Starlance

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Vigdis was glad to hear that at least the commander shared her views on oversharing with the locals and cataloging and putting the civilians to work. Occupying their minds with something would leave them less time to be worried, Vigdis thought. The irony of the thought, as she’d been doing nothing but burying her head in work so she wouldn’t have to think about the very real possibility of something important being busted beyond repair and thus stranding them forever ever since the crash, lost on her in the moment. What job would Darnell be given? A mop and bucket? She just hoped the civvies wouldn’t see being quartered in the shuttle bay as some form of imprisonment - being moved aside while the ‘social elite’ of the actual crew controlled the entrance to the ship and hoarded the comfortable living space and supplies for themselves. She took the news of training the civvies with actual joy, welcoming the option to leave mundane tasks to them and focus on the big things.

Over the course of the fourth day, Chief Zhao finished checking the main distribution conduits and all of the systems they needed to keep running, fixing some issues found. Until they started turning on new equipment, they had minimized any power losses and could breathe a little easier. There were still kilometers of wiring and circuit boards to check, but most of those were useless in their given situation and could therefore be safely ignored until much later. During the same day, Varen and Vigdis went over the three still-attached engines, both cackling about having ‘an office with a view’ while some poor bastards were digging a moat. Although the cowlings were battered, the engines filled with soil and debris, more than half of the compressor fan blades needing replacement and the port side aft gimbal mechanism mounting was bent out of shape, nothing was deemed beyond repair, though neither of the two felt confident giving any sort of time estimate on how long repairs would take.

On day Crash+5, Vigdis had spent no small amount of time huddled over data sheets and the power control console, at times joined by some of the other engineers when dealing with systems they were more familiar with, trying to figure out how to squeeze the most time out of the backups. After hours of deliberations and a few decisions she needed to run by the other engineers as a sanity check, she made her draconian recommendations to the command crew. Dimming lights and switching them off in empty rooms, no heating, rationing hot water, turning off everything that didn’t directly contribute to day-to-day activities, repairs or restarting reactors, not using the galley’s cookers and organizing people to form logging parties for open-flame cooking… Still, just saving power was only putting off the inevitable. Vigdis did attach a note to her recommendations advising that parts of the ship could be dismantled to build wind or man powered generators, but they’d need a miracle or fucking magic to get enough power to keep up the minimum requirements and start the reactors in their lifetime.

Fucking magic…

They had magic now, or rather some frien- not-enemies who did.

Vigdis spent every free moment of the rest of day Crash+5 and day Crash+6 using the ship’s onboard database to research lightning and running through various calculations that might’ve made a non-mathematically inclined soul nauseous. A few times someone walked in on her rubberducking at Fritjof, who probably knew the answer but chose not to share to amuse himself, but she’d been making steady progress. Still, there was no guarantee that it would work. Measurements were one thing, practical implementation would be a different beast to tackle.

And on the seventh day, they rested. Not quite, but with Wodan’s new technical development, Vigdis and maybe some others clocked out early. Armed with the translation program linked to her headset, a grounding stake, a sledgehammer, some man-portable lab equipment she’d borrowed with the permission of whoever she found in the lab at the time - more of a courtesy rather than actually intending to heed their potential refusal, survival came first - the largest tablet she could find loaded with some materials on harmless subjects like astronomy and grade school physics and chemistry, an EVA dry erase board, a rag, some markers and the weapon present every time she went outside, Vigdis set out toward the camp of the locals she somewhat knew, though hoping Silbermine - or preferably someone less pig headed and scientifically literate from his camp - would also join, intending to leave them free range of questions initially before asking her own. Standing some distance away from the camp in plain view, she radioed Ezra - prick as he could be, he was still made responsible for their security - to let him know what she was doing and briefly lifted up her breathing mask to be able to whistle unimpeded to draw their attention before approaching. Friendly or not, they still had swords and a living flamethrower. Time to play teacher and CIA officer in one.

