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>>48208471
It's a section of brightly-painted hull bearing the name of a ship: "ANTIOCH". It looks too colorful to be military, so your guess is it was a civilian transport. One of several given the size of the debris field you're passing through. ALICE quickly confirms it.

"The Antioch, private freighter registered out of Anaheim. Reported missing with all hands six months ago, along with her sister ships the Ramilles and the Scipio. Presumed lost to pirate action."

"It ain't presumed anymore," Showtime mutters.

"There's the Ramilles," Rossweisse observes with an almost eerie calm, indicating part of the bow of a second ship. "They're easily spread over a thousand cubic kilometers."

"Cut the chatter," you order curtly, "and switch off your IFF tags. This is where things could start getting ugly."

"Let's hope we can fly under the radar... and for the love of god try not to bump into anything?"

The three starfighters of Viper Squadron maneuver out ahead of the Sericea, tiny flashes of light accompanying each burst from their chemical thrusters as they roll and pitch through the larger pieces of debris. The erratic tumbling of the bits of steel and luna titanium making up this field is only made harder to follow as Rossweisse maneuvers her ship through it: in fact it's almost pointless to keep track of any single piece of debris, as there's no real permanent point of reference to compare its movement to. You're almost certain she's doing it entirely on instinct.

“ALICE,” you order, finding yourself the only one not fully engaged with the task at hand, “devote some of your runtime to a passive scan of the debris field. Estimate its total mass and compare to the mass of three ships in the typical configuration of the Antioch, Ramilles, and Scipio.”

“Yes, ma'am,” ALICE replies as she begins working on your task. “I should have the initial readings momentarily.”
>2/3

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>>48208510
After a few minutes of slowly picking out a flight path through the debris field, your support AI's voice chimes through your headset with a surprising result.

“My scans indicate that the total mass and density of the debris field is inconsistent with the presence of three cargo ships of the configuration common to the Antioch, Ramilles, and Scipio.”

“Inconsistent how?” you press. “Is there something missing?”

“That is the part which surprises me,” ALICE replies, “there is actually too much mass. This discrepency can only be rectified by factoring in the mass of the cargo for the three ships. The presence of Helium-3 in large quantities is also suspicious.”

“They left the fuel?” Rossweisse mutters, gently rolling the Sericea under a large section of hull. “Even if the cargo was useless to them they'd have taken the He-3 stores.”

“Unless the ships were destroyed without anything having been stolen,” you realize aloud. “That's not consistent with piracy, but with commerce-raiding activities. This looks much more like a military operation... we wonder how many of the ships supposedly 'lost with all hands' were like these three, destroyed along with all their cargo?”

A specially-designed stealth ship, her crew and atmosphere suits missing, adrift in deep space. Stolen hi-tech metallic coatings leaked to revolutionaries and other private parties. And now, three ships destroyed in a “pirate raid” along with their fuel and cargo, adrift in the inner Solar System. Either it's your fate to run into trouble everywhere you go, or else the trouble follows in your wake. At this point you can't say for sure which.

>Continue on towards Luna as scheduled.
>Conduct an investigation here and leave a hidden sensor buoy.
>Divert to Cuithe itself, the pirates there may know more.
>Other?

>>48208536
>Continue on towards Luna as scheduled.
>Other?
Just drop the sensor buoy or marker for future reference.

>>48208629
Well, then. Guess I'll start writing this.

I'll also make sure to pay attention for any latecomers, but this doesn't exactly bode well.

>>48208785
>this doesn't exactly bode well.
Getting that feeling too. The twitter poll and the sched change might have left most of the players confused. Or unaware of the update.

>>48208838
I'll leave it to sit for a little while, I guess. One player making the decisions seems a little unfair, particularly if I may have confused people as to when I'd be running.

>>48208536
>>Conduct an investigation here and leave a hidden sensor buoy.

>>48208536
>Conduct an investigation here and leave a hidden sensor buoy.

Our mission isn't that time sensitive, I think we can afford to get a little more info out of this place.

