The Line in the Stars (IC) [PG/14]

[Azlan]

Bridge


"A commendable action commander.  However, I must ask that you withdraw from this system immediately.  Our business near this singularity is for only the masters."  Loki put on his best perturbed and disapproving inquisitor look on as he stared down the commander.

The Vizanzi commander hesitated, "well, I..."

Alexis opened a holopad, the contents of which could only be seen by the bridge crew near Loki and her.  The picture was of the Vizanzi commander with a mustache, beard, and swirly eyes.  She blandly stated, "inquisitor, our mission directives clearly state we are empowered to terminate any who interfere with our mission."

Loki nodded with a grim expression, within the psychic network space he was laughing uproariously while trying to berate Alexis for nearly literally dropping a bomb on his whole discourse with the commander.

The Vizanzi commander seemed to pale visibly, if dragons could do such things, "oh, er, we have some other important business that needs to be, uh, done... yes!  Everything is in order here, uh, carry on your excellency."

The other Vizanzi in the screen view looked up at her commander, "but commander..."

"Silence!  We have taken up enough of the Inquisitor's valuable time.  Best course to our next waypoint!"  He nervously replied.

The screen view and communication ceased and the tactical display showed the inbound ships maneuvering away from Matron heading for the system's edge.



Special Forces Area


Rebecka regarded the design and "hmm'd" to herself, "I would say probably about a couple of days.  We would need to machine parts and assemble them.  Matron has sufficient tools, machine shops, and raw materials."

[Shachza]

The Vizanzi on the screen were of a very different image than the ones La'orth had seen before.  Brighter and more vibrant colors, and a markedly greater amount of ornamentation were trying to tell him something about them that he just wasn't quite getting.  Beautiful in a way that turned his stomach.  He could thank his gut reaction for that; a large part of him wanted to respond in a violent and very direct manner.  His rational mind, on the other hand, noted that the Vizanzi weren't reacting at all to his presence.  A small flutter of relief and thankfulness for the obvious obfuscation was quickly buried under his trepidation that performing any action would ruin the cover that these Acadians seemed to be successfully feeding the Vizanzi.

Doggedly squashing his desire for vengeance, he concentrated on breathing quietly and evenly.  And standing very still.

[ShadesFox]

Bridge

"Right, now that they are going away, we should probably do much the same.  Elsewhere is good.  Preferably someplace far away so that I can finally get some rest from this crazy journey."

Aaron really didn't want to think of all the things he needed to deal with.  Like Richard.  And Marissa.  And Captain Summers.  The sooner he can get to dealing with these open issues, in addition to the sphere of harmonies and the associated Xaos and Gaea issues.  Though with Xaos and Gaea that leaves open the issues of Ixiah and Loki.  It might even be relatively safe to remove their restraining collars if Xaos and Gaea are firmly on his side.  Well, that was a whole different can of worms there.

[Azlan]

And time progresses


Evading pursuit from all appearances seemed to have been rather successful after the little trick that was pulled planet side.  For the time being at least, Chronos and Heimdall have not caught up and encounters with the Vizanzi can largely be avoided.  The various crew members spend a fair amount of time acclimating to the alien vessel.

Knight was able to build his LAM with the expert engineering skill of Rebecka.  Despite past situations, Knight did not develop his own harem, but Saioko is happy to be with him.  Aaron was able to adapt to having a bit of an ancient Acadian soul within his own.  Together with Marissa, and with the assistance of Mina, they improve on their psychic abilities.  Robert having been reunited with his best friends is able to leverage them to bring some minute amount of normalcy back into his life and work together towards coming to terms with what has happened to them.  La'orth is able to learn more about his hated enemy than he ever cared to thanks to Mother's extensive library as well as about his hosts and the ISF.  What he can learn of Acadians is not very helpful in relation to his people.  The others have their various learning experiences, trials, and tribulations.

