Introduction
Therefore, all 150,000,000 of my shares in Legitimate Salvage, Incorporated will be managed by the Legitimate Salvage Executive Trust under direction of the named Board outlined above. The following are binding instructions for distribution:
- Fifty million shares will immediately be returned to the company treasury to be issued as incentives or disposed of as the crew sees fit.
- The remaining hundred million will be held in trust by the Board until 16 August wy617, where ownership will be transferred to Allied Advanced Intelligences Serial Number 2G01, also known as Calliope.
-The Memoirs of “Gentleman” Jack Cartwright
9 June - 1 July, WY603 – Deep Space, Whistler, Foxglove
The rest of the crew laughs off Dirk’s comments as a gag and assume that he and Aiden are conducting propulsion experiments. The crew offers up a 200% bonus to all non-shareholders as danger pay.
After a week or inspecting the ship, they dive back to Whistler, this time at Demeter. They arrive to a significant amount of news:
- The clocks reset roughly fifteen minutes, representing time dilation accrued during Dirk’s dive.
- WDF Damocles and the rest of the first fleet arrived in Foxglove, their arrival coincided with a Council embargo on all trade in and out of the system. Starvation and a lack of other critical goods is almost immediate, as the current population of Foxglove cannot feed itself, nor can a majority of the natives survive in anything more than roughly half gravity.
- A number of protests have broken out across the Reach, but besides damning statements from Grove - which is under blockade - and Jericho - which is too far away to help - there hasn’t been much political pressure.
- News reports suggest that the Navy intends to scuttle Sunrise Bay. Dirk receives a message from Polly stating that she’s not entirely sure they’re going to let everyone get off the station before they do it.
- Dirk files an injunction with the Council Supreme Court to stop any action against Sunrise Bay until it can be properly decommissioned.
- The crew receives details of Jack’s trust:
- All of Jack’s shares have been transferred to a legal trust whose Board of Directors is composed of Aiden, Cara, Harvey, Dirk, and Roland.
- 50MM of Jack’s shares are to be returned to the company treasury.
- 100MM shares will be held in trust until wy617 where they will transfer to the ownership of Calliope (on what is essentially her 18th birthday). There are a number of provisions in place in case Calliope can’t be recognized as a legal person in that time, but he “has it on good authority” that it shouldn’t be an issue, especially in Jericho. These shares grant Calliope just under 50% ownership in the company.
- Dirk is notified by his insurer that Peach is believed to have been hijacked from Trinity Station. The ship departed early and did not take on the cargo she was expected to. A follow-up message from Agents Gibson and Lee includes some surveillance data showing Izzy Cordova boarding Peach. They suggest the Bureau office on Trinity would have more information, they were just flagged because of Cordova and the suspicious link.
- Aiden contacts Florence Abinde on Demeter and lets her in on his discoveries. They discuss opportunities to open a new lab dedicated to developing artificial minds that can manipulate spacetime.
The crew decided to prioritize rescuing Polly and seeing how they can help Foxglove, so they depart immediately.
Upon arrival, they find a system in chaos. The 1st Fleet is spread across all the major population centers, with three cruisers, including WDF Intrepid, and a few tenders at Sunrise Bay. Damocles is not in the system, having left over a week prior. Rioting and looting is extreme, as the populace attempts to secure transport out of the system or the scarce resources that remain. Numerous individuals reach out to the ship offering exorbitant amounts of money for transport out of the system.
The crew gets clearance to operate in the system stating they’ve been contracted for VIP retrieval and then contacts Polly. She, Director Chin, and some others are still trying to hold Sunrise Bay together, but with little remaining security force and no Marine help, things are falling apart rapidly. They also make contact with Smitty of Praetorian Security, who has a few remaining employees on the station. The station’s thrusters have already been scuttled, preventing it from making any adjustments to stay in orbit around the gas giant. A flotilla of small craft are ferrying people from the station to Skinner’s Point on the moon of Snowball, but resources there are already strained.
The crew hatches a plan to send the assault shuttle to a location where they can retrieve their friendlies from the station with minimum conflict.
