There isn't any gravity, of course, and the base itself isn't even designed for it. Instead, the inhabitants were - Terran Belters genetically modified to not suffer from bone and muscle loss associated with living in freefall. Every surface is used in the base, saving on space but making it semi-hazardous for those who do not maneuver well without gravity.
Jonas leads the way inside, and immediately goes to a status panel. "No messages," he reports over the suit-link. "Everything's sleeping."
"Lets let it sleep for now," Tasha directs, once again in her Titanianized space suit, complete with vernier pack and helmet painted with stars and animals. "Does the facility have a proximity warning system? An entry detection system? For security, to notify the owners the plant has been entered. You said it was abandoned, but it all looks like someone planned to return for it."
"We all planned to return to it," Jonas notes. "I sent the radio key code before we entered though. Scanning for incoming ships uses a lot of power and also broadcasts your location, so we never bothered. This system is pretty old, so all the rocks have stable orbits now. The unstable ones got weeded out." He gestures to follow deeper into the base, where it was dug into the asteroid itself.
Tasha nods her head, then proceeds along after the Belter. So far, she's been anxious but hopeful. Her ship, now her home, had quickly found its way in to her heart and become a place of solace and peace -- her place. She finds that even as she learns about it and her new crew, they change her in turn, giving her strength and a new outlook. "If the others don't plan to return, then can we consider the facility fully open to salvaging?"
"There isn't much of value here, aside from the relay," Jonas claims. "These bases are cookie-cutter made. Ah.. here," They stop at a large circular hatch. Jonas enters a code, then manually undogs it and pulls it open. "Storm cellar and command station," he explains.
"Storm cellar?" Gabriel asks. "You guys really were fuel conscious then if you didn't use a particle screen field."
"I see. Very interesting," Tasha notes at the explaination, then tilts her head, leaning forward as the hatch slides open. A second later, she begins inside. "Any thoughts, Gabriel?"
"I'm not familiar with Belter tech," Gabriel notes. "It's rugged and simple, able to take radiation and particle hits without failing." He opens one panel and pulls out a sliding tray of components. "Vacuum tubes, analog circuits. Slow, but immune to stuff that'd fry solid-state."
"Also easy to manufacture your own replacements," Jonas notes, as he pries open a different console. "Except for this of course: the relay controller."
"Particle screen ... Oh, for cosmic radiation, the, ah, 'storms,' to save fuel." The owner floats forward after a gentle puff of reacton pass, stopping by putting a hand to the wall and then peering down at the familiar components. Sending just to Gabriel, she notes, "I wasn't expecting to see so much familiar technology out here. I guess old doesn't mean bad, and simple can be a benefit?" He can see her wink at him from inside her helmet.
"It works on Abaddon," Gabriel replies. "It's found longer use out in space than it ever did on Terra, but yes, simple is best sometimes. This sort of equipment can't be infected by computer viruses, or crash or go insane. It's as close to using steam power.. well, that's not a good metaphor. There are lots of steam-powered rocket engines.."
"It's comforting in a way. It makes me feel a bit more at home, and useful." Tasha then reaches up and knocks on her helmet, smiling to her mate, before she pushes off and floats over to Jonas to get a look at the relay.
The device being carefully extracted is very different from the one Gabriel exposed. This is all glowing holographic optical circuits and precious metals and some sort of heavy, if transparent, radiation shield. Jonas has it out, so it's just floating in place while he works on the various connectors that anchor it to the station.
Having never seen a hyperspace communications relay, Tasha takes a moment to look the floating complexity over with the visual focus of birds. She hasn't a clue how it works, let alone how to build or use one, but she figures that getting a good look at one might help her identify another one. To Gabriel -- as she doesn't want to let her ignorance label her -- Tasha asks, "So, it sends and receives signals though hyperpace? A-Level?"
"The relay does, yes.. that box is just the controller," Gabriel tells her. "Terran, which means the relay itself will only work in relatively flat space. Usually keep them in libration points, which are gravitationally neutral areas in planetary orbits."
"Also called 'Lagrangian,' 'Lagrange,' or 'L-Points,'" Tasha quotes, smiling to herself for remembering. With the loss of most of Nora and Fred's encoded knowledge, the young woman has had to rely more on her own, real-world learning. It's inferior by far, but it's what she has to work with now. On the plus side, she feels as though it's helped move away from conflating her identity with that of Nora. "The relay itself is much larger?"
