Play date: September 23, 2016
In-game date: March 25, EY219
Location: The Eondeog military base in the system of Aiscapo, orbiting the planet of Daebak
Previous events: Met Rear Admiral Choi
While everyone else is up on the moon, Bishop takes Olivia up on her offer and finds her boyfriend, Woo-jin Cho, to fly him down from the Eondeog military base on the moon. Bishop's not intimidated by Woo-jin's square jaw or rugged good looks: this navy pilot's not the one who's going to connect with Warden Whang!
Sogbag airport is a small, dismal place, only there to service the local prisons filled with women behind bars. Whang is there waiting for him with her car. It's a compact, but he fits snugly into it and she drives them back to her house. Fade to black.
Later, lying exhausted next to each other in bed, she tells him that she wants to help in their efforts against the D'vor. She's a Dreamer too, though extremely untrained, and after reading all of his intimate letters to her she wants to do what she can. She's already put in for a personal leave; one of the higher-ranked guards, probably Sin or Gang, will take her place while she's away. Bishop agrees to take her to the moon. He's very pleased at the chance to take Whang along with him and share a bed with her every night, and also she might be able to help out the cause as well. But mostly the first one.
March 26, EY219
Malcolm's message gets to Whang and she has Bishop call his ship to arrange a flight up to Eondeog. The line from a small town to a transmitter to orbit is scratchy and the sound is distorted. That must be why Malcolm doesn't sound too happy to find out that Whang is coming along. Once Malcolm gets the address for Whang's house and Jillian's worked out coordinates and how to fly there the Steel Hummingbird leaves the military base and drops into atmosphere. Xao and his crew will be dropped off in Wonju so that they can visit Xao's parents and he can arrange getting a new ship from them -- every time the topic comes up Jillian fumes inside. Julia is left behind; she's told the military here what she can and a naval ship can take her back to Providence. It will take longer than using the slide points, but the Hummingbird has other things to do.
Once the Resplendent Dragon's crew is on the ground in Wonju with promises to contact the Hummingbird once they have a new ship (cue internal fuming) Malcom flies the ship to Sogbag, which takes a few hours. He puts the ship down in Whang's backyard, possible because in this fairly rural area yards are large and also because he's a totally badass pilot. Unlike the "rescue" mission to free Emily Varnsen nothing is set on fire from the landing and Jillian manages to not kneecap anyone with a shotgun.
It's an uncomfortable reunion. The Hummingbird's crew is annoyed with Bishop for going AWOL and for bringing Whang along without really asking and Whang feels odd about being on a ship with one of her former prisoners, especially one who could snap her like a twig. Volkova's not one to hold a grudge, though, and the ship soon lifts off once Bishop lugs Whang's considerable pile of luggage on board -- she doesn't travel light and no one offers to help him. No doubt this brief visit by a spacecraft will be the talk of the neighbourhood for a while.
On the ship Bishop and Whang take over the luxurious two-person quarters on the passenger deck. While moving his things over Bishop notices that all of his clothes are missing. Malcolm freely admits that he dumped them into the plasma conduit and is totally unapologetic. Bishop's angry but there's not really too much that he can do.
Flying up to the military base Jillian shows Whang her artwork in an attempt to get to know her a bit more. Whang tries to hide her feelings about Jillian's art but it's obvious that, like almost all humans, Whang finds it to be terrible. So much for that.
On the flight back up to Eondeog the ship feels a bit empty. Instead of all the people that the Hummingbird's had on board for the last while it's now down to just the regular crew and three additional people: Azar, Sheema, and Whang. At least now there's only one eyepatch being worn at a time.
Back at the military base they report to Rear Admiral Choi and get fitted for naval uniforms. This goes against all sort of Very Important regulations but the Rear Admiral isn't too concerned. She considers this important enough that she's willing to break rules and hope that it all works out in the end. Everyone gets the rank of Seaman Apprentice with the exception of Jillian, who gets her old rank back. She's happy to outrank everyone else, but it feels odd to be in uniform again. Sheema's the only exception to this; she opts to stay on the ship with Ghost.
