Those Who Stare In The Black, Game 11: New Waters
Wednesday, 02 Oct 2519
New Sydney Spaceport 23, New Melbourne
Red Sun (Zhu Que) System
Morning
We are still involved in repairs to our ship’s systems and engine from the damage and the hacks.
Friday, 04 Oct 2519
After two days of searching online/open resources, Oksana was unable to find anything significant about Lissa other than the society of New Melbourne are blasé about her disappearance. It’s nothing they haven’t seen her do before.
When Oksana gets back, she finds a message waiting for her. It’s encrypted. Verity cracks it and it asks for a verbal password with a picture prompt. The picture is an irregular star. “Starfish,” Oksana says into mike and lo, the message is as follows:
“Hey, Starfish. Hope this found you. Heard you had interesting times lately. Meet at old stomping grounds 1 month from now. I need your help. Possible with your crew.”
It’s accompanied with a video of a man with silvering hair at his temples.
The time stamp on the message is 30 Sep 2519, 4 days ago. The old stomping grounds—well, the message didn’t tell us exactly where but it’s in Georgia system.
After the video component stops, there’s a pause and a string of numbers shows up on the screen. It’s the nav components for two legs of a journey. The first leg takes us to Silverhold (Red Sun), the second to Aberdeen (Kalidasa).
Oksana goes to Allyne and explains the message and he assures her that he will try to arrange cargo to Silverhold before she even asks if he’ll take her there.
We spend the balance of the two days hence on completing repairs
Sunday, 06 Oct 2519
We do our aquatic test on Space Otter.
It’s a three stage test:
- I: Float on the seas
- II: Shallow submerge
- III: Descend below surface and engage the caterpillar drive.
Working together, Verity and Xiu have Otter complete the test with only trifling problems. We need to jigger our flood tanks to fill and evacuate more smoothly and one of our thrusters cavitates a teense too much. We spring a few pressure leaks into our interstitial hull space but it’s nothing Xiu cannot fix easily.
We resurface to find the Alliance comming us that they can still track us with the pinger they installed. Great.
We also find a cargo offer when we hit our spaceport berth: 20 head of beef livestock needs transport off Silverhold to Aberdeen. It’s for “Star & Sea Services” and they need pick up a week and a half from now.
Silverhold is a week’s flight away.
Allyne runs a check on the merchant through his various contacts and the man’s reputation is a good one. He’s not a backstabber and has reliably followed through on his business deals.
We announce we are looking to take on passengers for Silverhold but there are no takers. Seems people on New Melbourne are happy to stay there … save perhaps for Lissa, who’s still missing.
We ask the Feds when we can leave. They say we can leave in another two days. They still have a few threads to tie up in their investigation.
If we leave two days hence, we’ll arrive five days ahead of schedule for the cattle run.
Tuesday, 08 Oct 2519
We lift off and bid farewell to Canterbury and New Melbourne. ETA Silverhold, 15 Oct 2519. Here’s hoping nothing delays us.
Go to Season One: Purpose And Place | Timeline | Those Who Stare In The Black
