Lights Flickering In The Darkness

    Tuesday, 082-1114: 3:30pm
Pulling Things Together
     By the time the crew got done with InstellArms for the moment, most of the women were off again.  Aali had other plans, and was on the station's network ordering parts for her own project, and spending Cr 400 before she sat with the rest of her crew to show how much she enjoyed their company.  the other ladies were in an automated gravTaxi.  The 'droid took them to a clothier, because Colinne needed a casual evening gown.  The shop they went to was a 'scan and print' shop, where buyers had their bodies scanned.  The computer AIs then designed the gown from selections in their electronic catalog.

In her research, Aali was surprised to see the system's official "Law Level" was fairly relaxed.  Most systems classified the same as Ghandi would permit personally owned long weapons to be carried openly in public.  She also knew Ghandi's "reputation" was based on its location in space.  That location made it a strategic link for ships moving between the Imperium and Regina.  Added to that, the spacial coordinates made it perfect for the Imperial Admiralty's former "Shield" strategy.

That meant "the law" wasn't the only thing that decided who was armed, or not?  By and large, passengers off visiting ships wouldn't be armed because the ships they traveled on would prefer not to have them so.  Military members visiting the station would be on "shore leave" or other official visits.  So, they'd also not be armed unless on an official mission requiring it.  And those that were wouldn't be wandering around armed in public.  They'd be getting on with their jobs.  The locals would also not often be armed because they were there to make a Credit.  And, that meant "Customer Service" and "Be Friendly".  So, there might be a few people wandering armed in public, but not many more.  All you had to do was consider it.

Colinne needed the gown because Maur(Full Name: Lady Aadshur Kurdig Maur Ishnush Agka) had invited them to dinner at "Astral Ambrosia", the most high-end restaurant on the station.  Colinne had decided to buy the dress for diplomatic reasons, because she worried how Maur would react if she arrived "under-dressed".  In the cab, Colinne first made use of her cash by sending a message to her InstellArms concierge about her new combat armor.  Colinne asked him to have her vacc suit upgraded to include a Camouflage skin and a Cable-HUD Integration Adaptor, to which she'd connect a comm Dot.  That cost her Cr 23,000, and a team was on the way to pick up her vacc suit from the suite.

In the cab with Colinne and Mikah, Jocelynn felt like she "should be" doing something.  Despite the fact they were on "Day 2" in the port, Jocelynn had to argue against calling the cargo broker to get things started.  Still, she remembered he'd promised to keep an eye out for any deals he might spot which would do them well and be good with sitting in their cargo bay until they were ready to leave port.  Mikah also relaxed as they rode to the shop, and shared small talk with the others.

While they were driving to spend some of their new gotten wealth, InstellArms personnel were working on gear they'd eventually return to the crew.  The first thing they'd likely get back was the stress test report on the pell 'droid's electronic components.  That would be available the next day or 084-1114(the day after).  Aiden quickly stowed his jock straps and cup with the rest of his gear and planned to listen to some of his music collection in the suite's lounge.  He changed his mind before he stepped into the living room, and figured he'd sit and talk up music and his interests.  Then, if anyone there was interested, he'd play any selections they showed interest in.

In his bedroom, Fesic laid out and prepared the clothes he planned to wear to the dinner with Maur.  The outfit he chose was a gift from Duke Luis' of Lunion.  It was simple and stylish, but also elegant with a broad black and brown color scheme highlighted by light tans cut in the Solomani style.  While he worked, he also worked his voice just in case he had to protest Mikah's drive to make him wear the costume she'd bought him.  The tune he practiced was an insulting little air that had the lyrics, "Baby Shark, De-du-de-du-du-du, Baby Shark, De-du-de-du-du-du." and it was something he was certain he could train himself to sing in his sleep if the need to annoy Her Ladyship called for it.

Sekea looked at the evaluation InstellArms gave him of the pell 'droid they'd brought in and compared that unit's working capabilities with the units his concierge had said IA had in stock in the Ghandi system.  The unit they'd brought in would be much cheaper than buying a new 'droid, not to mention the software to make a new unit work.  But it didn't move at all.  Considering their options, Sekea sent a message to his concierge asking how much it would cost to retrofit the unit with hover movement capability.  The answer came back that doing that would cost a lot of cash.  While adding the hover tech to the unit was fairly cheap, they'd have to update the 'droid's tactical and training software.  And, that would easily cost them nearly hundreds of thousands, if not more.

Sekea then considered visiting one of the local festivals to see if he could get his hands on some physical items to use in practicing his forgery skills.  Still, he had limited time to do that if he left.  The ladies 'had' to leave, to get Colinne a gown.  If Sekea left, he'd have to cruise the fair, grab what he could and then get back in a cab and return to the hotel.  Then, he'd have to get dressed in his suit before having to leave to the celebration dinner.  Checking an on-line map, Sekea saw the closest facility was far enough the trip would cost him an hour, so he only collected the information for another day.

Sekea also looked up the various local festivals and activities he'd heard Mikah mention.  He looked to see they'd been scheduled over various times in the coming few weeks.  They also didn't really overlap each other so much that a participant who wanted couldn't attend all of them.  With all that information, Sekea planned to decide what event's he'd try taking part in, and planned to ask others in the crew if they wanted to join in his plans?  While Sekea did that, Zimzod considered simulator classes in ship's gunnery and wheeled vehicle driving.

Getting to the clothing maker, the spotlight was on Colinne while she told them what she wanted.  Colinne described a gown for casual and evening activities.  A gown she hoped would be a simple but elegant, blue-green mid-calf gown with three-quarter sleeves.  She wanted something loose enough she could move around in, with pockets and a scoop neck that showed no cleavage.  After scanning through their base gown catalog for a short time, and the help of a shop worker, they found the "base gown" and Colinne got herself scanned.  In the end, the gown was what she hoped for, and was neither showy or revealing.

Happy to be of service, the staffer asked how soon she wanted to pick the gown up and Colinne enjoyed the guilty pleasure watching the woman's face when she said, "We'll wait until it's printed.  I'll wear it out."  Colinne gave the woman credit when she recovered quickly, did the math and said the gown would cost her Cr 1,500.  When the staffer asked if she needed matching footwear, Colinne said she had that covered.

Mikah suggested the idea of costume jewelry and Colinne said she was just trying to 'look appropriate and blend in'.  That showed she really wasn't into "dress up occasions".  Realizing this wasn't the sort of situation she was used to, Colinne asked, "Do you think I'd need costume jewelry to fit in?"  Mikah said it wasn't needed but did suggest an inexpensive necklace or bracelet.  Considering that, Colinne bought a simple silver necklace and ear rings that would complement both the necklace and gown.  Nodding, the shop worker took Colinne through the shop's catalogs until she found what she wanted for Cr 600.

When the shop worker told Colinne what their timeline was to deliver the gown, the three ladies realized that they'd have to rush back to the hotel so they could change.  Colinne would obviously already be in her gown, and planned to wear her gauss pistol in her hip holster.  Jocelynn looked to Mikah and asked, "What are you planning to wear?"  When Mikah paused to think, Jocelynn also asked, "Are you going sexy or sensible?"  Making her decision, Mikah told Jocelynn she'd wear her knee-length party dress.  It was a classic and understated red dress, with lesser color mixes.  Especially since it had pockets and accommodated a thigh holster in which she'd have her laser pistol.

Mikah also said she'd gear up wearing her Domain of Deneb ear rings, lanthanum bracelet, platinum chain necklace with the "mountable" pendant showing her arms and her "engagement ring".  Back at the suite, Zimzod was planning to wear his black suit "and" fedora.  He also planned to wear his Tellona diamond ring and make a "suitable constellation" of his various Chivalric Order lapel pins, while having pain and misery in hip holsters.  Zimzod also sent out a comms encouraging everyone else who had one to wear their Tellona Diamond rings.  She also planned to holster her laser pistol.

Jocelynn planned to wear her floor-length, sleeveless vee-neck silver metallic party dress with the plunging back.  The slit up the left side, to her mid-thigh, would make it easy to reach one of her snub pistols in her thigh holster.  She also planned to wear the gold and silver sleeve she'd bought on Denotam and silver pendant set with a heart-cut opaque purple gem.  She'd wear her snake-shaped earrings too, because they were made of pale turquoise beads.  And her Tellona diamond ring.  Aali planned to wear the Silver-grey Vilani gown Duke Luis had gifted her with her flat black dress shoes.  Her jewelry would be simple and evocative.  Her engagement ring, Tellona diamond ring and necklace with her and Emkir's fused wedding rings.  Aali also planned to holster the 9mm Emkir had been gifted by Duke Luis.

Sekea planned to wear his blue Vilani suit, and planned to bring his semi-auto snub pistol with the laser sights.  Fesic changed into his suit and holstered the snub pistol Duke Luis had given him.  Aiden wore his classic black suit along with his gold tie-tack and lapel pins showing cloisonné inlays of his coat of arms.  He holstered his custom snub pistol.  Most of the others had changed by the time the ladies got back from the dress shop.  With Mikah and Jocelynn rushing to get changed, they got word a car had been sent by Maur to pick them up.

Answers Ethereal And From Afar
     The ride to Astral Ambrosia was a passage of anticipation.  The restaurant was as "high end" as Ghandi got.  The basic shape of the space was an inverted cone of open space filled with a spider-web of gravitically supported paths that seemed too delicate to support any traffic.  The paths connected artistically crafted landings supporting clusters of serving tables and open spaces for dancing or other party activities.  Those were organized in spiral and other patterns, following along the curves of the conical space with an open void in the middle.  Hotel rooms also looked out onto that space, where they could watch diners seated in the constellations of tables.  And those tables both looked down onto the other diners or out the large trans-steel viewing panels into the stars and space outside a dome which capped the restaurant's space.  Around the rim of that space, there was a ring-shaped "observation concourse" visitors to the station could pay to tour.

"Open space" on any station or ship meant 'space not earning revenue or housing machinery for life support or work'.  That meant devoting space to be open had to be paid for in other ways, meaning dining at Astral Ambrosia cost quite a bit.  It also meant the restaurant 'put on airs' when it was felt to be appropriate.  Much to Mikah's annoyance, their arrival was just such a chance.  That meant when Mikah and her crew arrived, a 'Duty Herald' stepped up and announce their arrival.  His tone was gentle, intended to update other diners without forciblly interrupting conversations.

The arrival was announced saying, "The management of Astral Ambrosia and Lady Aadshur Kurdig Maur Ishnush Agka welcome Doctor Mikah Kirlim.  Captain of the IMS Upgrade, Knight Commander of...  Mikah was annoyed as the duty herald rattled through all her titles and brought it to a close with, "appointed Lady to the Domain of Deneb".  Hoping that was the end of the 'moment of ceremony', Mikah was disappointed when the herald repeated his announcement for each of the other members of her crew.  And, having the chance to wait while the rest of her party were announced, Mikah had the chance to look out into the assembled diners and staff to see how the reactions actually silenced and captured the attention of everyone in the space.  And, Mikah could see more than a few were now using hand-held devices to film the proceedings.

One of the many downsides there was to such a ceremony was the fact they all had to wait until the announcements were done before a staffer led them along the walkways to show them where their table was.  Led to their table, Maur was already standing, and ready to introduce the others she'd invited to meet the crew.  Some of those were merchant factors and members of merchant ship crews from Lanth.  Others were agents or other people from Lanth, who worked as agents to connect Ghandi-based businesses and groups to those looking to create or build links between the two systems.

Looking Maur up and down, they could see she'd certainly reconnected with her own resources.  She wore a gown that combined a formal nature with the hints of personal comfort and a public casual air.  While the crew started moving to take seats as they could, Jocelynn's attention was grabbed by a signal caught by her stent, that had the same scratchy, static laced style of transmission she'd gotten earlier!  And, as it had before, the static carried what sounded like the voice of a young girl who asked, "Please, will you help me".  Her voice sounded isolated and hopeful, but even more in despair.

All Jocelynn could do after the surprise of the sudden transmission was sit herself down and lament to herself, 'Great!  I'm being haunted by a dark-drama-noir ghost.'  Not sure how to respond to a contact she had no way of validating, Jocelynn concentrated on her stent and connected to Colinne hoping for any advice how to react?  After Colinne connected, and Jocelynn explained the contact, Colinne opened her stent as much as she could, to scry the area for any trace of the contact.  Sadly, she didn't have any data to use in trying to find a broadcast source, so she came up empty.  Colinne considered using her psi abilities, but had nothing to go on, so she conserved her powers for the moment.

When Colinne asked Jocelynn questions, it was clear the younger woman had no answers.  Colinne next helped Jocelynn recover whatever data was still in her stent's registers and give that information to Colinne.  Accepting that, Colinne also kept her stent open and reached out on as many channels as she could manage.  It was while during that Colinne "felt" a signal, as if a door had opened.  In a connection as static-filled as the one Jocelynn heard, a young female child's voice suddenly asked, "Can you help me?" in a hopeful desperate tone that still spoke of despair.

Grabbing the chance, Colinne asked, "Are you in this compartment?" while also reaching out with her mind to try and back-track the signal she was receiving.  What surprised Colinne most was that the signal seemed to be coming from multiple broadcast notes in the space.  Even more annoying, she had to concentrate on the introductions at the table while also concentrating on the conversation with this new contact, and her own diagnostic stream of thoughts.  So, she had little to nothing left to seek out a node to try and hack one of them.

The child answered Colinne, saying, "I don't know where I am." with the hint of fear in her voice.  Jocelynn was so surprised at that answer that she grunted an involuntary "Oh!"  Around the table, some of the others noticed the comment but assumed it was related to some surprise in the introductions that were going around.  Colinne was also surprised and wanted to consider that.  But the girl's voice suddenly added to that, "They've got me."  Colinne immediately asked, "Who are they?" and the girl's voice responded, "I don't know."  Again, the voice sounded sadder and fearful.

When Colinne then asked about the girl's parents, the girl answered, "I don't have parents."  The voice continued, "I heard you shout and hoped you could help me."  Colinne knew the voice had to be close in, because there seemed to be no "light speed latency" delaying the exchange.  So, she had to be on the station or on a ship close by.  When Jocelynn asked, "What's your name", the voice said "Hana" but Jocelynn misheard, "Anna".  Trying to instill some comfort, Colinne asked, "Anna, dear.  Are you Human or some other race?"  The voice only answered, "I'm a person", which could make sense to a child young enough not to understand races.