"Yes, it'll be out on the surface most likely," Gabriel says, then switches the public channel and just asks. "Jonas, where's the main relay itself?"
"Far side of the rock, away from any possible interference," Jonas notes.
"I think Mel and I are about to have a job to do. No matter how far I go, or what I have, I guess I'll always carrying things. Not that I mind!" Tasha tells Gabriel. Switching to main channel chat as well, she says, "I'll prepare my machine for pickup then. Gabriel? Jonas? Do you need to remain here to guide the process?"
"No, once we have this disconnected and boxed we can all leave," Jonas says. "Then we can swing around to the other side and pick up the relay."
"Sounds good to me. Let me know if you need any help. I'll just be looking around." And that's exactly what Tasha does, pushing off to float through the room and try to figure things out along the way.
There's surprisingly little to manage in a mining base. There are communications, life support.. and that's pretty much it. The storm cellar has emergency rations and other supplies.
Tasha makes a point to gather the emergency rations and anything else that looks useful: Space heaters, blankets, various chemical kits, and so on. The Dark Horse is minimally equipped and prepared, so she figures a bit more in the way of emergency items couldn't hurt. The survival materials are particularly useful to her mission, as she suspects there will be a large amound of landing party missions, and they'll need what she's gathered. At the very least, they'll have makeshift landing party supplies until more species appropriate ones can be gathered.
As they leave, Jonas shuts down the rest of base. "No sense keeping it ready now," he notes. Soon they are heading back to the extended docking struts of the Dark Horse, which do make it easier to find the airlock at least.
With a filled crane under each arm and another strapped to her back, Tasha is bedecked in survival supplies. She wonders if it;s strange for the owner to do the manual labor, but decides not to worry about it. Carrying crates, she decides, is likely the least of the many strange things her new Belter doctor has seen of her. "Once we're done here, Gabriel, lets dive a distance out and settle in. We can eat, sleep, and prepare for our next dive and FTL transit."
Once they're back and things are stowed, Gabriel takes the controls and tries to nudge them over to the other side of the asteroid. He has to do a lot of force-scale adjusting on the joysticks, often accompanied by swearing. "Fragging inertialess, reactionless thrusters.." he grumbles.
"We'll have our Phin pilot soon. I promise!" Tasha assures her made from the console beside his, leaning over to pat his shoulder. "You could let me do it, and then we'd all be in trouble, of course!"
"It just takes time to adjust," Gabriel says. "We're using Terran-style controls, and that makes me expect Terran-style maneuvering, which is a mistake."
"Now you know how I feel all the time, about absolutely everything since I met you," the young woman notes, then she shifts and leans on him, arm around his shoulders. "Except without the 'seems like something I knew' part."
"Well, surely my joystick responded as you expected," Gabriel jokes, as the dark asteroid turns above.
This ears the Karnor and pinch. "Maybe it did," she admits. "How's your head?"
"Better," the Karnor notes. "I feel less hungover. Ah, that's our baby there.." He points up through the window layer, where a spherical device is tethered to the asteroid, connected to a long cable that heads back the way they came.
"So I'm fetching a ball?" Tasha releases Gabriel, standing straight and stepping forward to get a look at the prize sphere. "I can't imagine Treachery hiding that in her quarters, so she must be thinking of shipping it to New Zion, or possibly Expedition City."
"It'll have to go into orbit, actually," Gabriel notes. "The Silent-Ones relay is in a stationkeeping orbit over the City of Hands, so this will be the only relay over Abaddon.. that we know of."
"And the relay base on the moon, but that's part of the Silent-Ones communication change -- invasions leftovers. Oh, and whatever else the Khattans left behind." Tasha stretches a mment, then turns around and eyes the exit hatch. "I'm going to get my helmet, then head down to the hangar. I'll contact you once I'm about my Titan, and we can get our shiny new ball aboard."
Mel still looks odd in his false armor. Yet at the same time, a bit more Vartan. Rough and tumble versus sleek and sexy. After checking the thrusters have pressure (and while not steam rockets they're close, something called hydrazine), Tasha settles into the cockpit. The connection arm makes contact.. and Melchior asks, "Where are we?"