By this time there's only dinner left to examine the crew of the station. The six members of the Hummingbird's crew go early and get a table right by the door. Bishop, Volkova, and Whang spend the dinner period feeling out something on the order of fifteen hundred people. It's mentally exhausting and the two inexperienced Dreamers aren't sure if they've done a decent job or not, but in the end they don't find a single person infected with the Song.
They report this to Choi, who is happy to not have to execute anyone. She's set up a meeting with the high-level staff for the next day. It's short notice and only five of them will be there but at least one of them will be the Admiral in charge of the base, Gun-woo Kim. Jillian will talk about the situation while her crew serves coffee and surreptitiously detects if any of the major brass have been converted before Choi reveals who the Hummingbird's crew are.
That night most everyone sleeps on the ship. Jillian feels like she should sleep on the station -- by pure coincidence away from Sheema -- to "keep up her cover".
March 27, EY219
The officers' meeting is set for early in the morning, so there is breakfast to check the crew for infection. Bishop and Whang, along with Azar as a bodyguard, choose another mess hall and Dream their way through the meal. Once again, they don't find anything suspicious. This bodes well, though they're both pretty tired afterwards.
Volkova's concerned about her inexperience with the Dreaming and decides that she needs to put herself into the right mood for checking out the officers. She asks Malcolm if he can make a special tea for her to put her in the right headspace for Dreaming. He spends a decent part of the morning working out the right mix for something that he doesn't really understand. At least with Volkova's constitution she can deal with pretty much anything, so he can go for a "stronger is better" approach and throw in anything that should work. In the end the tea is almost thick enough to stand a spoon in.
Volkova scrubs herself clean of her usual grime leaves the military base and takes the maglev train to the civilian station that's on the moon right next to the military base. Once there she finds a masseur and gets a long, relaxing massage with aromatic oils to get her as mellow as possible. That should help as well, right? Even if it doesn't, it's worth it.
When it's time for the meeting Malcolm and Azar stand outside the room with submachine guns as guards, a deceit that Choi says she hopes won't lead to her court-martial. Putting civilians in military uniforms is bad, but giving them automatic weapons and posting them by superior officers will have severe ramifications indeed if this doesn't work out, and possibly even if it does. Before the meeting begins things already start to go wrong; a Vice Admiral Song decides that Malcolm isn't dressed properly -- it's been a while and Malcolm just couldn't be arsed to do such an anal job -- and chews him out in the hallway. Malcolm manages to take the abuse and when asked for his serial number gives his old one from his time in the navy, hoping that the IDs are at least standardized across systems. Luckily for him, they are.
Inside another of the drab meeting rooms that the military seems to have an endless supply of Jillian begins her talk. She details the attacks that occurred on Colt's military base, but doesn't mention the D'vor or the Song or that the attacks happened to her. She does a very good job of pretending to be an officer and drags out the description while Bishop, Volkova, and Whang enter with a coffee cart and clumsily set about handing out drinks. Volkova gets called out by Vice Admiral Song for her smell; she still has a definite aromatic air from the massage oils. He demands her serial number as well, pulling out the same notepad he previously wrote Malcolm's in. Volkova notices the format of the ID and gives one that is similar but filled with random digits. Song's building up a good head of steam before Admiral Kim shuts him down; it's obvious from the way everyone's reacting that this is normal behaviour for the Vice Admiral.
While that's going on there is also a Dream scan of the room, which reveals an absence of Song. The D'vor effect, that is, not the Vice Admiral. Relieved, Bishop gives Jillian the "all clear" hand signal that they agreed on earlier and Jillian switches gears, talking about the D'vor, what really happened in Vishnu, and the Song. She also introduces her crew and explains the Dreaming a bit, with Choi vouching for them. Vice Admiral Song is apoplectic about this deception but he's shut down again by the Admiral, who wants to hear everything about this. The meeting goes on for a while and by the end of it the brass is convinced about the dangers.
One matter that needs to be addressed is the military base at Juche, which likely has at least a few people there who are converted by the Song. It probably also has some of the black ooze, as the Song doesn't seem to convert people unless they're exposed to the ooze. The only people who can detect the Song are the Hummingbird's crew, so it looks like they'll be visiting a very isolationist and paranoid planet soon...
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 1 (running total: 24)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 3)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 13)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 6)