Galactic Pilgrimage, Part 3 of 3 - Obliti
01 Dec 2018Monolith Preacher
Preacher woke up in Morgan's Rest. That is to say, he woke up in the den of ill repute centred in the red light district of the asteroid base known as Morgan's Rest. That is to say, he woke up within the company of the eponymous Morgan who was certainly not resting as Jaquel rushed out of there towards the docks. The security wasn't resting as it chased him for failing to present his valet ticket as he wanted to inspect his ship within the anti-grav garage lovingly called "The Sardine Tin" by grease monkeys from Jaques' to Bill Turner's.Air Traffic Control was shouting to eighteen different channels what the protocol was around Letters of Marque as The Ravager sauntered through the letterbox at barely above approach speed. He smoothed out the landing process by greasing a few cogs on the way in and spent the night at the nearest bar to the docks. By the time he left for the bubble in the morning, there was nothing left behind it.
Checking his watch, he realised it was eleven in the morning. Checking the date he noticed he'd lost a week somewhere. Trying to remember the last thing he knew he did, a shiver ran down his spine as he realised he had no idea how he made it through the event horizon of that black hole let alone make it back to the bubble. Looking at his inbox made him spill his Goman Yaupon coffee and engage pre-flight protocols. As Jaquel set a route for Kamorin as fast as he could, he sent out a hail on Scarlet's frequency. As expected she was still at Morgan's Rest, having probably taken over where he left off. She always was a good host whenever he saw her, and he could only assume this applied to most of her social scenarios as long as she'd not forgotten lunch and acquired a bee in her visor again.
"Heya sugar, where'd you end up to end up here last night?"
Preach responded with his own question, entirely foregoing their usual "sweet nothings" protocols predicated by their polar predispositions to purple prose.
"Where did I end up to end up here last night?"
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Jaquel's mouth tasted like one too many gargle blasters and there was a massive badge covering half his chest proclaiming him as the ten thousandth member of the seventy five k club. He wasn't great at maths, but enough people thought it was a good thing that he hadn't seen the bottom of his glass for quite some time now. It wasn't a great thing to see, truth be told. The bottom of the glass had twisted his mouth into a leering smirk, as despite the fact he couldn't feel the muscles within he was pretty sure it was closer to resembling a grimace. As he slowly picked himself up off the table so as to avoid the instant nausea which can accompany too brisk an awakening from stupor, he realised he might take another day or two to get back in order to at least be presentable. With any luck he might even have a few far flung wits about him. The faint dampness of rum undertones assaulted his nostrils almost as prevalently as the pervasive rock dust swirling around the outpost. He wondered for a few minutes as to how a filtration unit could be deprioritised to the point an entire ventilation system now needed a piecemeal attempt at a total overhaul. Eventually, he settled on greed and modified the intake settings on his breathing mask. He'd probably been breathing this crap for days already, but better late than never.
"Well, time to pull up the feeds." he said as he cut an arcing line towards the bar. The barman looked over from his optics.
"Rum's gone, your fault. Anything else you want?"
Preach thought of asking the obvious question, but settled on another.
"Can I pay my tab?"
The barman laughed.
"With how much is behind the bar right now, I don't think we've got enough drink to cover your tab. Just go and we'll do our best to get through the rest when you've gone."
As much as Jaquel could've done with one for the road, if the rum was gone there was no point in staying around. He decided to get his bearings, so he knocked his flight assistance off as he approached the letterbox, and allowed himself to pick vectors to slowly swim towards around the asteroid belt whilst his brain worked. He pulled up re-runs of his return from Galnet, and marvelled at the rumours which has spread since it return. Making the music for his exploration montage in a single weekend with the aid of authentic antique Leestian synths, authentic Leestian shamans, and a few instances of attempting to work within the templates of each other's ritual endeavours. The heisting of 8 Parsecs and O'Malley's Coffee and Payday loans in one night which coincided with the release of the video itself. The time spent out exploring the Tenebris and believing he'd put his name on a system with a black hole and a water world, but losing a full two thirds of his exploration data during a scuffle with the SysAuth following some traffic violations. The fact that almost all his wing had disappeared in his absence. That being said, his absence seemed to stretch up to a month after his return. No matter how much he researched about himself, he couldn't account for anything since he dived into the precipice, and now he had a hard time believing this was anything but a superego induced mental break. Maybe he was still spinning, and his brain had taken him to any kind of safe spot it could conjure up. If that was the case, it seemed to be lasting into banality by the time reality really did set in. It looked like he enjoyed himself, and these things had a habit of piecing themselves together a few days after the drinking stopped anyway. His body could handle a lot, but his brain always struggled to recover from malt liquor.
