AubreyConfirm action: head back to ship, spend up to all my money on a jump solution on the way back. Then we need to think a bit!
Aubrey queued up the station's jump market, only to find it locked off due to a security breach- requiring her to actually meet with a broker at one of the port kiosks, an irritat-
A priority redirect flashed on Aubrey's screen, taking her from the public jump market to a simpler, sleeker, distribution system. Aubrey knew this one, designed by Deliria's information gathering network, for Deliria's information gathering network. A parting gift from Fuzzy, and something she hadn't used in a long time.
Aubrey found an imminent solution to the Flounder, looking the price up. It was rather suspiciously close to exactly half of everything Aubrey had on account. Not unexpected, considering how much Fuzzy knew about, well, everything. Fuzzy was willing to help, but while he was generous, he was businessman- not a philanthropist. She purchased it without hesitation, forwarding it immediately to the Reunion while she rode the lift back down to the port.
Despite the current -rather distracting- environment of Deliria, the trip to the port afforded Aubrey a great deal of time to think. With the solution in hand, they could be within Sled distance of the Flounder and its planet within ten minutes, but that would put them rushing headlong into a furball that they were only minimally prepared for. The image of a Mercy was of an individual who'd throw dice in a game where victory was wealth and defeat was death, but those that actually followed that doctrine tended not to last long. This was a profession of tempered risks, not of haphazard gambling.
Aubrey met Sadish at the docks, getting checked back onto the Sled. It was difficult to read anything from the outside of the Finwalker, but she seemed distracted by whatever she was working on. Considering what Aubrey had heard about that topic, a bit of distraction didn't seem to surprising.
A quick check of the Reunion's personnel manifest and port control's sign-in roster revealed that Khate was the only one still aboard Deliria- and, somewhat worryingly, she'd been communications dark recently. Khate could charter a transit shuttle off Deliria, as Boris had, but not knowing where she was or what she was doing invited another level of uncertainty into the mission.
The quick flash of a new message calmed Aubrey's nerves somewhat, showing that Khate had been distracted (unfortunate, but not exactly unexpected), but that she was on her way. At least the Cane hadn't found someway to get incarcerated by Deliria authorities or start a riot between competing fan groups.
When Khate finally arrived, Khate piloted the Sled out of port as deftly as was possible, guiding it back with all speed that wouldn't sending it hurtling through the Reunion. Not that careful piloting made the eventual landing gentle, just slightly less damaging to the docking mechanisms. After the Sled landed, both Sadish and Khate hurriedly disembarked on their separate tasks, but Aubrey found herself with a moment to consider what to do next. The Reunion was ready to jump, the question was whether the rest of them were.
ScarletScarlet glared at the console. "Yeah, this is gonna have to wait. Should probably put this goddamn drone back, though. . ."
Getting the drone back into Sadish's lab before the Fin got back proved impossible. Getting the drone back before Sadish noticed, however, proved pretty easy. Despite hauling a bright pink control module back in with her, Scarlet didn't think Sadish even noticed her entrance. The Fin appeared transfixed by a what appeared to be a rather unique bacterium. Granted, Scarlet was a field medic and not nearly as versed in the intricacies of biology as Sadish was, but she was still pretty sure that DNA should NOT resemble a buckysphere.
SadishAction: Buy Backimaged Blackbox data from KaGrenac's ship §4. I don't really have time to watch it, however-I have to get back to the ship and work on making some antidotes!
Sadish's focus on the bio-data was intense enough that she didn't even feel the discomfort of the Finwalker suit chafing at her as she exited the Think Tank and slid back into her mech. The data here wasn't the freshest, but it was well done. Full analysis would have to wait until she was back in her lab, but... there were enough disconcerting things in the sample she had to work with.
Dividing focus between not crushing people with the Finwalker on her way back to the docks and analyzing the preliminary data was not an easy feat, and there were probably a few more broken toes before Sadish stood outside the Sled, providing her identity to port control in order to get cycled back through.
Sadish was dimly aware of Aubrey joining her on board, but she was more focused on analyzing the massive immune response evident in the goop. Not only was everything toxic, but the response cells all looked like they were going after different threats- not a unified pathogen. Hopefully that meant the pathogen was stimulating hyper-sensitivity, not that the bio-weapon was capable of free-mutation in order to cheat antigens.
Sadish needed her lab, quickly, but she was reduced to waiting until Khate finally showed up, which did eventually happen- along with one her typically perky messages. Normally, this was endearing to Sadish, but at the moment she wanted to be focused on developing a defense against the entire crew turning into fountains of pus and infected blood-which required her lab. She wouldn't have much time before Aubrey loaded the new jump coordinates she'd bought off Fuzzy into the Reunion bored across space, but hopefully enough to get her equipment working on synthesizing the vaccine.