"Welcome to Galactic Space, Mel!" Tasha greets her long time robotic companion -- and occassional lover -- cheerily. "We're aboard the Dark Horse, our new home. My ship, Mel! A Tnuctipin prototype. Right now, we're orbitting a distant star in preperation to recover a relay."
"When you say recover, do you mean we are stealing it?" the Titan asks for clarification.
"Technically we're salvaging it, as the facility ia abandoned and one of its previous residents has given us access and means to take it. We're not thieves just yet," the hybrid woman explains. In the hangar, the great machine's taloned hand moves, open and closed. One, then the other, as Tasha flexes her neural control. "Why? Is something bothering you?"
"Nothing is bothering me, I just needed to be certain how to log this mission," Melchior claims. "How do we launch from this hangar?"
"We pass through the permeable matter and through the time-space warpage that encloses the interior space. It's much more straightforward than it sounds," the pilot explains. "Here, I'll show you." Directing her great machine across the hangar deck, the Titan crawls -- or rather prowls -- across the hangar floor until it reaches what serves as the hangar door. She then directs the right hand forward, pushing it through the membrane. "See?"
Then she pauses. "Hey." She asks, head tilting. "Do you log all the times we're, um ... Together ... Too?"
"I do not forget anything," Melchior notes. "All memories are logged and categorized."
"Well, um, just ... Just don't let anyone access those. More than usual. Um, exceptme of course. Maybe I'll ... I'll look later." Tasha shifts in her seat, biting her lip, then remembers she's supposed to eb doing something and pushes her mind out of the gutter. "Hokay! Lets get out on the hull. We'll take it slow. You can see the ship, too. It's really beautiful Mel. It's the best ship in the universe, really." And with that, she directs her Titan out.
"It is green," Mel notes once they're out. He isn't wrong, certainly. The asteroid and the 'ball' is overhead, from their perspective.
"I wasn't a big fan of green before, but I think the color is growing on me. Anyway that," the Titan points its enormous talon towards the relay, "is what we're here for. We're to release it, grab it, and then get it in to the hangar undamaged. It's a Terran hyperspace relay. And that reminds me ... " Mentally shifting through controls, the pilot brings up ship communications and cycles until she's got the right communication channel, then waits a moment while the Niss makes the link.
"There we go," she sends to her ship. "We're on the hull, Gabe, and ready for fetch."
"Technically it isn't fetch if nobody threw the ball," Gabriel points out. "More duck retrieval.. or truffle hunting.. or just get the damned doo-dad already and we'll work out analogies later. Try to disconnect the cable, but if you need to you can cut it rather than risk damaging the connector."
"Are psionics making you grumpy again?" Inquires the pilot as she pushs her machine off the hull and in to space. Using the broomstick array, she carefully manuvers upward towards the relay, using the 'less is more' philosophy of propellant usage the virtual training taught her.
About midway the Titan rotates, turning its feet towards the asteroid and soon making contact with the surface. "Lets see here ... " She murmurs as she inspects the attachment point, seeing if it can be disconnected by the Titan or if she needs to release it personally.
The relay is anchored with cables and pitons driven into the rock. Six of them. Cutting the cables would be simplest, probably. There's a cradle of sorts that it sits in, which has the thick cable that runs back over the surface to the base.
"Cutting it is!" Using the Titan's active cutting talons -- specifically one talon on its left hand -- Tasha movs to sever the cables on at a time. With the Titan's right hand she holds on to each cable before cutting it, so that she can test how much each release compromises the structural arrangement of the cradle and its cargo before letting it go. In this way she hopes to avoid cables whipping around, or the relay unseating dangerously, as well as the likely lecture about caution that would bring.
The key is in cutting the cables in opposing pairs, so there's no tension that can pull the relay off to one side or the other. Even with the cables gone, it still seems firmly seated in the cradle though.
With the cables gone, Tasha turns her machine's attention towards the primary cabling, and the cradle. Thinking some of this wiring may be useful, she cuts far along the cord, deciding to spool it up on the way back for reuse later. Then she pushes off, moving to the cradle itself and looking to see what further anchors the device, and to remove them.
