Sunset: Then, Now, Tomorrow (Maintenance & Role-Play)

[Sunset]

Entoch Prime, Somewhere in the Southern Slice of the Beta Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy... Not More Than An Hour Later...

"...you Dent?" Meli asked, a tiny edge of hope in her question. It wasn't that she'd had trouble finding the cutter gang in question. Rather it was that Dent - if this was Dent - appeared to be an actual honest-to-god Dwarf. On top of that the hunched-over figure holding a welding mask over his face while working a bright-hot torch over a piece of unidentifiable scrap was bare-armed and muscular - even for a Dwarf - with intricate tattoos and a handful of scars down both arms.

Dangerous, strong, and handsome; he cut the torch and lowered the mask to reveal a hard-edged jaw covered by a thick but short beard and a pair of piercing grey eyes that swept over her before locking onto her own, "That's me - who's askin'?"

"Meli," she took a step forward and put her hand out. Setting his work aside, he rose from the crate where he'd been sitting and took the same step towards her. Hard but soft - and not weird or sweaty either; "Dent - Denton, my father named me. The nickname stuck."

"Seems right," she said, taking a further look around the shop - workshop, rather than storefront. Various pieces of this and that were hung up on the walls and there were tools everywhere. Everything from hull cutters and plasma torches to a good old-fashioned anvil sitting in one corner. There were also a couple large piles of pure scrap - plates and parts as befitted his profession.

"Word out there is that you had a beat-up with another gang over some territory. That true?"

"That's right," he took a step back and a look around before settling on a rounded-off storage container. Sweeping it clear of whatever mess had been piled there, he pushed it out into the clear space in the middle of the wreckage before offering it to her, "Have a seat. Yeah - Jvates' Boys. They've had their eye on the 'Coril for a while. Figured they could pull a raid while we were busy on a job - taught them otherwise," he emphasized with a solid fist and a curled bicep that gave one of the tattoos an entirely new meaning.

"Tell me about the 'Coril."

He gave her an odd look then shrugged, "Dunno what you'd want to know, but since you're askin';" and he was clearly willing to spend time with her answering; "Used to be a merchant-freighter. Working a trade route up the arm a few. Went fine for a few years until the crew took a look at the numbers and figured out that the owner was making more than all of them so they took off."

"How do you know that?"

"One of 'em works for me," Dent shrugged. "Heard the story a dozen times - usually over a beer. Say..." he leaned over and flicked the door open on what turned out to be a beat-up cabin fridge. "Sorry - looks like I'm clean out."

"S'fine," she stood and walked to the door before turning to cast him a glance over her shoulder. "You show me the bar, I'll cover the tab - if you keep telling me about that ship!"

By way of accepting her offer he grabbed a jacket and followed her back out onto the 'streets. Even tucked away from the main drag as the cutter's operation was, it didn't take long for the pair to wind their way through the crowd and find a small establishment. Their first step inside confirmed her suspicion - this was also the gang's regular haunt as indistinct figures called out greetings and were met by name in reply. A booth in the corner wasn't much more than a pair of hull plates welded upright but the table was level and as soon as they sat down a pair of appropriately-sized mugs were sitting in front of them.

"So - the 'Coril?" she sat across from him, watching as he drained away a good half in his first foamy pull.

"That's right," he put up a finger and at first she thought he was signalling for more until someone at another table rose and started to amble their way.

"Twig here - he was one of the crew. I'll let him tell the story." The nickname was just about right; a young man - Human - who looked like he had as much muscle on his whole body as Dent had on his forearm. Still, he had a welder's tan where his eyes were still pale while the flame had chased his cheeks and chin a ruddy red. "Have a seat," he pointed to the spot next to Meli.

That pushed her a little closer to him - or a lot - but she didn't object and slid nearly next to him which left him with his hulking arm curled above her as a headrest if she so chose.

"Tell her about the 'Coril," Dent offered before she added; "All of it - where it came from, how it got here."

Maybe it was an excuse, maybe it was a hunch, but there was something there - maybe two something's - and as the young man explained what Dent had already told her she found herself scooting just a little comfortably-closer.

"...so we decided to go freelance;" meaning they'd stolen the ship; "and we traded around for a while. Nothing too exciting - ran away from a pirate or two - but we were makin' our own money. Turns out we weren't making enough though. Turns out we hadn't figured repairs and maintenance into just how big the owner's slice was. After a couple months we'd cut our wages back to where they were so we could keep the ship running. Jobs were starting to dry up too - not a lot of ports willing to work with a stolen ship. We did manage to pick up a cargo at a ghost port in Augste - bound for Entoch..."