Hammerson was determined to get Preach from zero to moonshine in as few steps as possible, but was finding it a bit of a challenge finding the right entry drink. It had only been fifteen attempts so far, so there was time to let it grow on the lad. He'd gotten the skinny as to how bare bones the new setup was going to be, and promptly offered his services when asked if there was anything he might be able to bestow upon those less able than himself to procure them. Thus had begun an attempt for he and Jaquel to turn each other to their tipple of choice. Whilst they both had skin in the game, this battle of the palate coerced in them the kind of fervent loyalty only a half-remembered pledge of a fully forgotten necessity could give. The first night being over, Hammerson decided it was obviously the lack of seasoned taste behind the selection of Preach's bar which stopped the whiskey from expressing itself adequately. He'd felt the same about his own stock of late due to all the fluctuations in the markets recently. With no-one at the controls of late it had been hard to stay competitive. Profits were still down, but considering everything it could be worse. Maybe a few systems might even be able to tread water once everything started ticking over. Whenever Gunnerson thought about the way layers of bureaucracy could fall away if the hydra lost too many heads it made him realise that even though he had issues as an independent trader of exotic militia, he'd rather not be the head of a cell structure. Being an amoeba was fine by him. He could attach a history card to his weapons if he wanted to get a quick buck. Organising anything much beyond transactions was beyond his range of care right now. Security was always paramount to him, and the thought of having to outsource his workflow filled him with dread. He took a sip from his flask to calm his nerves.
"Better him than me" the muttered to himself, and decided to start on his inventory checks. It was going to be a long night.
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Jaquel took a few days to detox when he finally got back. All in all he ended up a week over his schedule, but all things considered he thought it wouldn't have made much difference. Their resources were stretched to bursting. Despite their best attempts to shed a few systems and drop admin costs accordingly, it seemed their notoriety had reached a point where random well-wishing individuals were too busy trying to spread the word for the train to stop rolling any time soon. The problem was if it didn't stop then it'd crash through lack of direction. It wasn't the first time he cursed his terms of contract. He'd said they could always just convert the crews to increase loyalty, but instead the turnover was petering out. He was going to have to make the best of a bad situation, and just prioritise. The combat wing was all but decimated with the loss of their contracts with the AUS Squad, a lone band of renegades you could only hire if you had the tinnies and could find them. They had done a lot of work, but eventually they decided living on different body clocks meant you could never drink with your employer, and left quite amicably to cavort with fellow Bruces in systems which operated on their hours. Most of the newer recruits had been floating in and out of active service for a while, and their last recruitment drive had done badly due to lack of funding. There was only one decision to make in such scenarios, and the shareholders weren't going to like it.
He set up a meeting in one of those stuffy non-descript soundproof offices every government and their dog has used to experiment with new interviewing techniques for prisoners as often as for sensitive talks which fall under the jurisdiction of the Pilot's Federation but tend not to get written up. Turgid wall colours, austere tables resembling lunch trolleys, chairs welded to the floor in places, slight whiff of toilet cleaner and that just-cleaned carpet smell. No carpets. He called in what was left of Black Omega's command structure, and handed everyone a data tablet on the way in. Once everyone had taken an inwards facing seat Preach explained the situation in no uncertain terms.
"We're stretched to a point we have no eyes. We don't have the manpower for bully work, and we barely have it for trade work right now. Our only option is to focus on a new strategy. We all know I've got a line to Saud Kruger, and we also know that smuggling profits have been down for the past year or so. I suggest we run a dual front on the business to make up for our lack of activity in the fight of late. We can cater to the whims of our illustrious guests and thus gain new links that not only consume, but can invest back into our usual cloak and dagger trade routes. We might not have as much overt influence, but considering how big our presence appears we may be able to make Deggie's look like the centre point for a local Pegasi tourism initiative, and then be sure to keep the relevant sectors off-grid. The trick is that we don't change the economies of our systems to facilitate it, because we're touting independence, see? We could even be cheeky and pull up a few examples of people looting local pyrats without waiting for paperwork. At the end of the day, if someone can't hold on to their own property, it wasn't their right to own it. And there's the rub, folks! If we can't find a way to own our image, someone will turn up and highlight our flaws."
