Play date: March 7, 2015
In-game date: January 7, EY219
Location: Vishnu system, having just come through the slide point
Previous events: Many reunions and a trip to Vishnu begins
Once they're through the slide point and have moved away from the exit Jillian begins to perform a long-range scan, something that will take at least half an hour. The book on interpreting readings that she got from the navy comes in handy but it's a lot of work, involving lots of crossreferencing and an endless amount of fiddling on the sensor controls. While she's doing that Bishop checks on Sheema, who slowly comes to from the sedatives and Cletus, Malcolm, and Volkova check the ship out to make sure she's ok; it's her first trip through a slide point after her numerous modifications, after all.
It's not long at all before the Iof pops out of the slide point with no issues to report. There's no sign of the Resplendent Dragon but no one's too concerned; Xao and his crew don't have the experience of the Hummingbird or Iof in traversing the slide points but they're competent enough. Jillian largely ignores everything going on and focuses on the arduous business of her scan.
The Dragon shows up two hours after the other two ships, with a slightly bruised crew but no real damage. Jillian takes the opportunity to give herself a rest from her screens -- it's been a very intense couple of hours of work -- and put together what she's found while all three ships fly away from the slide point for half an hour before joining up with umbilicals. Neet and Xao come over to the Hummingbird from the Resplendent Dragon and Arba, Padb, and Seo come over from the Iof.
Jillian lays out what she's found out so far. The jump gate is still intact and looks functional. It's also apparently guarded by the Vishnu cruiser Khan, which is a problem, and the naval refuelling ship Kinnara and a small mysterious ship are there too. Both Kali and Shiva have cruiser-sized ships that Jillian doesn't recognize in orbit and there is a smattering of mysterious ships here and there.
She recognizes three civilian ships by their transponders: both fuel ships Manu 1 and Manu 2 and the Thirsty Bitch is there too. All of the human ships seem to be acting normally.
There is a large ship, about the size of a cruiser, roughly halfway between Kali and Shiva that's doing an awful lot of transmitting in various frequencies in a code or language that no one understands. It's likely running things and the quiet, equally large ship by it may well be protection.
All these ships seem to be on good terms with each other: transponders are going, transmissions are being sent -- although in some code she doesn't know -- and no one looks like they're making any attempt to be stealthy. The one exception is the frigate Chempil Arayan, on the same level as the Hummingbird at 2AU below the orbital plane with pretty much all of her systems off and a smaller ship, about the size of the Steel Hummingbird, nearby. She's obviously doing her best to lie low and it's only Jillian's skill and relatively close range that spotted the frigate. The last time the Hummingbird was in contact with the Chempil Arayan she was about to engage the Nehru after the latter had bombarded Labrys City. She's only about 2AU from the Hummingbird and as far as they know is as close to a friend as they have in the system.
Everyone returns to their proper ship and Malcolm sends a tight-beam message to the Chempil Arayan identifying the Hummingbird and asking Captain Travancore if he remembers them.
While they wait the half-hour it will take for any response to get back to them Bishop asks Arba if any of the communications going back and forth from the other ships in the system seem familiar from the D'vor attack on the Grob system. Arba performs the Grob equivalent of a shrug; they were far out from the fighting and the communications they heard were mostly Grob. There were other non-D'vor ships that showed up, some of which may be the ships here. The Iof's crew weren't doing long-range scans or listening especially closely to transmissions and so can't be sure.
When the Chempil Arayan gets back to them her captain is understandably suspicious and asks how they managed to survive over the past six weeks. Jillian's pretty sure that the captain is sincere in concern and likely not possessed or otherwise evil. The Hummingbird responds that she fled off the orbital plane, regrouped with friends, and has been laying low, coming across the Chempil Arayan by chance. This is all technically true. Jillian also asks about the other ship that the Chempil Arayan's with.
Another half hour goes by before Captain Travancore's response makes it back. The other ship is apparently a refuelling depot. The Hummingbird's response is that she doesn't know of a naval depot so far off of the orbital plane and that her crew is understandably suspicious about this.