”Hello again.” She started, the wristpad’s speaker spitting her words out in S’toric. ”I hope this thing works as advertised. On a scale from one to… eight,“ She remembered their math exchange, ”eight being good and one being bad, how well can you understand me?”

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

This guy. Probably for the best that Vigdis wasn't aware of Mallory’s confusion between nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs, else she'd have joined Ixtaro in the 'XO doesn't know his arse from a hole in the ground.' club. Though his thoughts did hold a useful idea in giving Silbermine a piece of radioactive material as tribute, out of spite if the worst came to pass if nothing else. Something with a bit of cesium-137 from a medical radiation source or something, they’d just have to make sure he got buried with it to prevent further contamination. ”Speaking as a bilingual person: No, they can't. Not in a reasonable timeframe. How long did it take you to learn English back when you were a kid and learning a lot faster? Unless you want to have knowledge magically implanted into your mind, if that’s even something they can do, we’ll just have to talk to them until Wodan builds up a dictionary.” She could imagine spending a few days sitting over a drawing board or Ixtaro’s holoprojector with the locals, pointing at images of things and stating their names in English and whatever language the locals were speaking. How this was going so far, Vigdis could see neither Kareet nor Ixtaro would take too much convincing.

‘Not Tyrese, Gar’Tan did nothing to deserve that.’ Vigdis thought privately before remembering her thoughts were not private at that moment. They really needed that direct translation capability. ”Commander, have anyone harmless in mind?” She asked, assuming from her military experience that sorting out the extra crew would be Mallory’s job.

---

Despite her actual intentions, Vigdis could understand why Nellara thought she was being hostile. ”I’m not trying to be hostile, far from it. I’m just being cautious. I wouldn’t trust any Tom, Dick or Harry after knowing them for a few hours if they were a human either, the fact that you have feathers changes nothing about that.” She tried to explain and ease the Castigator’s concerns. ”And I’m worried for your sake, too. Going by what I’ve seen of you and learned of your systems of government today, you’re where we were about… I’ll call it 800 years ago?“ She looked to Ixtaro for an opinion as the FTL specialist seemed to know her history a lot better than Vigdis. Sure, she couldn’t see them making a combustion engine or a transistor even if they had blueprints and a detailed explanation, but who knew what magical secrets they held that could replace it? ”Suddenly introducing a big change - technological, ideological, whatever - could have unforeseen consequences even if done with the best intentions. Bad enough we already have people claiming we’re divine messengers and massing armies simply because of our presence.”.

The picture of the Ascendancy that Nellara was painting was intriguing. ”As a scholar, as you say, I’d like a second opinion, but if what you say of the Ascendancy is true, then we might have more in common than I thought.” Well, at least it wasn’t a complete lie. The ‘Civilized World’ and those colonies throughout Sol that were derived from it were on paper based in part on merit as well - succeeding on the free market according to your ability, the first few waves of colonists being hand picked according to their skill and suitability and so on. In practice, nepotism, bribery, fraud, politics and other rot of civilisation was rampant, in some places more than others, but Vigdis suspected the Ascendancy in the real world wouldn’t be a paradise as advertised either. Mythandia as described stood on the opposite side of the spectrum. Assuming she was being truthful. And if Silbermine and Mythandia were all they were said to be, Silbermine might even confirm some parts of it if asked - the divine rule bit at least. And as more and more people spoke up, the image of Mythandia she had in her mind morphed further and further into a shithole no sane person would want anything to do with, with the exception of Gar’Tan who, to his credit, seemed to be taking his neutrality seriously. She at least had no problem believing Silbermine could be everything they were painting him to be. God knew Sol had enough people like that peppered throughout its history. ”Silbermine is the space Hitler we know of, Ibarra. Who knows if their equivalent of Stalin or some other nutter isn’t Nellara or Kareet’s superior?”

