Admiral is warned not to send a ship with a large crew through at first: the odds of someone going insane and destroying some vital system or the ship itself is too great.
Food arrives and everyone digs in, especially Volkova. While they eat Helga Lang brings up the black ooze that Jillian and Volkova helped with in Labrys City and Kasturi talks about the ovoid device that she's been looking at that contained the initial payload of slime. These definitely seem to be tied to the D'vor but no one's sure exactly how. With no D'vor taking part in the massacres in Vishnu they remain as mysterious as ever.
Once everyone's up to speed on past events and present information it's time to work out the future. The Steel Hummingbird's plans are to get repaired and then go to Aiscapo to rejoin the Resplendent Dragon. Bishop negotiates with Egan about fixing the Hummingbird and the Vice Admiral is more than happy to have the navy foot the bill for the work. With Choi on the ship it will be difficult to have the work done on Colt without her being discovered and it's not ideal to have work done on the ship on a base with Inspector How around -- they had a tracking device on the ship for months last time How had a chance! At the mention of her name Malcolm coincidentally enters the room on his crutches. He looks disheveled and mutters something about "that woman" in a curious tone before dropping into a chair and helping himself to some food.
It's easy enough to have the ship worked on at the Diego Garcia platform orbiting Limbaugh, less than one AU away. This gives the crew some distance from Hoax and would also allow them to drop off some people at McNeely Station beforehand.
The final plan is to leave Janaki on Beck to help the refugees and take everyone else to Limbaugh. The mechanics from The Ashram have expressed interest in going to McNeely Station and finding jobs there. The Black Rose contingent can be dropped off at the station as well, where the criminal organization has a strong presence. Ester and Samiksha were both living on Limbaugh anyway, though they'll have to see if Samiksha is in a state to be moved after getting injured in the slide point. Helga and Kasturi can stay on McNeely while the repairs are going on -- in the apartment where the Hummingbird keeps its strays, perhaps? -- and then get picked up on the way to Aiscapo. While the crew waits for the ship to get patched together Volkova can instruct some of the engineers there on the slide point modifications and a copy of the copious notes that have been taken on the slide point experience can be couriered to Egan. After all that the ship will take a slide point to Aiscapo. With nothing else to resolve the crew takes its leave and heads back to the Hummingbird.
Back at the ship everyone's treated to an unpleasant sight: Inspector How and her partner, the glasses-wearing and shlubby Inspector Wen, are trying to get into the Steel Hummingbird but Ester is blocking the door with her bulk and refusing them entry. A couple of naval guards nearby are watching the goings-on but with none of the participants part of the military they're not too concerned about the outcome.
When Jillian confronts the Hoax agent How reveals that she knows about the ship's odd trips, providing details about the their intra-system jump (with the Iof) in Providence a year ago and some of their slide point trips. How doesn't know how this travel happened -- and claims that installing a tracking device in the ship back on Beck a while back is legally within her purview -- and quotes laws allowing Hoax to search the ship. Jillian's unable to make How step down even with Volkova's threatening pose helping her and turns to the guards, telling them to get Egan. They refuse... until she browbeats them into doing so, using her relationship with the Vice Admiral as leverage.
Egan shows up before too long, puffing from having obviously run here, and it's her turn to engage How in a debate. As it turns out Hoax's position and power here aren't exactly cut and dried. She and the Hoax inspector go back and forth about rules and regulations, quoting increasingly obscure passages -- How even pulls out a book of official clauses to help her! -- and in the end Hoax comes out on top.
This back and forth takes a while and Jillian doesn't want the non-Steel Hummingbird crew around to let something slip so she suggests that the rest of them go to a bar and relax a bit, which they happily do. Bishop takes advantage of the confusion to hide Choi: Inspector How's the one who sentenced her to Crapworld and it wouldn't do for her to be found on the ship! The best place that he can think of for her is up on top of the ship, behind a part of the superstructure. It's not ideal but the chances that the inspectors will look there is pretty small. She climbs out of the hatch that Malcolm uses when he perches on top of the ship and brings her bag and Crapworld xenotech with her.
The final result of the official debate down below is that Hoax gets an hour to search the ship and a military observer will be allowed on the Hummingbird. No one brings up the crew's place in the proceedings and they take advantage of this. Volkova stays outside with Malcolm but Jillian follows Inspector Wen, haranguing him about working with an obviously corrupt organization, and honestly feels that she's rattling him. He does seem to have some doubts about things. Inspector How is accompanied by the military observer and Bishop does his best to throw her off by hiding in a shower and getting caught by her doing something that can best be described as grossly indecent. He doesn't care that she sees him but does feel sorry for the military observer who is just doing her job.
Inspector Wen goes through the ship thoroughly and at an impressive clip and has the time to explore the top of the hull, climbing up the rungs in the hallway by the crew quarters and opening the hatch to lock eyes with Choi. The two immediately recognize each other -- she pulls a knife and tries to shank him as he drops back into the ship as quickly as he can. Jillian has no idea that Choi is up on the hull and with her poor vision everything's confusing as someone follows Wen into the ship and pursues him down the hall, trying to stab him. Wen pulls a pistol from a shoulder holster and takes a hurried shot at Choi, grazing her while Jillian tries to break things up. The bullet ricochets off a metal wall but luckily doesn't hit anyone else.
With so many doors and hatches open the echoing gunshot is obvious to everyone. There's a scramble to get to the top deck and in the end it's Volkova, vaulting up through the cargo bay, racing past everyone else and taking stairs four at a time, who gets to the action before anyone else. By the time she gets there Jillian's bundled Choi into the nearest room -- Malcolm's -- and slammed and locked the door behind them. Wen is outside, yelling at them to come out peacefully, when Volkova rounds the corner and sprints down the hallway at him. She may not know exactly what's going on but there's an idiot firing a pistol in her ship and she's determined to put an end to that.
Wen hesitates and Volkova's on him before he's decided to shoot her or not. She grabs his arm and slams it into the wall, dislodging the pistol from his hand into a ventilation shaft where it clangs safely away. The others, with the exception of Malcolm on his crutches and lagging far behind, show up. Bishop yells at How to tell Wen to stop, but disarmed and with Volkova solidly clamped onto his arm he's in no position to do much anyway. Jillian slips out of the room and Choi remains inside, locking the door again.
Once everyone's crammed into the top deck Wen insists that Choi's in the locked cabin. He and How have a standoff with the Hummingbird's crew and Jillian soon storms off the ship to find Egan again. While she's gone How tries to get Choi out of Jillian's room but no one will admit whose room it is and the door stays securely shut.
When Jillian returns with the Vice Admiral there are also three armed marines along for extra intimidation. Everyone moves to the galley and discusses the matter, with all of the accounts of what happened matching up. When Bishop sees the chance he sneaks up onto the hull and drags Choi's xenotech into the ship, where he shoves them onto the bridge. During Egan's questioning Jillian admits that Choi might be a criminal and might know xenotech. Once Egan's satisfied that she knows what the situation is she manages to convince Choi to open the door. She then kicks the Hoax inspectors off the station for discharging weapons on a ship in flagrant disregard of safely regulations. Choi will be held until Egan can validate her identity. The Hummingbird's crew is satisfied with this turn of events and tries not to act too smug towards the sulking How and Wen.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 20)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: though we don't know exactly what happened with How we'll say it was nothing (running total: 9)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 4)