The rest of the trip out to a safe jumping distance goes uneventfully. The ship safely transitions into hyperspace and ROCK proceeds towards imperial space.
About two and a half months after departing Qantseqr, the ship arrives at Rio JP. An imperial warfleet is stationed near the jump point and immediately identifies ROCK. Coded messages are passed back and forth, verified and acknowledged. Sir Jon is no longer at Rio and has instructed the group (including Mek) to travel on to Jewell and rendevous there. ROCK is refueled and resupplied and is on its way again within a couple of days.
MEK: One minor question. Are we still at war? One major question. How is my adopted daughter and the orphanage?
GM: The empire is still at war with the zho. Your adopted daugher and the orphanage are doing fine.
MEK: Before leaving Rio, Mek will visit with the members of his squad. That assumes that they are still in orbit and haven't shipped to the front. Or to Thengo......
GM: ROCK never went to Rio Prime. The ship was met at the jump point, refueled, and sent on its way.
JACK: It is my understanding that Mek needed to make contact with the people on Rio Prime at least briefly, I'd have tried to arrange that for him. During the months we were in space Jack spends time practicing in the gym alone quite a bit, and if anyone stumbles in on him he is standing perfectly still in a combat stance, glowing golden and bathed in sweat, concentrating, while his aura pulses rhythmically. Other times he continues his studies of Systems Operations, particularly the operations of ROCK's sensors that would be needed to qualify him to take a bridge watch.
MEK: One time when Jack is 'practicing' in the gym, he'll hear Mek's familiar voice from near the ceiling. "Geez, Jack. Use the toilet like everyone else, will ya? And get some roughage."
JACK: Given you've been watching him more than he thought, you would have noticed that he seems to be trying to force his bio-field aura to concentrate on his fist through sheer willpower and focus. After your comment he lets out his breath explosively chuckling and says, "I suppose it does look a little like that, doesn't it. I'm trying to focus my bio-field in different ways to allow me to be more versatile in battle. We've run into many opponents that I just can't seem to deal with in any way, so I wanted to try to improve my chances of helping the group with them. I think I'm starting to have some success, but only time and practice (and GM approval) will tell for sure.
MIDNIGHT: Midnight spends the months of travel time bouncing between the bridge, engineering and the workout rooms. He makes a point to learn the basics of how to work in/around a ship by questioning and watching any/all persons who work the sensors, comms, pilot chair, etc.
MIDNIGHT: Midnight doesn't make much of an attempt to get to know the new passengers on board. He doesn't relate well to the Rickets, and he's not sure what to make of most of the others. He's not rude, and he'll gladly speak, play or work with any who approach him. He's basically waiting to see who'll stick around once we meet up with Sir Jon.
MIDNIGHT: He also practices his martial arts with Vamparina on a regular basis if she is willing to continue his training. The mental and physical exertions allow Midnight to channel his powers in new ways which he has fun learning to control during these sessions.
MIDNIGHT: Midnight also spends many hours each day pouring through weaponsmithing books, and "hands-on" dismantling, assembling and designing weapons. If asked about his increased attention to such things, he simply states that he plans to get his Gunnery license soon, and he wants to be ready for the test.
TECH: TF: Spaceships (2 pts), +2 Weaponsmithing (17- w/levels), Density Increase w/Damage Shield Clinging added to multipower.
A little over a month later, ROCK arrives at Jewell JP. A week later it pulls into a military space station orbiting Jewell Prime and Sir Jon is waiting when the airlock opens. With him is Lisan Ricket, the 13 year old daughter of Professer and Nanci Ricket. Needless to say, the reunion is emotionally charged and tearful. The Ricket's haven't seen their daughter is almost four years although Lisan was in cold sleep for most of that time so she has only aged about a year.
MEK: Mek bawls as everyone gets teary and then shrinks down.
JACK: Jack will greet Lisan warmly when the opportunity presents itself, show his continued interest in her life and wellbeing, etc. How's life with the Aunt and Uncle treating her? :)
The professor and his wife and daughter are given time to themselves to catch up. Everyone else is shown to private quarters in a quarantine section of the station.
Then the debriefing begins. Various analysts from the IIS talk to each one of you separately and then later together in small groups. They ask many, many questions about the mission in general and Qantseqr in particular. You have access to entertainment and good food but the environment is otherwise quite isolated and the only people you see are each other and the analysts doing the debriefing. Sir Jon stops in to see everyone on a regular basis and tries to assuage any ill feelings or anger at the duration of the debriefing. He talks very smoothly and promises that it will be over very soon.