It takes some awkward angling to get a good view, but the cradle just sits on a disk of goo. Space-glue! So it's just attached to the rock surface.
Glue is a problem for the cadet, as she isn't sure that she can pull the relay off, or for that matter, cut it loose without bringing part of the cradle along with it. "Well, here goes nothing." And so she tries tugging the object, if not with much force, hoping the glue is just for alignment and pre-seating before cabling would be added.
There's movement, but something must be attached to the cradle. A good shovel would solve the issue, probably.
Having left the shaard in its casing, Tasha is left to improvise. Instead, she chops off one of the legs of the cradle and, like a crowbar, uses that to gently pry the relay off. "I need a Titan-sized halitool," she mutters as she works the delicate motion.
It isn't the most delicate of operations, but the sphere does come free eventually.
Tasha snorts at the makeshift job, but she has what she came for. After spooling the cordage around the Titan's arm, she uses the attachment points the cables uses as handles and begins hauling the object back to the ship. "Hokay, I have the device. I'm bringing it in. Once we're inside, take us away from the asteroid in to open space and dive the ship. We can get something to eat, and rest, before we make our way to Encante."
An hour later, the crew is gathered in the galley. "So, who wants to prepare the inaugural meal?" Gabriel asks.
"Did we get any marshmallows?" Eli asks.
"They.. weren't on the list," Gabriel admits.
"Everyone likes tacos right?" Eli asks next. "I can make tacos."
"I'd like to avoid a mutiny, so it's not going to be me," Tasha replies with an expansive shrug and spread of her arms. "I'm considering picking up a cook once things are running smoothly."
"I'm alright with handmeals," Jonas offers. "Uh.. sandwiches, that is."
"I'll second the taco motion," Gabriel says.
"I'll third that. We should pick up some fish when we reach Encante, too, for fish tacos." The owner lets her arms fall, then settles back in her chair at the head of the table. Still in her armor, she shifts a bit uncomfortably, then shifts again, and then finaly sits back up and pits an elbow on the table, restign her head on that instead. "How are you doing so far, Jonas?"
"I've got the medical bay sorted out now," Jonas explains. "I had to use some of my own database to do it, but your AI didn't seem to have any trouble with the designs."
"Our 'AI' really does have things under control," Tasha agrees, smiling a little. She then turns to Gabriel and Eli and asks, "So, think he's a keeper? Because I've worn this suit for almost two days straight."
"Well, if he can make sure we survive dinner, he should be fine," Gabriel says, as Eli is already going through the supply pantries for ingredients.
"Good. If I stay in this thing any longer, my ... Well, I'll be seeing him about cramps too." Rising, Tasha pushes herself to her feet and glances towards the hatch before looking back to the others. "I'll be back in a few minutes; I think it's time I got comfortable on my own ship. Jonas, you'll just have to live with a bit less mystery on board."
"Don't worry, I'm used to nudity if that is your concern," the man claims.
"Just what I need, another smartass in my life!" Tasha heads out, but pats Gabriel's arm along the way.
Minutes later, someone rather different walks back in to the galley. Without her armor making her look like a Titanian child, Tasha can be seen for what she is: Unique. Feathered wings, hooves, a half-mask face of Karnor and Vartan features with hands to match. She's wearing a Khattan style robe, a kimono-like affair made of some exotic, shiny material she liked. The outfit is all golds, blacks, reds, and whites, and paired up with black Vartan shorts and a pink Terran tank top underneath. She pauses at the entrance, then walks towards her seat.
It's abundantly clear she's no child, though she hardly looks much older than one.
"Okay.. I get it," Jonas says after a while. "The AI is the owner. You're its progmat avatar.. no, wait.. you couldn't leave the ship then.." He then shrugs. "You aren't grafted, despite the hand and eye. Wings and torsos don't work like that. Chimeras generally are.. symmetrical. I don't know what you are or how you got like you are."
"Well, that's one of the nicer reactions," the hybrid woman observes, directing the comment towards Gabriel and Eli. "An AI avatar, a grafted cludge, and a chimera. Maybe we should start a pool for new people, and bet on what they guess I am?" She winks, then turns to Jonas and says, "Don't worry about what I am. I'm here, and I'm real, so that'll have to do for now. All I ask is that you don't tell anyone what I really look like, unless we've cleared it. The people on Encante know what I look like, but not what I am, and we're fine with that. Everyone else, well, we'll take it one at a time."