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>>48208536
“In any event we should drop a sensor buoy,” you suggest to your copilot. “Keep an eye on this debris field, get some more detailed scans. Maybe if we're lucky someone will return to the scene of the crime.”

“Can do,” Rossweisse acknowledges, keying in a series of commands. “Launching off the port rail in three... two...”

When the sensor buoy rolls off the portside mine-laying track, drifting lazily behind the Sericea, you reach out to it through the bridge's psychommu system and order its small chemical apogee motors to life. A few quick bursts and you're on your way, quickly navigating it towards a likely-looking hiding spot near a section of hull plating large enough to conceal its presence.

With a few final bursts and a shot from its magnetic “anchor”, you position the buoy right where you want it.

“Buoy is in position,” you announce, directing the machine to begin making regular sensor sweeps of the surrounding debris field. “ALICE, please fire a contact link towards Anubis.”

“Yes ma'am,” the AI replies cheerfully. “Contact established!”

“Anubis, we want you and your wingmates to assume positions within the debris field,” you order. “Disguise yourselves as debris. We want to take a closer look at this, something about it's bothering us.”

“What about it?” Anubis demands through the contact link. “Jesus, we're kinda exposed out here ma'am.”

“We're aware of that, Anubis,” you reassure her. “We'll try and make it quick.”

“All stop reported,” Rossweisse announces. “Continuing passive scans.”

“We want to figure out what happened here,” you muse to yourself, contemplating how to best go about doing that.

>We'll take our mobile suit out, get a closer look at some of this debris.
>Find us a large chunk of ship to board for a closer look at the damage.
>We need to wait for the sensors to find the cargo these three were hauling.
>Other?

>>48209098
>>We'll take our mobile suit out, get a closer look at some of this debris.
>Other?
Have a pair of junior MS hitch-hike with us for more up close and detailed investigations.

Seems I'll have to give this one a bit of extra time as well.

>writing

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“We'll take our machine out and get a closer look,” you decide, rolling out and over your seat towards the door. “Keep in touch, Rosse, we'll want word if any other ships decide to come picking through the wreckage.”

“Consider it done,” Rossweisse replies calmly. “I'll keep the missiles hot.”

Once on the hangar deck, you gesture to your mechanical team. “Get us two junior MS pilots. We want a good look at this debris, so you'll be tagging along for the ride.”

After pulling on your helmet and sliding into the cockpit of the Viola, you perform a quick weapons check. Standard loadout of beam sabers, shields, and the VSBR's tied to your machine's reactor, along with six beam funnels resting within their charging cradles recessed into the VSBR mounts. No need for a grenade rifle on this operation, as it's more likely to get in the way of search functions anyway, but the contact wires and birdlime launchers in the Viola's hands are fully loaded. If you see anything interesting along the way you can grab it with those.

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2aoCa1ImUU
The hangar doors open and the whole space depressurizes slowly, the few personnel who need to remain on the hangar deck bracing themselves while the two junior MS you requested grab hold of the Viola's shoulders with their wires.

“Contact established,” one of their pilots reports. “We're good to go when you are, Captain.”

On the curved walls around you, covered in displays tied to the exterior cameras, you can see a primitive manipulator flash the equivalent of a thumbs-up.

“Alright then, prepare for acceleration.”

Rather than using the launch ramp, which would almost certainly tear the junior MS free of your suit and probably destroy them in the process, you kick off from the hull and use the Viola's thrusters to accelerate away more slowly, heading out into the debris field.

>dice+3d10, best of three
>also, if you have any idea what to search for please specify

Rolled 10, 8, 2 = 20 (3d10)

>>48209621
Maybe look for signs of what weapons were used to destroy the ships? Kinetic, megaparticle, explosives, etc. Could point to who did the attack. Also look for any black boxes, though I doubt there are any intact.

Rolled 2, 6, 3 = 11 (3d10)

>>48209621
>spent shells, energy casings, logos

Rolled 3, 3, 1 = 7 (3d10)

>>48209621
Identify what weapons were used by looking at the hull damage. See if they were caused by beam weapons and so on. We might be able to at least judge the amount of power used depending on how slagged they look, and thus identify if another ship caused it or some MS.

