Renkden mutters and starts to pull his core out of the power suit.

Xiao giggles a little and takes him by the arm, leading him out of the skunkworks. "Alright, alright- so, let's talk.  I haven't been allowed inside the captured ship, and in fact they're not allowing anyone to even see images of the inside.  So I'd like a brief description of what you saw."

She glances in his direction, "As far as your head- please describe that too.  I have wondered if there's some sort of issue with psychological booby-traps installed, and that's why I'm being kept out."

"With respect, ma'am, you don't know me well enough or outrank me in any explicit capacity for this kind of social power move," Grunt said as he extracted his arm while they walked, "There's rather little to the interior of the ship. At least in terms of space or differentiation. Aside from a handful of what I assume to be maintenance corridors, and the suite of the Guest, it seemed purely dedicated to combat systems."

He mulled over his words for a moment. Half to order the thoughts, half to rebuke her trying to grab the upper hand. Social games were a weak suit but he at least recognized when a pretty, ambitious woman was trying one on him.

"Assume a crew that doesn't need all the drudgery ours do, no air, food, or water. Safety measures are equally discarded. Fill the available space with nothing but systems for power, offense, and defense including some manufacturing facilities to generate disposable tools for the same. Add in a trivial in the overall context living suite for the only marginally living being. The core is a pair of massively powerful but slow and unsustainable systems; one to kill things and one to prevent destruction until the targets are killed. The rest wraps around those in layers to minimize their vulnerability, effective in their own right but almost ablative armor in intent."

Gabriel shook his head.

"In terms of layout or aesthetics, the bulk of the ship just doesn't have either. If they needed a way to go from one part to another they made the straightest possible corridor, even if that meant half of it was exposed to something that'd destroy almost anything living or dead that touched it."

"The Guest's quarters were a mix of fairly old computer design and much older furnishings. You could control most of the main systems but the support stuff, such as the power distribution, seemed to have been walled off. They gave him a nice gun but don't seem to have trusted him to be able to disassemble it."

He sighed.

"Hallucinations of various threats. Location stays consistent, people and current environment do not. Things appearing on fire, corpses, enemies, and the accompanying sensations. I've had three episodes since our return. Duration appears to be rising from less than a second to roughly two, and most recently seven or so. My assumption was pure psychological stress but that was apparently too optimistic."

She takes the rebuke with grace.  She follows along with him, arms folded under breasts as she listens.

"Explain to me more about this unsustainable system.  How and why is it unsustainable?"  She asks, tapping her arm; "And explain to me about the manufacturing capabilities.  Did you get to see these manufactoriums?  Because the low quality of the computer system, and the low complexity of the rest of the ship, says to me that it's to minimize power draw."

She then listens to the problems of his hallucinations.

"Also, please explain the content of your hallucinations.  We've had similar problems around Reactor and Overflow that can't be explained by simple Wyld energy.""

"That canon and the field generator both take four or five subsystems lining up just right. Usually they do but when I was using them there were moments of... slippage. Small things over all but enough that by themselves they'd be quickly destroyed. All the secondary systems seem designed to give them a chance to spin up to full function," Grunt replied, "Saw very little of it. We were in a hurry going through and my focus wasn't on the swarm of tertiary vessels being disgorged."

"The hangar in flames, dead pilots, ruined equipment and the deceased fighting everywhere. A warghost in necromantic enhancement armor in a battle scarred corridor. An enemy vessel just outside the skunk works."

"That's much worse design than we'd expect from Thanatos and Yama,"  She says  as they walk, "Which says to me that they're either working with inelegant components or there's more than one shipbuilder in the Abyssal fleet.  So my next question, of course, would be this- the hallucinations, if they were sparked by the ship?  Would you be willing to return to the ship?"

She looks at him seriously.

"Lower the number of people exposed, of course.  If you'd like a hand in the clean-up and rehabilitation I think I can make it happen."

"It's efficient before anything else. At least that was my read, well outside any expertise in my possession," Grunt told her before he let out a low groan, "Yes, I'd return. We need to know the effects of that things before someone turns into a timed charge."

He shook his head.

"I didn't think your experiments ran in that direction."

"Mine don't, but I'm doing my due diligence here.  I'm not even allowed onto the ship right now, remember?  But they do value my advice, and I can make sure the right people hear- and also make sure the wrong people don't hear." She keeps moving down the hallway until they reach an elevator, "Security seems a decent prospect."

"A soldier likely to flip out and kill allies is one of those things best not kept secret, I think," Grunt told her, "Even if being put on an inactive roster grates."

They reach the elevator and she steps in, one of her bodyguards entering with her and Grunt as she presses the button to Sanctuary.

"Not secret, managed.  Honestly." She suppresses an eye roll, "Grunt, when you have an engine coil that's going to blow and you need to direct the energy somewhere, would you rather direct it out at the engineering section or into the void?"  She looks at him, "You'll have two options.  Serious surveillance at Sanctuary, a sure career suicide.  Or you can step onto the war spoil and be at least active.  Any damage you do in there will be, on the whole, more acceptable than wigging out in a Sanctuary padded cell."