---

”If captain Kadıoğlu approves it, we’d be happy to share.” Vigdis replied to Kareet, assuming Ixtaro at least felt the same, ”Although I must warn you that we all have our duties here, so the amount of time available every day isn’t limitless.” Might be a different story while some of them were working outside the ship though, she couldn’t see much harm if Kareet saw the guts of an engine and she could work and answer questions at the same time.

---

”Close.” She nodded as kerchak asked more questions about engines, surprised he was aware of the concept of pressure. It took humans a bit more time for Pascal to be born and figure it out. ”The engines, which the compressors are a part of, create very fast wind. Now, a physicist named Isaac Newton formulated three statements about motion, one of which - Newton’s Third Law - states that if two bodies exert forces on each other - the acting force and reaction force - these forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. For example, when I push against Eva, I am exerting the acting force on her, and therefore she exerts the reacting force on me, in the opposite direction. And because I am lighter than she is when wearing her armor, I get pushed away even though I am pushing her.” As she spoke, she leaned against Eva’s side and pushed herself off to demonstrate, ”Thank you, teaching assistant.” She said to Eva with a chuckle before turning back to Kerchak, ”The engines are the same. Push air in one direction, the air pushes the ship in the other direction. It’s the same among the stars, except we have to carry our own air because there is none that high.” Well, argon gas, but the periodic table would have to wait.

What Kerchak said next gave her pause. Her mind - used to traveling the heliocentric system - completely forgot Geocentrism had once been a thing. She judged elementary school astronomy to be another harmless subject. ”No. First, planets revolve around their parent stars, not the other way around. Second, the time it takes for a planet to circle its sun is the year. A day is the length of time it takes the planet to make a complete revolution around its axis of rotation. Therefore, Earth rotates faster than Kanth-Aremek” She decided she wasn’t going to confuse them with Solar and Sidereal time just yet.
”We left Earth because there wasn’t enough space for everyone to live and space to grow and raise food for everyone. The planet itself still supports life.” Sure, we fucked it up, but you don’t need to know the details of that either, that topic needs chairs and refreshments for a full explanation. She also glossed over Kolvar’s mentions of creators, leaving that for later and perhaps someone more qualified.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

“Any of the civvies. Most of them know nothing about the ship and many probably have a very basic understanding of human physiology. Throw in increased rations for every day they’re translating until Wodan has enough data for a working translation program and we’ll even get volunteers. We don't need an ambassador yet, just a walking dictionary.” At least she assumed Wodan was working on that. As soon as they had a library of words and grammar rules, using headsets and wristpads to translate outgoing and incoming words between two languages wasn’t difficult.
“And it’s not just your FTL knowledge. Teach them basic sanitation, and suddenly one kingdom has far less disease, therefore far fewer dead, therefore a manpower avantage. Teach them to make high strength steel, and they’re unlikely to start building bridges spanning vast lakes. Far more likely the first person they’ll pass it to is an armorsmith. I don’t care if half of them look like something I had for lunch a week ago, I refuse to be the one who hands some space Hitler his wonder weapon, fuck that. Let’s not pretend Silbermine is the only one who showed up here with troops, though at least Nellara and her squad didn’t grow up in a barn and have some manners and common sense.” This was said less to Ixtaro and more to the entire assembled group, speaking with pauses so Gar'Tan would have time to repeat it to his compatriots.

But as soon as Nellara - through Ixtaro’s translation - mentioned Silbermine’s intent on disassembling the Jotunheim, Vigdis flared up. “We didn’t slave over this ship for two years for some dick from a mountain to call finders-keepers and take it apart, bad enough we binned it on its maiden flight.” People often said things like ‘It’s his/her ship.’ when referring to the captain, but any ship was really the baby of its engineering team. Even if Vigdis wasn’t supposed to be part of it, she was now by circumstance, not to mention being one of the builders. Only then did her brain catch up to her mouth, realizing the common Russian phrase referring derisively to a stranger that Venerians adopted along with the language might be misinterpreted as referring to the people who actually came from the mountains, rather than Silbermine. Using the word ‘slave’ wasn’t the smartest thing to do either, they were all volunteers and paid handsomely. Maybe Gar’Tan was still listening to her brain and this would be cleared up. Hopefully. “Though I would very much like to see a gaggle of ponies who’ve never seen an allen wrench in their life try to figure out how to dismantle the Jo without breaking everything they touch.” What kind of tools could they even have? Mallets and hand-forged pliers?

