SadishAction: Sadish considers if she is capable of making one of these 'metafields', and in a way it might be difficult to detect-such as making it subtly different from a personal defense shield this malicious being would expect mercies to have, which would obviously be expected, at protecting against energy and kinetic weaponry. Essentially, a 'bio-shield'?
She also had made sure to collect her payment before leaving the station
Edit: ALSO, she searches her tablet history to see if she still has Grenacs last voice recording to her, to use in identifying his voice on the video.
The payment Keresh had credited Sadish was an excellent profit considering the cost of the information, but rather stingy when she considered how precious the data probably was. Still, his hands were probably somewhat tied by his superiors. Reward money was typically one of those purses where those was a low-ceiling and no floor. Meanwhile, Sadish worked on scanning through her device's history to see if she still had anything from Grenac. It was a long shot, but it could be done while her equipment collated data on the Vera, and it would potentially help narrow down Aubrey's work later.
Buried deep in the history of the tablet, bracketed by historical books she'd forgotten she'd downloaded, was Grenac's message and the scan data of the tree. It had been a short, cheerful apology- a rowdy bar providing the background for the message. There wasn't much there, but Sadish sent what she had over to Aubrey. She'd get to it when she got back, and hopefully it would clean things up a little.
That done, Sadish had her bio-shields to work on. She had an idea, her own Fin-walker, and a fragment of a relic that might help. It was somewhat ironic to be basing her design off an old idea that had, in the end, failed to save its inventors. Sadish, however, wasn't intending to hedge out Vera forever, just for long enough to get away- if such a thing was possible.
Sadish wasn't the world's greatest engineer, but she'd picked up more than a thing or two from years fiddling with, and even occasionally building, her own tools. The relic fragment she had couldn't be directly integrated into her shield generator, but it made a fair model in order to avoid major problems. At least, Sadish hoped that was the case. There were several ways to achieve her goals that seemed a great deal easier than what she was attempting, but that seemed to run counter to the design of the relic. Sadish had made her own anti-bio fields before, usually to sterilize a work environment, but this was something of a power far beyond her regular work. She deferred to the expertise of the past and took the harder path, avoiding the potential dead-ends of promising design branches. She could get creative later, right now she needed this to work.
Eventually, however, Sadish got to a point where decisions had to be made without concrete input. The relic was a fragment, after all, and while it hinted at the proper direction, it gave no clear solution. The worst part was that, whatever choice Sadish made, she would have no way of knowing whether it was correct or not until the shielding was deployed. Either way the shield would be able to disrupt one assault from Vera. If she was able to make the appropriate correction to her bio-shield, she would be able to modulate it four to five more times in order to block alterations of Vera. If she got it wrong, then then modulations would effectively be the same shield, and the bio-shield would be about as useful as a large soap bubble. Though, honestly, a large soap bubble would probably catch more bacteria before popping than the improperly modified shield would.
There are five resonant nodes used to generate the shielding metafield, Sadish needs to correct one for negative anharmonicity. She knows that, due to the problem of covariation, exactly four of the five nodes will give accurate readings, while one will give inaccurate readings.
Node Alpha: Indicates that node Beta does not need correction.
Node Beta: Indicates that node Chi does not need correction.
Node Chi: Indicates that node Epsilon does not need correction.
Node Delta: Indicates that it does not need correction.
Node Epsilon: Indicates that either node Alpha or node Chi need correction.
((I should write all exams like this.))
15§
Aubrey Current action is to prepare and then leave as soon as possible - presumably on the sled, but if just me and Scarlet are going then we could fit in the Bird and leave the sled for the emergency backup... Then go to station and make way to Varkonius' room. Best Aubrey doesn't do the talking if possible.[/b]
Without much time to work on the problem, Aubrey briefly collated everything she had on the audio file, pinning it together with the vocal sample that Sadish sent over. The vocal sample was old, and the quality of blackbox was degraded, but the problem seemed a tractable one. It might only give her the ability to determine which words were said by Grenac and which were not, but it would still be something. Whether it would be something useful was a question to answer at another time. For now, she needed to gear up.
