Play date: April 22, 2016
In-game date: February 24, EY219
Location: Vishnu system
Previous events: The D'vor are wimps and so are the Black Rose
February 24, EY219
The fleet is as follows: The flagship Steel Hummingbird, with her usual complement and the addition of Sheema Satrapi (Commodore Jillian's long-lost "friend"), naval test pilot Major Cletus Jehoshephat Mosbey, and the crew of the Leary (including a recovering Nandy Reddy); the Resplendent Dragon with her usual complement and naval test pilot Major Edward Watkins; the Iof with its usual complement; and four Wyrm ships. Ahead of them, hopefully not spotted by the D'vor, should be the Vishnan navy's last loyal ship, the frigate Chempil Arayan, without her fighter escorts and with only half her crew still alive after the savaging she took at the hands of the Nehru some time ago during the battle for Labrys City.
If things get desperate there's always the option of using the gunship (from the Leary's secret base on Brahma's moon, Lotus) that's crammed in the Steel Hummingbird's main hold in a battle; Malcolm can fly it and Bishop man the main weapons, while Cletus takes control of the Hummingbird and Volkova takes up her former position as gunner. The gunship is much more fragile than the other ships but does pack a good offensive punch.
It will take them a dozen days to get to the slide point, 13.5 AU away, but if they burn their fuel at twice the normal rate they should be able to make it in just under ten days. Having taken on lots of extra fuel before entering the system everyone can afford to push their engines and hopefully get put some real distance between them and the site of their recent battle before the D'vor send more ships and track them down. Everyone except the Wyrm ships, that is. They don't have any storage space and can't take on more fuel. They are small, though, and can fit into the cargo holds of the other ships. Two can be squeezed into the Iof and another into the Resplendent Dragon. The Steel Hummingbird's cargo hold is currently taken up with the gunship. That's only three of the four ships. Bishop communicates with the Wyrm; their way of communicating is just gibberish to everyone, including the Leary's crew without their bespoke computer setup, but Bishop's a master communicator and interprets the signals that they send to the Hummingbird correctly. The Wyrm aren't concerned about losing one of their ships: they can always grow another one -- including its space drive! The Wyrm are odd, odd little creatures.
Wyrm are transferred and ships stowed away before too long. Instead of just abandoning the last Wyrm ship Jillian comes up with the idea of attaching panels and some electronic equipment to make it light up on sensors when it's a certain distance away from the fleet. The D'vor will certainly send someone hunting for them and the fleet is too big to stay unnoticed even with the roundabout route Jillian's plotted to the slide point. If whomever comes looking gets distracted, on the other hand...
The Wyrm ship is easily set up to gradually unfurl panels and fire up bolted-on noisy electronics as it moves away from the fleet, the Wyrm programming it to travel on a path that Jillian calculates. With their decoy sent on its way the rest of the fleet pumps up their space drives to full power and race for the Chempil Arayan and the slide point.
February 25, EY219
One day into their run Jillian picks up something on her sensors, coming from the direction of their fight with the D'vor. To keep themselves as stealthy as possible she's only using passive sensors and so can only work out that it's about the size of a frigate. There's a long, tense wait as she tries to figure out if it's coming for them or following the decoy. When it's clear that the new ship is indeed going after the decoy everyone sighs with relief.
March 5, EY219
After a week and a half of paranoid sensor watching the Chempil Arayan comes into the Hummingbird's sensor range, no more harmed than when the fleet last saw her: it seems that the D'vor were too busy chasing everyone else to notice the ship limping to her current position. The crew's been rigging various booby traps into the ship in preparation for abandoning her here: there's no time to adjust her space drive so she can travel through slide points and she's far too damaged to survive the trip. The dozen surviving crew are transferred to the Resplendent Dragon and Olivia takes advantage to steal some ammunition from the frigate's cannon: it's the same model as the Dragon's, as it turns out!