She shakes her head.

"As a side note I'm honestly, personally worried about this.  There's only so much work you can do in motonics before it starts skirting a bit too close to entropy deregulation.  If your hallucinations were caused by the war spoil reactor, our fleet will end up having a problem.  I'd rather not turn this ship into the Event Horizon."
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:58, Sat 31 Dec 2016.

"As I recall my career is suicide," Grunt noted, "But fine. I'll go onto the damned haunted ship and do the recording, measuring, and testing."

"I was always under the impression your job was to die if you must but live if you could."  She says to him, "But since you're going to be doing especially hazardous duty, it's your right and my own duty to inform you about the special benefits.  Since this counts as especially integral and dangerous work, you're due perks.  If you forward me a list of quality of life improvements for both now and later, I'll see what I can bash through the resulting committee."

"There's a very solid uptick in survival rates after the fourth mission survived but there's no avoiding the roulette aspect of it," Grunt replied, "It'll be a short list. Endings won't be returning I assume."

"If I could tell you what any one of Command was up to or had on their plate, I'd be much higher up in the hierarchy.  I don't know what Endings is up to, but it's unlikely he'll be employed on the war spoil full-time." She raises a hand and her thug hands her a business card, "Here, this is my personal email.  If you think of anything you need, shoot me a letter."

The elevator dings.  He's on Sanctuary's entrance level.

Grunt took the card.

"I'll let you know. It'd be wise to assemble a checklist of things you want me to report on. My first impression has been spent. Time for a more nuanced looks."

"I'll make certain to send you a detailed checklist,"  She tells him.  Her thug holds open the door to the elevator.  "Please convalesce quickly, Mr. Grunt."

"If you're going to use 'Mr' then it's Hockenberry," Grunt replied as he stepped out, "Have a pleasant evening."

There was a temptation to linger in the elevator, see how well the thugs took the display of making their boss wait.

But wiser thoughts prevailed and he needed to be checked out soonish. With luck, maybe it was just a tumor.

He stopped by registration first.

The form is depressingly familiar and long.  Remembering one's service ID is easy, but the H-SIN (Hazardous Situation Insurance Number)?  Who the hell remembers that?  Why should he even fill out forms?!

Maybe, just maybe, Sanctuary is a tool of the Neverborn...

But eventually he's let in and led to a quiet, white room that looks unsettlingly sterile.  A doctor approaches, flame-red curly hair cascading down her back.  She clears her throat.

"Well, Grunt, it's finally come to this.  You've gone cuckoo."

Dr. Kelleigh Connolly, a member of the Plague Doctors, a Wood-Aspect Dragon-Blooded, and apparently an old compatriot of Jess.  Grunt and most other Dragon-Blooded have met her before.  She's normally big on genetic testing, so all of them have had their blood drawn and analyzed.

"In which way? Anything exotic or just old fashioned living in a tin can, staring at the entropic death of everything?" Grunt asked Kelleigh, "You know, something about female Chosen in the sciences really seems to bring out a sadistic streak lately."

"We're not all like that.  Just the best ones,"  She says as she looks over the chart, "Well, we haven't really scanned you yet, but I think that-"

Her voice fades off to silence as she goes through all the rules, records, procedures, treatment options; it's all a haze.

Then the door blows open (a directed explosive charge- Grunt's trained enough with them) that blows one of his eardrums.  A tall, statuesque woman with long black hair, a brown trench coat, and circular sunglasses raises a sawed-off shotgun and blasts off the top of Kelleigh's head before regarding Grunt.

Grunt knows who she is.  He's had plenty of training in that, too.  Agent Orange isn't someone he's likely to misidentify.

(28 + 10 Wu Wei + 5 bonus [Pavlov] = 43, good enough to keep calm?)

((Quite))

"So, Agent Orange appears to be here and you're dead, I know it's probably going to pass but trying to avoid getting shot even in the hallucination. Sorry," Grunt told the empty air as he rolled behind the exam table for some cover from the perennial problem.

"A hallucination?  Is that what you think this is?"  Agent Orange follows him, gun at ready but still nonchalant.  "Very interesting.  And who are you?" She taps the shotgun on the table.  "I didn't think this was possible."

"As a general rule the party having the hallucination is the one experiencing an addition to their perceptions. Plus this would be the fourth or fifth in the last two days," Grunt replied, missing the weaponry he'd left in Sanctuary's care, "Intermittent, brief, and witnesses see me responding to stimuli that isn't there. This conversation alone is going to have them breaking out the trepaning drill."

"Oh, I don't think that'll be necessary,"  Agent Orange says as she taps the side of his head with her shotgun barrel, "I have good news and bad news.  The good news is you're not hallucinating.  The bad news is that you're not hallucinating."

She smiles at him with teeth a bit too white.  It's a very sharklike look.

"You're kind of treading on my territory."