With only a few of them and a lot of the locals, Vigdis turned to Kerchak as soon as his questions were conveyed to her. ”We do use wind, in a way. Except instead of trapping it in sails, we use devices called compressors to compress and accelerate it in a desired direction, which propels the ship in the opposite direction. This is old technology, we've had this type of propulsion for around…
” 2296 minus 1939 is… ”...357 Earth years. An Earth year is 365 days, which are only a little shorter than days here.” Detailed enough to answer the question, hopefully simple enough to be understood and vague enough not to be useful. It almost felt like she was back home, answering children's questions during Fleet Days, Vigdis thought with a fond smile before answering Kerchak's second question.
”This world, at least around here, is very similar to parts of Earth. But there were too many of us for it to sustain us, and we also wanted to see what lay beyond our home's borders. Other planets we've settled aren't similar at all.
Mercury is an airless, barren world with one side always facing the Sun, scorched by its rays while the other side lays in endless, frigid night. We only live at the terminator line, in areas of perpetual sunrise or sunset, in cities covered in domes that keep air we brought with us in.
Venus is toxic and hot enough on the surface to melt lead, so everyone there lives in floating cities high above the surface where the temperature is survivable.
And Mars is so far away from the Sun and the air is so thin that it's a cold desert covered in rust-brown sand.”
As she spoke of Venus, she unclipped her wristpad from its mounting and turned the screen toward Kerchak and anyone else who was interested, showing the animated desktop background depicting the Venerian city of Mariner and airships coming and going.

Then she had a thought. ”When Silbermine learns we intend to leave, he'll lose his fucking mind, won't he?” She couldn't see a religious fanatic learning that his gift from the gods wants to go back where it came from and taking it well.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Suddenly knowing things she had no way of knowing was a weird feeling. “Are you… doing that?” She asked Gar’Tan out loud, visibly confused. Confusion would give way to apprehension once Ixtaro confirmed her fears. “Alright, you.” She pointed at Gar'Tan, "Out." Pointing at her head and then a shooing motion, "Otherwise gun." She pointed at the S'Tor again, sticking to the simple way of communicating via known words. Not the best way to convey her grievance, but in the moment that was the best she could think of. Gar’Tan would be able to feel that she didn’t actually mean to harm him or anyone else and her weapon remained untouched on her back, she was just surprised and frightened. Not as much frightened of him or his abilities as of what he could find in her mind. Engineers, doctors and commanders knew too much about the ship, the crew or both to be allowed to have their minds read willy-nilly. Maybe that wasn't how that worked, maybe he was more like an empath, reading emotions and intentions rather than thoughts and memories, but could they risk it? Of course not. Might as well hand them the keys otherwise.

“Let's wait for a middle man who doesn't have critical information in their head and let’s put the brakes on the sharing.” She advised Ixaro. Of course she had no clue how or if Gar'Tan could be prevented from reading them. Tinfoil hat? Lead? Crystals from some New Age loon? Best not explain Jotunheim either, the less talk there is about deities and mythology, the better. Way too many conflicts over theological differences in human history for that to be a good idea.

