Off The Books
18 Feb 2021Elkyri
Faraday Ring, Bunda3307.02.12
No joy on the planetary approach suite. Completely whacked. Faulcon DeLacy and the makers of the module's components are pointing fingers, each trying to lay the fault on the other. Pulling the module out and replacing it with another had no effect so it doesn't look like a bad module but more likely something in the way it's interfacing with the ship.... for which DeLacy takes no responsibility. This is going to take some time to sort out and I'm getting the idea I may end up taking Yalena to the proverbial shade tree mechanic as a last resort. I'm hearing it's not just Yalena that's having issues. In a way that's good news as it means DeLacy may have to end up owning it and finding a fix after all.*
All of that means I'm restricted to working the orbitals for a while. I can work around that, at least for now. After getting Yalena put back together and getting out of Jameson Memorial I started by picking up a few delivery missions out of Bunda. Local runs, mostly, so quick turnarounds. It's a Federation controlled system and in the process of dealing with them I learned the refugee rescue runs I was doing in Shenve last month got me on their good side. I had just arranged the download of two-hundred tons of aquaponic systems hauled in from Meredith City when their contact with the Eravarenth Alliance came on the comms.
"Good day, Commander; I'm Chancellor Kaily Hill. I saw your name pop up on the list of arrivals and wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for helping the Federation with the evacuation of Hannah Enterprise."
"You're welcome," I said. "There were quite a few of us pitching in. I only did my small part."
"Even so," she said, "the Federation wants to repay you in some way for your contribution. They've authorized me to offer you an honorary commission."
"That's very generous," I said, suppressing a chuckle. "But as I understand things it's really just a title with nothing behind it unless I want to buy something from Core Dynamics. That's not likely so I don't know that we need to bother with that."
"Well, there is a little more to it than that." She smiled and paused just a moment. "Have you never considered visiting Earth?"
She had me there. Who hasn't thought about it? It's a pilgrimage many make, usually as passengers on a cruise liner since ships require special permits to gain access to the system. The permits aren't easy to get... and here she was holding out the implied promise of granting one.
"Ah, I see," I said. "So this commission gets the permit unlocked on my nav computer?"
"It does," she straightened up a little taller, "and we can get that arranged for you." Another pause. "That is, we can get that arranged for you if you'll first do us another little favour."
There it is, self said to me -- there's the catch. Enough skirting around. "What kind of favour?" I asked.
"A certain ship was lost in Eravarenth." Any remaining semblance of a smile was gone. She was all business now. "We need someone to retrieve the ship's black boxes."
"Uh huh," I hummed in understanding then asked, "Why me? Certainly you have your own search and rescue ships in your home system. Why not have them do the recovery?"
"We need to be more..." she paused as she searched for the right word, "...more discreet than that. It won't do for any of our ships to be seen in the area. As for why we're asking you, let's just say we've looked into your past and we know not all your cargo runs have been on the books. We need this to be one of those runs."
There it was. Somebody was caught doing something they didn't want anyone to know about. Now somebody else doesn't want anyone to know they did something about it while still trying to find out what it was they were up to in the first place. Intriguing, but I try not to get too involved in the "why" about such things. Trouble can lie down that path. I focus on the essentials and try to keep it simple.
"What's the risk?" I asked.
"Minimal. It looks like no survivors and no sign a distress call went out. No hostiles expected in the area."
"Swoop in, find the wreckage, scoop up the black boxes, then scurry back here? Sounds easy enough." I lifted a questioning eyebrow, silently asking for the part that wasn't going to be easy.
"It should be. We just need you to get the boxes into the station without them being picked up on a scan. They must not be traced back to us."
The boxes have transponders designed to make them easy to find. They easily show up on even the most basic, low-tech scanners. Better scanners -- such as the ones that pick out your ship ID as you approach a station -- can identify the ship they came from. If they were to be picked up on the scanner as I entered the station an unskilled scanner operator might wonder why it looked like there were two ships occupying the same space. Anyone with more time on the job would recognize it for what it was -- a ship carrying recovered black boxes.
If a legitimate recovery, no problem there. Ships often return with escape pods and black boxes retrieved from distressed vessels. There are even rewards given when turning them over to the Search and Rescue contacts to encourage Commanders to do just that. But in this case Kaily didn't want them turned over to Search and Rescue. She wanted them herself and she didn't want anyone to know she had them.
Any attempt to disable the transponder usually results in the loss of any data recorded and safeguarded by the box so that's not an option. Bottom line, they need to be smuggled into the station undetected, hence her "off the books" offer to me.
On the screen I could see her fish a thumb drive from her tunic and plug it into the terminal. "I'm uploading the coordinates now. Signal me when in range and I'll have a team on the docks standing by to take delivery."
The screen went blank as she abruptly cut the link. I hit the refresh then the replay button. As expected there was nothing there, either not recorded or instantly scrubbed from memory. Tricky.
"Well, Zoe," I said, turning to the cat lounging in the co-pilot's seat. "It looks like we may be in for a trip to Mother Gaia one of these days."
*OOC -- this refers to an issue PS4/5 console players are having with access to Horizons content. Some of us lost access to Horizons on 14/15 January. If you are a console player and still affected by this issue, please see the thread linked below and chime in on the Frontier rep's requests for info.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/issues-with-playstation-horizons-access.565831/#post-8965711
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