The Sled ride was quiet, Aubrey sent the data she had over to the Reunion, Khate skimmed the blackbox, and Sadish did her best to draw as much information as possible out of the goo breakdown. It was slow, and when the Sled ground its way into the Reunion's docking bay, Sadish was the first one out, already forwarding everything to her lab for processing. By the time she actually got back there in person, it should have a reconstructed cellular model of the pathogen for her to work with, as well as the preliminary tests to see which of the immunization packets she'd have to sacrifice in order to get a workable antigen.
By the time Sadish was back in her lab, she had a complete plan for what to do, when to do it, and how to get it done before it should be critically needed. It was good plan. It was also completely worthless when she got a good look at the model of the pathogen that her computer had constructed.
It was beautiful and terrifying, elegant and yet clearly a grotesque perversion of the natural order. The bacterium followed most of the standard features of a bio-weapon: its organs were of the expected obdurate abundance, and its cell wall dotted with a complex of markers that would make it tricky to combat- but all of those were expected features. It was the DNA of the bacterium that fascinated and terrified Sadish. Typical bacteria had a DNA strand, and potentially a number of identical plasmids running around. There could be dozens or even thousands of plasmids, but in all but the rarest cases there were only one or perhaps two unique plasmid types. This cell had well over thirty-thousand unique plasmids. Instead of being free-floating replicon rings, these were linked through one another, resembling chainmail and bent to form a perforated shell around the bacteria's primary DNA strand. There wasn't just one shell, either. This appeared to have four nested shells, each bound to the adjacent shells through a myriad of linking proteins, and the innermost shell was linked to the bacteria's primary DNA strand. The DNA was deriving some information from its plasmid shell, it was utilizing part of it, but the mind-boggling complexity of the problem preventing Sadish from even beginning to track what parts of the structure were active.
This was beyond Apex level bio-engineering. Sadish couldn't decipher it, but she could guess what the structure was for: this was, or was meant to be, a universal cell. Depending on what parts of the plasmid shell were activated, the fundamental nature of the bacterium could be altered nearly infinitely. Bio-weapon was merely one feature of this creation, it could also duplicate a neuron, form a tooth root, or become part of a cornea- and a few envelope calculations showed that the plasmids had enough 'space' to express complete DNA sequences for each of the sentient races with the bulk of their room to spare. This was programmable biology on a level Sadish had never seen, as far beyond her expertise as colony ship design was beyond the expertise of a tribal canoe maker.
If Sadish had found this on a Relic world, and someone had told her that it was responsible for the death of the entire civilization that had created it, she wouldn't have doubted it for a minute. The only certain thing was that this thing could adapt to and consume any antigen she could develop in her lab without even slowing down.
KesariHelp buy that transaction for that...jump calculation!
Work on a sensor 'firewall' of advertising, marketing, and all around consumerism while calibrating several acute/deep sensors to aid our mission!
Reinforcing the Reunion's EW defenses met with mixed success, largely due to the interplay between Kesari's unspecialized programming experience and the Reunions own quirky physiology. While the defense Kesari created was prototypical, and needed a bit more work to be truly effective, the concept was interesting. Instead of a hard firewall that prevented access to the Reunion's computer, the system Kesari coaxed into existence was a maelstrom of honey pots and system locks. It was relatively easy to step inside the maelstrom and make a connection, but, once spruced up, it should be very difficult for an assailing computer to not get battered into submission by the Reunions hyperactive adware. The best case scenario was that the Reunion would be able to spike a direct hack back, using the assault channel as a window for her own counter-stroke.
The Sled arrived before Kesari had a chance to do more than get the frame of the program down, which meant there was likely to be a tough decision ahead. The more time she had, the tougher the Reunion's defenses would be, but also the longer their target had to escape, or for another crew to racoon their mark.
KhateHead back to the ship and review Sadish's black box. As in, study its contents and report them to Sadish, not post irritated 4/10 comments online about how it's mediocre at best and squanders anything of promise.
Khate was the last one back to the Sled, checking back out of port authority and heading into the shuttle under the not particularly patient eyes of Aubrey and Sadish. Things had been going on, and that was probably important, but Khate had to defend the honor of DNR, particularly at a time like this. Her efforts hadn't been particularly successful, and some of the claims that had been made put Khate's hackles up.
Still, there would be time for message boards later. After they apprehended the bad guy and did the thing with the whatever, then she could get back to the important stuff.
Aubrey was the one who piloted the sled back, giving Khate ample time to queue up the back-imaged feed from Grenac's ship. It was, as expected from a black market pirate of a government feed, of terrible quality. The relevant camera, the one capturing the ship's mess, actually looked like the footage was captured through a layer of smeared potato- which was entirely possible on a mercenary ship. The black box was primarily there to record flight data, and thus the video was held to only a few hours- though the ship's computer had been intelligent enough to lock the recording after it detected that all the crew had been killed.