But even if Gar’Tan stopped poking around her head, he should still be able to understand what she was saying by reading someone who understood her, right? “We’ve actually been able to travel between and even settle the worlds around our star for a long time - for example, Ixtaro is from Earth, whereas I was born on a different world - but we’ve only recently gained the ability to travel to more distant ones. As you’ve no doubt figured out for yourselves, the Jotunheim was damaged by the attack and subsequent crash. It will take time to repair it so we can return home, and we might need help in securing food and materials to do so. That is, those materials that you know of and assuming we can eat your food safely. Neither of us are in position to promise anything, but with our commander’s blessing, we could trade some of our knowledge for the necessary supplies.” She said before Mallory interjected, making her sigh.

“Oh, now he starts organizing things, instead of having people out here on a regular rotation and a civvie on standby to translate through. Fucking officers will be the death of us yet.” The former enlisted woman growled. Screw it, she promised Zeynap she wouldn’t defy her again, Mallory didn’t come up in that conversation. Having told the locals of the good, it was time for the bad, even if what she was going to say fell far outside the realm of any authority she had on the ship. “However, due to a lesson learned in our history, we will not share any knowledge that would give any given group a significant advantage without scholars from other nations present. Either all sides profit, or none do. On that note, and especially given the border dispute, I think Silbermine should be present and have a chance to speak for himself. Herself? Itself?” Vigdis could only think of one sure way to tell and she was not going there. “And if he intends to bring an army to take what doesn’t belong to them by force, it would be polite of us to explain what awaits any who try.”

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Having demoted herself to a turret for the remainder of the mission, Marit did the only thing she could and aimed at the bend the train would have to round to approach the dam, cursing her luck. She shouldn’t have stopped, that was the crux of the problem. Though she had been standing in the river before and managed to move afterward, what gives? She’d been standing a lot closer to the dam, where the river had to have been altered to build the dam itself. It was probably paved with just a thin layer of silt over it, enough to slip and slide a little, meaning she hadn’t noticed any difference over the unmodified riverbed, but not enough to get stuck in. And when she moved further away, there was nothing stopping Archie from sinking deep into it once she stopped moving, the momentum of the 70 ton - 64 ton given her liberal use of the LRM launchers - machine being enough to yank the feet out of the mud and the ‘Mech didn’t have enough time to sink as deep while he was moving. In hindsight she could’ve seen that coming. At least the empty missile racks made Archie a bit less top-heavy. As Jon’s Marauder walked by, Marit’s mind drifted far across the stars into Davion space, where - as far as she knew - her mother was now saddling a similar BattleMech and briefly wondered what, if any, modifications they'd made to it.

”You’re gonna have to explain that to me, Family Man, I’ve never even learned how to swim, much less stood in the sea.” She replied on the lance channel, as somewhere along the line, she decided that swimming was a useless skill. After all, the parachute had a dinghy attached to it and you couldn't swim in the shower. She knew he meant well and couldn't have known, but those instructions were wholly alien to her.
”And I am cool. That's why I went into the river in the first place.” Since it had little effect on whether she would live or die in the next 10 minutes, being stuck didn't worry her that much. Even if retreat was called, she couldn't have outran a nuke anyway and if Archie fell down, the cockpit was still sealed and the riverbed evidently soft, so the worst thing she could see happening were bruises and whiplash.

Switching to thermal like the others, now guided by the heat of previous strikes against the self-professed doom snake, Marit let her lasers do the talking as she thought about recovery. Where were the tow points for when the maniacs were dealt with? Bottom of the pelvis - underwater, of course. Lower back - facing away from dry land. Up top - too high up, even higher than shoulders. Looked like Archie would just have to grab a tow rope and hope pulling that high up wouldn’t topple him, that’d be just a cherry on top of an already embarrassing cake.

…She didn’t have any tow cables. When the Colonel would review the CVR tapes, he’d get a lovely sampling of Swedish curses. Could she get one break today?