While the Resplendent Dragon's tied to the Chempil Arayan Bishop gets an incoming hail on a tight beam: "Nice to see you again." Everyone panics a bit, and Bishop recognizes the voice as that of the captain of the Gurg, Benjamin Mitchell. The Steel Hummingbird and the Gurg are on unknown terms, the Hummingbird having saved the Gurg when it had been badly damaged by a D'vor ship about a year and a half ago but then being badly shot up by the Gurg's gunships when the hummingbird went looking for the Telushkin, an event that cost Jillian her eye. At least when the Gurg attacked them they didn't know it was the Hummingbird due to the electromagnetic chaos in Prager's atmosphere.
Jillian tells Bishop not to respond; she's not sure of the Gurg's intent or even if it's now working for the D'vor, as pretty much everyone in this system is. Not being able to see it on sensors is also disturbing. It's big and not all that stealthy, she recalls. When Mitchell asks what they're doing flying with one of their ships -- undoubtedly referring to the Iof, she decides that they'd might as well talk. She claims to have stolen it from "them" and decides to actually have a conversation with Mitchell: he seems to have the drop on them but hasn't attacked, and he's also seems to be in a friendly mood.
Mitchell agrees to come out of hiding after a few minutes of conversation. Malcolm tells the other ships in the fleet to hold their fire and a ship that's pretty nearby spins up its engines, suddenly visible. It's not the Gurg; it's about the same size as the Hummingbird and is obviously very stealthy. Frighteningly so, actually. It identifies itself as the Carcharon, and the Gurg soon wanders in from farther afield. The Carcharon is the escort ship for the larger Gurg and looks designed to ambush ships passing by.
The two ship groups exchange information. Not sure what happened here when the jump gate went offline, the Black Rose sent a ship in that didn't come back, so they sent in the more competent Carcharon and Gurg to explore and report back. They came in through the slide point and saw the Chempil Arayan, obviously badly damaged, and worked out that her crew was waiting to be evacuated. They decided to stay in the area a bit and see who came by.
Bishop takes care of most of the communications and strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mitchell. The latter asks if the Hummingbird knows anything about the Black Rose in the system. Jillian tells him that their base on Ganesha's moon, Ganapati, is fine -- she very intentionally states its location. The rest of the system is effectively lost, though. She doesn't mention their brief attack on the base nor their rescue of Nanda Reddy but she does admit that she knows Rashid and that they have a complicated relationship.
While he accepts their interpretation of the state of Vishnu Mitchell does need to go check on the Black Rose base and talk to them himself. Jillian relays what information they have about the large ship that was chasing them and where the decoy likely took it. Mitchell thanks her and says that Venla Inberg (the Black Rose commander of the Telushkin who "hired" the Hummingbird to get Mi Kyong Choi,) is very angry with Jillian over simply disappearing, but that he won't tell her that he saw her here. As with Rashid, Jillian points out that no matter what her disagreements with the Black Rose might be, the D'vor are an enemy to everyone and hopes that he'll remember that. Mitchell is more agreeable than Rashid on this point and Jillian's not entirely sure where his loyalties would be if Inberg told him to shoot down the Hummingbird. The two captains part on good terms, the Carcharon and Gurg moving off towards the Black Rose base.
The Chempil Arayan's crew crosses the umbilical to the Resplendent Dragon with their meagre possessions and Volkova takes the opportunity to scavenge spare parts from the doomed ship. It can't hurt, right? Not too many parts, though; they decide to set the mangled frigate on a trip to the inner system, setting it up as a bomb to cause some chaos. The slide point is close enough to the planets in the tightly-packed inner system that Jillian programs a roundabout path to prevent it from being tracked back to the slide point and also sets a delay so that her fleet can be out of the system before the Chempil Arayan begins its final trip.
Once everything's been set the ships head for the slide point. On the Resplendent Dragon Captain Travancore silently watches his ship through a window until she's out of sight.
March 6, EY219
At the slide point Sheema and the crews of the Chempil Arayan and Leary are drugged with tea and pills so they don't have to deal with the horrific psychological effects of the trip. To protect them as much as possible from physical jostling they're also strapped into the crew quarters on the Steel Hummingbird and into cargo netting in the Resplendent Dragon -- makeshift, but it's the best they can do.