"But.. you know what you are, right?" Jonas asks. "I will need to know which medical base to use with you.."
"Yes, I do. And I knew you'd ask, but you can't blame me for having my fun, can you? When you look like I do, you learn to have fun with it or ... Well, the fun is better." She leans forward, closer to Jonas. "I am ... A Harrower."
"A.. what?" Jonas asks, leaning back just slightly. "Is that like a Titanian?"
"You don't know..?" Tasha blinks, making a face, then she lifts her hands and wiggles them towards the doctor. "A Harrower is a extra-universal entity, beings of dark energy, dark matter, dark time and dark biology. We live in D-Space, and our job is to fixate gravity, get Confederates lost, and confound scientists." She then glances Eli-ward. "Right? I confound you, don't I?"
"Not as much as the protein printer is right now," Eli calls from the food preparation area.
"Ah, of course," Jonas says, smiling. "I've never heard of any of that. You don't look like a Lovecraftian Horror from beyond the Stars, exactly. Do you have tentacles?"
Tasha looks back to Jonas and shrugs, smiling. "Well, close enough." She then leans in again and offers, "Alright, I'm just part Harrower. Maybe a tenth?" She holds up her hand, fingers barely apart. "A smidge. My tentacles are all inside! I save them for Gabriel." The captain gets blown a kiss, then Tasha looks back and winks. "Other than that, well, I might be a Karnor and a Vartan thrown together by gh- ... Um, perserverence. Oh, and I have some Khattan neural studs."
"Well, she's gotten a hicky from one, at least," Gabriel notes, grinning and wagging his tail in amusement.
"Harrowers and I get along," Tasha insits, after sticking her tongue out Gabriel-ward. "And it was much nicer than the brain-melting."
"I'm a doctor, and an asteroid miner," Jonas claims, holding his hands up at shoulder level. "I don't know about extra-dimensional whatsits, I'm afraid. I just need to know if it makes you allergic to anything."
"Smartasses make me itch," notes the hybrid. "Sadly they're everywhere." She then reaches over and touches Jona's nose. "Other than that, you can fix me with Vartan and Karnor medical databases. And you will, I promise! You may even get sick of it. I'll try to keep the extra-universal parts of me uninjured, just for you."
"Oh and I may be allergic to whatever Harrowers are, whatever that is. Sometimes I get visions. Oh, and I see ghosts. I try to ignore them," Tasha adds, tilting her head in post-explaination addendum afterthought.
"Are you seeing any right now?" Jonas asks, quite straight-forwardly. "Or only when you've been alone for some time?"
"Usually when I'm emotionally compromised and need advice," the owner answers as she leans back, "So just about any time, really! Are you there, Blackwings? Want to say hi? Jealous yet?"
"I've heard that dolphins are all smartasses," Gabriel points out. "Clearly, we're going for the all-smartass crew roster. Eli, you'll have to step your game!"
This far from Sifran space.. well, there hasn't been any Blackwings or Nora or other activity in Tasha's head, aside from that one time with the Goddess Nukapai.
"Oh gods are they!" Tasha declares a moment later, throwing her hands up. "And they'll be trying to get you in bed, so you stay away from them Gabriel! Er, in the pool? Water? I don't know how they do it. But they do. A lot." She then looks around and, upon not seeing any paranormal activity, claps her hands together. "Nothing! I knew coming out he- ... Well, I knew this ship was a good idea. I'm free!"
"If not, I have some pills that might work," Jonas says. Eli curses a bit in the back though. "Corn.. corn.. it's supposed to be yellow, not green.."
"So, who wants who-knows-how-old emergency rations I liberated fromn the asteroid's storage?" Tasha asks after listening to Eli's outburst. "What's 'cheese tortellini,' anyway?"
"We'd have to add water to those," Gabriel points out.
"It is something that is completely different from what that paste is, which will taste a bit like cheese with crunchy bits in it and pass through your system without apparently digesting, since it will come out looking and feeling exactly the same."
Jonas notes.