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

At least the sunset was pretty. And to think she took the Stavanger job because she wanted a calm job where she could sleep in her own bed every night. But Fate decided to be a sore bitch and leave her to wonder about how Cortés' crew must've reacted when he burned their ships after landing in America. For her part, Vigdis could say she would have shot Cortés as soon as she saw him with a box of matches and sailed back to Spain at the earliest opportunity. She was torn from her musings by a call from Chief Zhao.
"Vigdis, they want you in the shuttle bay."
"Why? The gate can wait, if at all repairable." She replied, picking herself up.
"It's not the gate. To be honest the guy isn't making much sense."
"If something's wrong, open a maintenance ticket, that's what the system is for. All this manual reporting is just making a mess of things." She complained as she crossed the hull. Better not be some intern complaining that she didn’t do something exactly according to textbooks. Peering down over the edge of the hangar roof, she was about to give a piece of her mind to whoever was in there when the sight left her stunned.

First it was birdfolk, centaurs, an ent… and now a dragonborn. That would explain why she was summoned directly by radio. She had to wonder if some K-A fiction featured something that looked like them.

"Ibarra? What's all this? Tell them to come back during office hours." She joked, leaning over the edge to see the Cuban engineer. “I'll be right there.” Returning inside the ship Vigdis stopped by the storage room along the way to grab a handheld flashlight before joining the hangar party. It was one of the old but immortal models with a tubular body that contained a coil and a permanent magnet to charge it by shaking. The lizardman - a translator of sorts, she assumed - was massive up close. If that was a scholar, what the hell did their soldiers look like?
“Hello.” She waved to the ‘known faces’ before introducing herself to Gar’Tan in the same way they’d done so during the first meeting before demonstrating the flashlight’s function and handing it to him, as he was the only one who hadn’t gotten a welcoming gift yet.

And speaking of centaurs, someone was missing. "Silbermine?" She asked, looking at Nellara. Even if the two groups of locals didn't like each other and even if Silbermine had hostile intent, cutting him out of communicating would only make things more difficult and piss him off.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

The Jonsdottir Line wasn’t needed in the end. They could all breathe a sigh of relief. There was a welcome pause to return the equipment and decompress before the captain called the meeting, letting Vigdis kind of sort out what just happened in her head. They still had no clue what was happening, where they were or who to believe, but the historical example of native Americans called for caution. But nobody died. Yet. That was a plus.
“I think we should figure out a way to ask them for samples of their food. We don’t know how long it will take to get flying again, and if at least some of their food is edible to us and we could secure a steady supply, we could even thaw out the frozen goods, gain some extra manpower and stop wasting power on the cryo pods in one go.” Technically, she wasn’t supposed to know about those, but power became a hot topic the second they realized the crash scrammed both their reactors and the pods were the first thing Chief Zhao brought up when they discussed power saving measures over lunch.

---

After the meeting, Vigdis hurried to intercept the captain to apologize for sidestepping ehr authority when Ezra spooked the locals and assuring her it wouldn’t happen again before going about her duties. Despite the unforeseen developments, the day was only starting. Seeing a chance to show off one of the many reasons why keeping in humanity’s good graces might be a good idea and taking advantage of the fact that the words ‘stay’ and ‘repair’ were known, she used the two plus gestures to invite any locals that stayed near the ship to her own magic show: It started with a few trips to the storage bay and workshop to bring a fire extinguisher, a few spare welding masks for any onlookers and some hull patches - four millimeter thick rolled titanium squares and rectangles of various sizes. Then she fiddled around with the media player on her wristpad, setting it to loudspeaker. Always work in style and comfort if possible. Using notes she’d made on the second day, the marker and a plasma cutter, she cut the patches into shape so they would fit the jigsaw puzzle that would temporarily cover the hole in the hull. Then came the main number of the show - the tungsten electrode inert gas arc welder.

With the first panel in place, everyone who stuck around would receive a palm-sized scrap of the titanium patches left over after cutting them onto which she wrote the recipient’s name with the welder, or her best guess of how to write the names in latin script based on how they sounded to her, doing her best to explain what it was by pointing and repeating names. She took great care to take the high oxygen environment into account, despite the fact that these welds would not be holding pressure, and a little over nine hours later plus lunch, what had been a hole in the hull that accidentally facilitated first contact with three separate species was once again a wall.

