Those Who Stare In The Black, Game 12: Under Observation

Sunday, 08 Oct 2519
New Sydney Spaceport 23, New Melbourne
Red Sun (Zhu Que) system

First, we are unable to ascertain if our message to Malcolm Reynolds and his crew has reached him. We've had no confirmation of message back from them. We can only hope they got the warning we've sent them and are taking appropriate measures.

Meanwhile, we still need to earn our pay and eat. As the investigation of the murders on our ship and the disappearance of Lissa Gates-Mann are still ongoing, the Feds will let us leave to earn a living only if we take an Observation Officer with us. (OOC:That would be Dorian's character.)

Great.

Oksana makes a quiet mention of "political officers" from her culture's history. Verity takes an immediate dislike to the very idea of a Fed shipping out with us. Xiu starts planning pranks. Allyne and Oksana urge caution and discretion.

The man arrives. His name is Jacob Marley and he has a liking for fedoras. Otherwise he's dressed Coreside simple: trim jacket, shirt, and trousers. Nothing remarkable beyond the hat. (OOC:Dorian's avatar is a picture of Rorschach, the man who invented the blots. Sara says the picture looks like the love child of Brad Pitt and David Bowie. I asked for a copy of the pic and Chris emailed it to me.)

Sunday, 08 Oct 2519
Mid-bulk Freighter Space Otter
En Route to Silverhold
Red Sun (Zhu Que) system

We lift off and over the course of two and a half days, we get to know a little about the PO (Political Officer). Oksana deals with him mostly as his Steward, giving him the cook's tour, making meals and eating with him. Keeping him out of trouble. The first day isn't even over before he asks to see the engine room and the bridge. Oksana demurs, saying it's restricted to authorized personnel only. But she would ask the Captain. Please do that, thank you.

Allyne does a background search on Marley. Marley comes up as someone who's done a little bit of everything—if there's a job that needs doing, he's your go-to guy. He's also moved around quite a lot for those jobs too. One odd thing: there are no records of him older than five years. More than five years, nothing.

Over dinner, Oksana and he have a little getting to know you conversation and the one thing she takes away from it is that he's from Yudhishtira, off Dragon's Egg in Blue Sun.

Wow, you come far, she says and leaves it at that. He gets out of her that she's travelled widely during the war and she tells him some funny stories. Nothing involving her patients directly, thank you.

Dinner's an uneventful affair.

Monday, 09 Oct 2519
En Route to Silverhold
On the second day out, Stone takes Marley on a tour of the bridge. Verity is cool toward him but he doesn't seem insulted. He asks if she can do something fancy. And to show him what she can do—and make him nauseous—she executes an end-over-end spin combined with a barrel roll.

Yup. Made him nauseous.

An alarm goes off on our proximity scanner. It's coming up on our rear. Fast.

What do you know about this? Verity demands of Marley.

Nothing, he asserts.

Allyne scans the approaching ship with our sensors and checks our own signals and emissions fingerprint. We're not leaving anything weird—so … we're not broadcasting any funny "We're Here. Come get us!" signal. Verity tells the Captain it's his call if he wants to hail them.

He makes that call.

Other ship: (gruff voice) Yeah. What is it?
Allyne: This is Space Otter. You seem to be in an awful hurry.
Other ship: This is Jedidiah. Headed out to Silverhold. What's with the fancy moves?
Allyne: Oh, just testing what our ship can do.
Jedidiah: Let me pass ya? I'm on a tight schedule.
Allyne: Sure.

Jedidiah passes us as if we're flying backwards. Which causes Verity all manner of consternation. We're a fast ship, she asserts. How the hell is he faster than we are?

Blarghhh, says Marley into his sick bag.

Well, Verity admits she is going a little slower than her usual, on account of our guest. How's he doing back there?

Barffffff….

Allyne does a little check on Jedidiah. Yup. The records and his contacts affirm he really is out of New Melbourne and he really does have a delivery to make to Silverhold. Marley is still puking and Allyne calls Oksana to the bridge to attend to our guest. She arrives and immediately injects him in the neck with Dramamine. Privately she wanted to use Scopolamine. In addition to fighting motion sickness, in proper doses Scopolamine also makes people vulnerable to suggestion and inhibits short term memory. In short, it's a great drug to make people do what you want. Like tell you all their secrets.

But no. She would have had to clear it with the Captain first. So, Dramamine.

Xiu arrives with a wet/dry shop vac for the puke on the deck and Allyne suggests the tour is over. Oksana helps Marley back to his quarters to sleep off the meds, then goes off to the galley to get dinner started.