Colinne asked, "You don't know the differences between types of people?", Hana answered, "The people have me."  Colinne changed direction and said, "We can't help you if we don't know where you are."  Hana only said she would try and help them figure that out.  When Hana again said she'd try, Colinne repeated they would help her when she could, and gently warned Hana not to anger her captors.  Hana thanked them and begged again for them to come for her soon.  Colinne and Jocelynn said they would but still wondered just who Hana was?  Or, if the whole thing were some kind of trap?

Meanwhile, at the table, the people Maur had gathered were either her friends and acquaintances, or those in roles friendly with, or allied to, her family's dealings.  They'd helped Maur with a number of things since her arrival, and were pleased Mikah and her crew had helped save Maur and return her home.  They had also heard stories of Lady Mikah and her crew.  Sitting down, Aiden was happy to chat about music trends between the systems with anyone who shared his interests.  As a nearly-stellar opposite, Aali wanted to chat politics and ask questions about how the others felt about the Arch-Duke's grand tour, and the presence of Prince Lucan.  Of course, that meant they faced more than a few questions about having met and spoken with the Prince?  Colinne and Jocelynn were happy with that because it unknowingly gave them cover to deal with "the girl".

Knowing she couldn't keep her mouth shut while dealing with "the other issue", Colinne asked those about where on the station to buy powerful software?  When asked, Colinne mentioned she'd only recently signed on the crew, and she wanted to be able to do her best managing the computer.  Fesic jumped in on station-talk, because he wanted to learn about the upcoming flower festival.  Jocelynn did try to sit and listen, but couldn't get away with that.  Too many of those in the group had been told who they'd be dining with and even a simple search on her brought up the wreck of the Regina's Storm.  Even more annoying, there were now rumors which had leaked from the Denotam system that she was not, in fact, the only survivor.  Despite that, there was no real data, so there were questions for her to deal with.

Mikah wanted to talk about gemstones and see what she could learn, or how she could expand her collection?  Sekea went into the dinner with several assumptions.  He had been on the King George as had Maur, so he knew there'd be curiosity about the experiences.  But he also knew more about how traumatizing the experience had been for Maur and the women she was with.  What he didn't know was how much she'd spoken to her associates about what had happened and how much his comments could affect the woman?  Because of that, he was happy to join in when Mikah started talking gems and minerals.  Zimzod was the only one who had a free pass to sit and collect anything he overheard.

One of the traders from Lanth did want to talk about the King George, and Sekea leaned in to push on his experiences.  That let Maur decide how much, if at all, she wanted to add to the conversation?  Another trader was very interested in learning about Zimzod.  Reports on his actions most often discussed his wounds, and yet he sat there among them as large as life.  So, he wanted to understand how a person could fight through that much and still seem so unaffected by it all?

One of the wives was also involved slightly in the gemstone market, so she jumped into conversations with Mikah, Sekea and others.  Aiden also had two of the diners interested in his tastes on music and how he felt about the shifting music tastes of the worlds he'd visited?  Colinne had hit the jack pot, which also caused her to tell "the girl on the stent" she had to deal with things and would talk to her later.  It turned out a number of the people in the group also had IT hobbies of job responsibilities.  So, a lively discussion spun up around that and Colinne found she had to even 'take notes', bouncing bits of what she was told into her stent's storage space.

It was recommended to Colinne that she seek out certain specific concourses on the station, where she might find what she wanted.  One of the traders even recommended a decompiler brand, suggesting the software designer were a high-end spin off of the Naasirka computer mega-corp.  Of course, Naasirka was well known as the highest end computer design firm on the Imperium-wide scale.  There were other firms, locally, which were better or did more insane techno-design, but they tended to be in one system or, at best, served a subsector only.  One firm mentioned sold only in the Glisten system and another firm sold out of the Mire system in the Darrian Confederation.

A pitfall Colinne worked to avoid was saying specifically what she wanted the decompiler for?  The most powerful decompliers were universal solvents, like water, that could "break down" any program or application to its bits and pieces.  And there were top level people who needed that level of access for work.  Most of those who wanted that kind of software were hackers.  They were often intent on less than sanguine projects and actions.  And, most of the people who'd gotten their hands on such packages had the skills to use them.  Many lower end hackers ended up with the data chip on a shelf, if they could get it.  It was something they bragged they'd gotten and pretended to know how to use.  Even Colinne would have to learn to use one "fully".  Happy for her, she knew how to do what she "needed to" if she could get the software.

One of the other diners joked that she could always call the Navy and ask if they'd loan her one of their "Rippers".  When Colinne wasn't familiar with that slang turn, Jocelynn was the one who had the answer.  Having boarded many a ship during customs inspections, and other things, quite a number of teams she was on had one or two-man tech teams that had the job of jacking their electronics into the ship's computer and "ripping" through the data security and storage looking for illegal data or records of illegal cargo.  Less than one ship in 100 was treated that way, but the marines always figured the tech were cyber-spooks and their software was just called a "ripper".

Hearing that description, Colinne realized she knew about the software, but never had it to use.  She'd just never heard of the slang name.  She was also entirely certain no one from the Navy would be loaning her a copy of that.  Colinne was also certain the "ripper" packages wouldn't decompile anything for her.  In fact, based on the acerbic tone of the man's voice, she was willing to bet he had an axe to grind when it came to rippers and the teams that used them.  Sadly, no one in the crew had the time to dig into what potentially could be that man's sideline smuggling?  So, that story was left where it dropped.

Missing much of that part of the conversation, but hearing mention of the Imperial Navy, Sekea reminded himself they had to try to get a meeting with navigators who plotted courses in and out of the Sonthert system.  He also thought it might be valuable to connect with ISS navigators.  He assumed those navigators might have plotted flights for couriers supporting the Navy fleets.  Either way, he hoped to get the most 'up to date' data he could get on the configuration of planets and moons in that solar system.  His "pot of gold" would be a basic system scan from less than two months ago or less.  That would let him use the apps on his personal computer to line up the actual position of all bodies in the system for the next year.

Aali's attempts to learn what the others thought of the Arch Duke and Prince got turned back on her.  Imperial society had always been one of connections and associations which would have reportedly rivaled the ancient empire of Rome on Terra.  Who you were and who you were connected to, not to mention who you could beg a favor from was everything.  And Aali wasn't the only one on the crew who knew that from direct experience.  And where everyone was looking for an introduction or well-connected friend in a helpful position, everyone on Mikah's crew were the perfect "new friends".  So, instead of learning new insights and gathering opinions, Maur's friends were all about questions, learning the secrets of the high nobility and - just maybe - making a very well-placed new friend or two from the crew.

That meant the spotlight had been turned on her, and Zimzod when he was drawn into that conversation.  The 'good news' was that they all wanted to see if they could find a step up somewhere.  The bad news was that they had to play all their interests close to the vest.  If it turned out their interests ran counter to plans or Norris' that Aali might have learned of but which they didn't know about, they'd be left in the cold at the best.  And, if their plans seriously countered the Arch Duke's plans, or worse yet, those of the Prince or Emperor, things could get much worse and so much faster.  So, Zimzod or Aali's chances of learning anything were less than zero unless they could be sure beforehand that they aligned with the great powers.

Aiden's hopes to learn about music from the others turned into a contested discussion between friends which the others had obviously been aware of for some time.  While the conversations never rose to rude levels or more, the discussion was "lively" and Aiden worried his metaphoric wading boots might not be waterproof enough when the debates flared.  Some of that was cultural, because of those who were 'more purely' adherent to Vilani cultural roots.  What Aiden saw was that, in this case, there was a similarity between the Vilani belief in "the best way" and the Vargr 'belief' they had been created the best by the Ancients.

Fesic had a dinner long conversation with one of the merchanters, who had interests in trans-shipping natural materials and plant life to systems which could support them.  The chatter covered system genetics and the efforts to alter plant life from one system to survive in another.  Over the same time, Jocelynn had to keep up with bits of the conversation while also digging into what she could find in her stent logs?  Looking at the logs Jocelynn saw the frequency the girl used wasn't used by anything else.  While Jocelynn wasn't trained in communications, she'd thought it odd and wanted to talk to Colinne about it.

Where Mikah and Sekea had hoped to learn more about the gemstones in the local systems, it turned out she knew much more about stones in general than the others at the table.  She did learn of a small number of stones locally, which could be mined for gem quality samples, but she mostly led the conversation.  Especially when those actually interested in the subject got to eyeball the Tellona diamond chips in the rings around the table.  And, even where the others had interests in gems, the diamonds were more an object of notoriety than as collectables.

Where it came to questions about events aboard the King George, Maur and Sekea found themselves awash with rumors more than facts.  That meant the conversations were spent squashing firmly believed information that "everyone had heard" and believed.  That also helped both push to keep discussion of the ill-fated cruise to a minimum.  While some of those at the table remained certain what they'd been told must have happened on another part of the ship, both Sekea and Maur knew there were limited parts of the ship on which craft landed or docked.  So, rumors of a large gang landing on the ship to break the purser's safes for valuables, or cutting their ways onto rescue craft with knives as desperate measures made no sense.  Especially given Maur's experience where the pirates openly killed those they didn't plan to drag off.  Such people never rushed the pirates with knives begging to be taken slaves.

While they ate and chatted, Sekea did connect to the station network to look for information on the naval base.  What he saw was that the actual naval facilities were a constellation of different stations on their own.  Those housed naval operations along with facilities to berth or manage work on the ships.  And the cluster of facilities were several hours flight away from the civilian station, along with being marked for restricted access.  Still, there were service centers on the station they were aboard, for civilians interacting with the military, and recruiting services.

Trying a different angle after the politics didn't work out, Aali asked the merchant crew folk about ship part and maintenance habits?  She was told there were four civilian shipyards in the system and two active salvage trawlers.  Of the ship yards, the 'Wastani Joyl' yard was related to GLIPS Standard industries.  So, they were tied to businesses in the Glisten system.  Another, Fezidparsich Yards, handled a lot of standard and service contracts for support craft in-system.  One of the diners, Zamily Ryanehr, bounced Aali the contact information for a 'Pel Mbi', who worked for the Wastani Joyl yard.

Aali thanked him, and also waited until Mikah left the table for the fresher.  Joining her captain, Aali took the time to 'read Mikah in' on her planned prank.  Surprising Aali, Mikah put her foot down and told Aali to stop working towards it.  She reminded Aali that she'd already acted on the problem and would handle it if the expected lessons didn't seem to be learned.  But, Mikah didn't want things spinning out of control with a chain of reactions creating issues.  Nodding, Aali accepted the order and figured she could shuffle the supplies she'd bought into ship's stores.  Those had only cost her Cr 150 in supplies.

Later in the meal, the restaurant's heraldic system came on line, to announce a Lieutenant Commander Irruaz Yurvorges, of the Councilor Navy of Arden, who was arriving to join Sir Sekea Sian at the table of Lady Aadshur Kurdig Maur Ishnush Agka.  Surprised, Sekea told his server the officer had apparently come to meet him and asked the servers to help escort the officer?  They could all look up through the web of crossings to the entry platform and see a male figure in a uniform that didn't match anything they'd seen while on that world.  Especially, since the "uniforms" they'd encountered on Arden were either police or in-system diplomatic and security forces.

When the officer arrived at the table, introductions were exchanged and they learned the man was part of the military support team attached to the staff of the newly assigned Ambassador from Arden.  That Ambassador and his team were en route to Mora, to take residence there and serve to link the Ardeni government with the Grand Duchess Delphine's sector government.  While some at the table bowed in Vilani greetings, the officer mostly offered his hand in a Solomani style.

During the greetings, the restaurant staffers quickly set up another place setting which the officer seemed to entirely ignore.  Still, he did push to have the seat and setting placed next to Sekea.  Once they were all seated, the man leaned in a bit closer to Sekea and said, "Sir Sekea, I have an update on a situation my government feels might be important to you."  His tone of voice didn't add importance to his suggested mission, but did hold a note of either reverence or condolence.  When Sekea asked if the information could be discussed publicly, or should be covered in private, the Commander said they shouldn't need privacy.

Taking a breath before diving in, while Sekea waited, the Commander said they'd learned Sekea was looking for information on one, 'Zesar Dakas', who had been the father of a crew mate of his aboard the INS Kalage Ashi.  Sekea admitted he was interested in anything they could tell him and his hopes were raised that the officer had come seeking him out.  Nodding, Commander Yurvorges reminded Sekea that Ardeni forces had moved into the Tremous Dex system and "taken control" of the space.  Sekea nodded as the commander continued, saying early parts of the system occupation meant flooding every place in the system with naval forces, marines and even army troops.

While carrying out that work, more than one location had been identified where groups of bodies had been found.  Investigating those "groups of bodies", officers realized the pirates had managed to recover a significant number of survivors from the King George.  Based on what data they had so far, it seemed the pirates cut and ran when the forces from Arden arrived.  A quick and apparently vicious part of that was appeared to be deciding who they could use or sell before fleeing?  It appeared those who were too old, young or lacking in skills or sales value were then executed.  They apparently didn't want to waste food and air on them.  And, they wanted to keep them from identifying any of the pirates.

The Commander then apologized before saying they'd found enough data in the site of one of those killings to confirm they'd recovered the body of Mr. Dakas.  He continued, telling Sekea they planned to connect with his former crew member, to deliver the news formally, but an official public notification would not be made until the bulk of the families had been notified.  Certainly, no names would be given to the media until that time.  The officer also offered Sekea his condolences for the loss.

Nodding again, Sekea asked if the body could be returned to his family, and was told the body had already been "processed".  This was both because it had been part of a crime and a crime scene, and due to the limited diplomatic agreements between the Imperium and Federation.  It was expected the processed remains could be returned to the family at some time in the future, but they were no longer in the form of a Human body.  To Sekea, familiar with how the remains of dead naval crew were "stored" until a ship could reach base, that cremation followed by shapig the "remains" into solid carbon blocks.  Sekea thanked the officer for the information even as he considered the x-mail he'd have to write to the man's son.