MEK: This is a process Mek is used to as a scout, so he's actually pretty good at telling them what he saw without a lot on interpretation. It was his MOS. (PS:Army Scout NCO, 13-, [rolled 17]) After being asked for the seventieth time about the anomaly experience and explaining it, he will ask them, "So, now that you guys know, how do you want to handle it? The way I see it there are two ways it could go. First, IIS and the Army could both run tails on me and waste a lot of time sneaking and snooping. Second, you guys could ignore it and let me walk away with an alien invasion in the colon. Or third, which is close enough to two for me, we could just arrange it here that I have to check in with you on occasion for a debrief every few months. That assumes that four isn't that you take me apart and find the alien bits. But, I only promised two, so I don't think we can legally get to four from one. Know what I mean?"
KYLE (OOC): For all that he'll still be irritated at what IIS did to him, Kyle will still be a font of knowledge about Qantseqr. He'll be perfectly willing to give the IIS hundreds of hours of tape about the situation on Qantseqr - and he's got a lot of it. For all that the IIS treated him badly, the Zho treated him worse. And at least the IIS rescued him.
And given what most of the team has been through over the past few years, it is a short time. Sir Jon is as good as his word and fulfills his promise to the original group to clear their names. Jack, Max, Curt, Surge and Vamperina are no longer wanted criminals and, in fact, no longer even have a criminal record.
JACK: I originally was thinking it would be better to have the record, but show that we were acquitted of all charges during an appeal to deal with those who would have some personal memory of the business, but then realized just aving no record at all is better in these times of heightened mutant suspicion. Again, Jack asks to have access to a gym to train in, and a tutor for sensor operations (unless he's finished learning it by now).
Mek, if he so chooses, is cycled out of the military as his enlistment has ended.
MEK: Mek will accept his Honorable Discharge, though any other discharge he'll leave with Kyle to analyze in the lab. He's out of the Army, but not into anything yet. This should begin a discussion about what he does next. At this point he likes you guys, but things didn't move in quite the way he'd expected. The COS procedure was waylaid by the Adventure in Zholand.
GM: Obviously it will be up to Mek to get this discussion rolling.
Kyle receives an official apology for what happened to him but no official acknowledgement that the IIS was in any way involved.
KYLE (OOC): He'll be understanding about their need for secrecy. So long as he's compensated for his lost time, he'll be willing to let sleeping Vargr lie. He will ask for their assistance in getting his life together - contacting banks, getting his medical license renewed, etc. I figure they should be able to streamline that sort of thing without any acknowledgement of involvement. And if they start the ball rolling on Rio, some of it might be completed by the time we get to Regina.
MEK: Nice to see some good came form all this. :-)
Sir Jon thanks Vareq for his years of service to the empire and wishes him well in private life. Which is another way of saying that he is fired.
JACK: Fired? Why? He did his job, I hope it wasn't anything to do with his trip with us...
GM: It is up to Vareq if he wants to expand on this.
On the final night, the professor and his family rejoin the group (it's the first time you've seen the Rickets since you arrived at the station and there is something subtlely different about both the professor and his wife though no one, not even Jack, can put their finger on exactly what.
JACK: Perhaps a personality overlay was removed, or a new one instated, or their memories altered to blank out the extensive debriefing that never happened ;) In any case Jack will not pry heavily, now is not the time. If Lisan is present he will again show his affection for her and dance with her if she likes, or something to that effect.
The food is excellent and served by some of the best chefs at the station. Many toasts are made and everyone's good health drunk to many times.
Dalag announces that he will be rejoining the Imperial Scouts and returning to space in his own Scout ship. Brendan announces that he is retiring from the IIS after a long career and has not yet decided what he will do. No one is quite sure whether his retirement was voluntary or not. Curt says that he wants to go down to Messemer (capital city of Jewell) and 'kick around for awhile'. The professor reiterates that he and his family want to travel with Jack to find his friend.
KYLE (OOC): Kyle will certainly make arrangements to keep in touch with Brendan. I'm sure Kyle has a bank, a lawyer, an electronic PO box, whatever. You don't go through several years on a prison planet with someone to lose touch when you escape. And though he's almost as out-of-date as Brendan, he'll offer to lend what help he can, if Brendan needs it, to pursue whatever it is he chooses to do.
MIDNIGHT: Since there's a war on, this may not be the best time to mention it, but Midnight will as Sir Jon about his Gunnery Officer testing/licensing which was part of the original contract when he and Michael first agreed to work with the IIS.