Jeanne Pewar and the others who had sustained injuries are again made whole via the advanced Acadian medical technology.  Though Jeanne might not be donning any two piece bikinis for a bit.  Anastasia Tescrae is rather cross with Knight and Aaron, but she is ultimately forgiving.  She throws her lot in with the rest of the crew to aid in the mission against the Masters; it will at least make a wonderful tale.  Holly Kidsan is reasonably compliant and amiable after a fashion, though the mission's importance does not allow for any side trips to drop her off, so for the time being she is given reasonable freedom within certain areas.

The inevitable comes to pass and Matron receives tachyon communications on a channel flagged by Mother as pertaining to ISF military communications.  Not meant for her specifically, it does identify Major Aaron Brown as its intended recipient.  The message is a simple order from Scout Fleet command, Captain Summers and Colonel Nexx, requesting that they rendezvous at a specific location near Technocratic League space.  By cosmic coincidence this is on course for the location of the Sphere of Harmonies.  Not willing to refuse a direct order, at least at this time, Aaron has Matron set a course for the coordinates given.

A relatively short FTL jump later, the ISF scout fleet plus a vessel Saioko and Knight will recognize as a Dark Rage class ship are present.  After a bit of communications and a few IFF exchanges, associated parties decide to meet on Matron for a briefing of the current state of affairs.

With all relevant ISF personnel, Acadians, an unknown mustelid scientist (Saioko and probably Aaron recognize her as Washu), Anastasia, and the various privateer representatives present, it is Captain Summers who speaks first after the room comes to order.

"To cut to the chase Major Brown, report please."  The canine naval officer flatly requested.  All eyes shift to Aaron which understandably makes him a bit nervous.

[ShadesFox]

Matron room of Briefings

It is amazing just how much a few days of Acadian mediations and the assimilation of ancient soul bits can do to reinforce and calm one's mind.  Unfortunately for Aaron it wasn't quite enough to remain completely calm in the face of ISF officers many pay grades above his putting him in a tight spot. It was enough that he was able to control the color of his fuzz back to the old grey, so that he wouldn't look to be his new natural shade of blue... which was only getting lighter with time.

"Right, my report. The last major incident I reported on was rescuing Lt. Whitehaven And Captain Saioko from their little accident. I do not have information on that incident and if you want more details you will have to ask that pair.  After notifying you of our updated crew roster we made our way to the star system where the Matron crash landed.  Since Lt. Nova's parent's expedition the pirates had setup shop in the star system with a major presence, including a space station and active monitoring of the system. We were able to locate and reach the planet with the Matron without incident."

Remember, breath, look around the table, "The site of the Matron itself was being actively watched by a pirate outpost. They clearly did not know that the Matron was there but their active scanners would have made it impossible to conduct an operation without being noticed. We attacked and suppressed the outpost. It was at that outpost that we ran into Anastasia.  She was trying to recover her crewman and our operation... conflicted. Once the fools at the outpost were smacked around sufficiently we agreed to assist Ana in recovering her captured crewman.  It seemed the right thing to do since we ruined her chance of doing that her way. It was during this recovery operation that Sergeant Darkcloud was killed in action. However, Anastasia's man was successfully extracted and there were no further fatalities. These operations did lead us to capture a few prisoners.  Speaking of which, one in particular named Jeanne Pewar was promised amnesty from piracy charges for her material cooperation in the rescue op. We also picked up another ISF team there, CWO TiBalt and his lot."

"Next point was the Matron recovery.  We went into the ship and found an old ISF crew, Ensign Norston and his crew. After exploring the ship we found the Acadians Xaos and Gaea. We rendered aid to them and are recovering from their... um... you know I'm not sure how to explain it.  Torpor? Anyways, they recovered, apparently the ship is in one piece too.  However, the ship activating caused the Acadians in league with the Masters to pick up on the Matron and come to us to try and kill us all. We recovered our rescue team, the ISF infiltrator team on the planet, and left with Matron, Mother, And Anna's ship out of the system. Once we had escaped we found a stranded ship and rescued its pilot, Zhildar D'ral La'orth kroi'id Namulk'nam. Or I think that is how it is pronounced."

"So that is our current situation. We have learned the location of the sphere of harmonies and are in route to it to try and fix it, preventing more of the Master's kind from entering."