>>48209685
Very good roll there, anon.

>writing

We can also judge the precision of the attack by scoping out the bridge, engine, and the storage for the volatile stuff.

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“Look for anything identifiable as bridge, engines, or cargo,” you order your companion MS. “Anything that looks like a weapon strike as well. We want to know what sort of weapons did this.”

“Roger that, ma'am.”

The two junior MS separate from you in two different directions, and you head deeper into the debris field. Each course correction is the result of the tiniest kick of your apogee motors, rolling out of the way of the tumbling tangles of steel with the bare minimum effort... you make it look easy as you pass by Digger's fighter as it drifts like the debris that surrounds it.

A close-up view of his cockpit shows that he's staring at you as you go, polarized faceplate pressed against the canopy.

It's close to his fighter that you discover what you're after: evidence of scoring from a high-temperature particle beam impact, a rough semi-circle of slagged metal along the edge of a piece of hull. Missiles and railguns don't just evaporate what they hit like this, there's always some degree of structural collapse into the hole in any case where there's been kinetic transfer. But a beam weapon leaves a hole that has a more “boiled” appearance at the edges, like sugar syrup that's been left to burn on a stovetop too long.

“Evidence of beam scoring here, Rossweisse,” you report through the secure psychommu link to the Sericea. “At least one of these ships was probably scuttled deliberately.”

“Any evidence of what cargo they were hauling?”

You shake your head. “There wouldn't be here. Blast damage suggests an internal explosion sank this ship, so the cargo was probably blasted too. We'll head back towards where we found the hull identifiable as the Ramilles.”
>1/2

>>48210054
It takes a few minutes to maneuver back through the debris field towards the large chunk of bow remaining from the Ramilles, but you're rewarded by the sight of what appears to be part of a forward storage hold. The interior still has some large crates of some kind secured in place by heavy straps, with no external indications of their contents.

>Get in close, try and recover one of those crates to bring back aboard the Sericea for examination?
>Take sensor sweeps and get back to the ship? Play it safe and get moving.
>EVA time, crack one of those crates. They may contain hazardous materials and are safer to open out here.
>Other?

>>48210078
>EVA time, crack one of those crates. They may contain hazardous materials and are safer to open out here.
Your mention in the first thread of the quest that The Expanse was one of your inspirations has left me all paranoid about bioweapons.

>>48210078
>>Other?
Sensor sweep first. Depending on the reading, we can proceed with opening them up.

>will get to writing in a few minutes

>>48210160
Changing my vote to this from >>48210128. Proper paranoia should get all the data first.

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>>48210398
You give the cargo containers a proper initial sensor sweep, checking for anything out of the ordinary. No radioactive signature, no dangerous chemicals, no heat signatures... nothing that would indicate a health hazard if you cracked it open into a vacuum, but that doesn't mean there might not be something inside it that would be dangerous to bring aboard your ship.

“We're opening one of the cases,” you announce, maneuvering the Viola closer to the wreckage. “We want to see what these guys were hauling.”

“You're gonna do what?” Rossweisse asks you, incredulous. “May have been a bad connection, but it sounded like you said you were going to open one of the crates.”

“So you were listening,” you muse, unhooking yourself from the restraining harness. “Popping the hatch in five seconds.”

“You're insane,” Rosse sighs, “but hey, I knew that when I signed up.”

There's a hiss as the cockpit depressurizes, and you clip yourself into a small metal loop inside the frame of the hatch. With a gentle kick, you begin gliding towards the cargo crates with a carabiner in hand. When you reach it you hook the harness around one of the straps holding the first crate in place, and begin looking for a way to get inside it.

“There we go,” you grin as you pull a stout knife from a sheath around your ankle, wedging it in under the wooden container's lid like a prybar. “Reveal your secrets, box!”

With a grunt of exertion you manage to lift the lid, pulling the nails silently out of the wooden sides of the container. Bracing so as to apply your full body weight, you give it everything you've got and are rewarded by the lid splintering and popping free. What drifts out however is disappointing, to say the least.