After another half hour Travancore reveals that it's a civilian depot, not naval, and that his ship came across it by chance. Jillian sends another message, suggesting that they meet halfway. The Hummingbird will come with another courier ship.
Half an hour later Travancore's agreement reaches them. The Resplendent Dragon and Steel Hummingbird fire up their engines and head to the meetup point while on the Iof Padb starts to work on calculations for the jump to that location. The Iof will stay in her current location and only jump in if Bishop pings Chig with a request.
January 28, EY219
The Dragon and Hummingbird are faster and get to the meetup point first. While they wait Jillian runs another long-range scan and everything else in the system seems as it should be; the other ships are carrying on as if everything is normal.
When the Chempil Arayan shows up a few hours later it's obvious that she came off her fight with the Nehru badly. Her plating is bent, there is a massive cavity where the flight bay should be, and she generally looks like she's been chewed up and spit out. There's no way in her current state that she could be moving around in an atmosphere or on water; the vacuum of space is, in this case, a forgiving mistress.
Greetings are exchanged and Captain Travancore agrees to come over to the Hummingbird along with his first officer, navigator, chief engineer, and pilot, at Jillian's suggestion. The Resplendent Dragon will fly about in the area and provide protection as needed.
On the Hummingbird, Bishop sets up food for everyone and Malcolm stays on the bridge -- listening in on the intercom -- while everyone else goes to the meeting, including Cletus and Sheema. Everyone is introduced in person and Captain Travancore -- an attractive example of a mid-forties Vishnan naval officer -- explains that in addition to being unable to stop the Nehru from destroying Labrys City they also came out second in their fight with the destroyer. The Chempil Arayan managed to escape, but at the cost of both her fighters and half her crew. The Nehru did take some hits, though, and with the destruction of The Ashram and the jump gate not being used there's nowhere for the larger ship to repair itself. The new and likely alien ships came from far away from the sun from roughly 310º, a direction in which Jillian detected nothing and in which none of the planets are currently found.
Jillian decides to come clean about the slide points and modified space drive; Volkova takes the Chempil Arayan's chief engineer down to the Hummingbird's space drive and shows him the modifications that allow the ship to travel the slide points. Captain Travancore's obviously fascinated by this and he's then let in on the secret of the Iof and the Grob. Once he's been assured that the alien ship that will jump in is friendly and that his ship should stand down Jillian subtly signals to Bishop to tell the Iof to jump in. The Grob do so and the crew of the Chempil Arayan get their first look at an alien ship, albeit one whose current state doesn't look much better than their own.
Arba, Padb, Seo, and Vob all make quite the impression when they come on board the Hummingbird. With everyone here it's time to figure out what to do. There are too many ships to make a serious attempt to find survivors on Kali or Shiva, so the first thing they should do is try to contact Nanda Reddy on the Dobbs Habitat. She can get them in contact with the humans and Wyrm that came in on the Leary and possibly have some more ideas. They can refuel at the mysterious depot and then all head off to the Leary together. Jillian points out that they need to have one person in charge of this mission and given that she's got much more knowledge of what's going on the Chempil Arayan should follow her lead. This isn't a military operation, after all.
Captain Travancore doesn't need much convincing given the state of his ship. He doesn't seem the argumentative type to begin with and with half his crew dead and a shambling wreck of a ship it's far better to follow what seems to be a trio of ships who know what's going on and seem to work well together instead of trying to take command.
With that decided the four ships fly to the mysterious fuel depot to top up.
January 29, EY219
The depot has no running systems when they get there and they have to move supplies manually or by the ships' pumps. Jillian enters its cramped interior in an EVA suit to see if it's a Black Rose installation and Sabine, bored, comes along. They don't poke around long before Sabine opines that it's likely Black Rose. Jillian hasn't mentioned anything about her suspicions and is more than a little worried about Sabine's statement. When asked, Sabine shrugs and says that it just has that sort of feel, but Jillian feels that Sabine knows more about this than she lets on.