"What was it?" she interrupted, "The cargo?"

"Just what you're drinking now," he smiled, poking at her mug with boney fingers. "Ethanol."

"So no weirdos leading a guy around on a chain-leash? No passengers?"

He shook his head, "Nope. We'd taken a couple people from here to there but only if they were going our way. If you want to know where those guys came from, you should talk to R'Guiba. He arranges that kind of thing."

"Hmm. Already did;" and she'd have to remind herself to ask him what he knew about these apparent standouts but there was a story to finish first. "Back to the 'Coril. What happened next?"

"Things got ugly quick;" though clearly he was still around to talk about it. "We made the jump to Entoch just fine but our sublight drive blew the boards. Barely limped into orbit on maneuvers but by then we all knew that we were done for. The drive was toast. We didn't even get a chance to talk it over before the Captain was ordering us into 'pods and taking her down. It was either that or deorbit the hard way. Turned out to not be the easy way either."

"Sounds rough," she nodded, all sympathy.

"He didn't make it. Most of us didn't. Wasn't the landing - it was the weather. Hull breached right away and half of us froze to death right then and there. Captain's still out there at his post, stiff as a board. I'd paid attention to the charts though so I had my survival suit on even inside the pod. Couple more dropped trying to make it inside," he tapped the table meaningfully. "Now it's just me and a couple others. Dent found me and persuaded me to join up. Figured I had as good as claim as any to her, being as I was a junior officer. Treats me right;" the big Dwarf raised his mug in salute to the younger man at this; "And we've been taking her apart ever since."

"Got the booze off first, of course," Dent offered, finishing off his mug and then raising it high to signal for another. "If you don't like your White Lightning, some places will fancy it up. Found a couple actual oak barrels and the guy here is tryin' to make something like whiskey."

"What about the 'Boys? Jvates?"

"Yeah - so what happened was that we had managed to cut our way down into the drive core," Dent answered, picking up the story while Twig nursed his drink. "And I figured we might as well see if it still worked. Hard enough to get replacement parts around here, let alone something that works from the get-go. Hauled a generator out there, plugged it in, and what-do-you-know - Captain pulled a trick in that landing. Jump core was still working - mostly. I figured that if we could get it out and at least into the yard, we could sell the whole thing to someone."

"Maybe someone could cobble it together with one of the other hulks into a working ship, you know?" Twig added.

"Sure - so what happened? Jvates's Boys caught wind of this and decided they wanted it for their own?"

"That's what I figure," Dent added a shrug. "We got a legit job - climate control system in the 'D' wing was on the fritz - and while we were working that, Jvates and his crew were having their way with our girl! After we were finished in 'D, we went back out to start work and found the drive missin'. Generator too - left that out there to keep the place warm. Hurried back inside, asked around, and it turned out that they were out in the snow while we were working our butts off!"

"Any idea what happened to the drive?"

"Nope. Might still be out there somewhere. Things tend to get lost, if you understand me," he chuckled. "And when we went to have a friendly conversation they upped tools on us. Didn't get a chance to ask before they chucked 'em into the recyclers. So what about you?" he asked as Twig rose; "Anything else, boss? Gotta use the head."

"No - thanks, Twig. So?" he half-repeated the question. "What brings you to this frozen hellhole?"

That was an easy lie; "Bounty hunter. I'm looking for those guys with the guy on the chains."

"You?" his eyebrow went up and he looked her up and down in pretend shock. "A pretty little thing like you - a bounty hunter? Way I hear it, you came in on a pretty sleek little ship. Not a whole lot of room for whoever you're looking for."

"Ah - nope! Jus' enough room for me up-front. Nanny bags and the heads go in the back. But," she slid out to the edge of the booth, "I might be willing to try and get two up-front - if you're interested..."

[Sunset]

Aboard the Derelict, The Šurla System, Southeastern Corner of the Gamma Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy... A Few Minutes Later...

"...cadets, be advised that system authorities are on-site and deploying;" so don't freak out when mysterious figures in vacuum gear suddenly loom out of the darkness!