"Oh, I'm allergic to water -- and also whatever horrible Terran nightmare that food sounds like. Maybe I'll just take a nap instead, it sounds safer," the hybrid notes, resting her head on the table. "Maybe we should just make the journey to Encante now, before Eli kills us with corn."
"It's not really corn," Gabriel notes. "It's starch and.. cellulose, I suppose. Whatever the printer uses. It should be fine though, if he doesn't overspice the meat. I think he likes chili powder a bit too much. Always fond of curries.."
"Nothing wrong with spicy," Jonas says. "When you eat lots of bland stuff, you appreciate spices."
Tasha's ears fall. "So, you don't think I can operate the mass detector, do you?"
"I'm sure you can," Gabriel says. "It's just.. tedious. If you do have some Harrower in you, I've no idea how it will react with the device."
And so Tasha rises. "Time to find out. Niss? We're heading for Encante." The young owner turns towards the door, then begins walking. "You all can stay here. I want fish tacos."
Jonas tests Tasha's pupil response in the 'new' medical bay. It looks completely unfamiliar to Tasha - even the beds are folded up into the wall when not in use and incorporate a lot of apparent robotics. There's also a big tank at one end, currently empty but big enough for a fully grown dolphin. "Well, I don't see any ruptured blood vessels, so the redness is likely just from blood pressure, along with the headache," the doctor says, and then presses a pneumatic injector to Tasha's neck. There's a hiss, and no real sensation of anything happening. "That should take care of it."
Piloting the Dark Horse was an ordeal. She couldn't let her mind wander at all, and had to stay focused on the mass detector. It was the constant focus that did her in. It took ten hours to reach the Encante system.
"Thanks," says Tasha, whose eyes slowly turn as she takes in the room. A frown crosses her face; A very confused frown that is soon joined by flattened ears and a tuckd tail. "Where am ... Oh."
"Oh."
The young woman lays her head right back down on the pillow. "I think we can safely say that being part Harrower was no help at all. Please bury me with my ship."
"You don't bury a ship, you scuttle them," Jonas points out. Already the brain inflammation seems to be calming down. "Is there anything I need to prepare for? This is an outlaw system, after all.. and you're talking about taking on rebels as crew."
"I'm part Karnor. We bury everything." Tasha sits up, actually feeling a lot better, a lot faster than she expected. She decides modern medicine may well be her new favorite discovery. Realizing she still needs to think with her brain, she answers, "Just be calm and act like this is all very normal, and that you're supposed to be with me. Encante knows who I am, and we've worked together before, so the biggest surprise will be our appearing right under their nose in an alien ship. If they don't kill us in the first few minutes, we should be just fine."
"Ah, in that case, I should tell you that Gabriel wants you on the bridge as soon as you're recovered," Jonas notes.
"I was just about to go there anyway. Important owner matters!" Tasha sits up again, winces, then slides off the table and begins walking on out.
But, then she pauses. "Oh, and thank you Jonas. I'm glad you're settling in, too. If you need anything else, even amenities, be sure to let me know." And then she walks out.
The bridge seems a long way off. When Tasha arrives, the view through the window is still the shiny-murky-watery view of the maelstrom, which means only the periscopes are extending out into the real world to provide the tactical display. It's zoomed out and exaggerated to fit everything in. There's Encante, with two ships in orbit.. or rather, not in orbit, but stationkeeping on opposite sides of the planet. There's the Ningyo, and the Terran destroyer that 'patrols' the system. But there are two other ships, further inwards towards the star. Those seem to be orbiting an invisible point in space.
Tasha walks right over to the tactical display and leans against the nearby railing, staring at the tactical map. After several seconds she says, "There's the Ningyo, and I recognize the destroyer that's here to 'deal with the rebellion,' but these," she points at the two other ships orbiting who-knows-what, "I don't recognize. Is that an Alderson Point they're guarding?"
"Blockading, yes," Gabriel says. "Niss says they're Khattan, and one of them has a very big cannon."
"That's bad. I don't remember a blockade. Last time we were here, there were Celestials in-system, and the destroyer, but not this. Niss?" The hybrid woman glances back towards the civilization resting on one of the consoles. "Can you intercept any communication traffic from those Khattan vessels? Anything that suggests they're here for more than observing?"