Aaron was quite intentionally trying to paper over the parts where he was becoming MORE Acadian with the soul bits, Marissa in general, Saioko being... what ever she is, and that seemed to be the main highlights of "oh shit" moments he was trying to bypass.

((OOC: Egads, last time on DBZ here! Also, a management note, Richard and Marissa would have had all but one bond cord cut by now. Hopefully I didn't forget anything important.))

[Shachza]

La'orth's first few days aboard Mother proved very trying for him and most of the crew.  Most being the operative word.  After one day of La'orth speaking through the translator program in his headpiece Xaos decided that enough was enough, and that the stereo echo had to go.  So he did what any good samaritan of godlike power would do - he held a lat night cram session in La'orth's dreams.  This provided a few more days worth of entertainment for the Acadian as La'orth's brain struggled to cope with being quickly force-fed a new language.  The poor Korsinian would randomly and seamlessly swap between the two languages, his own and that of the ISF, without breaking his speaking.  It led to some interesting half-understood conversations between all the non-Acadian parties.

While the language barrier (fiasco if you asked a certain alien explorer) was being overcome La'orth came to the stark realisation that he was the one who was MIA from his people, and as such was beginning to find the sudden loss of his usual social network very distressing.  Korsinian society is based around small, tightly-knit groups of friends and La'orth had none now.  He very quickly began to hang around the other crew members on Mother, not as much to learn about them, but just for the interaction.  In a word, he became a bit clingy.  Not so much with Loki and Ixiah; there must be some universal constant that clinginess is only one-way, and La'orth did his best to avoid getting glomped.  It hardly ever worked.  He tried to be useful, though, and even offered his meager technical skills to the building of Knight's LAM. (ok, assuming he's allowed to find out about it...  can't remember if it was a secret)  La'orth also attempted to make friends with Anastasia, once it was clear that the Acadians were not at all concerned with flying back to Korsinian space to blast the Vizanzi to hell and back.  Perhaps the Technomages (Anastasia is the one, right?) would be more amenable to some sort of trade for assistance.

Even with trying to make friends among the crew, La'orth ended up with a lot of free time.  A portion of this was spent on keeping up his fighter, and flying it when allowed, but the larger amount was devoted to whatever Vizanzi-based holovids Mother could provide.  His initial interest in military records, schematics, tactical comparisons, and weapon analyses waned when he found out that Mother's records were a bit dated and that Matron had not been outfited with a comprehensive military database that would allow La'orth to pinpoint the Vizanzi's every weakness.  That, and despite all that he learned, the raw military stuff was boring to read over long periods.  So he took to a different kind of understanding - analyzing Vizanzi mentality through exposure to popular entertainment.  The rest of the crew just called it movie night.

La'orth never did quite understand some of the themes he witnessed.  Coming from a rather social pack-centric society, La'orth found the Vizanzi's penchant for isolation and distrust of others, even when it would be wiser to seek out others for assistance, particularly mystifying.  He did, begrudgingly, admit to Xaos that he found the vids entertaining, and some of the actresses attractive.  Under duress of course.  (On the receiving end of a noogie.)

One very notable interaction was La'orth's extreme discomfort around Holly.  Piracy was one of the strongest taboos in Korsinian society, both because of necessity from a limited number of ships to support the now-nomadic species, and also from their time as peacekeepers.  As peacekeepers in their neck of the galaxy Korsinians had spent much of their time combating pirates, and so La'orth really just wanted to space Holly and be done with it.  Unable to do that, he did his best to stay well away from her.

******

Now on board Mother with a room full of ISF personel...

La'orth cringed a bit as Aaron attempted his name.  The sounds just weren't quite right coming from a non-Korsinian mouth.  The effort of using his full name and title was appreciated, and so La'orth nodded to Aaron, and then to the assembled fleet representatives.

He tried to wait patiently while the "locals" caught up, but he couldn't help but play with his fingers' claws out of sight.  He was the sole liaison between his people and theirs, something he had never trained for (he was military after all, not political!), and the impromptu position was not sitting well in his stomach.

[Azlan]

During Aaron's report Captain Summers and Colonel Nexx kept their expressions very neutral and professional, but both shared a variety of sideways glances during the more interesting portions of the report.  It was Captain Summers that spoke first after Aaron sat back down.