"Understood, 'Ojeni," Cadet-Captain Järvinen replied, turning where she stood framed by the gaping hole in the side of the derelict to survey nearby space. "We see them," just so; the shuttle that had ferried them over was parked just off the hull with its running lights up and hatches open as was the more-distant 'Ojeni. Two new ships had arrived to bracket it on either side - a pair of locally-produced Custom's Frigates that were the current closest thing Šurla had to a Coast Guard. "Advise that they board through main and auxiliary airlocks as to avoid crowding."

"Understood - be careful in there."

Not that there was a whole lot of risk - at least to the search-and-rescue team. For the most part they were just as they had been aboardship; ARC4's didn't need to eat or breath and did just fine in a freezing vacuum. Only Cadet-Lieutenant Ahonen was 'wearing' - inhabiting - power armor, both because they might need someone for heavy lifting and because he was the only one certified on it. Their 'buddies' were second-and-third shift volunteers from the regular crew and had exclusively opted for ARC4's 'configured' to look like they were wearing armored vacuum suits like the Cadets.

"Right. Alright - Hrkac, Stajgr; head for the bridge. Secure computer access and see if you can't find out what they say they were doing out here. Ahonen, bomb disposal. Make sure there's nothing else dangerous and put together whatever you can find that will tell us what happened here," she ordered, pointing to the mangled deck they mostly-stood on. "Laine, get down to engineering and see what can be brought back online without bringing it online. Everyone else, search and rescue."

Which she already suspected was going to be exclusively 'search'. The explosion was centered on the crew decks and had been powerful enough to completely destroy whatever room it had been centered on, turning those bulkheads into shrapnel that had gutted the adjacent spaces. If anyone had been in those rooms, they would have been ejected, "'Ojeni, can you do a detailed sweep of nearby space? Small objects - frozen corpses."

"Already on it. We'll let you know," the communications officer replied.

"With nothing to slow them down and not knowing when this happened - they could be a long way away," Ahonen added. He was clinging to the inside-outside of the ship at the moment, running his palm sensors over a section of warped interior bulkhead that was now facing the stars. "I'm getting traces of..." he reeled off a list of chemicals that could, according to her HUD, be found under the kitchen sink or in the pantry. "...which means it was an improvised explosive. Pushing, ripping, tearing - but not cooking. Anyone in the same room will be frozen chunks - might find larger pieces if they were in adjacent spaces or on the perimeter."

"Definitely not alive."

"No Ma'am - not unless they were wearing heavy armor or weren't alive to begin with. Biologically, that is."

"So everyone keep your eyes open for robotic saboteurs," she relayed half-seriously. "Anyone else find anything interesting?"

Which meant it was also her turn to look. There weren't going to be any survivors here but there was a lot more ship to search. There was a corridor on the inside of the blast site and her crews had chosen this as their path deeper into the ship. Here and there emergency lighting patches had survived the explosion and a dim speckle of red lights became a regular strip as the passage stretched on. They'd shone their lights into any open rooms as they passed but she went slower, checking the status panel for each and then manually cranking the door open if it had been depressurized to step inside and sweep her light around the space.

"Cadet-Captain Järvinen?" This voice was new and she stopped in a doorway to focus on her HUD and the speaker's tiny image; "This is Ensign Meadows, SSA - from the frigate 'Jyväskylä. My captain told me that you're in charge here and that I should tell you if we find anything interesting. We found something interesting."

By way of explanation, the Cadet-Captain was in charge because she had been the first to arrive on the scene. Some might point to old First Responder protocols, others would note that Maxim 2 was always relevant, and yet others would point out that Maxim 2 was basically the First Responder protocol but with an appropriate amount of snark when it came to the subject of Lieutenants and Sergeants, "What did you find?"

"We came in from the forward cargo hatch airlock. No damage here. Emergency systems are operating normally;" good to know - but beside the point. "The cargo bays are being refitted for... I don't quite know how to describe them. They've got thousands of those baby-in-a-box artificial wombs in here - all plugged in. There could be ten, twenty thousand of them. Next bay over, it looks like the crew was in the middle of installing racking and there's a bunch of those head-in-a-jar units. They're mostly in their boxes but there are some on the racks."

"And you don't want to know what we found in auxiliary engineering," another voice - this time that of Cadet-Ensign Uskoski - cut in. "But it makes sense now. Industrial CHON recycler hooked to a nutrient distribution manifold."

