Episode2Act2Part3

CAST

• Michi Nom
• Karl
• Dorota Kowal
• Sarah Lee
• Carina Yuzu
• Tom - Alliance Officer
• Chuck - Alliance Engineer
• Captain Jordan of the She Ya
• Marty - Crew member of the She Ya

LOOKING FOR A DISTRACTION

There are eight ships in the yard and a bunch of alliance walking about. Those captains that would talk to Carina are edgy and all but one send you packing. The one left is a ship about the same size as the Kobukson, except a little nicer looking. The Ships Name is the She Ya.

"Tell me again what you're asking me for?"

The Captain, an attractive short woman who goes by the name of Jordan crosses her arms skeptically at Carina.

Carina smiles warmly, doing her disarmingly best in the situation. "I'm asking you to help us help you. None of us want the Alliance hanging out here making a nuissance of themselves, disrupting trade. I'm asking you to do what you can to help distract them, so that we can make the run we need to make, which will draw them away from here for good. Comm traffic to bottleneck them, and an unscheduled overflight to give them someone else to look at - someone without a spec of unsanctioned cargo, someone they have to apologize to when they're done being cumbersome behemoths. Nothing illegal. Nothing dangerous." That's the job of the Kobukson, maddeningly enough.

"So you're saying, you want me and mine to draw the attention of the alliance and hope they are kind enough to apologize to us for gettin in thems way?" Captain Jordan raises an eyebrow skeptically. "I don't think you understand the alliance. Must be that pretty face of yours that gets you a free pass."

Carina tilts her head, glancing at the captain. "I appreciate the compliment, back-handed as it may be. You have a lovely ship, and I respect you not wanting to risk it unnecessarily. My hope was that we had a common want, a common goal, and that we could come to an arrangement to work together to accomplish that goal, to both of our benefits. If there's something more, beyond that mutual goal, that we could offer to make you feel this was more worth your while, I'm at least willing to listen. A favor for a favor seems a fair thing, after all. It's the way commerce works, does it not?"

"A favor? Hm." The Captain rubs her chin seemingly intrigued. "Who's the captain of your ship?"

At that point, from farther inside the ship, a young man, a good head taller than the captain walks into the room. "Jor, have you seen my..." He stops when he sees Carina. "Sorry Captain, didn't know you were conductin business."

Captain Jordan circles a finger along the side of her head. "It's ok Marty. This here Feng le (loopy in the head) woman is lookin for our help."

"Captain Nom. Michi Nom." Carina answers. They are co-captains, but Michi is the pilot, the one with a lot of experience in shipping. She's just the business partner. The friend. And the face, when she can be. "Hi." she offers Marty.

Marty steels a sideways glance at Carina in the /omg, a girl just said hi to me/ look. Captain Jordan listens to the name as if contemplating something.

"Michi Nom? Hm. Marty, what's the status of the engines?"

"We'll be good within the hour." Says Marty, trying hard to keep his eyes off Carina.

"Good. How many others you got convincing to help you out?" The Captain asks Carina.

"You're the first Captain I've spoken to." Carina offers, honestly. Granted, that's because all of the other captains sent her packing before she could talk to them. But no need to share that just yet.

"If you want to jam the lines and confuse the alliance, you're going to need to get every ship in this yard to help. Or you're going to need to find a way to fake it. Right Marty?"

"That's right captain." Marty nods in agreement. "A good sqawk box might help too."

"Do you think you can get them all on board?" says Captain Jordan.

"All I can do is try my best." Carina answers. Someone has to be the first. She has to hope she can convince Captain Jordan to be that first. And perhaps to work out how to build a squawk box. Mmm.

Captain Jordan looks to Marty and some sort of silent communication seems to cross between them.

"Alright, little miss pretty. Seems you've piqued my interest. You want noise, I think we can help you out. All it's going to cost you is the following..."