Most of what Aubrey owned for tactical situations was limited- smugglers might be depicted in holos as guns blazing heroes who wielded oversized sidearms and outran explosions, but that was a rather impractical image. Smuggling was the kind of profession where gunfire was avoided at all costs, and physical violence was a mark of failure- regardless of the outcome. Aside from her bladed pinions and pair of rear-firing micro missiles concealed in each wing, most of Aubrey's gear reflected that philosophy. Concealed in her tech harness was a personal cloaking generator that could manage a good six seconds of optical cloaking to a minute of cooldown, an automated lockpick, and a portable signal jammer that was decent at taking out local communications, and when paired with her implants could be used to generate very short range interdiction fields.
Importantly, most everything she had was reasonably concealed, and it at least didn't look immediately lethal on a cursory scan. Not that she tended to like going through scanners- old smuggling habits that really didn't change when one entered the life of a mercy.
Aubrey headed to the Sled when she was finished with her kit, snagging Boris' explosives on the way and getting the 'shuttle' warmed up and ready to go. Scarlet could run most of the talking, Aubrey was just there to swipe the artifact, and, rather importantly, get the Sled into the Flounder's shuttle bay without creating any unnecessary hull breaches.
KhateIf I'm not needed for our current plan, experiment with ironweaving some immobilizing net or goop for combat. Ideally I'd like two versions: An actual does-its-job version, and a fake one to scare Varkonius into wasting his bore jump avoiding or redirecting harmless slop onto one of my allies.
Gear up to head to the station with the team, but stay in the shuttle (such as it is) waiting as backup.
Nets, as it turned out, were hard. Just using nanites for a decent net was next to impossible, there just weren't enough of them to create a net large and dense enough to trap anything larger or stronger than a rabbit. In the end, Khate ended up experimenting using one of the many, many extra chairs from the restaurant to provide additional mass in the form of metal and plastic. Making a goop ball was pretty easy- that was the result of any failure. Of course, since everything was dry, it wasn't terribly goopy, more like a ball of plastic and metal dust.
The proper version that Khate tried to make was rather disappointing. It was a result of the rush rather than a lack of material, but it was still rather low quality. It could be fired from any rifled grenade launcher, and the centrifugal force would cause it to expand into a capture net. However, the mix of metal and polymer that was supposed to make it flexible and strong did neither, instead making it rather brittle and moderately easy to tear. It wasn't useless, but Khate didn't expect anything hit by the net to stay captured for terrible long. Unless it was like another chair, then it would probably be horrified by the fact that had just been enveloped by a net made from the mangled remains of its kin. That, and chairs didn't struggle much.
The call to get assembled to board the Flounder came shortly after Khate had finished her first try at the net, giving her no room for another attempt. Instead, she assembled the rest of her rather eccentric combat gear. Most of her primary tools were integrated into her mech, but there were more than a few toys that were kept locked up with her in the mech's cockpit- just in case she had to get out and work by tooth. Most of the arms fell in the general category of 'kinda non-lethal', well, most everything except for the shotgun that fired spinning sawblades. That one was pretty bad, but she just couldn't compromise on favorites.
Gear ready, Khate went down to the hangar to suit up into her mech, settling into its quadrupedal frame like a second skin. Not technically powered armor due to the cockpit in the machine's chest having enough room inside for Khate to disengage from the controls and take a nap when needed, the mech was still designed to move and look like a very large and exceptionally heavily armed Cane.
Tromping through the hangar sent shivers of anticipation up and down Khate's spine. Sure, things were less likely to devolve into a horrific firefight up here in space, but there was always a decent chance that she'd get to let loose and recruit a few prospective runners- or at least have some fun practicing for the real deal. Once in the Sled, Khate locked her mech into the shuttle's internal clamps and settled in, swapping the mech's internal holo-screens from exterior view to entertainment.