The flight recorder part of the black-box was easy to skim through, particularly to make sure that Grenac had crossed through Tiamen space and had intercepted an encrypted signal with the same origin as the one the Tiamen had sent the Reunion. He had, and though it wasn't infallible proof that he'd been working the same Job as Khate's companions, it definitely pointed that direction. More importantly, the flight recorder showed why and how Grenac had stopped in the middle of deep space.
The ship recorded the endpoints of multiple jump calculations in the hours before the crews demise, apparently flicker jumping towards the flounder with all speed, but then, somewhere in the middle, the calculations go absolutely haywire. Either someone planted something on Grenac's ship that attacked the computer, or somehow, years away from the nearest civilization advanced enough to be on logs, someone managed to track his ship and project a
very powerful interdiction signal. Either way, from what Khate could see, the flight computer completely stopped being able to make any forward progress.
Exactly two minutes and forty-seven seconds later, a communications connection is opened. The sender's registered ID has been blocked, but the call-name "Nosoi" remains. Whatever exchange there was happened quickly, lasting eighty-nine seconds before the communications channel was cut and sensors recorded an inbound bore aperture opening and an unidentified ship (though presumably the Nosoi) passing through. From there, Khate switched over to the box's limited recording feeds from internal security.
The video of the mess, despite the poor quality, was informative. The problem was the audio was scrambled all to hell. Maybe some fancy tech people could do one of the things they did on deepshows and somehow invert the whatever to differentiate the signal harmonics and somehow make it sound right, but that was well beyond Khate. The video showed Grenac (handsome devil) and his crew assembled in the mess, looking rather intentionally indolent and carrying weapons in a very visible manner. If what/whoever was coming aboard intimidated them, they didn't show it.
Details were difficult, but the Cane who sauntered into the mess hall opposite Grenac's crew was still distinctive. For one; he was tall, zero-g birth tall, and two; he was shiny. The newcomer had hair like rainbow colored wire, shiny, metallic, and in a dozen different peacock hues. He wore no tech harness, nor did there seem to be anyone else with him. He spoke, and Grenac answered. The Audio was incomprehensible, but while it was clear that everyone was doing their damnedest to be calm through the encounter, everyone but the newcomer had a mohawk running between their shoulders. They talked for three minutes and eighteen seconds, after which point Grenac and his hounds pointed their weapons directly at the stranger. The stranger hung his head, managing to convey mockery with the submissive gesture, and sighed.
That was when the first of Grenac's crew started exploding. There was no warning, no weapons fire from the metallic Cane, no sudden movement. The member of Grenac's crew closest to the newcomer began screaming, and in seconds began ballooning, massive swelling racing across his body, raising pustules and blisters that split the skin. A brief bout of panic fire erupted from Grenac's men, but the tell-tale flash of a personal shield around the metallic Cane absorbed everything. The swelling spread to the rest of the crew rapidly, disabling them in seconds and killing them in seconds more. Grenac succumbing last, his face an unrecognizable mass of weeping infection by the time the first crew member afflicted detonated, spraying gore across the room and further occluding the picture. After that, there was nothing visible on the feeds except indistinct greyish blobs and globules of... something dripping over the recorder lens. Ick.
BorisHead back to ship to install the EM Flask
Boris had only just begun installing the EM flask around the reactor when the Sled docked with the Reunion, an event heralded by a slight shudder and flicker of lights as the assault pod 'landed'. One of these days Boris would get around to working on that, but at the moment it was pretty far down the list of things that needed attention. Not for the first time, Boris wondered if it would ever be worth hiring his own engineering team. On the one hand, it would be nice to have a group of people to delegate the unending lists of tasks to, on the other hand it was expensive and the odds of them not all being incompetent idiots who couldn't repair a goddamn paper-clip without a blueprint was almost negligible.
The good news with the EM Flask was that the design was perfectly compatible with the Reunion's reactor, the bad news was that it was a great deal more complicated to install than Boris had suspected. He'd need two hours or more to finish the job, and in the meantime fervent prayer was likely to be a more effective radiation shield than the partially installed flask.
Decisions!The crew has a jump solution, using that they can reach the Flounder within minutes, and be on the planet in minutes more. Unless Varkonius' goat purchase takes only a few minutes, that means it's quite likely they can catch him on the ground.
On the other hand, both the EM flask and Kesari's improved EW defenses will take a considerable amount of time, which might mean that delaying could be the smarter option- though it gives time for a lot of the unknown variables to converge on Varkonius.