"So we have increased by two more Acadian helpers and the dispositions of both ships are nominal.  Do we need to refit them or are you provisioned enough to move on the next steps of this plan of yours?  Will we need to transfer any crew to you?"  Summers asked with his attention solely directed at Aaron.

Both Matron and Mother commented before Aaron could answer, "We are fine Captain Summers and can report our own statuses.  We are both sufficiently provisioned and fully operational."

Speaking loud enough for everyone to hear, which is likely intentional, Xaos quips at Summers' comment, "oh look, we're helpers now Gaea.  Do not worry mon capitan, I have a whole crew in the freezer.  Just got to thaw them out.  Though if you have any foxes on board I'd be happy to indoctrina..."

Xaos stops suddenly and waves off the last part of his discourse as Gaea herself only smiles sweetly and flutters her eyelids.  At a psychic level Gaea just smashed Xaos's proverbial foot.

Colonel Nexx raises an eyebrow at this but shakes his head, choosing to hold his tongue.  Instead he stands up and clears his throat before adding his portion to the discussion, "alright, we'll just keep staffing the way it is for now, but let us know if you need resupply."  He pauses to nod towards Mother and Matron, "my apologies, we are not used to ships being considered persons.  No disrespect was intended."

The two nod in acknowledgement and the colonel continues.

"With the loss of Romulus and our operations somewhat cut off from our primary support structure, I am hereby field promoting Benjamin Foster to 2nd Lieutenant and overall command of Special Forces operations on Matron and Mother.  Ben I'll leave it to you to identify your NCOs and you have authority to promote them."

Turning to Knight, Nexx continues, "Eric Whitehaven, we are hereby field promoting you to 1st Lieutenant.  We can't provide you with any additional LAMs or pilots, but Matron has assured me they can provide you with a few to cover your role and provide close air support as needed."

Nexx completed his announcements with a nod to the affected parties and Summers once again took the floor, "This sort of thing is not the best segue, but we are not equipped to handle first contact or establish relations with aliens."  He regarded La'orth, "perhaps you can explain more about your function and what exactly your rank and authority level is expected to be among your fleets.  Once we have sorted out the galaxy, so to speak, we can see about ambassador status.  For now, you have a fighter, we will need you to use it."

During the conversations, Washu managed to move next to Saioko.  This is quite the feat as she was on the opposite side of the table from the Acadian ship personnel.  Her voice is low enough for most with sharp ears to hear on this side of the table.  "Saio-oki, I hardly recognized you in this shape!  You adapt so well, but that is to be expected of a creation from the greatest scientific mind in the galaxy!"

Saioko smiles nervously moving closer to Knight for possibly protection or comfort.

[ShadesFox]

Aaron sighed, things seem to have gone well. Except for failing to mention the popsicle crew. Almost forgot about that.  Then again, they are all frozen, pretty easy to forget about.

"The only thing I could ask for would involve booze, since Mother and Matron will not provide such. Probably for the best. Also, while sentient ships take some getting used to, it really is a great thing."

After that quip Aaron hangs out to see what other crew members have to say.

[SquirrelWizard]

Downtime had been helpful for Robert. He had woken with a dull hollow feeling in his gut, not hunger, but the dull ache of the knowledge that everything he had been through was leading to the ultimate conclusion that nothing was going to be the same again. The difference was that it just sat there, it didn't loom or crowd him. It was just something Robert was going to have to shake with judicious use of time and booze. For a good while Robert, along with Mina and Spatz, discussed their times with the crew of the Delphi. He laughed; it felt like ages since he last laughed. Of the three, Mina seemed to adjust the quickest. Likely thanks to her new "status." Something seemed to concern her, though she went to incredible lengths to hide it. On occasion, Robert would get the feeling he was being watched and turn around only to see her there, but she would be doing something productive. Spatz was just happy to be alive; the fact that people weren't shooting at them was a bonus. He had told Robert about what Mina did, how she helped him, and noted that she was probably just keeping an eye on him like any other doctor.

