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Alestone · (This post was last modified: 08-13-2015, 03:25 AM by Hirschel Energy R and D.)

Ship's Log - Sleipnir: 822/02/10, Omega-41

The ship hung in a high stationary orbit over the neutron star in Omega-41. An artificial image of the star blazed on the holographic display, a composite of the various emissions that were radiating from the monster at the heart of the system.

[Image: m7ruHH5.jpg]

Sandra Steel sat in the Captain's Chair, reviewing reports. This was going to be an expensive piece of work. Shadowcat had run 3.3k cargo units of the armor plating that the ship was wearing as extra defense against radiation damage in to Freeport 5, and they were going through 120 units every 12 or so hours. At this rate, they'd go through 2 full shipments, and a partial, in the expected month of recording. Add having to overhaul the shield generators once a week, and this was probably more pricey than getting jumped by a Nomad Gunboat.

At least the data collection algorithm seemed to be sound. By the time they got done, there would be 120 locations around the primary where Sleipnir had recorded for an average of 6 hours. Maintenance tasks were going to put them just about on the 6 week mark, two weeks behind original projections, but not something that could be avoided if the crew wasn't going to end up visiting specialists for long term radiation exposure.

Alestone · 02-17-2015, 02:30 AM,

822/02/16, Freeport 5, Omega-41

Shadowcat slid smoothly into place, the mooring tractors locking onto the cleats with computer directed precision. Once the bay pressurized, the airlock cycled open. Chuck looked around with the practiced eye of a naval officer. Everything seemed to be in place.

"Damnit, why did this have to happen now?!", he muttered.

A youngish fellow in a coverall with the Freeport 5 patch on his chest stepped out of a lift. "Sir, this way if you will? The... representatives are waiting in one of our conference rooms."

Chuck nodded, then followed the man back into the lift. It was tense inside, and the fellow stayed as far from the Star CRO as the tight confines allowed.

When the pressure valve irised open, Chuck almost smiled in spite of himself. Two Red Hessians and two Corsairs were busy trying to keep an eye on each other and the four station security types outside an elaborate pressure door.

Chuck reached out and gently grabbed his escort by the elbow, stepping past him in the moment of surprise.

"Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me?" The voice, pleasantly polite, still carried the tone of command. All eight men straightened unconsciously, although both the Hessians and Corsairs snarled almost identically after a moment. The momentary break in tensions was sufficient for Alestone to step past them.

Just before opening the door to the conference room, he looked back to the stationman. "Get these fellows something to drink, would you?"

Then, he was through the door and gone.

The meeting had been harsh, but Chuck had finally convinced both of the hostile factions that Star was not acting as a spy for the other power. Whoever had put them in one conference room had be mad, but it had worked brilliantly. Expensively, but brilliantly. Both sides had agreed to not destroy Sleipnir in exchange for a Docking Module to be installed on a ship of their choice.

The Hessian was grinning as he left, and Chuck couldn't help but feel that he had missed something. He just had no idea what...

Alestone Enterprises

The Power To Get You There!

Alestone · (This post was last modified: 02-20-2015, 11:18 AM by Alestone.)

822/02/17, Freeport 5, Omega-41

Chuck sat at the desk of the suite that Freeport 5 had provided in their Captain's Row. He was staring blankly at the display.

Just like that, Star Enterprises had ceased to exist. People he had known and worked with had just stolen the base while all of the Corporate officers were tending to affairs. He was startled out of his daze by a message ping from the Freeport. Habit made him scan the message, even though his mind was still replaying the news report.

The base had just recorded an explosion at Sleipnir's last recording location. Emissions consistent with a vessel de-cloaking had also been recorded, along with battleship class weapons fire. His ship, and more importantly, his crew, gone in a single blow, and the irony that the only people that sold cloaking devices in the area was the company he'd just stopped being a part of was not lost on him.

Where the Chief of Research and Development was not prepared to deal with this, the naval officer was. He turned back to the display and punched up Shadowcat. As soon as the comms were answered, he started talking, running right over the bridge watch. "Get a hold of the Freeport, and see to it that they reprogram the IFF. The ship needs to not be [Star]-Shadowcat when we leave. Have them rename it to...." his sense of history came to the rescue, "Silk_Road. We just became a wandering Zoner trader, at least until we get clear of the hostilities. Being flagged to Star Enterprises is no longer safe in these parts."

The man nodded and severed the connection, and, in the dimly lit room, Commander Alestone went away while tears streamed silently down Chuck's face at the loss of his family.

Alestone · (This post was last modified: 02-21-2015, 12:01 AM by Alestone.)