“Bananas,” you mutter, swatting one of the disgusting yellow fruits out from in front of your visor. “Freeze-dried bananas.”

“That's disappointing,” Rossweisse sighs over the psychommu.
>1/?

“Are you sure that's all that's in there?”

“Dunno, let us check,” you admit, scooping handfuls of bananas out of the crate until your fingertips brush against something that's the wrong side to be a banana.

“Hang on,” you tell Rossweisse as you try and work the object free. When you withdraw your hand, you find that it's a “banana” of a different kind. This one's made of stamped sheet metal.

“It's a magazine,” you tell Rossweisse, holding it up so she can see it through your camera feed. “Looks like an old Kalashnikov style.”

You swing yourself up and over the open top of the crate, clearing out dozens of bananas that bounce off your armored pressure suit, and spy dozens of old-fashioned automatic rifles in racks that line the bottom of the crate. “They were hauling contraband in with an agricultural shipment, probably bound for the outer colonies after a stopover at Mars.”

“Carrina, we've got problems,” Rossweisse announces. “Drive signatures heading towards us on what looks like an intercept course, extreme range. No IFF tags.”

>Let's get out of here, we've lingered long enough.
>Let's hang out here, see who we're dealing with.
>We want us positioned for an ambush. No IFF tags is bad news.
>Other?

>>48210866
>Let's get out of here, we've lingered long enough.
>Other?
Scoop up our piggybacks riders.

>>48210866
>Let's get out of here, we've lingered long enough.
If their drives are bright enough to be detected at long ranges in the Universal Century, they have to be ships. We'd be outnumbered, even with our riders. Scoop everyone up and get out of here.

>>48210915
>>48211245
Sorry I was delayed, will get to work writing up.

>>48211293
No worries, Hearts.

>>48211293
“We've lingered long enough,” you tell Rossweisse as you kick off back to the Viola in a scattering of frozen bananas. “If there are drive signatures inbound it's time for us to get out of here.”

“I'll send the signal to the junior MS,” Rossweisse tells you, “so get back here quick.”

On the way back to the Sericea, it seems that Digger gets a good read on the situation and spins up his engines. He manages to make a contact link with your mobile suit, asking for an update.

“What's goin' on now? Those drives got you spooked?”

“If we're outnumbered we should get moving,” you observe, “since a direct confrontation's not in our job description, as it were.”

“You think they're hostile?”

“If we go now we may never have to find out.”

Digger and his fighter break off, heading towards what you reckon is the spot where his fellow pilots are waiting. “I'll update Anubis, you just do you.”

“Roger that,” you reply calmly as the contact link is severed.

When you arrive at the Sericea, you find one junior MS ahead of you in the docking pattern.

“Where's the other suit?” you ask Rossweisse.

“Negative response, negative signature,” she reports grimly. “Drive signatures closing rapidly. How do you want to handle this?”

>We leave for Luna. No other choice.
>We shut down and go dark, hope they pass us by.
>We can make for that pirate haven. The junior MS should be able to hold out until we're back.
>Stand and fight if need be.
>Other?

>>48211453
>We can make for that pirate haven. The junior MS should be able to hold out until we're back.

>>48211453
I hate doing this on one vote, but I feel like I've got no other choice. This will probably be a long update, and the last one of the thread, but hopefully next week will be better in terms of pacing and participation.

>writing

>>48211787
Sorry, I'm SUPER fucking indecisive when it comes to voting, because I'm always afraid I'll screw up.

>>48211860
>>48211787
>We can make for that pirate haven. The junior MS should be able to hold out until we're back.

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>>48211787
“We'll make a hard burn for Cuithe itself,” you order. “Whoever's out here with us is either a pirate anyway, or won't want to mess with us if it means crossing the local pirates.”

“What about the second junior MS?” Rossweisse asks. “I know protocol says to assume a loss, but I didn't think you'd do it.”

“The junior MS has provisions and oxygen for three days,” you explain, “so we'll just have to be sure to be back by then. And all that's a moot point anyway if we've really lost him, which no signature and no response means we have to assume.”