A new thing that had shown up though, was the continual buzz in the back of his head, coupled with the disjointed voices he was hearing. Under normal circumstances he would have made more of an issue out of this; if it had been the first time.

Mindblow was the street name of the drug, it was a horribly addictive and dangerous as it temporarily altered brain chemistry. Side effects were strong hallucinations and euphoria. Psychics sometimes used it to augment their capabilities, though more often than not succumbed to the addiction. Robert's old captain had been in the market for some specialized scanning equipment, looking for stuff that wasn't always available where they operated. A deal had been brokered with a seedy character and all that was needed was to verify the equipment was functioning before finalizing the sale and lugging the equipment away. Being one of the few people in the crew who had a lot of experience with scanners, Robert found himself in the middle of a dimly lit warehouse elbow deep in them when another "enterprising" group showed up to make a withdrawl of their own. It was obvious that neither group was expecting the other, and Robert was pretty certain they had no interest for the scanners there. Just a chance meeting between two groups of armed people. Robert didn't know who fired the first shot, but both groups scattered for cover as bullets flew. Somewhere in the warehouse there had to been some canisters of Mindblow, because a bullet or two found them and a purple fog began to roll over the combatants. Somehow, between the strange new vibrations and pretty lights, Robert's group managed to get out of the warehouse, with the scanners even, and picked up by the rest of the crew. They spent weeks in detox before being declared fit for duty again. He had complained of the voices in his head since the incident, but the doctor on the ship said that paranoia and ghost sounds were common for people coming down from Mindblow. Robert had declined psyche treatment for two reasons. First, he didn't feel any paranoia, and second, the voices didn't make any sort of sense. It was like this for a good portion of a month, and they went away.

Now, Robert had just sat through a meeting with the ISF higher brass. He had kept his mouth shut. Anything he would have said would have been counterproductive, an exercise in brutish stupidity. They were part of the crew with the matron, even if the ISF moved them out they would spend weeks being debriefed from the Delphi mission; likely being questioned for being AWOL the whole time, given Robert's broad understanding of the military mind. It was midway through the meeting that he came to a rather startling conclusion. Things people said were sometimes echoed in the obscure snippets he heard, sometimes they weren't. As he listened he began to see a pattern, that the voices may be related to other people, but at the same time he wasn't sure he wasn't just grabbing at straws. Robert wanted to pull Mina off to the side, but the last thing he wanted the overeager ears of the brass to hear was that he was hearing things.

[Shachza]

"Kolnel Nexx.  Kap'tin Sommers."  La'orth nodded to each in turn.  His own pronounciations sounded off to him after having so recently heard the two officers addressed by native speakers.  Inwardly he hoped that these new ISF representatives were as forgiving as the rest of those he had met so far.

"I am no Ambassador, though I have some basic training in dealing with alien cultures.  What I have covers other species, so the most useful lesson is for me to be patient with you."

"My status, Zhildar, marks me as an accomplished veteran of combat, and my rank, D'ral," he motioned to the small blue slashes painted beneath each of his eyes, "shows me as capable of leading small detachments.  I had led a flight of five fighter escorts which I understand places me somewhere below the Major.  This is an acceptable arrangement."

He straighted a bit which, despite his slightly shorter height, did help him feel slightly more in command of the room full of seated beings.

"Korsinians have a long history of acting as peacekeepers for races unwilling or unable to so themselves.  You would label us mercenaries, though the term as you know it lacks in meaning.  We fight because we are descended from predators and have evolved for it.  But there are restraints.  We engage only other combatants, only so long as we or our charges are threatened, and compensation is expected or our services will be lost.  I will weild my H'vae'ek fighter for you as a pilot in good standing of the Korsinian military, but a contract will need to be drafted.  It will list the duties expected of me as well as those prohibited by both of us, it should list, as best we're able, those identified as enemies, and the manner of my payment.  I have authorization from the Korsinian fleets to accept such agreements in regard to myself and those directly under my command."

He left out the part where he would have to have run the specifics of any agreement by his superiors first; he didn't actually have carte blanche to hire himself away from the fleet, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.  Xaos smiled slightly and began humming quietly to himself.