Editing Episode 503: Old Secrets, New Chances
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'''0400 hrs, ship’s time'''<br><br> | '''0400 hrs, ship’s time'''<br><br> | ||
| − | We’ve arranged a watch schedule for bridge duty, shifts of 4 hours each. Rina’s a night owl and chooses the double oh-hundred to oh-four hundred watch. She slips into her quarters at the end of her shift and dives into bed and Joshua slides out to take a leak. Exiting the quarters he hears something very like a cat meowing. Our cat has turned up missing and we’ve been looking for | + | We’ve arranged a watch schedule for bridge duty, shifts of 4 hours each. Rina’s a night owl and chooses the double oh-hundred to oh-four hundred watch. She slips into her quarters at the end of her shift and dives into bed and Joshua slides out to take a leak. Exiting the quarters he hears something very like a cat meowing. Our cat has turned up missing and we’ve been looking for her since take-off. Perhaps this is him yowling to be found? Joshua follows the sound to the passenger deck and at the bottom step he pauses and listens. Now he’s hearing muffled screaming from our lady passenger’s cabin. ''No! Don’t hurt me! Nooooo!''<br><br> |
Joshua busts down her door—easily enough done, since our Smartship system won’t let us lock them—and startles the woman awake. She was sound asleep and she is alone. And rightfully frightened by the ship’s XO busting down her door. She starts making noise and her three male colleagues take exception to his being there. Joshua tries to explain, without success. They escort him out of the cabin and see him off. Joshua goes to Nika’s cabin. As Captain she should know what happened. She agrees that it was an awkward position to be in but she also agrees his intentions were pure and ultimately the smart thing to do: had we done nothing and our passenger been hurt for-real, it would be much worse than having simply embarrassed her.<br><br> | Joshua busts down her door—easily enough done, since our Smartship system won’t let us lock them—and startles the woman awake. She was sound asleep and she is alone. And rightfully frightened by the ship’s XO busting down her door. She starts making noise and her three male colleagues take exception to his being there. Joshua tries to explain, without success. They escort him out of the cabin and see him off. Joshua goes to Nika’s cabin. As Captain she should know what happened. She agrees that it was an awkward position to be in but she also agrees his intentions were pure and ultimately the smart thing to do: had we done nothing and our passenger been hurt for-real, it would be much worse than having simply embarrassed her.<br><br> | ||
| − | In the morning, Nika steps up and apologizes again for her XO, explaining his and our position for being proactive, and the male passengers accept it with ill grace. Their relations with us is downright cool afterwards and they pretty much snub us for the rest of the trip. Kiera does her best to smooth things over with exemplary service and Joshua stays out of their sight. Not hard to do, since he doesn’t like the passenger or cargo decks at all. They make him feel | + | In the morning, Nika steps up and apologizes again for her XO, explaining his and our position for being proactive, and the male passengers accept it with ill grace. Their relations with us is downright cool afterwards and they pretty much snub us for the rest of the trip. Kiera does her best to smooth things over with exemplary service and Joshua stays out of their sight. Not hard to do, since he doesn’t like the passenger or cargo decks at all. They make him feel weird.<br><br> |
'''Friday, 16 Jan 2522'''<br><br> | '''Friday, 16 Jan 2522'''<br><br> | ||
| − | Beglan draws Nika aside and tells her that he thinks he can reboot Joshua’s robot by running | + | Beglan draws Nika aside and tells her that he thinks he can reboot Joshua’s robot by running Lagniappe’s flight control computer through it. Nika clears it and later finds him struggling to get it upstairs. She helps him and they wrestle the robot aboard our shuttle. Beglan takes the panels off the requisite equipment and starts running a line. Nika leaves him to it and then returns when he calls her to come see something. it turns out that our shuttle’s computer is a high tech piece of Alliance naval gear—too sophisticated for a mere shuttle.<br><br> |
| − | We think back on how we got it. We filched her off the abandoned | + | We think back on how we got it. We filched her off the abandoned Henri de Pollo, in the Highgate Debris Field, and the flight computer was actually a salvage install from another ship on the de Pollo that Rina had put in. Originally ''Lagniappe'' lacked the flight computer. <br><br> |
We continue to search for our kitty. Kiera finds him at last in the forward storage locker on the passenger deck. At the back of the locker a wall panel has come loose, dented and pried further open by the cat worming inside. She opens it up wider to let our kitty out and she sees something on the other side. It’s the dead space between decks, the empty pocket area formed under the bridge, Captain’s Quarters and conference room a deck above and the upward rise of the deck from below. She gets inside and finds it’s a hidden cache of moldering carboard file boxes and trunks and trunks of stuff. Everything thickly coated in dust and she backs out, covered in it. She brushes off the worst and grabs Rina for the sake of her flashlight and also, just to have a friend share the adventure: hidden treasure! Woo!<br><br> | We continue to search for our kitty. Kiera finds him at last in the forward storage locker on the passenger deck. At the back of the locker a wall panel has come loose, dented and pried further open by the cat worming inside. She opens it up wider to let our kitty out and she sees something on the other side. It’s the dead space between decks, the empty pocket area formed under the bridge, Captain’s Quarters and conference room a deck above and the upward rise of the deck from below. She gets inside and finds it’s a hidden cache of moldering carboard file boxes and trunks and trunks of stuff. Everything thickly coated in dust and she backs out, covered in it. She brushes off the worst and grabs Rina for the sake of her flashlight and also, just to have a friend share the adventure: hidden treasure! Woo!<br><br> | ||