822/02/20, Silk_Road, Liberty space

If it weren't for the fact that he'd been sending messages from terminals at multiple different sites, Chuck would suspect that there was something wrong with the ship's comms; but, no, the Kusari Navy had responded promptly with their condolences. Gulping back his loss, Chuck forced himself to continue on.

Diplomacy was great, and Chuck still had the mindset of a Zoner even if he'd lost the affiliation, but how the hell did you exercise it if no one would even talk to you. Alright, yeah, it had been overly optimistic to think that he'd be able to get the Maltese to set aside their prejudices, but at least he had tried. Not his fault that they were just as stubborn as their reputation claimed. He still couldn't see how restricted access to a black hole was going to hurt their security, especially with what he was sure they would have assigned him, but, it was their space.

He had hoped for more from people that he had classified as allies in his mind, but apparently, the Liberty mindset was at work even here. Then, again, they never said what liberty they were claiming, did they. He'd give it one more try, and see if someone would at least talk to him in person. That had seemed to work for Jake when Neural Net correspondence hadn't.

First, though, he needed to safeguard his research. He'd been hoping to have secure storage on Ames by now, but that odd Recipient not Found error had come back right before the announcement that the station was under new management. Those folks didn't seem to want to have anything to do with him, either. A bitter chuckle, more snort than laugh, escaped his lips as he realized that whoever IRG was, they were based in Liberty, too.

Thought turning toward the memories of all the places he'd landed over the years, Chuck went looking for a place to hide his data in case things turned sour. Liberty itself was out; his relations with the legal side were all impersonal in the fashion of any customer, and the less than legal was turning out to be the same. In other times, he might have turned to the Hessians or Corsairs, but they had both been less than brotherly recently; another snort at the irony. Bretonia had been the closest that Star had to House stomping grounds on a regular basis. Maybe he could contact Gateway Shipping; they'd done a fair amount of supply to the base and he knew several of them personally.

Yeah, that seemed possible.

Alestone Enterprises

The Power To Get You There!

Alestone · 02-21-2015, 09:03 PM,

822/02/21, Silk_Road, New London system

So, I found the appropriate Gateway authority today; nice fellow. He was sympathetic to my predicament, and we settled on 10M a month for lodging and mooring. They offered to provide lab space, but I declined. I don't think that they have right sorts of resources available right now, and I don't want to see them investing in that sort of thing just for me. Maybe Jake infected me with too much of his business mindset, but I don't think they could realize a profit on it unless they went whole hog on making a research base. That, and the fact that there is a huge potential for danger if the later stage experiments go wrong just make me disinclined to get them involved in the research side of my life.

I will have my own network on the base, so the research data will be relatively safe from prying eyes. If I should happen to disappear, we've set up a Neural Net dead drop, and the info might eventually get back to Jake Winslow.

I still haven't heard anything from Ames, and I am not sure right now where I had rather look. I briefly toyed with the idea of making my own base, but after the whole todo with the New Hope Freeport in Bering, I don't think I want to go that route if I can come up with something less invasive.

I also got my first in person look at the Renku liner class. It's a damn shame that it doesn't have a powerful enough plant to push a Hyperspace scanner rig. Otherwise, given the size and general capabilities, it would be ideal.

In any case, I feel reasonably confident that I can try and chase down the Junkers now.

Attached log of Gateway transaction:

Spoiler

Alestone · 02-22-2015, 01:22 AM,

822/02/21, Silk_Road, Puerto Rico system

Well, the blockade running skills still work, although I hadn't expected to use them today.

After lurking near the Texas to Puerto Rico worm hole for several hours, I got a pair of fellows that were willing to take the time to talk to me. After some discussion, I was told to head in and make my way to the shipyard. Having always had an actual working relationship with Junkers in the past, we went in fat, dumb and happy. Batts and bots barely got us out of weapons range of the guardian station, and for a while, it seemed like everything wanted to invite us to be dinner. I don't know whether the fellow completely misjudged the situation, or if I ran into some murderous such and so that figured on feeding us in to the meat grinder.

We stayed out of trouble by stooging around away from all of the bases, and my orders not to shoot back were followed, even if grudgingly. in any case, the only thing that got close were a couple of missiles, and we just outran them in Cruise.

I sure as get out don't want it as part of our history that I shot down their fighters when it would seem we are in the wrong. This is an example of that old legal cliché, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse".

Luck is a fickle mistress, and She smiled on us after a while. Another Junker came around. I immediately put the ship to All Stop and asked for help. It was that, or try to take the jump hole out with one quarter of the batteries we had coming in. In any case, this fellow, and, yes, the log is intentionally vague about both sets of people since I had just as soon not risk someone IDing either of them, got the station commander for the guardian station to stop trying to pop us if we got close.