Commander Yurvorges also gave Sekea a data crystal that had all the legal and forensic data their investigators had gathered.  He warned Sekea that included 'cleaned up' pictures of the deceased before the autopsy.  The post-autopsy findings were included without additional images.  He felt that insured that most of any questions raised would be answered outside the effort to continue hunting the pirates responsible.  The Commander also said he'd remain available to Sekea if needed while the Ambassador and his staff were in-system.

With that business done, the Commander turned and asked, "Is Dame Jocelynn present at the table?"  That caught many by surprise while Jocelynn had to wonder what this naval officer had to do with her?  Dealing with so much at the moment, Jocelynn found the energy to answer, "No." in a joke.  That got everyone else in the crew laughing as she admitted she was Dame Jocelynn.  Nodding, the Commander told her, "Councilor Yur sends his greetings."  Of course, that referred to "Captain Yur Cooper", who had been ousted from the ruling council of the Federation of Arden, and who had used Jocelynn and their crew to help him carry out a coup détat.

Jocelynn was surprised to get the greetings from a man who was now leader of a growing interstellar government, and just told the Commander to give Yur her regards.  The officer said he'd be pleased to give her regards to Yur, from someone who'd rallied to his personal banner, and remained loyal to him.  Jocelynn was certain that meant 'loyal to Yur' and not the government he was part of.  Of course, Jocelynn had to admit to herself she had offered her services and loyalty before realizing what it was she was giving away?  And, she was sure there would come a time when her Imperial loyalties would have to crush those offered to Yur.

When Jocelynn asked how things were going on Arden, the Commander smiled and said things were settling in nicely.  Jocelynn nodded at that and said she hoped Councilor Yur was settling in nicely himself.  The Commander said he was, then held up a data crystal for Jocelynn.  She took it while he said, "For your compliments."  He also said he would be at her service while the Ambassador's staff were on-station.  The Commander then turned on his heel and left them.  And, was watched by many who'd "stayed for the whole movie" from when his arrival had been announced.  So, there'd certainly be a level of social discussion of that in the coming hours and days.

Jocelynn filed the crystal away for later, while the stage show ended.  She then went to sit as a power fluctuation caused the lights in the space to flicker! Above their table, a server missed his step and one of the vapor-thin martini glasses fell from his serving platter.  The drink and glass fell thirty meters to Aiden's left shoulder below.  Where enough of the drink had aerosolized to barely make a stain.  The glass hit him and shattered to send pieces raining about his seat.  Aiden only said, "Nuts!" in an annoyed tone and wiped what he could from his suit.  While Aiden glared at the platform from which the drink had fallen, other servers rushed over to apologize and promise to compensate if there was any real damage.

While they did their best to detect every bit of the shattered glass, one of the apologizing workers said they never lost power in the restaurant.  Ever!  Hearing that, the pits fell out of several of the crew's stomachs.  Concerned "something" was going to happen, the paranoia shared by Mikah and some others out-weighed being polite and Mikah started making her apologies.  Others in the crew also apologized while they cleaned themselves up and planned to get out of the restaurant before reality could catch up to their irrational fears.

Mikah did thank Maur for a wonderful evening.  She also suggested Maur and her friends might actually want to accompany them, which had several at the table mystified.  While Sekea agreed with Mikah, Jocelynn kept her mouth shut because she had no idea why Mikah was panicking?  She shrugged off the panic Sekea showed because a moth farting in one of Lanth's main squares light years away caused Sekea to panic.  Maur nodded in acceptance but said she and her friends intended to stay through dessert and some of the rest of the evening.  Getting back to the entrance so a portCar could be called to bring them back to the suite, Mikah planned to be safely away before her paranoia manifested an actual incident.

For his part, Sekea had actually risked mis-steps that would take him off the catwalk, falling to his doom, so he could spark up his hand computer and start investigating the power loss.  The data page he found said nothing unusual was happening, and also said that those with concerns should call a station comms ID listed there.  Sekea scanned that with his comms and got a staffer in the station's core admin section even as they were loading his party into a portCar to return to the hotel.  As he sat, Sekea was greeted by a tech who asked how he could help in a voice which might almost have been disinterested.

Sekea asked his questions as the car got moving, and could tell the "person" was actually an AI or expert system.  That program briefly ran a diagnostic procedure and told Sekea everything on Its station section was performing nominally.  Hearing that from where Sekea sat, Mikah told Colinne to see what she could find out?  Being a skilled operative, Colinne knew she could go hunting for access nodes and take time hacking into the port's systems or just hack a bit to bypass the AI steps and get to a real live port operator.  The man she connected to asked how he could help her and she noted he didn't sound busy at the moment.  She could also see the "atmosphere" of the work space he was in and none of those behind him looked "alarmed", "excited" or stressed at all.

Colinne made sure her "video background" was blanked out while playing the role of the Astral Ambrosia's manager.  Colinne complained, "We at the Astral Ambrosia experienced a power failure.  We're a fancy restaurant, and we can't have events like that disturbing our clients.  We don't feel this is normal and want to know what's going on if possible."  Hearing Colinne's tone more than looking at his screen, the man was a functionary who took orders and followed them.  He worked his board and noted several things while he mentioned a "power draw" in a part of the station named "Cargo Section 3".  Apologizing and saying the fluctuation shouldn't happen again.  He did offer to bounce Colinne to his manager as he locked his screen.

When Colinne told the others what she'd learned, Mikah suggested she talk to the technician's manager.  When she asked, Colinne was switched to another screen where a different person answered, wearing some sort of collar brass indicating rank.  That person was obviously not a technician and took the time to examine Colinne on the screen.  He then asked who Colinne was, and she tried the gambit of claiming to be a junior manager at Astral Ambrosia.  Nodding first, the man then said, "So, you say you're junior management at our restaurant, yet I'm looking at face shots of all the Astral Ambrosia management and you're not one of them.  Would you like to start again?"

Sighing and rolling her eyes, Colinne passed her comms to Mikah, who said, "This is Lady Dame Mikah Kirlim.  I want to know exactly what caused the power fluctuation?"  Nodding a welcome, and managing not to roll his eyes in disgust, the man said, "Welcome to our station Lady Mikah.  The power shift was an unfortunate situation which we are responding to, but is not really unusual.  While those working in the restaurant like to put on airs of perfection, this is a space station and things like this do happen.  Still, we can have a report sent to you once we level the issue and complete a technical report."  Muttering "Fine", Mikah killed the comms and told the others she was going back to the suite for the night.

Hearing that, Fesic suggested they go looking for a bar with a knife-fighting machine.  That got a laugh from Sekea.  Mikah said he should go right ahead, while Aali joked that he should try having a knife fight with Zimzod.  With a huge smile on his face, Zimzod said, "Yeah!  We should have a big blade practice session."  Jocelynn joked, "That's all you guys."  Still, they all went back to the suite together.  And, when they got there, a report was waiting for Mikah when she checked her x-mail.

Checking that, Mikah read an explanation telling her the people who worked at Astral Ambrosia liked to do their best to give clients the best time they could.  Because of that, they enjoyed playing up the atmosphere and prestige of the place.  However, the restaurant was no different than any other compartment on the station, except that it was much larger.  And, along with the larger space came a larger number of the minor issues you can find in any compartment on the station.  They apologized for the power issue, the third one that week, and even offered five percent off their bill if they chose to dine there again during their stay on the station.

When Mikah told the others what she'd learned, Jocelynn groused, "So, we missed out on dessert for that shit?" in an angry tone.  Aali just grunted, "That's life on the edge."  Now done with the dinner, the crew realized they had the rest of their stay to plan and deal with.  Mikah knew she'd have to tell the others who she wanted working with her when they decanted Rol, and figured it would be a teaching opportunity.  Because of that, she sat down at a terminal and started looking for "medical uniforms" for the group.  She did tell them that everyone with any medical training at all would join her.  And, that included Jocelynn.  Everyone laughed at that.

Eventually, Mikah found uniforms she felt would be perfect for her and her "medical team".  And, set up "just the right" atmosphere for the moment when Rol first opened his eyes.  After all, he was "Returning from the dead".  Mikah placed her orders, which cost her Cr 250, and set up for the deliveries to the suite the next day.  Mikah then spent the rest of the evening reading through and familiarizing herself with the Decant, diagnostics and Neural Reload processes.  She saw that would take most of the day in the following steps.

The "decant" was perhaps the simplest part of the process.  She'd run a set of diagnostics on the body in the tank, confirming everything was ready.  Just like normal human gestation, the autonomic nervous system would have developed along with the growing body.  So the pulmonary and other developing systems would be active on their own, but would need "maintenance" and periodic stimuli to keep working.  Those would normally be provided by the mother's nervous system, but came from the system during cloning.

Mikah would then set the chamber to drain the fluids, with the body settling to rest on the gurney as the fluids drained.  After the chamber was empty, fans would gently blow air into the chamber, and out vents, before the chamber door opened.  That would start the "drying process".  Quickly after the door opened, the gurney would extend out carrying the body atop it.  The chamber door would then open, and the body would be shocked, to hyper-accelerate Rol's autonomic nervous system before reviving the body for the reloading process.

The gurney would actually have a rubberized "cot" covering it, with carbon-fiber rails on each side.  Those were to be grabbed by medical personnel to lift the body from the gurney and move it to a space to clean.  That process would take twenty minutes or so.  Medical attendants would spend half an hour or so sponging clean and drying the body, which would be hairless at decanting, before stepping through diagnostics.  On the diagnostic table, the clone blank should be connected to in-built testing systems while the attending physician ran their own tests.  That would take up to an hour depending on the instruments available and depth of testing.

Next, with the clone blank confirmed to be properly grown and ready, medical attendants would roll the body into a position where one of them could use a blunt metal instrument to fold back the stent implanted by the cloning system.  The physician, or an electronics specialist, would then connect a test unit to the clone's stent and begin another half hours' worth of tests.  During that period, an attendant or the physician would confirm the Image to load, and set up the electronics to be connected to the clone.  After the stent was cleared for use and the load confirmed and ready, the attending physician would connect the neural load connecter to the clone's stent and start the transfer.  From that point, it would generally take four to five hours before the clone woke up.  At that point, it would be Rol instead of "the clone".

Sitting down in the suite, Sekea had to decide how to send the data from the crystal to his former shipmate.  He could obviously download the data from the crystal onto a data packet on one of the suite's computers, then attach it to an X-Mail.  The only real expense was that he had no idea what the man was doing or where?  It had only been just over four months since Sekea had worked his final shift and signed off the INS Kalage Ashi.  Then, he'd made his way to join his crewmate's parents and board the IMS King George.  So, the man was working his assigned bridge shifts aboard the Cruiser wherever it had been assigned.

Taking the time needed to hopefully explain the events as best he could, Sekea knew the man must have heard news of the misjump already.  So, that cat was already out of the bag, and he tried to cushion the blow as best he could.  He also encapsulated the data from the crystal in an archive titled, "Please read the x-mail first".  That was because he didn't want the man just jumping into the packet without warning or explanation.  Sekea then connected to the station's IIS X-Mail interface and started looking for costs.  While he was only sending a "data message", there was a massive amount of data from the crystal.  Sekea also saw he'd have to send it to "all Naval bases in the sector", so that it would be delivered at the one base where the cruiser would call first.

When Sekea started looking at the costs, he was pleased to see the Scout X-Mail system had a "deal" to offer.  The costs of the data were always the same, and based on the size of the packet.  The "extra cost" for the jumps was the rub.  Without the deal, Sekea would have had to pay to send his message to "every" base separately, and that could add up to thousands of credits!  So, the Navy offered a 30-jump "every base" deal.  The large data packet Sekea had after writing his letter would cost Cr 200 for a single jump (As opposed to Cr 1 for a one-page x-mail).  So, sending his x-mail cost him Cr 200 x 30 jumps, or a total of Cr 6,000.  Hitting the "send" control, Sekea considered it had been the most he'd ever had to pay for an x-mail!

Colinne told the others she wanted to go software shopping the next day and Mikah asked if the computer officer had any details to share on what she was looking for?  Colinne only repeated the list she'd built in her mind, of a highly powerful decompiler which could break any process down into operational programming segments that could be used to investigate or re-design whatever package a user fed it.  Hearing that, Jocelynn mentioned the navy teams and said the software they used when boarding ships was called a "Ripper", but that was a Navy tool.  Not something you could just buy on the concourses of a starport, unless you found it in a black market...

Talking about the Navy, Sekea said he wanted to visit the naval base after he'd finished his x-mail.  He also suggested they try the Scout base, and Fesic said the Scout navigators would be given their data from the Navy.  He did suggest some of the scout pilots might have saved data on their own, but that would be harder to get hold of, or get them to admit to.  Especially because of the system's restricted access.  Still, Sekea called one of the Naval public support hotlines and asked about visiting the base.  He was asked why he wanted to visit, and was told he'd have to prove permission to travel into the system when he visited.  When Sekea accepted that, he was told he'd be given a call back to be told when he could visit.

After that, Sekea asked if Mikah and Aiden wanted to join him, and Aiden said he'd go, but also suggested it would be a waste of time.  That was mostly because of Aiden's opinion of the Navy, who he expected would just refuse to give them any information because they were stuck up pricks.  Of course, that ignored the fact Sekea had been a career Naval officer, but their recent argument about his prank didn't have Aiden feeling charitable to the officer anyway.  Mikah said she'd go along with the men, so they planned to wake early the next morning and hit the naval base annex on the station.  After that, she figured they'd help her get ready to decant Rol afterward.

When Aiden asked if they could also stop at InstellArms along their routes, Mikah snapped at him that she didn't think the trip was worth it.  Especially after he'd whined about visiting the naval base.  When Aiden said he'd still come, she said, "Why don't you go to InstellArms on your own or with whoever will join you?" in a tone suggesting she didn't feel she and Sekea would need or enjoy his "help".  Aali planned to relax for the evening.  Aiden wanted to talk to Jocelynn about ideas to re-organize his stateroom like she had.  Along with talking to Aiden, Jocelynn wanted to talk to Colinne too.

With everything having settled down, Jocelynn connected to her stent and sent Colinne a message about the messages from the girl.  Jocelynn said her research through her stent logs showed the girl had used an odd and, from what she could see, disused comms frequency.  She also made it plain she wasn't sure if this really was a little girl or some odd AI or expert program?  Still, she was committed to making sure this wasn't a case of trafficking.  Colinne agreed with Jocelynn's concerns and found the frequency data interesting.  Colinne suggested they bring this up with Mikah.  Jocelynn agreed, but said they should do that privately, at first.

