The Vesk shot at us, even managed a hit, as we zipped through the asteroid field. As we move through the asteroids, we managed to attract about a dozen teleliths. We evaded the Vesk ship and our new rocky friends long enough to power down and drop out of driftspace. Hope the Valient enjoyed their new hungry hangers on. We ended up in some rather empty space, which gave us time to fix our shields. Ash decided he wanted to pilot. I tried to argue against it, since we’d just been in combat, but he insisted. Brock slid over to manage the other computer stuff. He’s good at both, but has the attention span needed to go for hours piloting without a break if needed. Anyway, we recalculated a course that unfortunately added three more days to our trip, and dropped into Drift. Ash said a ship was coming right towards us and immediately dropped out of Drift. That did not go well at all! We ended up inside a neutron star. I know more about radiation than I ever wanted to. At least this time, Sresaka and I faired well enough to keep conscious. When we got back out of drift, Brock was piloting again. The good news was, he calculated a course back to Absalom Station that would take about half a day. Bad news was, Lexx was unconscious, and Ash was conscious, but in no shape to do anything. Thankfully, Sresaka had a healing serum to give Lexx. At which point, we learned all Celi (none of whom were the least bit harmed by our visit to the neutron star) can heal others. So, Lexx got a bit more health back. This ability to heal should maybe not get out, at least not until they decide which group to join. The other news was not too bad. An AbadarCorp ship was hailing us to see if we needed help. They had seen us blink out of Drift, and reappear a minute later, a bit…. radioactive. Ash and Lexx went over and, for 3000cr each, got lifesaving radiation treatment. Ash paid for both. I guess he’s not so bad after all. Don’t want him to pilot again, though.
Crew Personal Logs
Diaries of the crew on this mission.
Woo.
🚀🧽🧽🧽🧽🪐🎖🐀🦡🤖🚨🔫🔫🔎🛸🔍🚀🌠🌌🦎
🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎
I feel the need… the need for speed
The Celi ambassadors love technology. We are going to build a device to translate their thoughts to words and vice versa. Should be fun! For now, it’s interesting to watch the Celi interact with our bots. Neither group can understand what the other says, but some form of interpretive dance seems to be happening. Of the four Celi, one wants to be on the bridge, two in engineering (one wanted to observe driftdrive specifically), and one in the tech lab. They seem to be sharing info with each other, which makes for odd questions.
We are about halfway through our two-day planned trip to Absalom Station, when we encountered a Vesk ship, the Valiant. It’s a Norikama Dropship, which normally carries about 30 soldiers, and is similar in size. We sent a general greeting, heard nothing back, and continued on.
Brock, piloting, says they have basically turned around and are following us. Still no hails. No way to power down to leave drift here, so we find ourselves attempting to evade them in an asteroid belt! I’m sure the Vesk would prefer a battle, but I’m hoping we can show the Celi we don’t have to always resort to weapons. Or at least, we won’t shoot first. Unless we are assured a good, crippling shot, anyway.
Water. . . . I can smell it from here.
So… I found out the Office of the Directorate considered updating the Please Don’t Shoot Us by changing out our cargo hold for the delegation’s tank of saltwater was our payment. Or at least, I got the impression from Widget that we weren’t getting paid. I couldn’t find Lexx, so I took care of it. We divided up 20,000 credits right away, with 100 credits per diem! Now I’m wondering if Widget meant *he* wasn’t getting money. Ooops.
Nearly two weeks were needed to get everything ready for our would-be ambassadors. And another three days to get to Vakpod Station. We had to get the old cargo bay-turned-ocean-habitat filled with water from Vakpod. It would take about three hours, at which point, the four Celi would come up to the station. I maybe agreed we’d make some nice, animated aquarium ornaments?
Then we saw Derrick. I thought we were past the, well, past, but he smirked at me. So, I yelled at him for a bit, with the warning I’d yell at Ark7 if we saw him. Widget and I went off to spend some money at that point.
We were back in time to greet the Celi Ambassadors. I made the grave mistake of asking what they preferred to be called. Triune save me! They have names with twenty syllables, all with popping sounds in them! So glad we’ll be using telepathy. Although, I’m stuck translating some of what Widget says to them, even though he’s very easy to understand. They can’t understand his thoughts– the Celi coninsider Widget a more advanced creature and hope to someday be able to speak directly to him.
We are taking the Celi back to Absalom Station first, then they want to see Aballon, Castrovel, and of course, Akiton.
Sluggish, like a wet sponge.
The last 3.5 (Absolom time, not Gavan) days were harrowing. Well, the first half was. We got very close to our ship. It was powerless, but thankfully I-9 was still operational, though on first contact he complained that “main power must be restored.” He says that about everything. We had to make him promise not to open a hatch for us just yet, as… simians… Chava… were everywhere, and too close, judging by where they left their mounts. After a horrific series of attempts to scare them off, most were still alive. We accidentally killed all their mounts (how were we to know they were just some weird cross between spiders and stampeding llamas? And were that flammable?), and their scout? Also, Widget tranqued a tree. He’s proud– it never had a chance!
Anyway, we got to the ship, and then to a little-used hatch, and successfully got in without upsetting I-9.
Then, we waited two entire days for enough power and an opening in the magic barrier to leave the planet. Chava were outside the ship, banging on it, for most of our wait. Thankfully, they were quite ineffective at getting inside. And thankfully even more– Brock was fine and just biding his time for enough power to manifest as a hologram– I-9 kept him on standby until we could power up.
It took us a day and a half in driftspace to get back to Absalom Station. We were just about to get our ship upgraded when we found out we were changing out our cargo bay for a giant aquarium. The Office of the Directorate, a place I only dimly recalled existed on-station, has made us Ambassadors of the Pact Words. Well, specifically Widget– I guess the rest of us just fly a ship. We are heading back to Vakpod to pick up a Celi delegation to tour the Pact Worlds. Apparently they’ve not decided whether they will join Azlanti, Vesk, or the Pact Worlds. We have, on our side, the fact that we killed off a hostile takeover from doppelgangers, not to mention saved the life of a Vesk ambassador and several submarine crew stationed on Vakpod, all while not having weapons. And we have Widget, whom the Celi have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with.