“We don't like it, but that's our only real option.”

There's a moment of silence as you complete your docking maneuver with the Sericea. “Understood, Captain.”

The mood when you step out of your cockpit is a distinctly sour one. Nobody likes leaving a comrade behind under uncertain circumstances, but you can't afford to put one life ahead of your ship, crew, and mission. While you're aware that if it was you who had gone missing none of your fellow officers in the Fleet would be leaving you behind, and it certainly leaves a bad taste in your mouth doing it to someone else... but it's not you out there, and it's not your fellow officers who have to make the call.

At least, not this time.

You feel the deck beneath you shifting as the Sericea changes course abruptly, pushing her way out of the debris field and setting a course for the pirate haven of Cuithe. When you reach the bridge and strap in, ALICE overlays the positions of your fighter escort and the incoming drive signatures onto your viewscreens.

“They're changing course to pursue,” Rossweisse announces. “By my calculations they'll have a two-second firing window.”

“I will be ready for them,” ALICE assures you. “Requesting temporary thruster control override.”
>1/?

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>>48212122
“Granted,” Rossweisse replies, tapping in a series of commands. “You have emergency thruster and retro controls. Incoming signatures will be in their window in sixty-seven seconds.”

“This is gonna get awful close!” Anubis shouts over her comms. “Viper Squadron, get ready to hit the jets, we'll fly right outta their crosshairs!”

“Thirty seconds!” Rossweisse shouts. “Carrina, give the word!”

“All hands brace for impact!” you shout over the Sericea's intercoms. “Twenty seconds!”

“Brace!” you repeat as you approach the predicted firing window. ALICE blows the retro-thrusters and the ventral emergency thrusters at the same time, causing the whole ship to shudder as it's blasted onto another trajectory. “Here they come!”

What must be two-dozen mega particle beam blasts tear through the inky black void around the Sericea on all sides, most of them missing wildly thanks to ALICE's course correction but some coming alarmingly close in spite of it. Then, as quickly as it's over, the incoming fire stops.

“All hands hold present stations,” you order. “Rosse, status?”

“The drive signatures are holding their course,” she informs you with a sigh of relief. “They're set to blow right past our own vector and head deeper in-system.”

“They missed their opportunity,” you nod, satisfied. “ALICE, patch us through to Viper.”

“God DAMN that was a lightshow,” Digger whoops. “Digger, reporting no damage.”

“So we're good,” Anubis concludes breathlessly. “Yeah, we're all clear up here Captain. You okay back there?”

“Perfectly fine,” you shoot back. “And here we were almost looking forward to having to stand and fight those jerks, but they can't even shoot straight. Would've been boring.”

“Solid copy, Sericea,” Anubis replies. “We'll slow up, gotta cut speed anyway if we're really going to approach Cuithe.”
>2/?

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>>48212143
“Yeah, Anubis,” you confirm, “we're really doing this.”

It takes another hour on this course to reach the pirate colony of Cuithe, an amalgamation of natural asteroids and half-junked warships with one 'concourse' of what appears to be fabricated habitation blocks stripped from an old space colony. The whole operation is much more complex than you'd imagined based on the reports from the Mars Navy, with a much larger population here.

You were expecting little more than a flying garbage heap with a gin joint and a couple of airlocks, but this looks like it could support permanent habitation.

“Send a handshake,” you order ALICE, “tell them we want a berth assignment for a short stopover.”

“Sending query,” ALICE reports. “Response received... they're marking our berth assignment now.”

“So easily?” Rossweisse asks in surprise. “Viper, pull it in tight.”

“You may even want to land on our outer hull,” you suggest. “Keep the engines warm, we may need to leave in a hurry.”

Down near the airlocks, Rossweisse throws a ragged cloak over your shoulders and hands you a headset. The device consists of a short microphone, an earpiece, and a small camera that all go on the left side of your head.

“Here,” she tells you, “to keep in contact. Keep your head down, okay? That's not a cheap headset.”