With the work outside done, Vigdis borrowed some quarantine sheets from the medical bay and secured them to the sides of the damaged ramp with the aid of liberal amounts of duct tape to create a temporary seal. The damaged ramp would have to wait, there were more pressing problems to sort out. After waiting for the life support system to normalize the air inside the now sealed shuttle bay so she could work without setting everything on fire and civvies could start cleaning up and organizing the space according to the officers’ wishes, it was another two hours of reinforcing the patched wall and then adding a second layer inside that would actually act as the pressure hull. Work done well called for a beer. Being marooned sucked.

---

Vigdis spent the short remainder of the work day going over the ship’s power grid centimeter by centimeter, looking for any damaged wiring where they could be wasting power to heat losses. Come evening, they weren’t even halfway done when they clocked out. Vigdis stole a few minutes to sit atop the Jotunheim and watch the sunset, this time with a breathing mask. She didn’t want to breathe in the invigorating, oxygen rich mixture before going to sleep, thinking the day’s events would make it hard to fall asleep anyway. Tomorrow, Zhao would take over the power grid unless something more pressing demanded her attention and Vigdis would help Varen with engine checks. That was going to be grim, ultimately deciding if they would ever return home or die on this strange new world.

Left Behind: Mulberry Street

C A R S O N H A C K E T T

_{Location: Valero House}

Timeframe Early Morning

---

_{Interaction(s): Survival Squad group chat}

One of the last things Carson expected was a text message. For a moment he thought who it could be as he fumbled for his phone. His dad? Did the Helena approach shore to try to establish contact? Mom or his sisters? He hadn’t heard from them since they sent him a message claiming they were being evacuated out of Fayetteville by air. Nope, a local. Who was Jason…? The skater guy, right. ”You got the message too?” He looked up from the chess board.
Similar questions had swirled around Alena’s mind. She knew the forest cottage where her parents had been spending time was far from civilization. Did her mom or dad find a hill that had cell reception? Nope. ”Aye. You answering?”
”Yeah, I got it, but the meeting’s past my bedtime.” In order to keep the night watch and still get enough sleep, the survivors at Valero’s had staggered schedules, with Carson usually sleeping between 13:00 and 21:00.
”Hmm…” She scratched her chin, scribbling into the watch schedule. ”How about you go to bed when we get back, I’ll take your watch and you take mine? An overnight shift will work better for the hunt than a morning one anyway.” She’d just signed herself up for 21 hours awake with only a three hour power nap, but she’d have things to occupy herself with and university had made her go through worse. That statistics course in the third semester was brutal.
”Alright, thanks.”
With that settled, Carson shot the group a quick message before they went back to their chess game.

Message

---

---

A L E N A S O K O L O V Á

_{Location: Valero house - nearby streets}

Timeframe Noon - early afternoon

---

_{Interaction(s): None}

She didn't even know someone in the town had her number, though given the situation she didn't mind one bit. Of course she first had to ask mr. Valero where the gazebo the message referred to was. No matter, as the situation involved all of them, she would've told him of the meeting regardless.
”It’s good to see people taking initiative.” He said, a bit embarrassed that he hadn’t done anything himself earlier, ”Let me know what you cook up. But Eventually, you will have to let others in on it.”
”Stand together or die alone, I know.” She reassured their host, ”If there’s any trouble, call and we’ll come running.”
Immediately, she threw a few extra things into her crossbow case - a spiral-binding notebook, a mechanical pencil and a map she got out of mr. Valero's car, readying it to grab it whole and go when the meeting time approached.

