Introduction
Wars are never truly won on the field of battle, but in the minds of the vanquished. Until then, all you have is words.
-The Memoirs of “Gentleman” Jack Cartwright
23 February - 18 March, WY603 – Helena
Current Contract: They’re Trying To Make Slaves of Us
The crew generally makes themselves useful for the week until ITC Marginally Better Than Prison departs Curtis’ Landing. They take the shuttle and meet the old freighter in transit. They’re met at the airlock by the ship’s captain and owner, Sal Bennet, along with his chief engineer “Pencil”. The crew of the freighter are all elderly veterans who’ve invested in the enterprise in their retirement.
Sal takes the crew to where they found Piney Newton’s body in a back corner of the hold. Angelica discovers an access plate that had been displaced (a detail the Bureau agents - led by Agent Frank Hargraves - at Storey missed), which reveals a faint trail of Helena soil in the pressure hull, which leads through a crawlspace to a cramped maintenance space where the stowaway hid for the journey. Angelica finds several hairs that don’t appear to match the elderly crew and collects them. Tomoe squeezes into the space and distinctly senses abject terror, presumably from the occupant.
The crew thanks Sal and takes their leave and returns to Legitimate Salvage. Over the next several weeks, the crew continues to investigate:
- Angelica hacks AEX records on the local net node and retrieves Izzy Cordova’s medical data. She confirms the hairs from ITC Marginally Better Than Prison are a genetic match.
- Tomoe makes a public records request of Jericho for Gareth Wright’s genome, but a response could be months away.
- Aiden works to attempt to isolate a genome that could explain Tomoe’s abilities. He narrows it considerably comparing Tomoe to Cordova, and even more when Calliope suggests that Dirk and Tomoe share an obscure ancestor. Finally Calliope suggests that a sample of her neural medium could be obtained through a maintenance procedure outlines in her manual - though she is unable to explore or, indeed, “know” about her own nature. Aiden compares the self-replicating structures of Calliope’s intelligence with the other samples and isolates a novel structure in common - though they vary greatly in sophistication. By comparison, if Dirk was a 4, Tomoe would be an 8, Cordova would be a 75, and Calliope would be in the thousands.
As the turn-around time to Whistler passes, reactions to the conflict over Anderson Northwinds begin pouring in:
- The crew’s social media campaign catches the hearts of the masses and creates a huge upswell of support for the town. At the same time, an incredibly well-funded smear campaign likely orchestrated by AEX is circulating, casting IBI as wanton renegades at best and collaborators with the insurrection at worst.
- Requests for interviews from media outlets flood in, and the more well-funded ones start arriving in person.
- The crew is notified that an investigation has been opened by the Bureau concerning the assist of WDF San Anastasia. A few days later, a second notification comes in concerning the AEX action against the Northwinds civilians. They are instructed to wait at Helena until agents can arrive.
- Almost immediately after the social media campaign took off, The Council took over the Northwinds case from the judiciary and ruled to allow the town’s emancipation from Anderson Exploration. The seats from BioGen and the Sagan Applied Research Group were the only detractors. Anderson Northwinds became a public town under the authority of the Council.
While sifting through the deluge of information flooding in, Angelica notices an obscure, but alarming trend: the Reach’s largest corporations are slowly and quietly leaving Foxglove.