CHON - Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen - was/were the basic building blocks of carbon-based life and so it was perfectly reasonable that there would be a recycling unit aboard. Any kind of biomatter would be fed into it and turned back into something that the body could use, even if it was just to breath. This unit was apparently an absolute unit and coupled to the previous pieces of information..?

"...at least they're not organ-leggers," Captain Blaine inserted. "Still really gross and very unethical."

"UBI scammers," Alyte deduced, filling in the rest of the blanks with only two words. "Make a bunch of kids, put their heads in the jars - probably hook them into a virtual world where they all live together forever, sign them up for the UBI, and pocket the difference. Is that illegal?"

"Sounds like you've got an interesting topic for class discussion when you get back to the Academy. Right now though - 'why blow up your own scam?'" Kami asked.

"Right," Järvinen nodded. "Hrkac, see if you can't fill in that last piece. Virtual worlds need real hardware. See if you can find it. Everyone else keep looking for survivors but assume we're also looking for evidence of this UBI scam. Ensign Meadows? I assume you're keeping your captain informed, but see if they can't start looking into who might have bought thousands of those units. I don't think those are something we make locally - they had to be imported into the system..."

[Sunset]

Aboard the Derelict, The Šurla System, Southeastern Corner of the Gamma Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy... A Few Minutes After That...

"...Ma'am? I don't think you need to worry about locating any survivors or victims," Cadet-Ensign Hrkac decided, the tail-end of the log file filling the end of the screen in front of her. "Because there aren't any."

"What do you mean?"

The insectoid - though she was currently living in a borrowed body - looked over to her buddy for confirmation before repeating her suspicions and conclusions, "We're in the computer now and we've pulled up the ship's system logs. The explosion occurred six days, eighteen hours ago, followed by emergency shutdown of the main reactor and activation of emergency systems. System logs show that eight minutes later the forward docking bay was cycled and this was initiated remotely - from a shuttle."

"Also, all of the escape pods are present and accounted for," Lieutenant McAndrews, her boarding-crew-buddy, noted.

"And checking the access logs on the crew quarters? Again, they had all been accessed from the inside before the explosion. It is more than likely that they were empty. Everyone was working in the forward bays. Maybe whoever set the bomb took a chance that they had the timing right, maybe they detonated it remotely, but everything I see here suggests that the crew quarters were empty and that everyone was in the forward bays. Until they abandoned ship," the Cadet-Ensign finished.

"You're suggesting that someone on the crew sabotaged their own operation?"

"It isn't much of a suggestion," the tactical officer put in. "Someone on the crew cooked up that IED - there's no way someone just threw together some moo and some baa and mixed it with some meow accidentally. I think Hrkac is suggesting that they were trying to make sure no one got hurt."

"A guilty conscience? Or maybe someone figured out what they were up to. How many people would it take to keep an operation like this running once it was actually up and running?"

It was one of the engineers who answered the Cadet-Captain's question; "Conceivably none. I was going to say that the only tricky part would be transferring the newborns to the jars but if you really know your way around the baby-code, you can program one of those things to act as the jar. They just probably didn't know that. Not to give anyone any ideas. Looking at the equipment here, I think they were going to be doing it manually."

"Gross."

"Gross enough to develop a conscious? It looks like we missed something though - that shuttle. Get everything about it in the logs over to the system authorities. Maybe they can find it - maybe it's parked outside someone's house."

"Sorry, captain - this isn't CSI. If there's someone to track down, that will be up to the system authorities," Captain Blaine broke in. "In fact, now that this is probably a crime scene we should pull out, document everything, and turn it over to the locals. Since they're already on-scene we should leave the details of that up to them but good work, everyone," she emphasized. It would suck to not be able to complete the job but it would also play really well for the Academy Graduation Committee.

"Aye-aye, Captain. Ensign Meadows..?"

[Sunset]

The Slave Lord's Throne Room, The Hidden Moon Kyupuu, Beyond the Auracexian Sector, Orion Arm... Republic Date 179.962.103...

"...and what of our guests?" Jero asked with a gesture, a careful glance around the chamber assuring himself that he was relatively alone; he, his guards, and a loyal agent who would have normally been found haunting the jungle market outside. "Have they found sufficient entertainment?"

"If they're interested, they haven't shown it," the spy answered. At first take, he looked like any of the other port workers. A dirty coverall, a tied rag just covering one eye, a worn plastic-and-faux-leather jacket in orange and brown, and a solid if gross-looking pair of boots.