GM: Yes, that was part of the deal. Go ahead and send me the die rolls for the test:
Firing Simulator: 20 DEX rolls (Scored 90%)
Gun Maintenance - Rockets: 20 Weaponsmith (Missiles and Rockets) rolls (Scored 100%)
Gun Maintenance - Energy: 20 Weaponsmith (Energy Weapons) rolls (Scored 100%)
Shield Maintenance: 20 Weaponsmith (Shields) rolls (Scored 100%)
GM: Midnight scored 90% on the firing simulator and 100% on the other three sections of the test. That earns him a Chief Gunnery Officer license.
The following day, Curt, Dalag and Brendan bid the rest of the team farewell as they board ROCK. The ship is fully fueled and supplied and the group is free to go where they wish. Each person is given 150,000 credits, either in cash or deposited in the bank of their choice on Jewell or some combination thereof.
JACK: Jack wishes each of them health, fortune, and happiness, especially Curt as he's been a good friend for so long. I'm definitely sorry to see him go. Jack will take his payment in 3 portions, depositing a third on account with the Imperial banks of Jewell and Regina, and the other third in cash. He has some ideas of what to do with the money one day, but now is not the time.
KYLE (OOC): I assume that includes Kyle, as an unacknowledged settlement for his loss of three years. He'd take the bulk in a respectable Imperium-wide bank where he no doubt has an existing account. He'd almost certainly blow some of the cash to enjoy some of the things he's had to do without the past several years - higher tech luxuries and high quality Imperial foodstuffs come to mind.
GM: Obviously a lot transpired in this turn. Feel free to interject at any point and do all of the role playing that you wish. You should also let me know where you want to go from here. You could head to a civilian space station around Jewell, park there for awhile as you spend some time on Jewell. Or you could just head out from here and make your way down to the Black Moon system (called the Utoland system in Traveller).
JACK (GM): (reminder to everyone) While marked as Utoland on our star charts it's actually called the Newcomb system in our universe, Black Moon is just one moon around a gas giant in that system, one with its own asteroid belt that is rich in minerals. The moon itself also has good mineral deposits (Oridium), which is why a MULE (Mutant prison) was built there to mine them, since it is hazardous to the health of those mining it. Circle City is the only city on Black Moon and serves as the transfer facility, starport, and support for the prison/mine.
JACK: Jack spends a little time on Jewell enjoying civilization again, but never loses touch with the ROCK or the others, and anytime anyone wishes to talk, he makes himself available. He's not sure how soon everyone will be ready to leave for Newcomb, or if they're going there at all, so he stays patient and laid back.
KYLE (OOC): On either Rio or Jewell, Kyle would want to get a full medical checkup. It's been three years with low tech medicine, and he would want to make sure everything was okay. He would also spend a great deal of time catching up on current events and the most recent scientific developments. The group would often find him at a video display paging through news reports and technical journals at a breakneck pace - a page every few seconds. At first it would look like he was skimming them, but after a while it would be clear that he was actually reading them all.
KYLE (OOC): Kyle is happy to stick around with the group if they have need of him. Black Moon is as good a place as any to go, and they're companionable people. He would see if they'd be willing to set up one of the cabins on ROCK as a medical bay. And if so, he'd see if he could wheedle some proper medical equipment out of the IIS to supply it. He'd note that since he doesn't sleep much at all, and he recognizes that space on a ship is always at a premium, he'd be happy to take the medical bay in lieu of his own assigned cabin.
VAMPERINA: Vamperina welcomes Kyle to the team.
JACK: I believe Jack already made Kyle welcome earlier, but he will welcome him to the team as well. "I've always been pretty healthy because my bio-field, but having a doc on board to treat everyone else is more than a little valuable, let alone one with your teleportation abilities. I only ask one personal favor, and that's don't try to figure out what makes me or my bio-field tick, I've had to put up with a lot of medical research over the years, and it makes me cranky," he finishes with a grin. "Add to it that my mutancy is the very result of advanced medical research conducted on my home planet by an alien race, and I hope you'll understand that I'm just not that tolerant of it any more."
JACK: Jack also speaks with Mek and Vareq during this time as they are trying to decide what to do with themselves, and casually invites them each to continue travelling with the team until they know better what they want to do with themselves. He specifically encourages Mek to stay with the friends he has here instead of going off on his own, especially after that incident with the anomaly. (This is not meant as a slight to Vareq, more as a subtle reminder that
Mek may be under more scrutiny than he thinks he is, or headed for a research lab of his own if someone unscrupulous finds out about him and he isn't travelling with friends ;) Once it comes out that Vareq has been let go from the IIS, he will show his concern and curiousity, and ask if there's anything that he can do to help.