“We'll try and return it in one piece,” you reply with a grin, before quickly checking your sidearm. Loaded, safety on, hammer back. Good.”

Stepping out into the station, you find that you've been greeted by a pair of pirates in what appear to be actual uniforms. These consist of a light, pressure-sealed armor plating with helmets and automatic weapons. They're taking you deadly serious, and from what you can tell they're under orders to.

Is there an actual command hierarchy here?
>3/?

gee twitter, thanks for not telling me this was live...

>>48211860
>>48211876
So why'd you leave a member of the crew behind and go to the pirate base when the whole point of us getting an escort was to avoid dealing with the pirates?

>>48212143
Actually, give me 3d10. Taking the best of four if I can get that many rolls, three if I can't.

Rolled 10, 6, 3 = 19 (3d10)

>>48212368

Rolled 10, 5, 9 = 24 (3d10)

>>48212368

>>48212366
Judging from the investigation, it's starting to look like the pirates may not have done the hit on the convoy. So, I guess attempting to enlist their service might be on the table. I dunno.

Unless these guys are not the actual pirates. Which would add another layer of confusion.

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>>48212308
Between the armored suit, the cloak, and the eyepatch you must paint an intimidating figure. The two pirates exchange a nervous glance and raise their weapons, drawing a little too close to you.

“We need you to surrender any personal weapons you may have, Captain,” the senior of the two insists.

You shake your head. “How about no. And how do you know my rank?”

“We've heard rumors,” the younger replies vaguely. “And I insist, drop your weapons.”

“It's just a pistol,” you sigh, drawing back the cloak to show them your suppressed handgun. “It's not like we're here to cause trouble, it's just there for self-protection. Rough neighborhood and all.”

“And we're saying you still have to hand it over!” the younger man repeats. “So quit being such a bitch and...”

In a blindingly quick motion you grasp the barrel of the man's rifle in your right hand and pull down, adding to the leverage by pressing up on the base of the buttstock with your left and slamming the weapon into his cheek. The blow sends him reeling as you put a neat spin on the weapon and catch it s grip in your right hand, dropping low and grabbing the back of his ankle with your left and pulling hard. The combination of movements sends him tumbling to the deck, hitting the back of his head with a loud crack and leaves you in a low crouch, aiming your new rifle at the senior pirate.

“Now we have a machine gun,” you grin at him, sights never straying from the center of his forehead. “Keep antagonizing us and we'll work our way up to an orbital strike sooner or later, or you could just let us keep our sidearm.”

“I... think you can keep your sidearm, miss,” the older pirate concedes. “Just give the kid his rifle back, please.”
>4/?

Rolled 8, 1, 9 = 18 (3d10)

>>48212368

>>48212551
fuckin' hell, me. get it together.

>>48212560
For the lateness of the roll, or the 1?

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>>48212579

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>>48212529
“Happy you've started to see things our way,” you smile, dropping the magazine, ejecting the chambered round, and separating the upper and lower receivers of the rifle before tossing its parts back at the pirate where he lies on the floor staring up at you.

“Someplace around here a girl can get a drink?”

“This deck,” the older man nods nervously. “Gin joint, real great watering hole. Run by...”

“You had us at gin,” you interrupt, pushing past the duo. “Oh yeah, and don't try and board our ship. Good way to get yourself a new set of holes.”

The interior of the station is cluttered and poorly-lit... not because there are too few lights, but because it seems like a patchwork of sections taken from ships and colony buildings and there are sections inside that have different distributions of lights. Some of them clearly aren't all on the same power system, and flicker annoyingly, while others are old halogen bulbs rather than the typical LEDs. Vendors along what seems like the main “street” sell various greenhouse-grown wares, which remind you of the results of Zeon ships trying to grow their own tomatoes and strawberries in microgravity. They look rather sickly to your eyes, but the fact that they're growing food here at all is impressive.