| − | Rina goes in there with her flash light and they first try opening a file box. It threatens to fall apart at the seams. Rina stabilizes the corners with her duct tape and they lift the lid to reveal paperwork from the | + | Rina goes in there with her flash light and they first try opening a file box. It threatens to fall apart at the seams. Rina stabilizes the corners with her duct tape and they lift the lid to reveal paperwork from the Ion days: tax forms, cargo and crew manifests, and receipts. It’s papers and paychecks. They open one of the trunks next and find it full of clothing—the style that Rim settlers would wear. There’s clothing for both sexes, from adult to child, and there are some personal effects mixed in. Kiera lifts a shirt and holds it to herself and as Rina tries to figure out why all this stuff is here, she fastens onto a horrific thought:<br><br> |
| − | These are the scavenged belongings of boatloads of people who were lured to take transport on the | + | These are the scavenged belongings of boatloads of people who were lured to take transport on the Ion and then killed, stripped of their belongings and their bodies jettisoned in space. Their murderers pocketed whatever transport fees they charged their victims and went back for more lambs to slaughter. How else would Ion make all those trips back and forth from Georgia to Blue Sun? Why else did they list the same 20 passengers on their passenger manifests time after time? That would explain why Joshua never took to the ship, why it makes him feel uneasy, why he particularly hates the passenger deck and the cargo hold. Maybe it’s the fact we’d recently slaughtered a cow there, but all she can think of is the blood being hosed off the deck into the bilge drains. Rina freezes with a wild eyed look and her hands clapped over her mouth. Kiera notices and asks her what’s wrong. Rina can only babble out her theory in bits and pieces, she’s that rattled.<br><br> |
Which of course is a total buzz-kill for Kiera. She pulls Rina out of there to chill and once she’s calmer they go back inside for the files box they taped up and to take one last look around. Rina spots a records book way up at the top of the curve, pinched between the curve of the deck and the top of the space. She pulls it down and opens it up. Everything’s written in Chinese. She takes it with her. Kiera hands her a shirt from one of the trunks and tells her to take it and the book to Joshua. See if he can’t get a reading off it using psychometry.<br><br> | Which of course is a total buzz-kill for Kiera. She pulls Rina out of there to chill and once she’s calmer they go back inside for the files box they taped up and to take one last look around. Rina spots a records book way up at the top of the curve, pinched between the curve of the deck and the top of the space. She pulls it down and opens it up. Everything’s written in Chinese. She takes it with her. Kiera hands her a shirt from one of the trunks and tells her to take it and the book to Joshua. See if he can’t get a reading off it using psychometry.<br><br> | ||
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The very idea makes Joshua recoil when Rina takes him to hydroponics for a private word over it. He’s not that kind of psychic! She persists, he humors her, and gets nothing off the shirt. The book, however, catches his interest. He can read Chinese, thanks to his linguistics skills, and he asks to keep the book to read through it. She gives it to him, gives Kiera the shirt and the two women go to Nika to tell her what they’ve found.<br><br> | The very idea makes Joshua recoil when Rina takes him to hydroponics for a private word over it. He’s not that kind of psychic! She persists, he humors her, and gets nothing off the shirt. The book, however, catches his interest. He can read Chinese, thanks to his linguistics skills, and he asks to keep the book to read through it. She gives it to him, gives Kiera the shirt and the two women go to Nika to tell her what they’ve found.<br><br> | ||
| − | For the balance of the 11 day journey, both Joshua and Rina tear into their chosen projects—he to translate the book, she to take all the paper records from the box and try to reconstruct a picture of the | + | For the balance of the 11 day journey, both Joshua and Rina tear into their chosen projects—he to translate the book, she to take all the paper records from the box and try to reconstruct a picture of the Ion’s travels through the paper trail it made. She mounts her findings, crime board style, to the wall of the machine shop. Joshua spends almost all his time in hydroponics reading and translating the book. He immediately finds a pattern: a person’s name, a place name, a person’s name, a planet. The person and place names are different each time. <br><br> |
| − | + | They get fairly obsessed over it, to the point of skipping some finer points of hygiene. Kiera complains to Nika, Nika orders them both to shower and make themselves presentable.<br><br> | |
| − | Meanwhile, Beglan's repairs patch with '' | + | Meanwhile, Beglan's repairs patch with ''Lagniappe's'' CPU is successful and he unveils the fully working robot soon after Joshua and Rina have cleaned up. It walks, it takes orders. IT LIVES! Congratulations and praise get heaped on Beglan, who gets a bit embarrassed by it all. Now that the robot's working again, it looks like we've got a chance to reduce the financial burden of the payments by selling it. That's for the future, however. In the meantime, Kiera drafts it to carry towels and whatnot for her on the passenger deck.<br><br> |