The tactical display updates. It's clear that the destroyer (now tagged 'Narcissus') is keeping between the cruisers Encante.. and also, by proxy, hiding Ningyo in its shadow on the other side of the planet. "The Khattans claim they are here to help put pressure on the rebels, by ensuring that no outside support can reach them. However, there is gravitational jamming coming from one of the vessels, which would disrupt hyperwave communications out of the system."
Tasha considers for a long moment, then turns and asks Gabriel, "Are they trying to starve them out, somehow? They're obviously up to something, and that big cannon makes me nervous."
"Intimidation tactics, certainly," Gabriel says. "They probably suspect the 'rebellion' isn't what it looks like, and are pushing. This system is pretty far out, so reinforcements are unlikely. I think it's a show of force, sending a 'take care of this or we will' message. No idea which Khattan faction those ships belong to though."
"Our presence could destabilize things. If we surface near the Ningyo, we may be able to avoid detection in the same way it is masking its own sensor data. However, there may be other satelites or monitoring stations in the region." Tasha stands straight, tapping her chin as she thinks. "Encante could use our help, especially if the blockade is stopping something necessary. But, we risk making the Khattans force their hand. If that happens, we'll be dragged in to a battle. Maybe even a war."
"We need to find out how long they've already been here," Gabriel notes. "They can't loiter forever, and someone will notice the disruption and raise diplomatic hell."
"I've been scanning the Ningyo," Eli says. "I think there may be a solution as far as remaining undetected."
"Good idea. Niss? Can you determine how long they've been here?" Tasha asks, turning to once again look to the spherical community. She then turns past the civilization to Eli, "Yes?"
"The Ningyo is full of water," Eli points out, calling up a schematic of the ship. "It has huge open areas inside the central cylinder. In theory, we could maneuver to intersect in real space, and just surface the airlock inside of them."
"That's a very interesting plan," the owner observes, brows raising. "Do you think we can manage that level of precision?" For this, she turns to Gabriel now.
"Well, seeing as how all of my pilot training was about not running into other ships, I can't say," Gabriel notes. "Niss, can we do that without causing gravitational stress fractures in the Ningyo? And also surface just part of the ship's surface that isn't the sensor spine tips?"
"I'll head in alone. If a large party suddenly enters the vessel, given the hostile situation, we could have a problem. A single person will look less like a Khattan boarding trick," the hybrid woman notes. She cocks her head to the side and then says, "I'll wear my undersuit, just in case. It's rude, but, I'll take rude over the alternative right now. Once on board, I'll have myself taken to the captain and explain things, after I explain enough not to be shot."
"It should be possible, but not for an extended period," Niss decides. "Long enough to leave or enter the airlock, but holding it in place for very long will cause damage."
Gabriel sighs and rubs his head. "Get ready, Tasha," he says. "We'll use the starboard airlock. Let me know when you're in position."
"I'll head for the airlock then, and get my rebreather." Turning, the young owner begins making her way off the bridge. "The Ningyo can take care of me if something happens. If you need to, exit the system and return later when it's safer. Keep an eye on those Khattans." And then she's off again.
It's several minutes later when she's down in the starboard airlock, stripped to her undersuit witha rebreather on, a belt with a belt knife, and a swiming suit tucked away for later. "I'm ready when you are," she reports, sounding muffled.
What follows are series of vertigo-inducing shifts. When the last one has passed, after several minutes, Gabriel comes on the radio and says, "Go now!"
Not needing to be told twice, Tasha pushes through the airlock hatch and with a kick of her hooves, shoves herself on through with all the speed she can muster!
The density change from air to water also comes with a sense of distortion.. as if she's being stretched. And then she's through, and the feeling passes as the distorted airlock vanishes behind her. A score of dolphins surround her, most of them with sasers pointed at her. She's also buzzing from the amount of sonar she's being subjected to. "Hey, it's Rustpuppy!" comes the familiar voice of Lucky Kaa - who is also pointing a weapon at her. "Did you bring any fish?"
Tasha has her hands up, slowly turning in the water from the force of her disembarkment. "Sorry," she replies, looking bewildered, ears askew. "I've been a bit too busy for fishing." After briefly looking around -- and noting the immense amount of weaponry, not to mention buzzing, directed at her -- she looks back and asks, "I came to see you, but it looks like you all might need some assistance. Mind if I stay a while?"