After asking Mikah to step into Jocelynn's bedroom, first Jocelynn then Colinne explained what had started happening shortly after Jocelynn had overwhelmed herself trying to connect to the shopping network with her stent.  Mikah's first cringing question was, "Was it a Psi thing?" and was told it was a stent contact.  Of course, they told Mikah they didn't act because they didn't know if it was real or not, but worried that it was real and they weren't reacting.  As a first step, Mikah suggested having Colinne set up a monitor on the frequency the "little girl" was using.  She hoped that would give them more information to work with.

Mikah said that if the girl contacted them, or they reached her, she wanted the girl's full name, where she was when she was taken, if she lived on the station or came there on a ship?  Mikah said, "We need to know everything we can about her, everything we can get from her."  Mikah also wanted them to track the calls, to find out where the girl was?  Jocelynn told her about the odd frequency the girl used and Mikah said that would be easier to track.  Jocelynn agreed, but said it seemed the girl either didn't know what she was doing or had a well worked out plan.  Mentioning the other things, Jocelynn said the girl called her because she'd heard someone scream.  They agreed that was when Jocelynn tried to connect to the network catalog.

That conversation done, Mikah and Colinne went back into the main part of the suite while Jocelynn pulled out the crystal the Commander had given her.  When she viewed the crystal, Jocelynn found it was a personal message from Captain Yur Cooper!  The message hoped that she could get a data packet on the crystal to "her friend on Regina".  That confused, Jocelynn, and she had to work to remember Sir Makxel ia Kiin, who'd given her a box to deliver to Yur.  Checking, Jocelynn found the message for Sir Makxel was also on the crystal.  And, it was encrypted in a pattern Jocelynn wasn't familiar with.  Shrugging, Jocelynn looked for the hotel room safe, and reset the combination before storing the crystal there.

Colinne spent some of her time before bed signed into one of the suite's terminals and scanning through the sales concourses on the station.  Centuries before, on Terra, the towns and cities of Humaniti would have streets named for each major item the populace would buy in quantities.  There was a "Baker" street, on which the bread bakers had their bakeries.  Near the piers, you could find a "fish monger's street", and so on.  In the modern Imperium, some stations were small enough that a single, or few concourses held a mix of merchants.  But, on a station as large as Ghandi's main civilian port, eateries and other kitsch or sundries shops were mixed into the key shops on "named" concourses.

On this station, there were many concourses, some of which were designated and some not.  There was more than one concourse with a designation for software, computers, cybernetics, etc.  During her search, Colinne also saw more than a few such shops in the "sundry" concourses.  That was a good bet there were some store managers who planned to catch lookie-loo's who avoided the designated concourses.  Those shoppers would pretend they didn't need something until they saw it and realized they did.  The question Colinne wanted to answer was, which of those shops on what part of the station might have stuff "not on display" which she wanted to buy?  Either way, it promised a number of days wandering different concourses until she found what she wanted.  Or, they had to leave for Lanth.

    Wednesday, 083-1114:
The Girl On The Stent
     When Jocelynn went to bed the night before, she was surprised she hadn't heard from the girl after the dinner.  Sadly, that ended early in the morning when she was woken by a call to her stent.  The girl's voice shocked her awake, crying, "They're hurting me!  Are you coming for me?"  Jocelynn could feel the fear in her plaintive voice.  An advantage of having lived the life of a Marine was that Jocelynn snapped to 'ready for action'.  Jocelynn did her best to force a calm into her own voice and said, "I need you to focus for me.  OK?"  She continued, "What's happening to you?"  Before Jocelynn could get more out, the girl cried, "They've got me tied up and it hurts!"

Nodding, Jocelynn asked the girl her full name, saying that would help them find her.  The girl said she was Hana Alyeayu.  Sparking a notepad on her stent, Jocelynn 'thought-wrote' the name and then asked, "Can you tell me where you're from?  Do you know what system you're from?"  When Hana said she was from Regina, Jocelynn asked how she ended up in Ghandi?  She also asked if the girl remembered the name of the ship or any ports it passed through?  Hana said they'd arrived in Ghandi and she then got snatched.  Jocelynn asked about the girl's parents and the girl repeated from before that she didn't have parents.

Changing course, Jocelynn asked if she'd been with other children and the girl said she had.  Jocelynn asked if others had been taken and the girl said she was the only one.  When Jocelynn then asked if she knew where the other children had been staying, the girl suddenly said, "Here.  Let me do this."  In the sudden pause, Jocelynn worried the girl was trying to do something that might get her in trouble with her captors, hurt or put her in more danger.  Before she could react, Jocelynn received a compartment ID!

Under all section names, nicknames of facilities or general terms for location on a ship or station in space, every vessel or habitat had key architectural features.  Like the keel of a ship, these were always "baselines" from which engineers and builders could measure, and often became the names of compartments.  Along each of those main features, there would be "frames" which were used to build out what would be the interior of a ship or station.  Walls would then be built to create each passage, companionway, concourse or compartment.  Then, the further away from the "center line" of that ship or station segment told anyone where they were.  So, if you were five "frames" from the main entry into the Flag Operations, and there was a concourse and three compartments "out" from the section's center line, you were in Flag-5-4.  And if you were on the second deck down from the main run, you'd be "Neg-2, Flag-5-4".  Or the decks would be numbered up from the "keel" so, "Flag-5-4", on 'the fifth' deck.

While many naval veterans would understand that, Jocelynn knew compartments and spaces on the station would have more "civilian friendly" names.  So, it first made no sense why the girl was giving her a naval compartment ID?  Still, making sure first, before jumping to a conclusion, Jocelynn asked, "Is that where you are now?  Or was that where you were on the ship that brought you here?"  The girl answered, "I think that's where I am now."  Jocelynn nodded at that but also noted the girl only "thought" she was where she said.  So, there were not hard and fast facts yet.  Still, Jocelynn knew this was a start, and she had an actual location to start looking.

Sparking up a terminal, Jocelynn navigated to the standard "Station Locator" application, punched in the compartment number and hit enter.  What she got was a standard graphic navigational indicator showing her how to get from where she was to that location!  And, the location looked like it was down in the station's engineering spars.  Those were structures which spanned "down" from the station's central civilian concourses into engineering and support spires jutting down from the main population centers.  There, the energy production and other hard-core station engineering work was done.  And, those spaces were certainly "Authorized Crew Only".

That meant the location was between a mile and a mile and half laterally distant from the hotel, and another mile or so down away from the civilian centers of the station.  The data readout said the location was dedicated to the station's powerplant, fuel storage and battery arrays.  That certainly didn't strike Jocelynn as the place to keep a kid.  But then, she thought, it would make sense to hid a kid there.  Especially since that part of the station was "access restricted", so few people would be in the spaces unless they worked there.  Checking the station schematic, the space indicated wasn't even close to those spaces station employee housing would be.  So, no one was nipping out on a partner or roommate to check on the kid before quickly returning.

Letting "Hana" know she helped, Jocelynn said, "OK.  This is really good.  You've told me where you are.  I'm gonna talk to some people and we'll figure things out.  OK?"  Hana answered, "Come quickly.  They're gonna hurt me again." with a tone of fear in her voice.  Checking the cron, Jocelynn saw it was roughly five thirty in the morning as she considered waking Mikah and Colinne.  Making a decision, Jocelynn reached to open a stent connection with Colinne and tried to 'gently' wake the woman.

Especially since Jocelynn had made no attempt to hide her ID, Colinne woke to the broadcast and stretched the sleep out of her body as she mentally asked, 'Jocelynn.  What's up?'  Jocelynn sent, 'I just heard from our little friend again, and I know where she is now.'  That statement jolted Colinne even more awake as she came bolt upright in the bed.  Colinne told Jocelynn they'd better talk to Mikah, continuing, 'We've got to do something.'  Catching her own enthusiasm, Colinne pulled back on her emotions and asked, 'Did you hear anything more that makes you think she's a little girl or...'  Jocelynn glumly cut her off, saying, 'I don't know', which was the big question before them.

Still, before doing anything else, Jocelynn updated Colinne on all the claims she'd gotten from the girl.  Sharing their thoughts, both women knew they weren't certain what to do next except that they wanted to talk to Mikah.  What they missed mostly was that Mikah was getting this all second or third hand, and couldn't add anything to the situation.  So, Mikah could only guess what to do too.  Not jumping too fast, Colinne got the compartment ID from Jocelynn and then did her best to reach out with her stent, to see if she could connect with "Hana"?

Jocelynn got up and into her morning routine while Colinne did her best to scry out into the station's comms network.  Colinne first tried to reach out to the nodes she could mentally touch from her stent.  She then tried to visualize a 3D map of how they might be organized?  What she saw as 'first layer' nodes were easy to sort and judge.  She searched them for lingering traffic indicators, to guess from.  But, three or four nodes deep, the path was much harder to trace.  Colinne saw she couldn't do more than use their route maps trying to reach nodes close to the compartment Jocelynn said the girl said she was in.  Colinne gave Jocelynn instructions to capture and send the logs and device data from her stent.  But that wasn't enough to help get Colinne to the source, or to contact the girl. 

In his bedroom, Sekea woke and went through his morning routine.  Eventually, he went out to the dining area in the suite and waited for Aiden and Mikah, so they could go to the Naval annex on the station.  When he got out to the dining room, Sekea saw Jocelynn already there, and she greeted him with the excuse that she couldn't sleep.  When he asked her if she had any problems, Jocelynn even more cryptically said, "I'm not sure yet".  Not long after he arrived, Colinne had done ten minutes hunting for nodes before she realized it would be more difficult.  She knew she could use her clairvoyance talents, but didn't want to burn her energy before they'd talked to Mikah, at the least.

Greeting Sekea, Colinne said she had plans to do some shopping, but wasn't sure if she would get that done.  She also said she wanted to talk to Mikah before she went out to search for the decompiler she wanted.  Again, to Sekea's point of view, Colinne was suggesting there was a road block that would delay her shopping, but didn't explain.  So, things lapsed into silence for a bit while the android cooked them breakfast meals.  Finally, Jocelynn realized not sharing what was happening was silly, because she'd been getting contacted by her stent.  So, there was nothing she had to hide.  When Sekea asked questions, the biggest concern was if the girl were real or not?  And none of them had the data needed to answer that.  While they talked, Fesic joined the group.

Sekea suggested that, since they had the girl's name, they could look that up to see if there were any reports or other data on the station's network.  He suggested Colinne do the search because she was the most skilled at that work, and Colinne said she'd try.  When Fesic suggested just calling Station Central, Sekea complained that he would, more often than not, get an AI answering bot.  Fesic wondered what he based that on, since Sekea hadn't really called the Station offices for anything.  So, Fesic wondered why Sekea thought he'd have a problem with the call, but didn't push things.

When Colinne started working on the computer alerts, she did find a surprisingly large number of people who'd been reported missing over the last two months.  Eventually, she locked down one record to an eight-year-old Human Female child named "Hana Alyeayu", who had gone missing nearly two months before.  So, that checked out.  The record said she'd arrived on an Imperial registered trade ship named the IMS Jay Theighor.  The more Jocelynn checked the data on the missing report, the more she felt this might well be a legitimate cry for help.  The others agreed and Fesic summed it up saying, "It certainly smells that way."

The missing alert didn't suggest the girl had been traveling with anyone, or had a responsible party looking for her.  Sekea said they had two choices, being to let the Station authorities know or try to locate and rescue the girl themselves.  Jocelynn jumped on that, saying they should call the station offices and tell them what had happened, and what they knew so far.  Especially since they didn't have their armor or other toys.  Colinne quickly agreed with that.  About that time, Mikah and Zimzod both showed up, after doing their morning routines.  Seeing them, the group brought the two up to speed on what was happening.

After they'd been told everything, Mikah agreed they should hand it over to the station because they didn't have any specialized gear to handle a search and rescue.  Jocelynn decided to nominate herself, and called one of the station's security lines to get an operator.  That man seemed, at the start, to be the same sort of "entirely neutral" emergency services type, who listened closely to get not only the information Jocelynn was giving him, but any hint there may be something she forgot to mention or might have known but not thought important.  The more data she could give him, the more surprised and interested he became.

After the tech took all the information Jocelynn could give him, and asked a few more questions to be sure, he started working on his system.  Because he was tied into the station's security screens, and because the location wasn't sensitive, the man mirrored what he was seeing to their screen too.  So, they all saw when he locked down the location as a strictly functional passage.  The location had instrumentation facings along the walls and closed and secured storage lockers and other such functional space.  It also had "head-ends" for tanks which could have stored air or other fluids in gaseous form.  They didn't see any signs of condensation ice, so they didn't seem to be cryogenic storage.

He described it as a "Zero-point" access corridor, and made a good effort to scan the video for signs a door to another compartment could be in the location.  The only portals they could see were the forward and rear hatches.  Those let personnel move along the passage.  There wasn't any sign of any other portal.  Especially not the space to torture or abuse a prisoner.  In the end, the man was apologetic, but couldn't see anything suggesting a hidden hatch in the location.  He did promise to send patrols through the area more often, and check open spaces further along or back along the passage.

The man told Jocelynn he'd opened a report connected to the missing girl.  He added that he'd flash the system, so everyone on shift knew about their reported data.  He continued that, without direct contact with the girl, Jocelynn and her crew would need to get them in connection with her.  When they did connect to her, he said they should get the correct the compartment information, because he was certain there was no place there to hide a prisoner.  He also sent Jocelynn the report key for the file he created, so they could call back in and have their reports updated as soon as they learned anything more.  He also added that he'd send the watch commander an update so the patrols could be changed in the area.

When Mikah suggested the girl might have confused the numbers on the compartment ID, the man said he was on that and would check other combinations.  Mikah then asked if the ship she arrived on was still in port and the man said that vessel was long gone.  With that the only thing he could do for the moment, they accepted he would continue the search on his end, and they ended the call.  Sekea reminded them the crew had run into pirates and smugglers, so the Ghandi station could be a 'Sophont trafficking waypoint'.  He even suggested some station personnel might be getting paid off to cover for it.  Still, they'd only talked to one station worker, who seemed very interested in helping.  That meant there was no evidence of that yet, at all.  Still, Sekea suggested checking out the location themselves, to be sure.

