Session Log 14

Stars Our Destination Tier

• The party members continued pursuing their own personal goals or planning for their Launch Day celebrations:

- Kruger spent his time worming through the various panopticon records looking for anything that might allow him to track Oz-4.

- John 117 did some research into what would likely happen if he turned himself in to swarm security and offered to make amends. He learned that it might be possible since it was the Scum after all, but it would likely take many years of the worst kinds of social scorn and service to rise from the notorious hole he had dug for himself.

- Piv tried to recruit the rest of the team for the Blackrock mission, but struggled to convince them all it was a good idea.

-  Nickolas brought Terry (and to a lesser degree the rest of the party) up to speed on Angel’s proposition, but there is a general feeling of unease about the idea of going (back in some cases) to work for the man who was somehow responsible for the hot mess of the Song Cai Flower and by extension most of what has happened to them since.

- Rentlov debated both what to do with his knew-found inhumanity and with his father’s back up. He also tried to get an angle on Osiris and understand how he could share so much of his kinesics profile.

- Terry burned a gob of rep convincing a number of A-List Launch Day party hosts to combine their celebrations into one huge blow out. He spent even more rep setting up a crazy venue - a 200 meter diameter, inflatable bubble featuring its own life support and an incidence of refraction of 0.0 - it was essentially invisible so that the party would appear to simply be driving through space.

• While Terry made party arrangements, Nikolas worried about security while mulling over Angel’s offer. Rentlov finalized arrangements for Terry’s Launch Day Dead Orbit interview.

• Launch Day morning, Terry had his interview. Osiris was clearly walking a fine line, trying to knock him down a few pegs without looking like he was doing it so as to protect his own rep. The interview went well enough with Terry not losing any rep, but not gaining any either. Afterward, at the party, Rentlov made veiled but convincing threats to Osiris.

• The party both started and ended with a bang. Not only had the pre-funk been going on for days but the plan to bring the three biggest parties together in such a unique venue was genius - at least initially. There was every form or hedonistic, drug-induced, nanite-assisted, narco-algorithm flavored, no-holds-barred, self-destructive consciousness alteration with every kind of cosplay, AR sim, transhuman sex-kink imaginable. Everyone learned what an octopus condom looked like, heard genres of music that had not existed before that night and was soaked with every kind of bodily fluid all the first hour.

• Then, with no warning, the biggest party of the year became the biggest disaster in Swarm history...

***

Damage Control

At first it seems like something is exploding, but there are no flames and the general decompression alert does not activate - for the moment anyway. The vibration through the hull is devastating and tortuous, but it grinds on too long to be an explosion. The power goes out in the bubble and across the shipboard grid as emergency AR flickers to life - color-coded tethers of light leading the skilled to damage control stations and the useless to safety.

Your muses quickly sort through the chaotic chatter and parse out the vital details. Three Sheets to the Wind and Thought Crime - the swarm barge and the factory ship - have collided. Crashed together for some inexplicable reason and under the redundantly watchful eye of some of the most sophisticated navigational technology in the inner system. This simply does not happen. Not by mistake anyway.

Your muse is pinged by emergency management AIs and your essential skillset is assessed and integrated into the Swarm’s disaster response. You have expert abilities. How are you going to use them to help save the Stars?

***

• The party crashed to a literally screaming halt. In the eruption of chaos everyone’s muse was queried by the damage control AIs and each able-bodied person (including the sentinels) was assigned emergency service based on his proven skill set. Nikolas, John 117 and Rentlov on crowd control. Terry on EVA body and stack recovery. Piv on emergency structural survey and Kruger on damage control systems analysis and coordination.

Everyone spent a grueling, sleepless 48 hours trying to triage, secure and repair the damaged ships and the injured people. In the end everyone earned more or less @-Rep as their exploits were observed and reported and in some cases replayed virally across the swarm - Ninja Baby Rescue even spawned its own, long-lasting meme.

• Kruger discovered that the navigational systems of not only the two colliding ships, but those of several other vessels had all been compromised in a deliberate effort to cause the crash and prevent anyone from noticing it was happening until it was too late. A very sophisticated hack.

Mercury Tier

• Terry awoke to find himself inside a gatecrasher-style truck being tended to by a good looking woman who called herself Angel. When she started asking him some pointed questions about his friends and Caloris 18 Terry tried to play it tough. She calmly shut him down by threatening him with a microdot explosive she claimed to have injected into his neck before waking him up.