Mellish stays to help clean up the dining chamber and shipchef after chow. Kovos takes Semo and Taylor back to the cargo bay to move the "agros" back into position. They turn out to be fairly similar to combines, and like the monotasks, Semo quickly develops a knack for them.

(OOC: they use Driving, which you're actually specialized in. The cranes were just good dice rolls)

The cargo bay drudgery takes a few hours - stowing equipment, clearing a safe space for sleeping arrangements, and locking down anything that might shift during an unexpected burn takes up time. Semo doesn't complain, as it's lighter work than the Army or the myriad farms of his childhood.

Kovos does notice Taylor's mismatched arm as the three workers wind down.

"How did you lose your arm there, Tay-ler?"

Taking Davis' lead, Taylor doesn't offer much besides "Was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Kovos shrugs and drops the matter.

---

You're led to understand that there's a sleep cycle coming up in about an hour, then a full work cycle culminating in another meal once they pass through to Hedion space. Then one more sleep cycle before landfall, capped off with a thorough but half-sized work cycle to prepare Akamu for re-entry. Taylor's glad to have some sleep time, but approaches Hugh and Angel about setting watches.

"Sir? If they've got ambush on their mind, we should set up a watch cycle. Angel, get a nap now if you need it - you're on nightwatch full-time."

Arketta also brings up useful tidbits about Swims-in-Black's previous life.

"The Alef-ka are the Emperor's bodyguards. They are all Whiirr, handpicked for loyalty, ferocity, and cunning. A Whiirr cannot usurp the Throne by virtue of its species. Their every need is catered to - there is no chance of bribery. But to have been there when Bashakra was ruined... that could have shaken even a Caretaker's loyalty."

"It was not the Imperium's brightest hour. Bashakra was a jewel once, and because it was so particularly placed, it threw off the Bureaucracy and destroyed its orbital Gateway. It must have thrived during the years it took the Gateships to arrive, but once they did, there was a terrible battle. General Akamu, The Hand That Guides the Sword, ordered the complete orbital bombardment of Bashakra. Hundreds of millions died. The survivors were packaged up and scattered throughout the Imperium so that they would not form revolutionary enclaves. For the most part, it seems to have worked. Atmosphere processing is slowly turning Bashakra back into a viable world. Any overt Bashakran resistance is too small to mount a proper offensive. Yet perhaps it is a mistake you can take advantage of."

She adds, this time in English, *Not every world is Earth - most are not even comparable to Botane. So many people rely on so many different worlds. The Imperium had to make an example of Bashakra... so that all people would benefit from every planet's bounty. Nevermind that they would destroy a viable planet rather than let it exist unfettered.*

Max and Luis are unsuccessful in gaining access to Engineering after dinner. One-Ton keeps the hatchways sealed and only replies "No, you ain't comin' in" when paged over the ship's vox.

Semo actually enjoys driving the agros. The task has a familiar feel, bringing back fond thoughts of his parents.

Work. Sleep. Work. Eat. Not a bad life, really. Be nice if they ate more often, though. A man gets hungry...

Kovos asks Mellish about the arm, but The Hammer keeps his answer suitably short and vague.

Arketts talks about Swims-In-Black's experiences. Most of it fits what Semo had already picked up. However, the thought that they might treat Earth the same way is scary, and the real reason they are here.

"So how long do you think it will take them to reach Earth?" Semo asks in English.

*Whiirr's thirty light-years from Earth,* Arketta replies in English. *And part of why we are here is to find out if any Imperial planet is closer than that. The best case is that the Imperium picks up my former comrades' transmission from their orbital base above Whiirr in thirty years. Then they'll build and send Gateships, which will take another thirty years. So in sixty years the Imperium will reach Narsai.*

admiralducksauce wrote:

Max and Luis are unsuccessful in gaining access to Engineering after dinner. One-Ton keeps the hatchways sealed and only replies "No, you ain't comin' in" when paged over the ship's vox.