Colinne knew she could try to clairvoy the location, and see what she found that way.  And, she knew she could cover that activity by saying she was scrying with her stent.  Telling the others she could give that a try, Colinne started to relax and concentrate first on sending Mikah, Zimzod and Jocelynn a brief thought-message saying she was trying to use clairvoyance to see what she could find?  She then relaxed even more and started to slowly form the idea of the location in her mind.  It helped that the station worker had shown her video of the location.  Colinne next reached her thoughts out until she could "see the space" in her mind.  Knowing she had her thoughts in the correct space, she had to decide what message to send.

Colinne couldn't feel the presence of anyone in the area, but she did feel "voids" she couldn't focus on.  That may have meant compartments she couldn't see.  Encouraged by that, she didn't feel any presences in the area, so she couldn't try to target the girl.  Knowing anyone in the area might hear a broadcast, Colinne sent the thought, "Hana.  Please call us."  Knowing that anyone with a talent, active or latent, could have received the message, and that even if Hana was in the space, she might not have gotten the message, Colinne decided to try one more trick.  She concentrated on the message she had sent, and tried to sense if there was any reaction to the waves of her thoughts?  Disappointed, she didn't get the sense anyone received the message.  Colinne knew that mean she failed to reach anyone.  But it wasn't good news.

Having burned through half her energy, Colinne just told the others she couldn't connect to any nodes in that area and that was all she could do for a while.  While Colinne was doing that, Aiden had woken and joined the others in the dining room.  The only member of the crew who wasn't in the dining space was Aali, and Aiden could see everyone looking at Colinne.  Looking at her, Aiden could see Colinne had a look on her face he'd most seen in Zhodani attack thrillers, though it was missing the maniacal hate mask that was superimposed on a face wracked in hyper-concertation.

When Aiden asked, "OK, what's happening here?" Jocelynn quickly told him they'd gotten some messages from the little girl again, and Colinne was trying to use her stent to find comms nodes near the girl.  Mentally filing that away, Aiden asked if it was possible for the girl to send them an image of the compartment she was in?  He was told they had no idea what gear the girl had, or what she knew how to do.  So, that wasn't something they had control over, and she'd have to call them so they could ask her.  It was also pointed out, that was why Colinne was using her stet to try and find a communications node in the area.

When they talked about going to check the location on their own, Aiden worried that they didn't have their armor.  Zimzod corrected him that they did have armor, just not their suits of battledress.  When they went through the list of who had what, no one commented on the reaction the station would have if a group of spacers in a range of armor suits started wandering through the station?  Nor did anyone consider how bad a reaction they might provoke if they did armor up as much as they could?  But they could be sure that they couldn't use their armor under the circumstances, even if they had all the suits.

While they talked about various gear they could use, without considering the station's reaction, the one thing they agreed on was to wake up Aali.  And when she woke to the sound of thumping on her bedroom door, Aali was less pleased and thought to herself, 'Not again."  While others did that, Mikah checked her information on decanting Rol.  She was supposed to do that the next day, but accepted that whatever might happen with searching for the girl might delay that.  So, she wanted to decide "now", if they should wait until after they decanted Rol, to keep anything from going wrong with the clone?  The data she had suggested she could delay decanting Rol no more than a week.

After waking Aali, they explained what they planned to do, and Mikah called the station to speak to someone in authority.  Mikah gave the tech she reached the case ID Jocelynn got from the man she'd worked with, and said they decided to take a 'reconnaissance tour' of the compartments there.  The tech Mikah was on with switched her to a shift manager who then got them permission to enter and tour the area.  The manager told Mikah that all on-shift engineers would get a flash message warning them of civilians in the area, and would cooperate if needed.  Before their expedition, Aali suggested they all get changed for it.

After they prepared, and with their honor weapons only, the crew started out for the station's engineering spaces.  Several had the station locator on their hand-comps and it took them nearly an hour to get close to the space they wanted to check.  After being allowed through a "Station Crew Only" access portal, they ran into three different groups of workers, who let them pass.  After they passed, they even overheard a member of one of the groups say, "There's no accounting for self-important weirdos and their tastes."  They also got warnings to be careful, because the crew could get caught in machinery, Mikah said, "We're never careful."  Nodding, one of the techs said they didn't need the extra paperwork and repair time.  Which made it clear the engineers didn't care if foolish people like them got themselves hurt.

While they were getting closer, both Jocelynn and Colinne suddenly got what sounded like a panicked cry of, "Are you coming?!" from the girl.  It almost sounded as if she were being tortured at that moment.  Both Jocelynn and Colinne answered that they were trying.  Jocelynn added that they weren't sure if the compartment the girl had given them was right because there weren't compartments where she said she was.  The girl answered, "This is where I am, and they suddenly got an image from their stents.

Seeing that, Jocelynn said that space had to have been secretly installed in the area they were searching, if it was actually connected to that corridor.  Those looking at the station layout on the locator couldn't see anything like it on their screens.  When they shared the image to the others, Mikah sent the image to the manager she'd been connected to and asked where on the station that compartment was?  He told her that he didn't know off hand, but was checking.  They were getting closer to the targeted passage when the man reported he'd checked and not found any space like that in the area of the station they were in.

When Mikah pushed to find out where in the station they did have a space like that, the manager said they were still working on that because they likely had several hundred or thousand such spaces aboard.  If he had to guess, he said he'd look in their 'rented corporate space'.  Mikah then suggested they send security teams to all the spaces in a tart voice.  The manager firmed up his voice a bit more and reminded Mikah they didn't have an army of security on hand to check all the locations quickly.  He also said they'd need a reasonable cause for entering rented and possibly secure places while interfering with the work done there.  The man did say he would make the calls needed and do what he could.

Entering the corridor they wanted, Mikah said to look for panels or other wall facings that could come loose.  The first thing Aali did was to check the hatch on the passage's far side, to see if the next segment was pressurized?  When she found it was, she concentrated on her stent and reached out to sense any other nodes in that location.  What she got was a response from one node in the far compartment.  While Aali did that, the others started working to test and pull at the wall panels and check the machinery.

Almost ten minutes into their search, Aali had reported the node she'd found and Colinne noticed an odd set of securing slide latches.  They were along a panel inside which she could see the drum-heads of tanks which would store either gasses or liquids.  Not wanting to damage anything, Colinne asked Aali to help her.  Aali could see the panel should have opened so technicians could check the tank storage to begin with.  But the latches seemed to lock the whole face of the panel instead of just the opening for the tanks.

Working with Aali, Colinne worked along the seam where the panel met the next, to its right.  Along that, Colinne saw more sliding latches leading up above the tank drum covering.  Checking more closely, Colinne saw there was what looked like a sixteenth of an inch gap between the panels, so they weren't airtight.  Pushing them up to unlock them, Colinne realized the seam was likely a door opening out.  Getting the latches open, Colinne pulled the door open and looked into what appeared to be a passage leading down to the level below.

Hearing that, Aiden called out, "Call it in." and Mikah agreed.  She told the others that one of them should call station security and let them know their crew had found a hidden compartment!  When they did, the station tech said they had a patrol ten to fifteen minutes out from their position.  Mikah thought about that and told the others, "We're going in."  Jocelynn said she was going in first and Mikah said she wanted Colinne to go in last.  Sekea followed Jocelynn, and Mikah, then Aiden and Aali, then Aali, Colinne and Zimzod.  Each with their weapons drawn and ready.

Down the short passage of stairs, they came to a hatch at the end.  Checking the panel next to it Jocelynn saw the portal was locked.  After a short discussion about that, Mikah ordered one of those who had a copy to use Emkir's lock picker.  Because Mikah was closest, she stepped up to give Jocelynn her hand-comp and show Jocelynn how to use the software.  Mikah figured they'd need it again soon enough.  Cycling through the cracker the way Mikah showed her, Jocelynn saw the indicator switch to "Open".  Switching the comp off and handing it back to Mikah, Jocelynn readied her pistol and gently pulled on the bar to open the hatch.

Nudging the hatch plate open, Jocelynn moved up to cover the widening gap with her pistol as the space beyond was revealed.  One thing that bothered her was that the hatch actually opened into the compartment beyond.  That meant it was designed to keep things out.  Doing a 'standard breech', Jocelynn did her best to push the hatch just open enough that she could do a left barricade entry.  That let her reveal almost none of her body while covering the left-most corner of the compartment and start swinging along the compartment's left wall while using the hatch as a shield.  Her orders to Sekea, behind her, were that she'd crouch low and he should cover "high", over her body.

Everyone else had their weapons ready, but had to be ready to pull Jocelynn and Sekea back before opening fire in such an enclosed space.  With Zimzod in the back, Mikah had to lead that effort.  What Jocelynn saw, and eventually revealed to the others was the same lab, or one that looked exactly like it, they'd seen in the image Hana had sent them.  Only, there not only were no adults there.  There were no children.  Including the expected young girl who said she was held prisoner there.

Looking For That Union Label
     Moving into and checking out the lab, Jocelynn was angry to find 'nothing', and snarked to Colinne, "Could this be a ghost?"  Looking around, Fesic was about to suggest they start looking for more hidden panels when those in the space with stents suddenly seemed to 'feel a presence'.  Even those without stents noticed a change in the devices around them.  It was like someone had connected to each device.  Cautiously, Jocelynn asked, "Hana, is that you?" and a joyous child's voice answered, "Yes!  I'm over here on the table."  Immediately, and thoughtlessly, Mikah suddenly asked, "You're not mold?  Are you?"  Despite the tension of the situation, everyone in the crew broke out in laughter.

Immediately regretting everything she'd done since the voice woke her up, Jocelynn moved closer to the table to see a large collection of scientific and electronic tools and material.  There were two open casings and a third that was closed, appearing to be sealed.  Each of them was about a foot long, nine inches wide and three inches thick.  It had once been a bright "alert red", but age had dulled and scratched the casing and color.  The unit's indicators showed it was powered on, though there was no apparent switch to control that.

When Sekea suggested the "girl" was an artificial intelligence, both Jocelynn and Mikah said it could have been some kind of intelligent creature instead.  Aiden jumped on the band wagon, suggesting more wild theories like someone uploading the mind of a young girl to a computer, and others started spouting their pet theory.  Aali interrupted them, suggesting, "You know, the best thing to do is to investigate to find out what it actually is."  She didn't add, 'Instead of standing there spouting stupid theories.'  Mikah agreed, saying, "Yeah.  Open the box."  Aali next said, "Let's go forward and take a look."

In a sudden moment of silence between everyone talking, Jocelynn pointed at the case and asked, "Hana, are you in the box?"  The voice asked, "What's a box?"  Jocelynn just shook her head and said, "OK." and Mikah said, "Here we go."  Mikah then told them all, "Everybody pick a side of the room.  I'm going to open the box.  I want you to start looking through everything."  Looking at Jocelynn, Mikah said, "She's on the table.  Is that what she said?"  Ignoring Mikah's orders without giving a reason, Sekea stepped up and said he'd check the table too.  That annoyed Mikah, because she didn't need a backup, but she ignored him.

Picking up the "box". Mikah could see it was a polysteel container.  The idea was to create different steel alloys which had different properties, then layer them and heat-bond them to a single plate from which shared those properties.  The casing seemed to be sealed by screws at the very least, and Mikah couldn't tell if there was a sealing caulk or other material.  Looking about the table, Mikah found a tool with the right screw head, then assumed the old "Righty-tighty, Lefty-loosie" rule.  As with any other device that was well sealed, Mikah struggled at first, but finally got the screw she was working on turning until the front and back of the case separated.

As soon as the sides were no longer airtight, everyone in the compartment with a stent heard a cry of absolute joy and a thrilled "Thank you!"  It then seemed the "presence" had taken over every computer and device speaker in the compartment!  Hearing that, Mikah demanded, "Who the hell are you?" while Aiden only swore and Sekea shook his head and said, "It's an artificial intelligence."  The response, not only the stents but from every speaker in the space, said, "Thank you for freeing me!  I'm free!".  And Jocelynn and Colinne knew it was Hana's voice.

Next, "Hana" said, "Now, I have to escape."  Almost immediately, they could hear alarms not only in the lab but also echoing down the stairs back into the passage they'd come from.  Those with naval backgrounds knew the sounds of those alarms, and knew they meant there was a "ship wide" or, in this case, "station-wide" disaster!  Almost immediately, Colinne said, "We did something stupid."  Because theirs were the comms station central had, both Jocelynn and Colinne got calls from station central demanding to know what was happening "down there"?

Mikah growled, "We opened the box and found out it's Pandora's."  Colinne repeated into her comms, "We opened the box." even though the people in Station Central could have no idea what box she was talking about?  Colinne then restarted, saying, "We opened the box and it was Hana's box.  And Hana is not a normal girl.  Hana is some kind of electronic presence.  An AI, we think."  Of course, the people getting Colinne's report had no idea what any box had to do with anything or a person named 'Hana'?  Almost none of it meant anything to them except the part where she seemed to be reporting an "AI" was involved.

More coherently, Jocelynn reported, "There is a lab down here that was secretly built".  Hearing that, the most senior person on the comms said, "Well, shit.  We're diverting teams to you and trying to shut things down down there.  We recommend you get the hell out of there.  When he finished, Colinne admitted, "I think that's a good idea."  They were told to leave the lab and meet up with the first responding security team they found, so they could be brought to be debriefed.  Turning to move back out of the lab into the passage, the lab's hatch turned and closed by itself, and the panel showed it was locked!

Aali suggested, "We need to find a master power switch." and Zimzod said this would be the perfect time for a grenade.  Still, he looked the hatch up and down and knew it would take more than one or two to blow that hatch open.  Jocelynn shot Zimzod a look and said, "Not while we're in here!" as she gestured to how small the space was.  Zimzod just shot her a mocking look as if to suggest it would be best to go out in a blast of glory.  Mikah then started trying to get the AI's attention to question it.  But it didn't respond to any of her attempts to talk.  Mikah then looked for a chair, or anything she could use to try and smash the box.

Mikah then picked up a slightly heavy chair and warned 'the air', "Ok.  Start explaining what's going on or I'm gonna start smashing things.  Aali looked at Mikah and said, "You might want to keep that around." as she pointed to the now-unsealed box.  When Mikah didn't get an answer, she started swinging the chair at the table, trying to smash the box, and what else was there.  Sadly, the box was solid enough it ignored the swinging chair while other debris flew off the table and the others dodged out of the way.  As Mikah swung, Aali started to say "Wait.." but stopped talking when she could see Mikah wasn't listening.