OMEN: Vareq has been alternatively friendly and surly throughout the trip. In his friendly moods he will play chess, watch holos in the common room. He'll help Midnight with his hand to hand skills. He'll even spar with Jack and Vamperina. They might be surprised to learn that Vareq's HtH skills are almost on the level of Vamperina's, even without using his powers.
OMEN: When he's in his worse moods he'll stay in his cabin. Any one who sees him during these spells will notice his hands shake and he has frequent nosebleeds.
OMEN: When asked by Jack if he'll stay on, he says:
OMEN: Thanks for the offer. I don't really know what I'll do next. I've always been told what to do. Now I have to think for myself.
MEK: Mek agrees, "You know Jack, it's like you read my mind. Not that it takes much to read a few words, but still the thickness of my cranial carapace usually prevents most folks from doing it. Sticking around with you guys for awhile works for me. Do I need to pay for my food and water? OOPS! I for-got! That's taken care of now. I don't eat food. Except on Founders Day. I love picnics."
JACK: We each pay our own living expenses overall, especially food, clothes, and luxuries, and up till now we'd been paying the expenses of the ROCK as a group, or getting reimbursed for them from the owner's funds or by the IIS. Now that the owners are here we may need to discuss whether we pay them for passage or they pay us as the ship's crew, or some combination of the two ;)
MEK: "So what super secret spy thing is next? And who really owns the ROCK? What diabolical plans does Dr. Orpheum have in store for our friends? And what will Vamperina do to make the annoying ex-corporal quiet down? These and more questions will be answered in our next episode of 'Daw-w-w-n of the Mek Monster.' "
JACK: "Didn't you hear? It's the perennial story of unrequited love between a boy and his computerized girl. Oh, and the twist is that both of them are virtually immortal. Will the evil Brotherhood of Anubi gain control of Xorn and turn him into their ultimate super-weapon? Will the girl convince the boy that flesh is overrated? Stay tuned..."
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MIDNIGHT (OOC): Where were Scout and Aerial going when we left them? If they were headed to Jewell, Midnight would like to go down to visit and see how she's adjusting, etc. Otherwise, he has no desire to go to Jewell for R&R or anything.
GM: Scout and Aeria went to Regina Prime.
JACK (OOC): Last I heard they were headed for Cape Goliath on Regina, when they finally had permission to leave Rio. That permission may not have happened yet though, so I'd bet on either Rio Prime or Cape Goliath.
JACK: Jack also lets those departing those leaving (Brendan, Dalag, and Curt) know about his TAS Box in Cape Goliath, if anyone needs to get in touch with him he tries to check it when he can, but don't expect emergency contact :) This is his standard procedure when someone goes off to do their own thing, he can't be sure how often he will be in contact, but he at least tries to leave them a way to find him eventually.
MEK: Uhhh. Doesn't the Old Man know about NetMail? :-D Mek checked his when he got back. See, he's in this PBnM RPG with some folks on Capital, Inthe and Ankod and they were just starting this mission on Old Earth........
JACK: TAS boxes have the advantage of being very hard to trace and given Jack's fugitive existence for the last 4 years, he chooses to stay a little harder to track even though he's legit now. At least until the next group of jerks decides to set him up for murder and railroad him into prison without a trial.
MEK: Of the cr150,000 Mek receives, cr25,000 go back to his family on Enope to help out with his sister's college fund. Another cr25,000 will go to the orphanage. Another cr1 will go to food for the rest of the year. WAHHHHHH! :'(
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JACK (reminder): Jack never goes off completely into his own little world and ignores everyone, it's not who he is, even if it's who I am ;) On the entire trip through space back to Rio, during the debriefing, he's not only available to talk, he is companionable and interested in what's going on with each of you. This goes for everyone, not just the new people too, he's curious what Vamperina's gotten herself interested in lately, spends time playing videogames with Midnight, lets Surge talk over his head about Rockora, Storm, and the virtual network inside the ship's computers, talks to Curt about his plans and how he's feeling since his 'liquid' episode during our visit to Qantseqr, etc. He makes himself available as a punching bag for those that are working on new attacks, spars genially with people who want to, and even tries to come up with something new to stop those he has trouble sparring against like Vamperina.
JACK (OOC): If I'm forgetting anyone rest assured that Jack doesn't, it's just Keith that can't remember everything or everyone ;)
MIDNIGHT: Midnight gladly takes the chance to practice with Jack or anyone. His h-t-h skills are still obviously in development, but he enjoy's the experience. |