What this thing needed for an upgrade was some form of internal popcorn dispenser.
ScarletScarlet continues to prep her gear for the coming mission, preferably in such an arrangement that it doesn't actually look like she's getting ready for a firefight.
Scarlet was having trouble deciding what to wear for her away mission. It needed to be subtle, unobtrusive, but still capable of stopping a bullet. Scarlet imagined the last wasn't a problem most women had when picking clothes. She'd narrowed her pick down to two options from her wardrobe: The Syn-Fyn arms disposable bulletproof body wrap with the ADUS-9 light tactical vest, or the Nachtjager full body suit. In the end, the choice was made by both expense and purpose. The Nachtjager was more infiltration gear, and while she could wear her normal clothing over it, the suit had the habit of... clinging in... places. Scarlet was typically not terribly self-conscious of her body, age had removed most of those barriers, but there were still one or two things that just made her uncomfortable.
The Syn-Fyn body wrap went over everything, covering her from her ankles up to her neck in its bandage-like material. Currently it was inactive, as pliable as wound wrap, but the first time it took a bullet, or a similar high-energy projectile, it would start behaving a little less like a normal material. Any force applied would be spread out across a few square feet of her body, which made bullets feel like getting clubbed with two-by-fours and made powered melee blows feel like a strong fall. Unpleasant in both cases, but survivable. The effect would only last for an hour or two after the first impact, after which point the body wrap would have the defensive value of the gauze resembled. The ADUS vest was sleek, easily concealed under her jacket, and would stop a couple shots from most direct weapons fire. Her own railgun would punch through it, as would certain kinds of direct radiation weapons, but it was a good all-rounder.
The clothing that went on top of the body armor was her standard kit, hooded red jacket, loose pants that were more for concealed pockets than style, and a set of red-tinted blast proof glasses. Melting the flesh of her arms from the flamers was unpleasant, but it could take her nanites hours to completely repair the damage if she burned one of her corneas. Her rifle, in its broken down state, was easy to fit into her jacket. Her flamers were likewise concealed just by keeping jacket low on her wrists.
If she did a little head-bobbing as though she was plugged into a Deep feed she'd look like any other disinterested teenager- which would be a good cover if there was any person who could realistically be her parent. Boris was really the only one on the crew who could pull that one off, and acting wasn't exactly his strong suit. Though, there wasn't any reason Aubrey couldn't be her mother in modern society, though it took a bit more explaining.
Both Scarlet's railgun and her assault rifle were far too large to carry on unnoticed, but she packed them onto the Sled regardless. She probably wouldn't need them, but she wanted them within possible reach if she did. The Sled was close enough that she could get a re-arm if she needed it, the Reunion, however, would be as reachable as the moon once they were on the Flounder.
Flounder StationAubrey deftly piloted the Sled out of the Reunion's dock after a couple of false-starts with the bay doors, navigating the short distance between the Reunion and the Flounder with a distressingly small number of formalities. Her request for docking was granted without any further requests for information on her passengers, her cargo, or even her business on the station. Aubrey had never been to Flounder, and she supposed it was possible that questions were fewer for a backwater as unimportant and automated as this one, but it still struck her as odd. And uncomfortable.
The Sled slammed down into the Flounder's dock without any incident other than the harshness of her landing. Port control took over, registering a fresh malfunction in one of the four docking clamps, but otherwise passing the shuttle through without complaint. Once docking finished and the shuttle tied off to the station's airlock, an automated message popped up on screen wishing Aubrey, Scarlet, and Khate a nice day.
While definitions of 'nice day' varied greatly between the Sled's three crew members, not one of them would bet on the Flounder station having a nice day.
Aubrey and Scarlet left Khate behind when the Sled confirmed pressure in the walkway, doing their best to not look like they were intending to (at best) steal a priceless artifact from a known killer. Not that they were really sure what legitimate business they'd have on the Flounder, other than restocking the Reunion's absurdly capacious fridge.