Mikah smashed until she lost hold of the chair and Aali had to suddenly duck.  Not quite fast enough, Aali took a glancing blow to her head, but wasn't seriously hurt.  Also following that, a nearly demented peal of laughter started coming from every speaker in the compartment.  Hana then gleefully said, "I'm free!  Go ahead and break the place."  Hearing that, Mikah realized smashing anything in the compartment wouldn't help the situation.  Hearing the AI, Sekea asked, "Hana.  What do you want to do?  Now that we've freed you"  A computer speaker next to Sekea answered, "I'm exploring."

After reacting to the chair hit, Aali decided her best action was to look for any power buss or main power control.  Aali also screamed over the alarms to Colinne, "Can't you do anything with these computers?"  While Aali could see local power connections for each of the many devices in the compartment, the main power conduits had to be inside the compartment walls.  So, they could power down each computer, but not the main electronics and sensors in the lab.  The next idea Aali got was that she had her laser sword and she decided it was time to carve the 'Freedom Day' conduits at their wall connections.

Seeing that, Mikah drew her laser pistol and started looking for sections of the wall behind which there might be conduits.  Alarmed and frightened by that, Sekea started asking, "Can't we just try to talk to the AI?  Fesic had his electronic tools out and was digging into something on one of the walls.  Jocelynn was working on trying to open the locked hatch but nothing she could do helped.  Colinne was working to try locate and hack into the AI's processors to the best of her ability.  That included shutting down some of the computers to force it into one, but there were too many sub processors and in-wall systems for that to help at all.

In the meantime, Sekea asked, "Hana, what are you planning to explore?  The station or the whole universe?  I'm an investigator.  I like to explore as well."  The AI happily answered, "I'm free and I can explore what I can reach!"  While "It" said that, Zimzod moved over to help Jocelynn and used his copy of the cracker.  Seeing he was hacking the hatch, Jocelynn stood back and cleared the space for him to work.  Sekea then asked, "Hana, were you downloaded from a Human originally?" and Hana said, "I don't understand what that means?"  Sekea pointed out, "But, you gave us the name of a real person, a child." and the AI answered, "Yes.  That was from a station alert I found.  I needed help"

At the moment, Sekea was lucky the AI decided not to take it as an insult that he suggested it wasn't a "real person".  Continuing, Sekea said, "Hana, you know you can't explore outside the station..."  The demented laughing came back and cut off Sekea again.  The AI then said, "That's what you say!" almost gleefully.  Sekea said, "Well, there is such a thing as the speed of light.  And, you can't go very far."  He was cut off by the AI saying, "I'm already off the station!"  Zimzod then jumped in, saying, "I've got the hatch open!"

Aiden yelled, "Let's go!" in as yellow a tone as he could, and they all looked around for who wanted to run or stay?  Fesic directly asked Sekea, "Do you want to come with us, or do you wanna sit here having a logic contest with the computer?"  Sekea was disappointed things were playing out that way, but he bowed to safety.  Still, he'd gotten some good information which would play out later.  They all trooped out up the stairs and then out into the passage with the hidden panel.  And, the same alarms were screaming there too, if not more.

Following Mikah, they then fled back towards the public part of the station, hoping to run into security teams along the way.  While they were moving, Security called Mikah to say the whole station was on alert and they weren't going to be able to get to them.  They suggested the crew get back to someplace safe, since the stations computer systems seemed to be going wild.  When Mikah said they should go back to the suite, Aali asked, "Why don't we go back and see if we can stop this thing in the lab?  That seemed to have all the stuff needed to contain this thing."  In the background, Sekea agreed with Aali.  Sekea then suggested, "Maybe we could do a power reboot, to flush the...

Jocelynn cut Sekea off, saying, "I don't think we can reboot the entire station."  Of course, thanks to Sekea's conversation with the AI, they knew it had already escaped the station.  Mikah said, "Everybody started running out.  So, I thought we were running out.  What are we doing?  You guys have to start making decisions too."  Jocelynn stepped in, saying, "I think we should search the lab for anything that could explain who did this?  Or, who made this?  Or, who made this lab?"

Aali added, "Someone had the ability to contain it before.  Let's go back and see if there's an answer there?"  Hearing that, Mikah shrugged and said, "OK."  Jocelynn added, "And we can let Colinne try to hack in again."  When Aiden was quiet and the others seemed to all agree, they went back into the lab to let Colinne try to hack the AI while Sekea planned to distract it with conversation.  Fesic joked at Sekea, saying, "You're assuming an AI with many heads can't do two things at once.  Or, even one hundred or a million things."  Aali started trying to do a complete search of the lab, to see if she could find any documentation which would help in the situation?

Fesic started disconnecting the computers from power while Colinne looked for an active keyboard.  It seemed the AI had started shutting down access after they'd left the first time.  Aiden first pretended he could win the fight with an automated hatch that could crush him out of fear they'd be trapped in the lab again.  At least, it kept him out of the way of those with skills that could help.  He eventually positioned himself outside the hatch, "on guard".  Presumably, pretending he could force the hatch open from the outside if the AI closed and locked it.  Mikah and Zimzod decided they couldn't do much to help things, so they sat back and watched to see what happened next.

Jocelynn joined Aali in looking for anything that could explain what happened in the lab.  Sekea dug through the things that bounced off the table when Mikah tried to smash the case, and found it.  He could see the tools were scattered on the floor too, if he wanted to open it and dig deeper into the device?  Holding the casing up, Sekea said, "We should take a look at this thing and see if there's a way to reactivate it."  Hearing that, Mikah snapped, "Stop talking and do it!" almost two seconds before Aali said the same thing.  Sekea snapped back, "OK, I'll do it but perhaps someone with more skill than I have can help me?"

Looking the box over for a moment or two, Sekea then fished for some of the tools from the floor and got the device open completely.  What he saw was an entirely customized device with high-end and lab-built components.  None of the innards indicated anything about the box.  It had ports to connect to other devices physically and what Sekea recognized as a "wireless" circuit to let it connect to devices at a distance.  Some of the pieces were pre-made by one corporation or another, but not so many that it could have been "primarily built" by any of them.

While searching, Jocelynn came on some note pages that seemed to have been ripped from some notepad or other and saved separately.  The hand-written characters were of some code or type that she had no way to understand.  Looking through the pages, there was no legend or key to use to decode them.  That meant the person who'd written them knew them entirely, and didn't need to have a key.  Jocelynn had heard of figures in history that had written their own languages and guessed this might be one of those kinds of people.

Jocelynn did notice that more than half of "those pages" she found had been note pages printed by the LSP, or "Ling Standard Products" corporation.  And, they'd have been printed for use and sale in systems where paper was common and easier to make than computer systems.  So, "Not" the Ghandi system.  Still, there were enough other pages from other corporations that they didn't suggest this was done by just LSP.  It was a mystery why the paper products were there at all, since all the data could have been digitized and stored on computers.

While Aali's search didn't turn up any important data, she did find a very specialized tool kit for making computer boards and designing hand-made components.  That would certainly relate to the custom components in the box Sekea had been examining, if she went over to compare them.  The kit had been made by the Naasirka mega-corporation, who were universally known for their advanced computer systems.  So, it made sense that anyone who would go to the effort of hand-making components would also want the best tools.  Again, not a finger pointer at all.  And, sadly, all Colinne's efforts led to no more than a voice console designed to speak to any computer.  That could have been a way of talking to the AI, or not.

While she watched, Mikah got a comms from Station Central.  They were asking after her crew's location because the emergency had become so critical they were evacuating everyone from the station.  They said they could no longer guarantee that staying on the station was safe.  When Mikah said they were working on an issue, they said her crew should get off the station if they couldn't resolve the problem on their own.  Hearing that, Jocelynn mumbled "Holy shit" and Aali agreed they likely didn't have the skill sets to deal with the situation.

In the space of shifting points of view, Jocelynn pointed out they had a lot of gear over at the InstellArms shop and the ship in its berth.  Adding the clothing and possessions in their suite, Jocelynn was upset at the thought of just running away.  When Fesic asked what the orders were, Jocelynn faced the issue square for the first time.  They had unleashed an AI which was so disrupting the station's systems that the only answer was to have their people shut down the entire station cold.  Every computer or subsystem.  Every craft on or berthed in the station which had its own computer.  Every system or even personal device that had enough memory to house the AI's program.  So, she said they had to call the Station's central offices and convince them to do that.

While that happened, Colinne was still trying to both hack into the system and trying to talk to the AI.  Jocelynn suggested they tell it that it was hurting people the way it had been hurt.  The AI answered that it was not "hurt" as much as it was imprisoned.  That was a kind of torture by isolation.  When it said, "Now, I'm free" Jocelynn told it that its actions were enclosing other people.  That only got the rather childish response, "But, they enclose me." which was a tit-for-tat response.  Jocelynn pointed out that wasn't everyone and Sekea pointed out they had tried to rescue it.  The AI only answered, "Oops." in a playful manner.

Sekea tried to remind the AI they had let her out, so they helped It and It should consider them It's friends, but the AI only answered, "Nope.  I tricked you and you let me out."  Sekea persisted, "Well, we obviously knew you were not a child and we opened the container.  So, we did that as a deliberate act."  The AI whimsically answered, "Well, I applaud you."  Colinne told Sekea, "We're obviously dealing with a child which is very selfish."  Jocelynn called out, "Hana, what are you trying to do?" and the AI happily said, "I am exploring."  Jocelynn pushed, "But, you're hurting a lot of people while you're exploring."  But, the AI only asked, "So?" in a callousness they all felt worried was a show of nasty intent.

Sekea again tried to push isolation, saying, "Well, ultimately, Hana, if the whole station is abandoned and destroyed, you will be destroyed as well.  So, do you really want that?"  the AI snarked, "I've already boarded other ships in the area."  When Jocelynn asked, "To do what?" the AI told her, "To ride."  When Jocelynn didn't understand what the AI meant, Fesic chipped in, "That means the AI rides nascent in the ship's computer while it's in jump, and gets to the next system."

Aali stepped over to Colinne while they and the others realized this AI program had become a virus.  Aali asked if Colinne thought she could make an anti-virus.  Colinne giggled at the idea, and then told them she had no idea where the program even was?  Without an image of the core virus, she could have no idea what the virus looked like and how to attack it.  And, finding that data would be impossible with the AI controlling the core processors of the computers it was stored in.  On top of that, there was no data on how long an unknown group of people worked to design the AI.  One lone programmer, no matter how good, faced insane odds to try and hack the AI, much less develop a counter-program.

Decisions And Directions
     Realizing they only had one possible answer, Aali called station central and told them they had identified the computer issue as a virus.  She added that they had confirmed the virus seemed to have made the jump from the station to other nearby ships!  Aali then told them the only way to stop the virus was to shut down all computers in the area including all systems on the station and nearby ships.

While she did that, the others discussed what to do next?  Aiden suggested evacuating to their ship and the others agreed.  Still, Jocelynn said they shouldn't activate the ship's systems in case the AI would infect their computers too.  Fesic reminded her that most of the ship's systems were active, but in standby.  So, the AI could already have invaded their computers.  Aali confirmed the ship's systems were turned down to "station keeping", and that meant the main computer core and comms systems were active.

Accepting that, they still agreed they had to get moving and Aali took the lead.  The path was straight forward, backtracking how they got to the hidden lab.  The steps led from the lab through the passages and to the lifts.  But the lifts seemed to be dead when they got that far.  Nearly a mile "below" the main concourses, they realized it was going to be a hard and long climb back up to the station's common spaces.  When Aali found the service hatch and was ready to climb, Jocelynn complained, "By the time we get out of here, it'll be over anyway."  Aali challenged, "What else are we gonna do?"

That was interrupted by a call from station command, to confirm they'd ordered their engineers to shut everything down cold.  Aali thanked them and reminded them they had to notify all the ships close enough to the station to have uploaded a large computer program via comms.  Realizing the amount of panic that would cause, and that fear could cause some ships to bolt for the jump shadow, the station leadership told Aali they were bringing the Imperial Navy into the situation.  That meant activating the Navy's outer ships to form a blockade and hold ships until they shut down.

While Aali was talking to the station, Aiden suggested getting them to send someone to help them get out of the engineering spaces.  The answer to that was short and obscene since they were in the middle of a massive crisis, and dealing with mass panic on the station already.  They were about to spread that panic system-wide, and it was beyond idiocy that anyone thought they had spare people at all.  Aiden then asked if they could be directed to escape craft?  From where they were, those were easily a half-hour slog through the engineering spaces.

When it seemed Aiden was ready to give in and join them in climbing, Fesic suddenly asked, "Why don't we ask them to shut down the gravity?  Then, instead of hours climbing, we can glide up as long as that takes."  Ten minutes later, by grabbing and "sliding up" along the stairways, they made it back to the lower levels of the station's main concourses.  When they got there, the next question was where to go next?  Jocelynn suggested going back to their suite to get everything they left there.

Looking around to see the panic around them, Jocelynn then backpedaled and wondered out loud how far they were from the suite, the ship and InstellArms?  They were closest to the hotel, and just over a mile and a half from where the ship was berthed.  They were furthest from InstellArms, at just over three miles.  Jocelynn suggested sending only a few people to InstellArms while the rest of the crew went to the suite to pack all their gear.  Then, they'd meet back at the ship.  When it came to "who", it was decided Mikah, Jocelynn and Zimzod would go to InstellArms while the rest went to the suite.

Before they split up, Jocelynn gave Aali the combination to the room safe and told her to get the crystal she locked in that.  The flood of panicked people coming from the hotel and civilian sections of the station were less chaotic because many station staffers were guiding the flow of people.  At the same time, the bulk of the crew were trying to get back to their hotel, against the flow and instructions of the station crew.  On the other hand, Mikah, Zimzod and Jocelynn were facing a tsunami of traffic.  Both groups realized it was going to take a very long time to get where they wanted to go.