BUSY WORK AT THE SHIP

Back on the ship, Dorota is doing some final tweaks, making sure the Kobukson is ready to fly the second that cargo is on board.

Once people head off to do their jobs, Michi grabs Dorota to help her move the Mahha-go into her quarters. "Careful. I don't want to have to redetail her."

Dorota gets tugged out of engineering, possibly literally, to help Michi move the Mahha-go. Which...well. Dorota is careful with *everything* she handles, at least.

"Carina's calculations say we'll have just enough room for that cargo. Means my bike needs to not be in the cargo bay." Michi stops to open the door to her quarters.

Dorota nods. "Of course. I also have half an idea for if we can't get some interference run." Dorota, treating the bike as if it was her own. Well, she might even have a tiny bit of envy.

"Ideas are good. Mentioning them when we're actually doing the planning is better." Michi points out. "Which you should of if you had one."

"Would have, if I'd *had* the idea then, I didn't until now." Hey, brains don't always produce output right after the input. Sometimes there's a time delay.

"Best to tell me the idea, then. Before I decide you're just mouthing off to your captain." Michi grumbles. Too much is riding on this. She's not super interested in slow today.

"Might be that if me and Sarah work together we could insert something into their computer systems...those guys *never* look out the window, or at least they didn't when I was Alliance." Dorota shrugs. "It's a thought."

"That's fine." Michi says. "If she can, she's welcome to a console. Otherwise, she's your monkey in the engine room to help out as you need until someone gets hurt."

Dorota nods. "I'll chat with Sarah. I think she's the better hacker than me anyway. I think." She's not really down on *everything* of how people's abilities compare.

"Not bad. If there's time and if they're on our tail and if you can do it from a distance, might be good." Michi agrees. "But in a race against them I'll need you on the engines."

"She's tuned as good as I can get her, at least," Dorota notes. "Not sure how much more speed I can squeeze out, but...I'll give you what I can."

DROP-OFF AND PICK-UP

Thanks to the fact that they don't search on the way out of the shipyard, the Shuttle leaves with Sarah and Karl and a load of grenades to drop off at the drop point. The dumpster isn't too hard to find in an out of the way place where no one really is watching, at least as far as can be seen.

Sarah glances over at Karl, "Want to keep an eye out while I place these?" She smiles faintly, "And where's your guard friend? We'll need to talk to him about things."

It probably wouldn't be the greatest of ideas to meet the Alliance guy with a load of smoke bombs, so that should be their first priorty. So that is the first stop. He just nods at the first question, as he surveys the area. He is armed and dangerous on this trip, though not obviously so. "On a docked shuttle. He'll be easy to find."

Sarah nods, "Good, we'll meet him after I deposit our presents." She hmms and moves towards a convenient dumpster, pulling out her well-crafted goodies. "And we'll see what we can manage."

Sarah has no trouble depositing the grenades without breaking any of them. No one jumps out and attacks. It's oddly quiet.

Karl continues to keep a lookout as the smoke bombs are placed by Sarah. Once that is done it is on to the location where the shuttle holding their Alliance contact is. The man is loathe to do so, but he leaves all but the least detectable weapon behind in the shuttle and then heads over to where the sentry stands gaurd over the entrance to the shuttle "Is Chuck on board?" he asks casually of the sentry "I need to speak with him."

The Sentry takes a moment to eye Karl up and down. He looks a bit worn down and maybe like he might want to give you a hard time but instead merely speaks into his comm. "Chuck, you have a visitor." The response is inaudible but the man then says. "Wait here."

A few moments later, Chuck, stumbles down the ramp. He eyes Karl, giving him a double and triple take like he's trying to remember where he's seen Karl. "You're that guy from the club." He slurs.

Sarah gives Karl a 'he's your friend' look, before taking a tactful step back to allow Karl the chance to speak with Chuck about things. Though she does start rummaging through her pack, as if looking for something.

