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Crew Personal Logs
Diaries of the crew on this mission.
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.
Poison… Runnin’ deep inside my veins
So, we smartly, I hope, decided to not take the main not-quite-path to get where we need to go. Instead, we’re slogging through a forest towards our ship. Still, we just managed to hide as a twelve-simian party wanders past our location. Thank Triune they don’t have a scout!
We eventually tire and make a fireless camp. It turns out the chava do have a scout. I mean, did have a scout. We were fairly certain it did not get a chance to warn any of its xenophobic brethren. And somehow, Mez’chef got poisoned. Well, envenomed. We find puncture wounds. She survived though, so maybe her carapace was too difficult to feed through. We will carry her back to the ship on a stretcher.
Actually, we are already on night two of our very slow race to our ship. Even though we have a fireless camp again, we don’t stay alone for long. A fanged, eight-legged lizard wanders out of the trees, through the edge of our camp, and wisely (for us), plods on past. Yay! And then we hear a Tyrannosaurus, off in the distance.