Move 4 (Chapter 1.4)

[yhlee]

Time: 361 (high calendar)
Place: out-rift near Station Moongray

[GM's note: I know several characters/players are still resolving matters from Move 3. That's fine! You may continue posting to Move 3 to resolve those threads or shift threads over to Move 4 to reflect the changed state of affairs, whichever you feel more comfortable with. Ashari and the rest probably ought to settle the matter of who's going where.]

A few new things happen.

Presumably Sasha has some kind of alert set up on the virus. She notices that it's trying to wriggle its way out into the wider grid, specifically so it can listen in on conversations and send back recordings to its unknown master.

[Since the grid responds to voice address, it's a fair bet that some form of sensors are always active within the Wasp.]

Meanwhile, Kaliyan, who is monitoring Scan from the Wasp's cockpit/command center, gets an alert from the Wasp's automated functions. While the "welcome message" from Station Moongray is still droning on repeat, what looks like the research moth Butterfly Lens is starting to move in the Wasp's direction.

What's more, a basic query of Scan will reveal that a second spacecraft has come out from the Scan shadow of a large nearby planetoid, and is also converging on the Wasp's location. While this second spacecraft isn't making any (more) effort to hide itself, any check on Scan will reveal that, unlike the Butterfly Lens, this second moth has some armaments. It's not a full-fledged warship--and it's almost certainly not Kel, since the Kel avoid traveling alone if they can help it--but it's probably intended for local defense.

[EDITED TO ADD: Sorry, I glitched and forgot]
If Yehan gets a good luck at the second ship on visuals, she'll notice with some surprise that it looks like a ship out of the past--there are markings on it that look Naxorian, but weirdly distorted, like it's from another dialect or related symbology.

Comments

Sasha is bad at hierarchies: paging Kaliyan

[zuhrovet]

"Kaliyan," Sasha says through the comm, "Please kill non-essential power, now. If we're going to fake a grid crash, that needs to happen stat."

She goes ahead and wipes the virus while she's waiting. She thinks she has enough to fake a single report, and she really doesn't like the wriggling. An air-gapped mini-grid is getting higher on her mental shopping list by the second.

[What would Sasha make of the second ship's markings? Past, future, hometown dialect, alternate universe?]

[ooc note: Christological doctrine]

[lleullawgyffes]

[this is entirely unrelated but every time I see "Naxorian" my brain tries its darnedest to make me read it as "Nestorian"]

Sasha is bad at hierarchies, mark two: paging Ashari again

[zuhrovet]

It has been 97 seconds since Ashari talked to Ankat, and Ashari hasn't said anything definitive. The ships look like they're approaching leisurely on scan, but that's an artifact of the hugeness of space. Sasha checked the velocity relative to the station while she was thinking about reasons for the grid to glitch, and thus she's keenly aware that everyone is moving at a non-negligible fraction of the speed of light.

"Ashari," she says, "This isn't a committee meeting. You need to give an order."

[Out of character, I'm enjoying the delicious narrative tension.]

Sasha fails at hierarchy: paging Yehan and Ashari

[zuhrovet]

134 seconds. Ashari is pondering something, with an ineffable Andan expression. Virmad looks as if he's mentally computing isomorphisms of even lattices¹, though presumably that's not what he's working on.

They still haven't communicated with the outside. Sasha's not willing to leak information to the virus without a good explanation for why the leak would end (such as the grid coming back online). She could just send the message that Ashari already authorized, though?

Sasha drafts it in her very best formal high language. Might sound a little bit antique, but with luck that will be taken as eccentricity:

From distinguished artist Andan Rii, greetings. We are delighted to accept escort from the Butterfly Lens for our Bumblebee.

She copies the message to Yehan's and Ashari's screens, just in case they want to make a last-minute grammar critique, and sets it to send in forty seconds.

[¹ A math kind of lattice, not the Space Internet kind of lattice.]