13:30
”So, do you actually know anyone else in that group?”
”Eeeeh… We’ve said ‘hi’ to each other when we passed in the street?”
”You’re not a people person, are you?”
”Well how many do you know?”
”None.” She admitted immediately, ”My flight home was supposed to be leaving ten days from now, I didn’t think it’d be necessary. Aside from you and mr. Valero, the only time I’ve spoken to someone from here at length was when I went to see doc Barlowe to ask if she’d take me on for a few months. Fuck it, let’s go make friends.” She grabbed her trusty, budget Hypertac and slung its the case over her shoulder, setting out early.

The two walked carefully, hunting crossbow and polehammer made of a fence pole, a paving block, rope and duct tape at the ready, taking note of which houses were showing signs of activity and cursing the cold along the way. The walk took about three times as long as it should’ve, Alena stopping every few dozen steps to look around and listen. Everything had gone upside down and inside out. Usually when trying to be unseen and unheard, she looked ahead, trying to pick out horizontal lines in the predominantly vertical lines of a forest, hunting. Now, she was concerned about what was behind her, looking for vertical, humanoid shapes in a city full of vertical lines and pretty much being hunted. Finally, they stood at the designated meeting place.
”Quarter to two. Now, are we that early, or are we in the wrong place?” Carson shrugged.
”You tell me, you were leading.” She sat down, both of them keeping an eye on the earnest buildings.
”If we’re in the wrong place, they’ll send a message.” He dismissed his own concerns, taking a seat on the opposite bench.

Left Behind: Mulberry Street

Generally find Discord to be better than the OOC tab, count me in.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

“Iba- wait!” Vigdis tried to grab the Cuban engineer’s wrist, but didn’t react quick enough, “If something happens to you, none of us are getting back to Sol!” She shouted after Ixtaro. Vigdis, Zhao and Varen could to a degree do each other’s jobs, so from a purely resource-management point of view losing one of them wasn’t that big of a deal, but figuring out what went wrong with the FTL drive and how to get it to behave was critical. She wasn’t gonna live out the rest of her days neither here nor during the centuries-long sublight journey home. “If she dies, I’m gonna kill her.” Vigdis growled under her breath, thinking that maybe she should’ve let Ixtaro be scared. Too late to fix that, but despite the necessity of Ixtaro’s survival, Vigdis couldn’t find the courage - perhaps madness - to go out and drag her back. She hoped Eva would.

“We’re holding a choke point, they’ve got Ezra and the two droids in their backs, and we’ve got Eva. We’ll be fine. Why don’t you post up over there?” She tried to reassure Darnell and pointed to the other side of the barricade, formulating it as a suggestion rather than an order to try to get around his combative attitude, “The farther apart we are, the fewer of us they’ll take down with a single area attack.” While spacing was a good thing to do, she mainly just wanted to get the tipsy corporate drone out of immediate earshot before responding to Zhao, since technically passing any information to people inside might’ve been considered insubordination since neither of the officers explicitly allowed it.

“Actually, hold that thought, the captain just walked up to one of them. They’re huge, no way they can maneuver well inside. If they breach, just park two armed sentries in the hallway and wait for them to come to you like Lemmings.” Zhao would’ve noticed Vigdis suddenly sounded a bit more relaxed, “Doctor, come here for a second. I don’t know how much you know, so from the start: Bumped into a bunch of local birdfolk, a centaur and a burning tree-man.” She said to bring both Feng and Zhao up to speed, hopefully without Darnell noticing her mic was open, “We started communicating, kind of, but they seemed friendly. But then a bunch more centaurs showed up, and these guys are loaded for bear. They’ve been yelling at each other in Alienese for the past five minutes now, and now the captain and Ibarra are within stabbing distance. Promise not to laugh at me, but some of the locals are fucking sorcerers. I tried to find a better explanation for what I was seeing, but I’ve got nothing.” The thought of magic was absurd enough on its own, but seemed to be doubly so in the world of engineering, where if you couldn’t model it mathematically, it didn’t count.