Later, while Sabine joins Volkova to take a look at the damage to the Chempil Arayan, Jillian confronts Xao about his new engineer. Jillian doesn't trust her but Xao does, saying that Sabine's got a bit of a checkered past but he can read people well enough to consider her not a risk. Jillian presses him but he stands firm. and neither one comes out of the conversation having convinced the other. Once back on the Steel Hummingbird Jillian tells Sheema about her suspicions.
As it turns out the engineers on the Chempil Arayan, though nowhere as good as Sabine or Volkova, have done a good job of patching together what they can on their ship. It's still going to need a lot of time in a shipyard that it will likely never see to be safe to take into a dangerous situation, but there's nothing that the two engineers can do. Volkova doesn't understand how Sabine can poke around filthy engine parts and come away so clean; it seems that Sabine fails to see how it is that Volkova manages to get so dirty.
Once all the ships are ready to go the makeshift fleet sails towards the Leary. From here it's almost a dozen AUs and the Chempil Arayan's easily the slowest of the ships; with her slowing the rest down it will take ten days to make it to the Dobbs Habitat even with Neet figuring out a very efficient path.
Over the next week and a half Jillian spends some time working on a mural in the corridor by the guest quarters. It has lots of hidden knives and black vegetation and is fairly horrible.
Malcolm continues to teach Cletus what he knows. It feels like Cletus's worship of Malcolm keeps growing and as much as Malcolm's uneasy about this he does bask in the admiration. It's a pity that Cletus is straight...
Cletus gets an upgrade out of the red rum to a larger, two-person room. Volkova decides to make the murder room less murdery and paints it to match the rest of the guest quarters. She also moves the various red furnishings into other rooms, spreading them around like Flint Cardesco's brains, though she doesn't put it that way to her captain.
February 8, EY219
As they close on the Dobbs Habitat it gets a scan, showing its systems to be shut down and its structure to be compromised. No one answers any of the hails. Up close it's obviously been attacked and a couple of the small ships that the prospectors used are still attached to the habitat but shot up. Nanda Reddy's ship, Varma, isn't here. Nor is Omenand and his goons' ship, Daynava.
A boarding party is formed of Jillian, Malcolm, Olivia, and Volkova, armed with their weapons of choice. Everyone's in EVA suits and much clumsier than they would otherwise be but there's not much choice with no atmosphere in the habitat. Before they go in they look at the strange damage to the habitat's exterior. It looks almost burned or boiled; Volkova guesses it could be plasma.
Once inside the lack of gravity doesn't help their clumsiness. There are signs of fighting, with holes from small arms fire here and there, a few hasty barricades, and some blood. There are no bodies to be found, though. Examining the bullet holes Volkova guesses that they were made before the Nehru destroyed the Ashram. It looks like the prospectors ran off in a hurry: much of their gear is still here. There really isn't anything worth looting.
In the quarters that Omenand and his crew lived in it's obvious that they had time to pack up and leave. The most intriguing thing is a letter left in the open addressed to Nanda. It just says "If you ever make it back we're in the compartment." and is signed by Omenand. The habitat is too small for there to be a hidden compartment that any number of people could live in for more than a trivial amount of time -- the "compartment" is likely in the Leary's three-kilometre long carcass.
Nothing else is worth hanging around for; Nanda Reddy hasn't been back in a while and won't be. Everyone enters their proper ships and the convoy heads off for the Leary, a mere tenth of an AU from the Dobbs Habitat.
A few hours later they're coming up to the Leary. It's impossible to scan more than a small part of it but when they do they detect two ships. The larger is roughly the size of the Chempil Arayan and has lots of flanges, flares, and ribs on it. The other is about the size of a large jet fighter and has a strange knobby look to it. They're not like any human ships anyone's ever seen.
Both sides detect each other and the "aliens" pull away from the Leary to close on the other ships. Malcolm hails them, asking if they need help. They use active scanners on the human and Grob ships while the humans take many gun camera photos. When they don't respond he asks them if they're human. Again, there is no response. He calls up the Iof and asks Seo if the Grob have ever seen anything like this -- no, they haven't. Malcolm calls the ships one more time, asking them if they know about Nanda or Omenand.
There is only silence as a response.
--------
Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 20)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 1)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 12)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 4)