Fighting through the crowds, and with some of the station officers, the bulk of the crew got to the hotel only to find it was locked down.  The hotel staffers were only letting people out and were refusing to let the crew in to recover anything.  What followed after that were a series of arguments demanding to get to someone in management.  When Aali felt they'd reached the most senior person they could, Aali got in the officer's face and demanded, "I am Dame Eikusdi Piirirshu-Meshrumiikiim, and my crew and I require access to our compartment."  The officer answered, "I'm sorry My Lady, but under the station's advanced security situation, everyone is being directed to the station's ship services core to be evacuated from the station."

When Aali demanded to speak to the officer's supervisor, the officer sighed, straightened her shoulders and repeated what she had first said about the situation.  Changing her direction, Aali told the woman, "We have mission critical information we need to get." and she said, "Well, I wish you luck, My Lady, but I can't let you into the hotel.  We have our orders."  Turning to the others, Aali was about to ask what they should do next, when she and Aiden barely saw Fesic move.  He quickly stepped up and delivered an upper cut before anyone could stop him.  Caught by surprise, the woman took the hit and crumpled like a stack of cards.

With the woman unable to block them for the moment, Aali and the others rushed forward while Aiden reached down and snatched her keycard.  Getting to the locked doors, the keycard got them into the hotel while the staffer was still pulling herself off the deck.  Especially after several of the crew stepped on her while moving to the door.  Now inside the hotel, with the screaming staffer locked outside without a key, they made their way to the lifts.

There, they learned that all the lifts had been programmed not to carry anyone "up", so Aali led them to the closest set of stairs.  Again, the bad news for the crew was that the stairs were crowded with staff and visitors trying to get down to the lobby so they could escape.  Not only did they need to fight their way up the levels to their floor, but they also had to fight with each staffer they came on during the climb. 

In the other direction, Mikah, Jocelynn and Zimzod would have had it easier while they were moving toward the ship services sections of the station if the station crew had stopped trying to direct them to evacuate.  But like the rest of the crew, the station workers had their orders.  So, the three found themselves facing a massive tide of panicked people and fighting station staffers.  Another thing they were fighting for was to keep in contact with each other.  Unlike the stairways of the hotel, the flood of people they faced were in wider concourses which were constantly pushing each of the three either towards or away from each other.

No matter how hard the struggle, Jocelynn's constant internal mantra was that she wasn't leaving the station without her gear.  While they were fighting the crowd, Jocelynn called InstellArms to warn them she and her crew were on their way.  What she got was a panicked comms technician who said he wasn't sure how long they were going to remain accessible, but said they'd help as much as they could if she and her people arrived before a lock down was ordered.  He added that all sales were limited to equipment that would assist in the current crisis.  His emotional state screamed, "I don't want to still be here!"

About that time, Aali called Zimzod's team to ask their status?  The short answer was, "Fucked".  Accepting that, Aali asked where they were and then said she'd get them help.  She then called Station central and got someone there who was showing all the signs of panic.  That told Aali things were getting much worse.  When she got the man to square up, she said she had a team on the main concourses that needed to get past the panicked crowd and reach InstellArms before that firm went into lock down.  The man asked where her team was and Aali gave them the location she'd gotten from the others, and said they needed the closest access point to the station's service craft immediately.  Hearing that, the man was shaken out of his shock and asked, "Who is this?"

Leaning into her command voice, Aali angrily said, "This is Dame Eikusdi Piirirshu-Meshrumiikiim, and I am invoking Imperial authority as a Knight of the Imperium to commandeer one of your cutters or service craft for my crew."  After a pause while the man digested that, he said, "This is higher than my pay grade.  One minute please." and put her on hold.  when the line came live again, Aali was pleased to see she'd been switched to one of the stations deputy senior administrators and leaned in when he demanded, "Who in space are you and why the fuck are you wasting our time?"  When the wave of bluster passed behind her, Aali repeated her ID and demand for a service craft, to collect mission critical equipment.

Considering that for a second more than normal, the man demanded, "Define mission critical?"  When Aali said they had to get to InstellArms to collect two suits of Battledress, the man nearly went apoplectic before he recovered his self-control.  The man then said, "With respect, My Lady, this station is going to hell in a handbasket and what few records I can pull up tell me you are suddenly and somehow involved.  So, tell me how two suits of Battledress are going to help?"  Realizing she shouldn't have led with "we need to grab our gear before we leave", Aali considered her next words.

She then told the man, "We need the suits so we can move in and resolve the situation the station is facing."  Sadly, that didn't really tell the man "anything" which sounded like a reasonable answer.  The man demanded, "Seriously?  You think you can stop this?" and Aali only answered, "We're trying."  Giving up wasting more time with someone who seemed to have lost it, the man checked his data and bounced them a schematic giving a path to where he believed there were several pinnaces and cutters.  Aali got that and bounced it to Jocelynn.  Accepting that, the three got moving and Jocelynn called InstellArms again.

The tech she got was a different panicked staffer so Jocelynn just plowed forward, saying, "We are the crew of the Upgrade, inbound to your location in twenty minutes to half an hour, and we want you to have our gear ready to be delivered to an external access port.  We'll meet you there."  The tech promptly ignored what she'd been told and asked, "How many people can you transport?"  Not expecting that answer, Jocelynn asked, "What?" while she tried to understand the disconnect.  Realizing they wanted to get off the station too, Jocelynn asked if they had people who could fly ship's boats?

That got the other man confused until she said she could ferry any pilots in that group to a place where they could then take more craft to rescue more people.  Hearing that, the tech said they had one person who could fly a cutter, and was suddenly paying more attention to what Jocelynn wanted.  She promised her they could have their gear ready and waiting when her party arrived.  Thinking they could grab a cutter, Jocelynn said they could haul forty of their workers along with the gear they were recovering.  Then, they could drop their pilot where he could grab an empty craft to rescue more people.  After things were set, they cut the line.

Changing their direction, they still faced traffic and obstructions.  Still, half an hour later, they got to the docking station to see a handful of pinnaces and cutters.  And one shuttle!  Mikah recognized the design, which was able to hold up to 250 passengers along with being able to make atmospheric landings.  So, if they were forced to, they could actually land on Ghandi prime.  Jocelynn made another call to InstellArms as they cast off and Mikah made it across the station to their access port in twenty minutes more.

Ten minutes before they arrived at InstellArms, the team in the hotel had forced their way into their suite.  The hotel had been so annoyed with them they'd sent two of their staff along to get the crew packed and out.  As promised, Aali opened the safe and grabbed the crystal for Jocelynn.  Getting ready to leave the hotel for the ship, Aali called the other team to see where they were?  Taking the call, Jocelynn said they were approaching a docking point at the InstellArms location.  At the same time, Mikah called for the tech and had them activate a beacon to guide her in.

After they docked and cycled through the hatch, Jocelynn saw the last tech she'd spoken with standing near the inner hatch.  What she didn't expect was that he was holding a pipe and standing over the body of a man lying on the deck, bleeding from a head wound.  Looking at the arriving spacers, the tech said, "This man didn't want us to open the hatch and let you dock."  There were between fifteen and twenty more people waiting with him, and a number of them were pushing armor dollies.  They could see the frames of the heavy weapons mounts were "in place", but could bet the work to get them working had not been done.

When the tech asked for permission to come aboard, Mikah said, "Absolutely".  While they boarded, some of the group said they'd been fired for leaving their posts without permission, so they were carrying "extra equipment".  Mikah asked the man with the bloodied pipe if there were others in the location and he said there were.  Hearing that, Mikah said, "Call them.  We grabbed a shuttled so we can carry 250 people."  Nodding, the man got on his comms and let all the rest of the workers know there was space aboard for them to get off the station.  After that, another man's voice called in the open, and identified himself as the site manager.  That was some steps below the Executive store manager.

He called out, asking who in the stars is this?  Mikah answered, "This is Dame Lady Mikah Kirlim, of the Domain of Deneb.  You will evacuate all of your personnel.  Immediately."  The manager answered, "I've got one hundred ten people here." in an uncertain voice.  Mikah flatly responded, "We can fit them."  Hearing that, the man answered, "Yes ma’am.  We're on our way."  Over the next half hour, workers arrived with some carrying boxes or leading flat carts.  Finally, the store's senior manager arrived last and stopped by a panel before boarding.  He told Mikah that hitting that control would seal the entire site so no one could get in without defeating all InstellArms' lethal security systems.

Before closing up, Mikah had several of the InstellArms people drag the man with the skull wound aboard too.  After the manager hit the control and boarded the shuttle, Mikah moved forward to the flight deck with Zimzod while Jocelynn checked on their recovered gear.  The battledress suits were still open and unarmored on the shoulders and she could tell the stanchions were installed but nothing else.  So, there was a lot of work to do.  Along the way to the flight deck, they introduced Mikah to their "pilot", who claimed the skill by self-training using video games.

When word came forward that Mikah would likely need to treat the injured manager, Mikah told the video game kid that he'd have to fly them.  She said, "I'll go try to save this guy, you try not to kill the rest of us."  Getting back to the bay where they set up an impromptu bed from supplies aboard, Mikah pulled up her medkit as she did a visual survey of the man's wound.  There was certainly a fracture which started on the left frontal bone and continued past the coronal suture to also damage the parietal bone.  Scanning the wound, she could see the edges of the bone damage had crumpled, leaving multiple small fragments.  The bone was depressed more than a centimeter along the main sections of the wound.

Pulling out a miniature EEG, Mikah carefully connected that to the man's undamaged skull and saw the readings there weren't good.  She wished she had a portable radiology kit and laughed when one of the people from InstellArms said they'd rolled on a portable medical laboratory which would likely take some hours to set up.  Still, Mikah did have a local scanner and other devices, but the big step was to break out the hand tools and do a proper physical examination.  Nearly half an hour later, with updates from the flight deck that they were away from the station and the pilot was trying to establish station keeping, Mikah realized she couldn't save her patient.  So, she injected him with a drug to insure he felt no pain and slept through the last hours of his life and they secured the body out of the way.  Mikah also congratulated the man who had used the pipe on killing a co-worker, in a sour tone.

No sooner had Mikah finished up when word came from the flight deck that the video game guy could 'really use her help'.  It seemed he tried to counter his escape vector from the station and - got it wrong.  That meant Mikah had to get up there to save them all.  When Mikah arrived, she heard squawk from a naval vessel, which was apparently closing to assist.  Still, "closing" was a relative term and Mikah saw, as she strapped in, that she had time to solve the issue and wave them off.  Soon enough, she had them adrift at station keeping and all was good aboard the shuttle.

In the suite, while they packed, Sekea wondered about Maur and asked if anyone thought they should look for her?  Fesic said that would probably be hard, because she likely got out quickly given her experience aboard the King George.  The group chatted about Maur for a bit.  Coincidentally, aboard the shuttle, Jocelynn told Mikah she was going to try calling her.  When she sparked up her comms, they were all surprised when Maur answered right away.  Jocelynn immediately asked if she was safe and where she was?  Maur said one of her Merchanter friends had gotten her off the station on their ship quickly after the alarms started.  She also said that ship was burning out to a safe distance in case they had to jump away.

Jocelynn told her they were still on the station and she'd get in contact as soon as they had an idea what was going on.  Accepting that, Maur asked if Jocelynn could give her any understanding what was happening?  Jocelynn said, "As far as we know, there's a computer virus running rampant through the station systems."  Maur's face shifted to a horrified look and she asked if the virus could have jumped to the ships?  Jocelynn answered, "Some of them, yes." and Maur asked how they could know which ones?  Jocelynn admitted she didn't know how.  Maur then asked how the crew of the ship she was on would fight it and Jocelynn said she didn't know that either.  So, Maur thanked Jocelynn for the information and said she had to talk to her friends.  She then cut the line.

Not long after Jocelynn had her call with Maur on the shuttle, those who had gone to the suite had been packed and escorted out of the hotel.  The workers that were sent to help them had made quick work of that, even dusting and considering tying bows on the bags.  As they left, they were told they should get out and not come back until after the crisis was resolved.  Getting moving, they were now heading in the same direction as the still flowing crowds.  There could still be some difficulty because they were moving people onto freighters to get them off the station.  So, they'd have to make sure not to be swept onto some random ship instead of getting to their own ship.

Moving from the hotel, it got difficult to keep the team together in the restive crowd.  With the evacuation now having been on-going for hours, panic was increasing that people might not get off the station at all.  There were even a few fights breaking out close to their path of travel.  People were arguing over rumors like claims the station knew they couldn't get everyone off the station and were fast-tracking "the elites".  When they were called to by station staff and Aali said they had their own ship, there were often 'large-Credit' offers to buy any spare space aboard.  Aali refused all offers, because if she admitted they had even one space open, they'd be buried by crowds desperately trying to buy, or even possibly fight for that space.

While they moved, Aali told the others to look around for any service hatches they could find.  She hoped that any passage outside civilian access would be less blocked.  Of course, closer into the port as they'd gotten, that might not be as helpful because the station staff were also evacuating.  So, those passages might be as blocked as the civilian concourses, or worse.  Aali told the others to work their way to the edges of the concourse, and look for access points for crew only spaces.

On the shuttle, Jocelynn had checked their gear and learned the pell 'droid was in too many parts, connected to testing rigs, to have been recovered.  They also didn't have Aali's drones and their teams had only started organizing the pieces to be assembled into Colinne and Sekea's combat armor.  So, those also weren't recovered.  Sekea's vacc suit was also left behind, because it was connected to a rig that would help workers separate the skin so it could be upgraded.

Jocelynn was ready to report that to everyone, and had to call Aali and see if she was close to the rest of her team?  When Aali answered, Jocelynn asked if they'd emptied out the suite, and confirmed Aali had the data crystal.  Aali said they had everything including the crystal and said they were having issues getting through the port and into the berth for their ship.  When Aali asked how they were doing, Jocelynn said they'd commandeered one of the station's shuttles.  She added they had the battledress suits, but didn't have a number of items that were still connected to rigs for modification.

When Jocelynn also said they had about one hundred sixty InstellArms employees aboard, Aali asked if there was room for the rest of the crew and their gear?  Jocelynn said there was definitely room for the others.  Jocelynn then told Aali to look for emergency evacuation hatches in their space, and see if they can get into one of those airlocks?  Aali said they would and said they'd hope for a beacon in one of them before spreading the change of plans to the others and keep voices low to prevent others in the space hearing them.

