Discovery Gaming Community

Harold Kane turned right and headed down the now-mostly-reconstructed starboard engineering hallway, eventually arriving at the office of Chief Engineer Clemens, who was startled by his sudden arrival. Not enough so, however, to avert her gaze from her computer screen.

"Bloody Erisites won't return my calls," he said. "I don't know who else we're going to get blueprints of that ship from."

She looked up at him, then back down at her screen. "Have you tried Phoenix?" she asked.

He decided to change the conversation. "Why are you so interested in the design plans of the Corvo, anyways? We'll need to gut the whole thing to get what the Commission wants out of it."

Once again, her eyes remained fixed. "It's easier to design a ship from a frame than from nothing, we've proven this with the Metropolis. I'd like it if you answered my question."

"Florence, we have had no contact with Phoenix at all."

She stopped typing and looked up at him. "Then make contact, or go to Baffin and extort a pope. Whichever you find safer."

He opened his mouth to protest her, a lesser-ranked officer, ordering him, the Taskmaster, around, but decided that the truly safest option available to him would be to silently nod and return to his own office to pen a message to Ames.

"Hey."

Kane stood at the doorway to Clemens' office.

"Harold. Something you wanted to talk to me about?" she asked, unmoved from her work.

"The Black Cloud II is here for your inspection."

Florence stood up immediately and closed her screen. "You mean you got it? The Strigidae?"

"Ehhh... not quite," Kane responded unenthusiastically. "But we found something with a bit more power output and less... encumberance."

By the time he had finished talking, Florence was already out the door and moving towards the factory mooring area. Kane jogged behind her to catch up.

"It's... it's..." she stammered, paused at a window through which the hull of the VCS Black Cloud II was visible, moored to Seasons.

"It's the Huginn. This is what the Commission told me to build an internal Strigidae clone for. This must be their backup plan. And it's beautiful."

"And it's yours to start working on. You'll get some help from Aquila's engineers alongside your own. Just let me know what you need."

Kane put his hand on Florence's shoulder for a second before turning around and walking back to his office, hearing from her two words he hadn't heard from her in a very long time.

"Yes, sir."

Harold looked up from his paperwork. "Report on the Huginn project, Florence?"

"We've brought the Black Cloud II online and made a successful sensor sweep of the system. The thing's nowhere near as powerful as the Spyglass array is, but it's more than your average cruiser holds." Chief Engineer Clemens responded enthusiastically.

"Good. And the Headlong?"

Florence looked down and shifted her foot around. "I'm... still working on that one, sir," she said with much less fervor. "The Commission has requested much higher-power sensors and scanner arrays for it than we have on the base Huginn cruiser, and coupled with the Headlong's cargo frigate power plant, we're still making the required modifications..."

Kane nodded and interjected, "That's all I needed to know. That ship is really more or less Escher's department, after all. How soon can we get weapons systems online on the 'Cloud?"

"Already active and simulated tests have been done. Accuracy is still being refined, but for our first in-house turret automation system, it's pretty damn good if I do say so myself."

"And you do."

"Of course. When was the last time I built something that didn't wor-- don't answer that."