As a result, I am now being a very placid, good boy, and hoping that someone of some seniority will happen by so that I can talk to them.

Alestone Enterprises

The Power To Get You There!

Alestone · (This post was last modified: 02-27-2015, 11:39 PM by Alestone.)

822/02/26, Silk_Road

Chuck "paged" through the various information items that his Star neural net search had dropped into his in box. He found it ironic in the extreme that people who had resorted to mutiny and piracy on the grand scale were shielding themselves behind the label of Zoners, and invoking that reputation as protection.

It would be bitterly amusing to see how that all played out, since it obviously had more politics involved than a disgruntled employee base that Chuck had heard nothing about prior to the event, but that was no longer his concern.

An initial survey from space of Ithaca station had revealed that it still seemed structurally sound leaving aside repairs, but he hoped to get the Junkers more involved, since they had at least as much knowledge, if of a different sort, as he did. It would be enlightening to see what they came up with about the facility.

Less enlightening, but still needing to be dealt with, was the Liberty bureaucracy. Records research had left him with no definitive conclusions about ownership of the wreck, and it was obviously in space that the Liberty government had control of. He figured that he could start looking into that tomorrow.

He knew that the base wasn't used to formal flight plans beyond requests to be inserted into the flight patterns, but Chuck figured that giving a 12 hours' warning would give him time for anyone from Higher in the Junkers' food chain to short stop him if they felt the need. That being the case, he opened a Comms channel to La Fort and put in a formal departure request for 1800.

Alestone · (This post was last modified: 03-02-2015, 10:11 PM by Alestone.)

822/03/01, Silk_Road, New York/Kansas systems

Silk_Road hovered out of the way in the vicinity of the jump gate to Pennsylvania. ShadowJunker had its scanners pointed at the ruins of Ithaca Station. The New York Baxter Anomaly could be seen in the distance.

Ithaca

After some back and forth, the two captains determined that Alestone's initial interest in the wreck was untenable.

Discussion

Alestone didn't actually know the name of the captain of ShadowJunker, but he knew the type; loyalty repaid in loyalty, and anything else in kind. When it turned out that Ithaca was not worth it, it was not surprising that the Junker had an alternative to offer up.

Chuck had never heard of the Kansas system, but he wasn't as familiar with the non-House backlands as the outer loop of the sector. They settled on 10M for escort/guide service and headed to Kansas by way of Magellan. No ship runs for free, and Alestone was out on a business venture, not a personal errand. A routine run out to the Magellan jump hole brought them to, for Alestone anyway, virgin territory.

Kansas Jump Hole

Once through the Kansas wormhole, they proceeded to the wreck while discussing the what made the system a likely candidate for a research station; not least of which, in Alestone's mind was the fact that the system was undeveloped which would reduce the potential for loss of life should something become spectacular when it went wrong.

Junction wreck

The biggest concern ended up being whether the base was going to end up with territory disputes the way that the Star Port had. Hopefully, that could be prevented by engaging the appropriate players before things got started.

Chat Logs

Alestone · (This post was last modified: 03-27-2015, 04:55 AM by Alestone.)

822/03/26, Silk_Road, Texas system

"It has taken a while to get things in order, but I finally seem to be making some progress. I have been gathering documentation for making a formal claim on the Junction wreck, and at the same time, I have been trying to get my affairs in order with the various powers in the local region.

With that in mind, I found a member of the Rogues today, and, if he wasn't scamming me, got him to promise to run my request for a meeting up his chain of command. Not sure how that is going to play out since I have never done anything this grandiose with the Rogues before; just the usual cloak fit that seems to be the only thing all these folks have had in common. Without Star's records, that is a dead end."

Chuck sat back and sipped the whiskey that the Rogue had given him at the end of the discussion. The Molly's made a fine vintage, and he idly wondered if there was a profit potential for that. With the glass empty, and his eyelids waging war with gravity and losing, he attached the comm records to the entry and headed for his bed.

Comm record for initial contact with the Rogues (edited to remove game chatter)

Alestone · (This post was last modified: 03-28-2015, 01:46 AM by Alestone.)

822/03/27, Silk_Road, New York system

"Things are starting to go so well that I have started checking to see where the Demon Murphy is hiding.

I was in New York today, doing some routine business when I chanced upon a pair of Hellfire Legionnaires. They were very polite, and promised to convey my request for an interview up to their Higher.

If things go half this well when I file my claims to the governments, we might be able to actually get started with building the service station next month. A lot of work ahead, but, at least we'll be able to do some shipyard work. It'll be nice to get my hands dirty with grease instead of politics."

Chuck leaned back, thinking for a moment, then attached the Comm logs and saved off.

Hellfire Legion first contact (edited to remove game chatter)

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