Max grumbles, opening up his laptop.

"Fine, there's more than one way to usurp ship protocols."

"So we can afford to take our time and do this by the book," Semo says in reply to Arketta. "That's good, as I doubt we'll get another chance."

Max interfaces his lappy with the mass of fiber electronics inside one of the access hatches near Akamu's aft. The glyphs painted on the hatch marked the morass of spidersilk cabling as "vox network", and so Max attempts to weasel his way into the systems using his crash course in Imperial communications from earlier.

He does a quick hand-pump as his machinations release a flood of glyphs onto his laptop screen. Max is in the system. He has easy, unfettered access to basic information, the same as if he was on the bridge and looking at the holographics: Everything matches up with what Yaris and Black have been telling the Earthlings. About a 10-hour flight before they reach the Gate, no sensor contacts for light-minutes behind them. There's nobody currently using the intra-ship vox. Life support readouts are in the green. Gravitic impellers are working fine, keeping ship gravity at a comfortable 0.92 standard.

Davis walks up behind the two of them. After Arketta moved on to non-history related topics, he went looking for Max. "While you're in there, think you can crack into the ship's log? I need some information on a few events that happened here previously."

Punkey wrote:

Davis walks up behind the two of them. After Arketta moved on to non-history related topics, he went looking for Max. "While you're in there, think you can crack into the ship's log? I need some information on a few events that happened here previously."

"Way ahead of you..." types Max, looking to delve deeper into the ship mainframe.

[mask connection][Hack]Ship's Log[/Hack][/mask connection]

Akamu doesn't have a "dear diary" type of ship's log, but it does have cargo manifests, permit codes, and timestamps. It's here where Max discovers that there's TWO logs. He's in the first right now, but the second one is encrypted, making it a juicy but potentially dangerous target.

Angel nods and goes to sleep in an out of the way corner next to his gear, hat carefully pulled over his eyes, with the look of someone who has slept in alot worse. Within 5 minutes, he's out.

There's some terse whispering back and forth as to what tactic they should take, but Max decides to download the encrypted log and attempt to decode it offline.

Max's fingers dance on the quiet Toughbook keys. The file completes its download sooner than he expected. To the best of his knowledge, Max hasn't tripped any alarms. It's possible someone could find the breadcrumbs of his intrusion, but they'd have to know what they were looking for. Dallying with an open connection just invites interruption, so Max covers his tracks as best he can, replaces the paneling over the vox access, and clears out.

Max humps his gear down to the cargo bay, where he flattens out his sleeping bag with the others. Akamu's cargo bay lighting is cranked down for the sleep cycle, so pretty soon Max and Davis are illuminated more by the Toughbook's flatscreen than the overheads.

It takes Max the better part of an hour to get his decryption module to accept the stolen logs. Once that's done, however, it's a relatively simple task to split the log up and transfer it to Davis' computer. Both men start their decrypts and hope it doesn't take a week.

Max is soon joined by Semo, Taylor, and Mellish. The SFC crouches down next to the scientist.

*I've got Angel on watch, Doc,* Taylor whispers. *Gonna go wake him up in a sec. Keep your weapon on hand just in case these fuckers aren't on the level.*

With that, Taylor slides over to Angel's corner.

*Riviera, your watch. Time to ride that sleep camel.*

---

Meanwhile, Luis hasn't been asking questions or hacking into the ship's guts, but he's been carefully watching and listening for the past 5-6 hours. He figures the ship has two propulsion types. The first one, and the one that's on all the time apparently, is the "gravitic impeller", however Max's "legitimate" logs referred to it. It's why Akamu is laid out like a Star Trek starship and not like a skyscraper. The gravity engine provides artificial gravity, cushions the massive acceleration needed to get anywhere in a reasonable time, and is apparently used to partially steer the ship through "stabilizers". None of the ships Luis has seen have had wings. They don't need them, not when they simply float on a gravity field.