The anteroom to the Flounder's dock was occupied as expected, with a Felid in a three armed tech-suit typing madly into the reception terminal. She, however, was not the only one present. A human and a hound, both in security armor, stood in the far corners of the room. Though their presence wasn't unusual, the looked a lot less bored and much more focused than ordinary security. They didn't seem nervous at the number of mercenaries and combat vessels that seemed to have swarmed over their backwater; they seemed ready, prepared for whatever Scarlet, Aubrey, and the rest of the galaxy could throw at them.
"Welcome to Flounder station," the receptionist called as Scarlet and Aubrey entered.
"We're happy to have you here, and we understand that you would like to complete your business as soon as possible, but in light of recent events you will have to comply with additional security measures." The Felid finally stopped typing and favored the newcomers with a look that was probably meant to be sympathetic.
"Please, follow security through to the gun scan in order to verify that you are carrying no contraband weapons or explosives."In Aubrey's head, alarm bells were ringing furiously. Something was off about the security guards, but she hadn't been able to place it until they starting moving towards her and Scarlet. Their armor didn't fit right. For normal security that would be evidence of a normal lack of training and general slovenly conduct, but this pair acted military. There was no way they'd be wearing their armor wrong if they had any other choice.
KesariWork Sensors
Eking every last edge out of the sensors without making it clear that Kesari was trying to peer into the private details of the assembled ships was an exercise in caution, largely because of the zeal of the Reunion. The computer was gung-ho about invading the privacy of every living thing within scanner range, and keeping it in check took every bit of Kesari's skill. Split between scanning and keeping the Reunion from unleashing a deluge of advertising materials, Kari wasn't able to learn anything new about the ships currently docked, and the situation on the ground seemed to have reached a steady state. All the shuttles had landed, and if something more definite was happening, the Reunion's sensors didn't have the resolution to pick it up. The only reason they'd been able to pick up the shuttles landing was because Kesari and known exactly where to look.
As to the inside of the Flounder, Kesari was able to verify that the team had made it on board safely, and the comms link between them and the Reunion was still healthy. Aside from that, everything inside the station other than the market board had been blacked out to external scans.
An aperture in bloom slightly beyond the Reunion's orbit captured the Reunion's (and by extension, Kari's) attention. It was a large bore, but the only ship that came through was a light transport, cheap looking and indistinguishable from any other of a million ships in similar production lines. It also matched the description Fuzzy had given of the ship transporting Varkonius' buyer perfectly. Kesari immediately ran a cursory scan of the new vessel, and that was where things became distinctly odd. Gravity distortion readings gave the ship a mass anywhere in the range -2 and 14 Gg, its hull temperature alternated between readings of 0.8 and 54000 kelvin, and signal sweeps produced nothing but noise. Whoever they were, they had a rather powerful jammer running. If they had been intending to be inconspicuous, they failed utterly by dint of being the only ship in the system to bother jamming its basic signature.
BorisMuch Work. Such Engineering.
The flask took shape slowly, and Boris performed tests at every layer of assembly to make sure things weren't on the verge of exploding. The longer he worked, however, the more he became convinced of something: the reactor's containment was degrading faster than it should. It wasn't like there was a smoking gun for sabotage, not like there had been when he'd been repairing the original Starset, but too many things were just a little bit not-right. Impurities in the coolant, aberrations in the containment field symmetry, slight alignment issues with the control rods- all things that he had checked and fine tuned when he'd installed this damn thing. They shouldn't have all gone bad this quickly, but the weight of all the little errors was slowly but steadily killing the engine.
This would help, but she needed the full overhaul. There had to be reason why the little things kept failing, and unless one of the crew had developed a keen interest in dying a horrible irradiated death, that reason was a mechanical one.
"Please, father, have mercy."Boris stood bolt upright, turning slowly to survey the reactor room. He was alone. He was very nearly certain someone had spoken, but he was also alone.
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Topic: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat. (Read 53328 times)