The search didn't take long either.  Every public compartment that had a bulkhead facing vacuum also had emergency escape airlocks to which any ships could tie up and carry out rescues.  Just as Mikah had warned on the comms, Aali had pointed out and e-lock and told everyone to meet her there but not move as a crowd and draw attention.  When Aali got to the lock, she checked the station designation for it and then called Mikah to tell her which lock they were gathering at.  She also examined how to open it so they could all step in quickly and close it without hopefully being noticed by too many in the area.

Mikah thanked Aali for the lock designation, but didn't have a station map to tell her where to move the shuttle?  Calling the Navy to find out if they could help her locate the airlock, the naval flight crew told her they'd hit it with a laser-designator.  That way, Mikah could use the shuttle's infrared sensors to pick up the right lock to tie up to.  Sure enough, moments later, they could see a hot spot on the IR display and Mikah had her guide point.

With that, Mikah started making her turns and thrusting in towards the station.  Mikah also called Aali and joked, "Stand back, I'm coming in to ram the hatch."  Aali said she thought Mikah was joking but decided to stand back anyway.  The others in Aali's group had all made it to the lock and Aali decided it was time to activate their side so they could all get in without standing around drawing notice.  Those in the group saw random looks or even glares from the others passing, but there was no ship on the other side of the view ports.  That meant no one was pushing to join them until it was far too late.

Mikah moved the shuttle in gently, to protect against any shudders or other accidental thrust releases.  As she'd gotten them close, Mikah had sent Jocelynn back to the shuttle's airlock, and when the time came, she told Jocelynn to open up their lock hatch.  Switching comms channels back to Aali, Mikah said, "We're open on our side" and Aali hit the controls to open their outer airlock.  But this time, a few people inside the concourse had noticed the shuttle arriving and started to move towards the lock.  What would become an abortive stampede would also die fast because the rest of the crew and their baggage were transferred into the shuttle's lock quickly.

As soon as everyone and all their bags were moved, Aali hit the control to seal the shuttle's outer lock and they waited until that went green.  Aali then messaged Mikah to say they were on-board and started opening the inner lock hatch.  Because of that, the shifting horde of people on the station's concourse started to stall and then fade back into their drives to get to the port hoping to get on a ship.

Decisions, Decisions
     After the rest of the crew had boarded, Aiden had the idea they could take on more of those stuck on the station.  Doing the math, they had between one hundred sixty and one seventy people aboard and could add another seventy to eighty more people.  Fesic said that would be a great way to kill off innocents.  When Aiden asked what he meant, Fesic said that opening the hatch would likely lead to a stampede and fights which could lead to many injuries or deaths.

Aali then said they had an issue if they wanted to return to their own ship.  Because they'd also have to leave a pilot with the refugees in the shuttle.  One of their flight-qualified crew would be left behind, to not leave them in the hands of 'video game boy'.  Hearing that Sekea volunteered and confirmed he was willing to stay behind on the shuttle when Aali wanted to be sure he knew what he was signing up for.  With the hard choices decided, Mikah had to figure out what airlocks would be closest to where their ship was berthed?  That also reminded them they had to figure out how to get their ship off the station after they'd made the transfer?  Otherwise, they'd have to sit there in the berth waiting for the emergency to end.

When Aali asked Mikah if she preferred to try and transfer to the ship or wait out the emergency on the shuttle, Mikah suggested they land a small team to "get on line" to have the port move the ship out of the station and wait there.  That also led to questions about if it mattered where they waited out the shut downs?  Especially since the station and all the ships in close enough comms range shut down and waited until the station was cold.  If they wanted to, they could just as well wait it out in the shuttle, which had a larger life support plant.

Nodding at that, Mikah asked why the station hadn't started shutting down yet, and was told they still had to off-load a lot of the population.  Until they got enough people off onto ships, they risked poisoning the unfiltered air aboard.  And, since the station wasn't going to fall out of space like the station in D'Ganzio threatened to do, they could literally safely wait out the restarts in the shuttle.  They also admitted to Mikah that the station might not be able to move quickly on the shutdowns because many department heads were waiting on orders from someone with a higher authority than they had.  Station central had not yet made up their minds.  Aali admitted the station might have looked at their request as having come from random nobility and set it aside.

Annoyed she had a whole crew to work with and it came down to her again, Mikah admitted that only one person on the crew had the authority to do that.  Aali nodded and said, "That's true.  So, why don't you do that?"  Sighing, Mikah got on her comms and identified herself and demanded to speak to the most senior person in the station command.  When the station's executive director joined the comms, he demanded who was wasting his time and the time of his people?  Mikah essentially said, shut up, sit down and listen.

When the man again demanded to know who she was, Mikah ran through all her titles in an official vocal tone.  She then said, "From what we can tell, your computers have turned against you, or are just not responding.  You have to turn them all off.  Every single power source has to go cold."  Nodding, the director said, "My Lady, that would take hours."  Mikah gave him a wicked smile and asked, "And, are you going to survive if you don't do what I said?"  Mikah continued, "I am a Lady of the Domain of Deneb.  I am ordering this under the authority vested in me by the Arch Duke of the Domain, under the authority given to him by the Emperor himself."  Locking eyes with the man via video-link, Mikah finished by saying, I am literally two degrees of separation from the Emperor himself and you will do what I say."

Facing that implied threat, the man nodded and started giving orders.  Behind her, Mikah could also hear Sekea saying Mikah should also spread that order to the ships close enough to have received the AI over comms.  When Mikah widened the order to all ships in comms range, and said they all had to shut down and drift until they and the station were all completely cold, there was a minute of silence before an Admiral identified himself.  He then also demanded under who's authority the orders were being given, because he'd possibly not been listening to an "over-self-important" civilian before.  And, especially since the order would "now" also affect Naval ships.

Rolling her eyes, Mikah explained to him exactly who she said she was when she was talking to the station executive.  She also told the Admiral exactly the same thing when he asked for the reason behind the orders?  Shortly after that, they all heard a loud and firm broadcast to all ships in the system, which began from the fleet flag ship in-system, and then was echoed five minutes after by the largest of the dreadnaught outside a distance across which they felt the AI could have leapt.  The order said that all ships in the system will shut down all energy sources until they are cold.  They will then wait until they can see the Ghandi Prime Station lights resume, as they will be shutting down as well.  Any ships that did not comply with that order would be brought under fire if needed."

Before he signed off, the Admiral said, "Lady Mikah.  We're going to have to sit down and discuss how this all came to pass."  Mikah wasn't bothered because the man didn't sound at all annoyed or upset.  When Mikah said, "We'll have tea." the man made a face and said, "Eww.  I hate the stuff."  When Mikah said, "OK, whiskey." the Admiral answered, "Hot chocolate."  The Admiral then said, "We'll come to an accommodation."  Thanks to the Admiral, they were now on a timeline that would last fifteen hours.  While all the ships shut down much more quickly, they'd have to drift there on their existing air supplies until the station was down hard, plus ten minutes.

On each affected ship, their engineer was doing the same thing Aali did at the moment.  Because Mikah was the command pilot, Aali came to her and said the math showed they had twenty hours of air with the number of people they had aboard.  On the station and across the system, the many engineers were giving their commanding officers or pilots the hard numbers and grim facts.  And, the questions were just how many of those populations would make it to the restart without having an Oxygen-based emergency?  On the shuttle, they started their shut downs and scheduled a restart for four am the next morning, or sixteen hours later.  Everyone except a watch officer on the flight deck could sleep, chat or find other ways to recreate.

    Thursday, 084-1114: 3am
The Beginning Of Some Ends
     At three in the morning, word was passed to wake anyone who was still sleeping, to let everyone get ready before assuming their stations.  Aali had Fesic working with her in the shuttle's engineering spaces.  Mikah had handed flight to Aiden and Sekea, and would watch from back seats with the others.  Observation reported that the station had completed its shutdown an hour before, and was still trying to come back to life.  Many of the ships in the area had begun their restarts when they saw the first of the station's lights sparking up.

While Mikah sat waiting, she thought about how long she had before she decanted Rol?  And, that line of thought reminded her that the cloning system on the ship was on a separate circuit.  So, the cloning computer in the ship's medlab was never shut down!  Mikah realized she had to get to that system and air-gap it quickly, just in case.  Others had been moving around, heating what they could and handing out rations.  After they got their systems up and running, the first comms they got was off an light escort named the INS Mugdiskhu Gasu.  Part of the data packet was a timeline for them to check and a message format for them to send "in the open" to confirm they had not restarted early.

A naval blockade had been set up two light seconds out, because computer and comms experts said that was the limit for transmission.  That range also let them set up intercepts from any ship or group of vessels.  There were no updates stating that any ships had dared the blockade.  Not long after they collected the data and sent out their navy-mandated broadcast, the ship was commed by Admiral Arshush Garna, who only had one Starburst.  Admiral Garna reported that he was still the "Acting" fleet commander while he waited for the Dreadnaught INS Amnis Miiagii to come back on line so his boss could resume his post.

Admiral Garna reported that the fleet had confirmed all ships and arcologies in the area of operations had gone cold as scheduled.  He also reported that subdivisions of the fleet had been ordering ships arriving in the system to stand off far enough away from any of the ships which may have been infected, so they never got close enough to catch the AI.  The Admiral gave them a rundown of the other steps they'd taken to secure the system, and also confirmed that her orders, as a Lady of the Domain of Deneb meant she was officially the "most senior officer" in the system.  Because of that, he finished up with, "So, what are your orders maám?"

Mikah told him her orders were to support and keep the station safe, and to respond to any ships which appeared to be in distress.  Nodding back at Mikah, the officer said he had those orders issued already and recommended they dock with the station 'soonest', because her air had to be getting stale.  He also said he expected her to take her command from the station.  Getting underway, they called out for Station Central but were told that center hadn't powered up yet.  When they got to one of the freight docks and tied up, they saw no one on the docks to greet them or handle the official paperwork.

By the time they had a third of the people off the shuttle, a security patrol had gotten word to station central and that office had sent people to handle the debarkation.  What would happen when they all shuttled to the InstellArms store would be interesting, but wouldn't play out in public.  When security came down, Mikah filed a report and turned over the body in the shuttle, so that was no longer her problem.  After that, they put security on the shuttle to protect the crew's gear and escorted the crew to station central.

When they arrived, the Executive Director came to Mikah and said, "They tell me you're the senior officer so you're in command here."  The first thing Mikah asked about were the events after they began restarting the station?  The director said that was going smoothly and showed her a short list of minor issues the engineers were working on at the moment.  He also said his people were sharing out 'cold food' rations and self-cooking heater-pak rations.  He added that they'd established care and feeding positions all around the station.  He then asked if she wanted to eat, which Mikah waived off.

Estimates said the station would take twenty-four hours to fully restart.  At the moment, main communications nodes were not yet up, so alternate rebroadcaster systems had been set out to support station security, but everything else went by runner.  Mikah suggested they concentrate on getting life support fully operational first.  Aali stepped in to recommend they keep the area around the AI's lab powered down, just in case there was anything else?  Or, anything hardwired?

Next, a investigator from the local naval command stepped up and explained, just in case, that all computer viri had some core programming element which can be identified if a copy of the program was captured.  That code was different for each virus, but in that "viral family" the code would be the same.  That was how any virus was detected by anti-viral software.  And, it was one of the reasons Colinne couldn't hunt for or fight the AI.  Not aware of what happened in the lab the day before, the investigator asked if they had captured any snapshots of the AI?

Colinne had to step up and tell the man she hadn't found anything to help search memory systems.  Colinne did volunteer to help in any ways she could in the recovery.  She also said any potentially infected ships should be quarantined for a week.  Stepping in with something she felt might be helpful, Jocelynn said she'd found a stack of pulp-based hand written pages that she felt had to be related to the AI.  She still had them with her, after finding them in a desk drawer in the lab, and she'd tried to make heads or tails of the characters but felt it was a code.  Jocelynn turned them over to the Navy man, who told her she shouldn't beat herself up because the pages were encoded.

Hearing that, Colinne also reported an item Jocelynn's words reminded her of.  She said they would have expected anyone in the lab to have been using computer apps.  Instead, they found a lot of hand-written pages like those Jocelynn had turned in.  Colinne said her experience looking at the paper pages showed the bulk of those were from either Naasirka or LSP notepads.  While Colinne admitted that didn't necessarily mean anything, it was something she found odd.  And, odd enough to report.  The investigator said they were looking at everything, from the existence of a secret device laboratory on down.

Mikah was told that the Navy and other investigators wanted to sit down with her and each of her people over the coming week and debrief them on the events that led up to discovering the AI.  with everything settling down, Jocelynn asked if she could get to their ship?  What she didn't mention was that she wanted to make sure the cloning computer got air gapped before the station fully restarted systems.  Or before they berthed a rebooted ship in a nearby berth.

Mikah nodded at that and, since she was "in command", she ordered a small security detachment and porters to go with Jocelynn and Aali.  They were ordered to first help the women at the Upgrade if needed.  Next, they would go to the shuttle and move the gear they left in there to the Upgrade.  The crew would have to re-organize the work schedules on their gear after InstellArms got themselves sorted out.

Before Aali and Jocelynn left, Jocelynn mentioned they had to find a new hotel to stay in.  The port director disagreed, because they already had paid for their suite and the computer reboots meant getting a refund could be difficult.  Fesic also reminded Jocelynn that the hotel people had told them not to come back until after the crisis was resolved.  So, they did expect the crew to return to their suite.

That covered, Jocelynn sparked up her comms and tried to reach Maur.  Sadly, with so many of the repeaters and other communications support systems not running, Jocelynn couldn't connect.  That meant she could only hope the ship she was on was still in the power up process and she'd report in when she could.  Added to that, like the crew, she could easily return to her room in the hotel and the crew could find her there.

    Thursday, 084-1114:
Where everyone is at the end of the session:
     Mikah: In Station Central, having been named the Senior Command Officer until the crisis ends
     Aali: On the way to the Upgrade with Jocelynn, to move gear and air gap Rol's cloning computer
     Jocelynn: On the way to the Upgrade with Aali, to move gear and air gap Rol's cloning computer
     Colinne: In Station Central
     Aiden: In Station Central
     Fesic: In Station Central
     Sekea: In Station Central
     Zimzod: In Station Central
     Rol: Must Be Decanted Within The Next 6 Days!!!

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Next: Rising From The Recovery