Meanwhile, Verity puts the ship on auto pilot and obsessively checks everything Marley touched while on the bridge. Damned if she'd let the bastard sabotage or bug her baby. No bugs or hacks.

Huh.

Verity still doesn't like him. She doesn't find anything but she still doesn't like him. Seeing his pilot fuming, Allyne lends a hand in the search and he finds something on the underside of one of the consoles that might be suspicious: a wad of …. something. Glue? Putty? Booger? Verity scrapes it off and takes it to Oksana to run tests on it.

She runs the tests. The results come back inconclusive beyond: it's some kind of glue. Bonding material.

Still unconvinced, Verity spit shines the bridge.

Dinner is a homecooked affair. Out of respect for our guest's gastro distress, Oksana serves nothing pukoid. Beef Stroganoff will have to wait. Dessert is Strawberry Shortcake with real strawberries and real whipped cream. Marley is impressed at how moneyed our Captain is—or at least, how extravagant our food budget is … which kinda means the same thing and is a topic of conversation.

Marley also gets permission to tour the engine room on the morrow. We break up the evening early and Oksana stays awake late into the night in med bay, reading journals and tacitly making herself available should Marley need her for anything as Steward.

Tuesday, 10 Oct 2519
En Route to Silverhold
The engine room tour. Xiu greets him when he arrives with Allyne. She cryptically announces that all hands and limbs are to remain close to bodies at all times and begins the tour. She talks up our ship, waxing proud-mama over her. Marley takes it all in and there's something about him ….

Xiu starts having a flashback. She starts spacing out and her running monologue on the ship starts going sideways.

Allyne catches the signs and hails Oksana to engineering. Oksana grabs the kit she keeps stocked for such occurrences and hauls aft. She gets Xiu medicated and installed in her quarters in her compression cocoon, and stays with her until she wakes again. Marley takes all of this in and asks a few questions about the sanity of the engineer. Allyne covers for Xiu. Marley seems to accept Allyne's explanation. He thanks the Captain and excuses himself and pulls a fade for Engineering, only to find the door's autolocked whenever someone leaves. He's not getting in there.

Xiu eventually wakes up. She's lucid. Oksana determines she's fit for duty and helps her out of the cocoon.

We're coming up on Silverhold, with landfall expected before dinner. Allyne orders the scanners be left on while Verity pilots the rest of the way in. Meanwhile he calls ahead to his contacts and inquires about Jedidiah and his ship. Was the man really a merchant in a big-assed hurry? Or was he following us and blew his cover?

No, he really is a merchant and he landed in Silverhold … and went straight into dry dock. Seems the idiot burned out his engine going too fast. Hard burn all the way from New Melbourne would do that to ya. Allyne thanks his contacts and signs off.

He checks the status of our cargo next. It should be on the dock and ready for loading in time for take-off in the afternoon on the morrow.

Good.

Allyne alerts Marley of our departure schedule and says that until then, he's free to leave the ship and see the sights … but if he isn't back when we lift off … The implication is clear: we'll leave without him.

Once we're actually on the dirt:

• Allyne looks for cargo and passengers for Aberdeen
• Verity is checking everything Marley touched or went near for possible tampering.
• Xiu apologizes to our ship for letting a strange man in the engine room, petting the ship and telling it to show her on the diagram where the man touched her. She watches all the security vids, too, as suspicious of Marley as Verity.
• Oksana goes off-ship to find a clinic or an orphanage to offer her services as a doctor.
  
  

That evening, Allyne goes out carousing—as a cover for gathering intel from his contacts. The news is not good: the Feds are increasing restrictions on trade and travel. The resulting rise in prices might be something we can turn to our advantage, but it means everyone has more hoops to jump through, more red tape to deal with, more intrusions into our privacy.

Wednesday, 11 Oct 2519
Silverhold Spaceport, Silverhold
Red Sun (Zhu Que) system
Morning

Our departure window is confirmed for the afternoon. The cargo is waiting on the tarmac for the stevedores to load onto our ship.

Allyne comes back after an all-nighter out. Oksana's returned some hours ago. Verity and Xiu are still aboard. Presumably Marley is too. (Dorian didn't say.)

An hour away from departure, one of Allyne's flag alerts starts yarking. The alert has tagged comm traffic concerning Xiu. Someone's reported her.

Marley, meanwhile, receives a message/automated alert about a particular ship and a particular captain as being en route to Silverhold. The message was sent in a hurry over an open channel.

Suspicions building, the crew starts to wonder. What was in Marley's message? Who is coming on that ship?

Huh.

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