The gin joint you were directed towards seems small but tidy, more dimly lit and comfortable than the main thoroughfare outside its doors. It seems like the general theme is an African watering hole which suits the slightly uncomfortable warmth you've noticed filling the station: the floor is clean-polished wood veneer, the bar itself is darkly-varnished and fitted with shiny brass fixtures, and the seats along the bar seem to be covered with fake white tiger fur. A seat in the corner however, situated behind a low wooden table with a cold drink sitting on it, is draped in the real deal: a genuine tiger pelt.
>5/6

>>48212712
>covered with fake white tiger fur
Either this place is led by a Cima fan, or it is her.

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>>48212712
Sitting in the seat is a familiar woman with dark, almost greenish-black hair. She looks up, and smiles warmly after the initial shock of seeing you. And given how long it's been since she went missing, you can't help but feel just as surprised at finding her here.

“Of all the gin joints in all the galaxy,” Cima Garahau greets you, gesturing to what you can only imagine is her bar. “Can't help but feel it must be fate that brought you here. Grab whatever you want from behind the bar and pull up a chair.”

“You're running a gin bar on Cuithe!?” you demand, smacking the side of your head. “We looked for you exhaustively for a year before we gave you up for dead, and you're in a gin joint at a pirate... God's sake, why are we even pretending to be surprised?”

“That's your business, Captain,” Cima replies as you pour yourself a tall glass of Foxdenton's gin and cut it with some ginger ale. “As for why you're here, I think I can help.”

“You don't even know why we're here,” you observe. For her part the former Zeon pirate turned politician glances about the bar to ensure that nobody else is present... must be a slow day.

“I don't care,” she tells you in a low voice. “But I can tell you everything there is to know about pirate operations in this system if you promise to do me one thing.”

“And what's the price, then?” you ask, leaning in and adopting the same hushed tone.

“I need you to get me off this damn rock before I lose my mind!" she hisses.

You stifle a chuckle. "Retirement not all it's cracked up to be?"

"You have no idea."

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>>48212825
Well whaddaya know.

>>48212825
And that's why I'm happy you changed your minds and took that plot hook, otherwise you'd have totally missed Cima.

That's all for this weekend, we'll have to end it here for now but I'll pick it back up next weekend. I've decided that 10am PST works WAY better, so expect it at that time on Sunday. Archive is up, and hope you had fun!

>>48212868
Glad to see this running again, wish I could've gotten in at the start, had a rough night though, power was out for half of it, so I couldn't sleep. Will definitely catch next run.

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>>48212868
Guess what I found.

>>48212952
That's actually a saucy little number, especially the grenade rig.

Where's it from?

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>>48213077
Found it on Danbooru.
Artist is exaxuxer.

>>48212868
So that hostile fleet that did a space drive-by... it's not a Cuithe fleet?

Also, I'm getting the vibes that Carrina is a bit more callous in this quest than before. (Beware the incoming wall of text.)

The train stand-off with a "Shoot first, ask questions later" attitude was understandable.

The questioning of the two company employees and them getting thrown under the bus afterwards. Weird, but the matter was pretty serious, so I didn't give it any further thought. Could've given them an out, like being a key witnesses for any future inquiries, in hindsight.

The commander of the Vipers. I guess it could have been handled with a bit more finesse, but otherwise it portrays the sort of urgency needed then. Understandable with how the votes went too.

And then there's the fate of that junior MS crew member. It's a pretty pragmatic decision, and it'll probably work out in the end now that we're secure in the knowledge that Cuithe might not be fully hostile. But still, for it to cross to the point that this is an IC decision that's being considered kinda left me wondering.

I dunno if it's partially influenced by Newtype power shenanigans ("Everything's probably gonna be ok. Future eye says so.") or if it's a little bit of something else. I am glad we're getting some of Carrina's inner thoughts over every action.

Put it this way, it's like she's stepping closer into canon Haman territory, and that really worries me.

>>48213207
It's really "a bit of something else". The situation between Carya and Catrina's uncertain status is a constant reminder of an uncomfortable past that's still very recent in the grand scheme of things. It's also true that while she has her own ideals, she's a soldier first and foremost.

She may not be totally comfortable with it, but a near-ruthless pragmatism is part of her decision-making process.