The next engine type is the one that had everyone wishing for some more Dramamine, the "cruise engines". Probably some sort of high-power direct-thrust device. That theory's borne out by what Luis saw of the other ships at the Gateport. They must be spendy on the fuel, else they could get to the Gate much faster under constant thrust than they could by burning and coasting. Or perhaps they aren't in that big a hurry. Or perhaps there are Imperial regulations forbidding vessels moving at a significant fraction of lightspeed inside a populated solar system.

Luis hasn't seen Akamu's power source or confirmed his propulsion theory, but he also hasn't seen the entire ship. He also notes that he hasn't seen any "super-tech" on the ship; the chrome nigh-magical artifacts seem to be much more common among Turai and their ilk.

admiralducksauce wrote:

It takes Max the better part of an hour to get his decryption module to accept the stolen logs. Once that's done, however, it's a relatively simple task to split the log up and transfer it to Davis' computer. Both men start their decrypts and hope it doesn't take a week.

Max is soon joined by Semo, Taylor, and Mellish. The SFC crouches down next to the scientist.

*I've got Angel on watch, Doc,* Taylor whispers. *Gonna go wake him up in a sec. Keep your weapon on hand just in case these fuckers aren't on the level.*

Max types away, keeping his sidearm unholstered and within quick reach.

"Amen to that. I've been of that opinion since we boarded this heap."

Angel wakes quickly, popping a stiff shoulder and picking up the bare minimum of functional guard duty gear - which includes at least 8 ways to kill a man, plus sundry personal effects.

"Just got comfortable and everything..."

Angel makes his rounds to where he knows various members of his group are stationed, moving with practiced calm and quiet, despite making no attempt to sneak about. Wouldn't want any ex-Emperor's guard shaggy space captain getting the wrong idea.

There are soft footfalls behind the doctor's left shoulder.

"Evening Doc."

Angel gets the silent treatment from Max, who's in his "geek fugue" tapping out final instructions to the decrypter. He shrugs and moves on.

Max finally lies down on the hard deck of the cargo bay. He knows he's going to wake up with a sore neck and a crick in his back, but it beats having Akamu's crew get wise to his subterfuge.

Semo's already asleep.

One deck above, Hugh, Arketta, and Luis are shown to their bunks by Clay. The beds are cubbyhole-style beds, inset into the barracks wall. Kovos, the shipboy, and Yaris are already resting, their bed curtains pulled, their jumpsuits stowed. Clay slides into his own bunk and keys the barracks lights from "dim" to "dark".

---

Angel pads through the ship's narrow corridors. At "night", the ship seems like much less of a barrier to the hard vacuum outside. Walls are cold to the touch. There's a persistent pulsating blinker glowing in time with a hiss every few minutes. The air does seem colder, and is tangy with the recycled stench of Angel's team and the vessel's crew.

---

*bee-beep bee-beep bee-beep*

Max and Davis are woken by their laptops about 5 hours into the sleep cycle. Max's decryption module's done its work, and except for a few passages of gibberish, the scientist and spook now have two logs to compare.

There are a lot more stops logged on the hacked log. Apparently, Swims-the-Black's tactic of "burn hard and coast" increases the time it takes Akamu to reach its legitimate destinations, but it gives its captain wiggle room to make stops at unfamiliar places like "Jang-Xur", "Lor IX", and "Skaharos". Travel times and fuel logs indicate full-burn and given the apparent speed of the vessel, they also indicate that these hacked entries are hell and gone from the orbital Gateways Akamu usually frequents.

Shadowports.

The cargo manifests match up except for the shadowport runs - offload and onload weights aren't the same on those entries, even though the cargoes themselves are normally always "machine parts".

