Saturday, March 14, 2009

Episode 14: Epilogue

A few days later the group met up at their favorite Space Port cafe to talk over next steps, when the Crew all simultaneously received anonymous vidmails. The First person to turn it on was met with the unmistakable visage of Jacques.

"'ello mon amis! Long time! I'd like to thank all of you for whatever you did to the Rubato, as she was most willing to believe that she had misjudged me most comprehensively in light of recent actions. So farewell and enjoy your stay!"

Attached was a simple Termination of Contract and Services notice, and as the group looked up, there was the unmistakable lines of their former ship, their equipment still in its cargo hold, leaving Terra Nova Space Port.



to be continued...

Friday, March 13, 2009

Episodes 12-14: Season Finale

So it came to pass that the Crew of the Rubato decided to take on the Hu-Sing, to save the region from the depredations of piracy.

Well, ok. the Gnobu offered to pay them lots.

Which makes me think of an interesting con - Pirates attack the hapless miners, 'Heroes' come to save the day, pirates and 'heroes' split the reward.

Anyway, the crew lead a daring assault on the pirate moon (finding additional motivation from the fact that the leader of the Hu-Sing is on The List), they did not penetrate far into the station - having been flown there expertly by Tyson - instead they decided to cause some mayhem within the initial hangar.

They swept one of the vessels of occupants, with little harm, except for a minor incident involving activating the exposed engine flodding the vessel with radiation. No real problems.

This, naturally gave The Crew a brilliant idea. Zechs decided to reactivate the engine so that it would blow. Some of the rest of the crew objected slightly because they were not informed of this plan, but onward to glory!

Net result, one space station minus one third of its mass after pirate vessel's engine suffered a critical operating malfunction.

Reward Collected! Onward!

So after a few weeks of hashing through options, Aerick and Maria decided to attempt to blackmail one Everard Schmidt into getting their names off of the Bounty Hunters target list. Being clever, they called his secretary to make an appointment.

After that failed, they simply phoned in their demands.

So Aerick, Maria and Maggie agreed to meet Mr. Schmidt at a lovely cafe, while Zechs, Tyson, and Dez hung out across the street.

Needless to say, no one was shocked when police cruisers arrived and hauled off the group at the cafe.

Interestingly, they did not go to the nearby station. Rather, Mr. Schmidt was in the cruiser as well. Long story short, he 'turned off' Maggies 'body', and took the trio to a warehouse, and offered to employ them in exchange for helping with their listing - all the while standing in front of clone chambers containing replicas of Maria, Aerick, Tyson and Dez.

Aerick and Maria agreed, and headed back to the ship with Maggie.

MEANWHILE, the rest of the group evidently decided to go rogue. They headed back to the Rubato, cuth through an outer door, and began to try to remove the 'connection' between the ship and Maggie, think, dear readers - and this is only a guess - that the AI was contained within the box. Not simeply the network connection.

Luckily, Tyson and Zechs decided to desist (either due to threats of termination or legal action, or something else) and as a result, the Rubato decided to switch the internal gav generators back on, and not leave port accelerating at 50G.

I do have a feeling that words may be exchanged sometime in the future between Maggie, Zechs and Tyson. Many many words.