As he looked around at a sea of concerted thinking, he realised everyone here probably had their own issue with part of the plan. He reckoned as long as none of them could think of a structured narrative as to its trouble as a whole then the ship would sail. It was obviously risky, and to some people it might feel like accepting defeat. Victor's dislike of the Empire was well known, and Preach had been the face of the company whenever they came around. He almost wished the Feds would just be done with his paper service and let Victor deal with them, but seeing as that was about as likely as them admitting their own psy-corps he'd decided to just continue doing PR duties when he had the time. In a way that led his idea some weight, as he'd demonstrated his ability to broker at a fairly high level. On the other hand, his massive restructuring could be seen besides these facts to make it seem like he was making a power grab. In all reality he'd given up caring about his title in the group a while ago, and was too busy just trying to make sure everything ticked over to think too much about his own aspirations. If these circumstances meant he had to restructure to something he knew in order to oversee it properly, then it came down to whether anyone had any better and usable ideas.
Seeing as there were still a few people left unaccounted for by the time proceedings ended two days later, Preach thought it safe to assume that there were no further objections to be heard of any relevance and went ahead with the initial stages of the plan. It was time to find out if slaves had held their value recently, and to start visiting every fence, tea leaf, runner, surfer, gardener, cooker, bookie, and dag he knew to make sure his house was in order. As he flicked through the ships he had docked, he noticed something odd with the schematics of one of his own vessels. He found himself an engineer and was told everything was operating within acceptable parameters, and decided to take a look himself. As the ship was slotted into the dock, Jaquel couldn't help but whistle the slow descending note of awe. This wasn't his Python, this was something new, and he couldn't wait to take off.
"This looks like it's gonna be the start of a whole new me!"
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The ship had recently been re-named as the "Drunken Caliphkrait" after having changed hands a short time ago. There was a video recording he'd left when he first started her up, but his explanation was the kind which you had to be eight days deep into a bender to be able to decipher. Jaquel was only on day five, and as such a few things were lost in translation. To the best of his ability to work out, he'd been bet he couldn't heist O'Malley's and he'd blown up a ship in the attempt. In the interests of saving face, he came back with a larger bet. He put his Revelation 8:11 up against his opponent's main ship, a heavily modified Krait. The second time he'd been successful and had celebrated with a further and considerably more drunken heist with an accompanying smuggling spree. Not bad for a night's work, if a bit sloppy by his usual standards.
A precursory look through the fire groups showed that this was a vessel meant for pyracy. For a lot of people, this would dictate their use of the ship. Jaquel, however, merely thought it a novel anti-pyracy measure of his own. If he happened to find a derelict or soon to be derilict ship with useful materials, it would also aid in cleaning up the wreckages. The hardpoints were in logical locations, and the engineering work done by the previous owner seemed to gel nicely with Preach's perception of how he would have modified it. The madman had even managed to procure some packhounds. This was a guy who knew his stuff and had the links to get it done. Preach almost felt bad for the guy. His infatuation with the unique flight mechanics was obvious in his tunings, and no one likes to lose something they've modified to such specific parameters.
It did fly like a dream when everything was said and done, though. Had the kind of rhythm to its flight that made one bank their frame to one side or the other when pulling off advanced manoeuvres. It had a fair clip to it, but something about the thruster balance positively screamed to take it out like you just stole it whenever you leave port. Part of that might've been down to the smell of plausibly rotting leather, but whatever it was it just worked. He found himself enjoying flying for the first time in a while, and began spending time working on different manoeuvres in asteroid fields. People made too much of conflict zones as a means of "real" training. For one with the knowledge of combat mechanics, an asteroid field offers a way to test theory with the rocks acting as the curve balls in your flight plan. Fighting people was just a case of matching their vector and thrust for the most part, and Preach rarely had a problem reading people. Still, he was going to hit that “deadly” rating soon enough, so he thought it wouldn't do any harm to find some people that might be able to test his mettle and give him some tips. The only issue was finding people willing to engage in his shadier pursuits and feed his growing staple of questionable habits might prove tricky.