"Serious bunch, I'd say. Strange too - they don't sleep. Or maybe they do," he corrected himself, rubbing at a shoulder and studying his toe closely. Heron preferred to keep his chambers both dim and warm and for most that was a good excuse for a bit of a nap. Convenient then that there was a scattering of lounges and mats hidden in the shadows behind the columns that stood on either side of the aisle.

"Might be they sleep standing up. Fact is, I've never seen one sit down either. Or eat. They've got some kind of cybernetics. Could be there's more metal than it looks there."

"Interesting. What have they been doing while they haven't been eating or sleeping?" Jero asked.

"Sometimes they just stand there, all four of 'em, backs to each other. Like they are expecting something. Sometimes they pair off. Two work their way around the market, two others just... Stand there. They do talk if someone talks to them though mostly they just tell you to go away. They have asked after particular slaves though."

It was a slave market, after all - though there was also a thriving trade in weapons, armor, salvage, and street foods. There was even a small (well-)used ship lot; "And a couple of the junkers."

"I presume no one will sell them either?"

The first was understandable and the second odd. The first was explained by the fact that the entire operation was a front for various intelligence services. Any slaves that came in were purchased and shipped out again to their forthcoming freedom while those that were sold were not. Instead they were undercover operatives that would help track and neutralize the slave trade in this portion of the galaxy. The second?

"No - seems they've got a bit of a problem. No one will take their credits and they didn't bring enough of their fancy coinage. I'd bet ships are a lot cheaper where they come from."

"These coins?" Jero was casually interested; maybe more, if the information might prove somehow useful. "Describe them."

"Yeah, sure - easy. Nice and thick, made of platinum and set with a big 'ol diamond that looked like a faceted lidless eye. One of the moneychangers told me all about 'em. Pretty, sure - but not particularly rare. 'Changer offered them five hundred per, just to see if he could get his hands on 'em and sell em on as a curiosity."

"Why then a 'junker'?" Jero asked himself, stroking his chin with a long talon. "And why would they be trying to purchase slaves? That would then suggest they would be interested in a working ship. Keep after them, Maje - there are too many questions. Though if they do trade in one or more coins, be sure to secure as many as you can. Tomorrow I will summon them - give them my answer. I would like to have as many of my questions answered as possible before they offer up more strange questions..."

[Sunset]

Katryna Silaco's Office, Special Projects Office Tower, Outside Landor City, Terra Incognito, The New Latin System... Republic Date Unspecified...

"...so that's the threat scenario. And because I'm a solutions-oriented person, I've got some ideas," Katryna continued, circling the threat diagram with a glowing line. "And because I'm a problems-oriented person, I've also got some problems with those solutions. Solution first though..."

With a gesture she pulled up another diagram, this time of a very specific system where even the description of that diagram could potentially violate the security of the same. Endanger trillions of lives. Reduce galaxies to cinders. Real End of the Universe stuff.

"My tip-of-the-tongue solution is a Dead Man's Switch. If this," she tapped one of the elements in the diagram, "Is broken, fails to report, or is otherwise incapacitated, the switch activates without further input. In this case the activation would result in all of these," she again tapped the diagram, "being shunted to another arm of the multiversal fractal."

Again she produced a hologram, this time a scintillating fractal flame with multiple branches of riotous color spiraling unevenly out from a central point. A particular point on one of the feathered arms was highlighted - our Prime Universe - but she tapped out a series of others on far distant branches.

"Which are normally endemic to life - or at least Prime life - for a variety of reasons from a complete lack of phosphorus to total protonic reversal. There's drawbacks to all of them, of course, but we can off-set them through again various methods. This will put the important parts of the whole thing out of reach for whoever might have initiated the threat. The shunt will be internal and invisible to the Prime - no way to follow except by the dumbest of dumb luck. And if they do? Well, total protonic reversal sucks. Imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light."

"This would then leave the rest of the system," she tapped the first diagram, "Free and clear to put its full resources into play. Now what I'd like to do is establish toeholds at all of these points. But maybe not - or maybe both? Toes have fingerprints, after all, and if someone stumbles across one of them who has relevant knowledge they could be tracked back to us. Groucho Marx disguises all around. Set up a whole bunch of toeholds using various double-blind methods and then pick which one to use or even rotate between them."

"The biggest risk to the system would - to me - be the risk of accidental activation. That said, in the grand scheme of things removing this part of the system doesn't hurt the overall system or impair its ability to persecute hostilities..."