"I wasn't sure if you would remember." Karl tells Chuck as he tries to herd him away from the sentry as casually as possible "Where are your buddies? They stay at the bar or are they on the shuttle too?" he wants to make sure that there isn't going to be any interupptions ya know.

Chuck puts a finger to his head as if really trying to remember. "Tom walked me back here. I don't know where Paul. Ha. I don't really care where he is."

Karl seems to recall that Paul was the one that was macking on some woman when they left, but that really doesn't explain the apparent disdain for the man. It doesn't matter though. "Don't care for him, 'eh. Good thing I found you then. I need someone that is trustworthy and I can tell you are, not like Paul."

Chuck nods. "If you need trustworthy, I am the man for the job. You can ask my Xo."

Sarah smiles faintly as she seems to be getting together some sort of hangover cure, "Well, that's good to hear..." She looks over at Karl, letting him explain further.

A rare grin flashes across Karl's face at the initial response from Chuck, the mention of his Xo is problematic, but one issue at a time "Well than Chuck, how about I treat you to a cup of coffee and I will tell you all about it."

As Karl asks Chuck about coffee, the man on duty says a few codes into his comm and then a few moments later another man exits the transport. Karl will recognize him as the silent one and now that he can hear their minds, he realizes he got them mixed up. It must be that throbbing headache that hasn't gone away. This man who just arrived is the one Karl wants to talk to.

"Tom!" Chuck says as the man approaches.

"What's going on?" Tom eyes Karl and Sarah suspiciously and then says to Karl accusingly. "You were at the club. What are you doing here?"

Karl doesn't school is look of recognition as Tom approaches the group, or the confusion at the accusing tone the Alliance man addresses them in. "We were passing by, saw the shuttle still docked and decided that we would treat you hard working men to a cup of coffee before you went back on your shift."

Tom looks between Chuck, Sarah, and Karl, the eye of suspicion on the whole scene.

"Go back to the transport, soldier," Tom says to Chuck.

"But..." Chuck begins to sputter.

"That's an order soldier," there is no wiggle in Tom's voice, he is definitely one of authority in this group.

"Yes Sir," Chuck looks to Karl and Sarah. "Thanks for the offer."

Chuck shuffles past the sentry and back into the Transport. For an alliance soldier, Chuck is one odd duck, not the typical soldier.

Once Chuck is back on the transport, Tom turns his glare to Karl and Sarah. "You've got 30 seconds to explain yourselves or you'll find your hides in detention where there will be questions and lots of pain."

Amazingly, somehow the mysterious and silent Karl aided by his doctor sidekick Sarah are able to get Tom to join them at the shipside bar that is just inside the town limits. Somehow, and perhaps it's the once in a millenia alignment of the systems and their stars, they even convince him to help them.

"I might be able to help you, but I can't do it without being back at the ship. The transport leaves in 1 hours and I'm on duty an hour after that. That gives you two hours to get yourselves together. HOWEVER, You have to promise me that you'll come back and find me, and get me out of here after the dust has settled."

Sarah stays relatively quiet, for the most part, though Karl might be picking up some of her observations. Then she says, looking over towards Tom, "I know what it's like, being in a situation you don't want to be in. After the dust has settled, we'll get you out." She isn't exactly the smoothest talker, but on the bright side, that just means it's easy to tell when she's lying. Which, in this case, she isn't.

Fast talking isn't really Karl's strong suit, but sometimes he just knows the right words to say and the proper combination to put them in. Certainly being loose with the promises helps. Though he does have every intention to seeing the promises through. He just hopes the rest of the crew agrees. There is a nod to Tom. "You keep your end we will keep ours." he holds a hand out so they can shake on it. "And hopefully there won't be to much dust."

Tom waves Karl's hand away, not wanting to be seen suspiciously. He does seem to trust Karl and Sarah's promise that they'll come back for him. He finishes his coffee leaving them to pay for it and heads back to the transport.