Although the crews are very experienced with travels through slide points at this point and get through very quickly -- Jillian manages to spot the location inside the slide point again but as is typical circumstances prevent them from exploring further -- the flight is physically very rough on the crew, who get bounced around much more than usual. Jillian badly wrenches her back, but rest of her crew comes through with only bumps and bruises. Sadly, the same can't be said of the Leary's crew. Despite being strapped into protective harnesses two of the sixteen Leary crewmembers are dead, including their captain, Fai Huang.
The Iof quickly makes it through the slide point with no injuries but the Resplendent Dragon's likewise had a rough trip. Four of the two dozen crew from the Chempil Arayan, including their first officer, don't survive the trip. The Dragon's crew has one injury, a broken right arm for their engineer Sabine. At least they're in Providence now, and away from the D'vor. If only the slide point trip hadn't been so lethal...
Everyone's low on fuel and the ships split up on various missions. The Iof flies to the water planet Carlson where it will use its strange abilities to fill up its life support reserves from the local biomass. With the gas giant Prager being so dangerous due to atmospheric debris the Grob won't want to risk using their hydrogen scoop there; they request that the Hummingbird fills up some tanks with hydrogen for them.
Cletus transfers to the Resplendent Dragon and she heads towards Colt, the military moon of Beck, to drop off the Chempil Arayan's crew and the two test pilots. That way all the military people can make their reports at the same time. There's some discussion of what should be included in the report. Specifically, everyone's told to not mention the Black Rose that they found there, and to only mention the D'vor presence. Seeing as the Dragon and Hummingbird have saved most of the people who will be making the reports the frigate's crew and test pilots agree.
The Steel Hummingbird flies to Limbaugh with the Leary's crew. They're despondent and bereft of direction with their captain dead and Nanda Reddy takes command of the crew. Over the week it takes them to reach Limbaugh the Leary's crew goes over various options and decide that they'd like to take the long-distance shuttle to Providence's companion star, Fortuna, and settle on the lush and lightly-populated planet Olbermann. It shouldn't be too hard for them to disappear there and Jillian writes them a note to pass to her friends, the Grunewald family, who will be able to help.
For most of the week Jillian rests up her back (helped by some disgustingly gooey but helpful medicine from Bishop) and works on the report that she'll give to Vice Admiral Paige Egan regarding Vishnu. She spends a lot of time going through her sensor records and notes to put together the most complete snapshot of the system that she can. The Black Rose is, of course, missing from all this. When she's done she passes the report by Sheema, who does a great job of making it readable and providing context instead of just providing a series of numbers. Of course, working on the report together gives Jillian and Sheema an excuse to spend a lot of time in her cabin together...
The gunship that's taking up most of the main cargo hold is going to be an issue. There just aren't enough people to fly and fight in it and the Hummingbird at the same time. A pilot could be hired, but in the end they decide it would be best to strip it of parts and ditch it into space. Selling an illegal military gunship would produce too many problems. Malcolm's sad to see it go, but there just wasn't another option that made sense. Volkova strips it for parts that would work on the Hummingbird and also removes the missile pods and cannon just in case they come in useful at some point. She leaves them under tarps on the cargo deck. To keep anyone from peering under the tarps she stencils "Danger: Tomatoes" on a sign that she places on top.
March 13, EY219
McNeely Station at last, where the shuttle to Fortuna leaves from. Jillian digs into the ship's kitty to give the Leary's crew enough money to put a roof over their heads for two weeks until the shuttle goes and for the trip itself. After spending years underground in tiny bases the Learys are amazed at the size of McNeely station, with hundreds of thousands of residents, but they're also eager to explore it. It looks like they'll be fine.
The Leary crew dealt with, Volkova arranges for maintenance and refuelling on the Steel Hummingbird while Jillian checks for any mail that might be waiting for them at the station. There are no messages at all, which is disappointing. The party decides to check in on the apartment to see how Gabi and the others are doing. Having left the minibus on the other side of the galaxy they split up to get across town. Malcolm and Volkova take his motorbike while Jillian and Sheema take the subway. Jillian's put on her giant sunglasses and big floppy hat to try to be incognito and inconspicuous. It's cute.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 20)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 1 (running total: 2)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 12)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 4)