Davis has a distinct idea of what he's searching for, however, and points Max to two entries dated 11 and 5 months ago:

11 Months: Akamu was boarded by the Imperial Needleship First of Five. Logs indicate a firefight, and all but two of the crew were pacified. Davis knows the shipboy makes a hidden third, so the kid's story checks out so far. Charges include smuggling and firing upon Imperial personnel. The engineer and the Shipmaster were found not guilty. No explanation is logged. Davis suspects some sort of heavy bribe or favor of some sort. The "official" logs have the incident but just list it as an inspection action resulting in no charges.

The logs match up until around the 7-month mark. Both logs indicate taking aboard an interceptor lifepod, presumably Yaris. It is soon after this point that the hacked logs' gibberish increases. One could theorize that Akamu's data bandit was taken by the boarding party and now Yaris is handling the book-cooking.

She appears to be doing a better job. Better, but not good enough to fool Max.

5 Months: This particular entry is notable in that Akamu's regular logs are hacked to include passengers that don't exist until the vessel docks at the Jang-Xur location. Recycler use increases with the intake of human cargo, and there is an entry where the ship is boarded by the Imperial ship Staunch Defender of Freedom. The mystery passengers are offloaded here, judging by the recyclers' return to normal. No charges are brought, and the official logs don't even register the incident as an inspection.

A week later, Akamu puts in at the Aikoro drydock for a full navigational refit. Holographic command couch, no-touch auxiliary stations, emergency lifepod functionality, the works.

From then until present, Akamu makes a series of smuggling runs without Imperial harassment. All passenger records, of which there are few, check out between both logs.

The thing that makes Max regret his decision to hack the file in place are the crosslinks to quite a few masked comm pulses. If he was in the system, he could slide over to comms, but as it is, he'd have to get out of the cargo bay, hack back into a convenient vox access, and retread his steps through a live log that's still encrypted on the ship itself.

admiralducksauce wrote:

Angel gets the silent treatment from Max, who's in his "geek fugue" tapping out final instructions to the decrypter. He shrugs and moves on.
The thing that makes Max regret his decision to hack the file in place are the crosslinks to quite a few masked comm pulses. If he was in the system, he could slide over to comms, but as it is, he'd have to get out of the cargo bay, hack back into a convenient vox access, and retread his steps through a live log that's still encrypted on the ship itself.

"Davis, Angel...I've got a loaded .45 and most of the crew are sleeping. I believe this is a situation in which the execution, pardon the pun, would fall into your capable hands." remarks Max, dying to know whether or not they've already be sold out to the highest bidder.

"Indeed." Davis plays with the hand grenade still in his pocket. "We'll need some insurance in case this goes sideways, though." He looks over at the team's gear, and thinks for a second, then smiles. "I have an idea. Do you know how to use an AT4, Max?"

Punkey wrote:

"Indeed." Davis plays with the hand grenade still in his pocket. "We'll need some insurance in case this goes sideways, though." He looks over at the team's gear, and thinks for a second, then smiles. "I have an idea. Do you know how to use an AT4, Max?"

"I'd prefer not to have a need to use one, being we're in a hyper-velocity sardine can in a vacuum in far reaches of space, but yeah...I've been checked out on its finer points. Point this end at the enemy."

One thing every grunt in the military learns is that you grab sleep whenever and wherever you can. Especially when you're out-country.

Semo's grabbing every second of shuteye he can manage, though his sleep is haunted by visions of Livia Colomaya.

Hugh doesn't get a lot of sleep. The Akuma reminds him too much of the MedEvac flight to Ramstein.

Funny thing, that - if they hadn't done such a good job patching his leg back together, he wouldn't be in the Army anymore, much less running the first extraterrestial combat unit. He wonders what he would have done with those years. Advertising, maybe.

One surgeon with a headache, and you're hocking used cars. One small step, and you're trying to bring down an interstellar empire. God has a sense of humor.

He gets up, grabs his pistol from under the pillow and wanders off towards the cargo bay. He's got the vague feeling that he should check on the troops.