Mr. Tyrolite shrinks in his chair as much as a several-ton rock elemental can shrink.  It sounds like a rockslide farting.

"Yeah, uh, question.  Fucking defense, eh?"  One of the miners asks, "How the hell do we help with that?  Our ships explode sometimes if we don't change the right ball bearing often enough."

"Manufacturing, Mr. Starbuck," Corduroy tells him.  "We get the raw materials, we get a monopoly on building, isn't that right, Boss Arkady?"

"Fuck vodka!"  The wine guy interrupts, "A bottle of Earth wine's worth five nights with a Neomah, no flesh cost!"

There's a few mutters of assent.

"Uh, sir," A skinny miner holds his hand up timidly, "You're talking about making a new scav fleet, right?  What would Spiderweb think about that?"

"Exactly. Thank you Mr. Corduroy. Research, development, manufacturing. The pilots and soldiers will do the proper fighting, we are gonna give them better tech to do their job, and pull some buck outta it."

He stands up and looks in the direction of the apparent Sommelier
"And If I could make wine, It wouldn't be earth wine now would it, fuck wit?"
He spreads his arms in an asking gesture and the sits back down, pondering for the next question.

"Not a new scav fleet, just a research vessel. We're gonna make the more dangerous runs with her fleet. She used to be, and kinda still is my boss. We sure as hell are gonna need her help at some point, but we are trying to avoid combat as well as we can, and we're probably gonna be one of Spiderweb's biggest clients. Still gotta talk out the details with her. She made me captain of the Bogatyr after all.

Main point being, we're goin' for something bigger than scavving and selling the loot. We're gonna create shit that's gonna change history!"
Arkady corrects.

"And it's gonna snowball from there. We gonna aquire resources to create tools for gathering more resources."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:54, Wed 24 Oct 2018.

"But it could be good wine,"  Sommelier says lamely.

"Used to be?  And still is?  Fuck man,"  A transporter shakes his head, "Most of us got ships.  That mean if we sign on we gotta get rid of our old ships?  Or that our ships become yours?  I worked real hard on my baby and I don't wanna get rid of it."

"I got an engineer on my boat.  A Circuit Elemental.  We get bonuses for bringing in useful people?"  Another miner asks, "He's good at jury-rigging shit.  Has kept my drill and asteroid-tractor in good order."

"Wow wow wow... Hold the fuck on. I don't have the intent, or resources to start a new fleet. Yet. I'm hiring individuals with talents and skills that are useful in the field I'm working." Arkady loosens his hoodie. "A union is a good idea to get proper working conditions for ya miners. After that shit is established and I've got my shit runnin' we can start talking about a fleet. for that shit I'd need a ship classed as a cruiser though. as a flagship and mothership, but I really haven't planned that far." Arkady shakes his head. This gives him a headache. "Those who are interested in Working on My ship, give me a form in writing or some shit. if you can't read and write English, you're straight out, Blyat..." He looks at cordory with hopes of him disarming the situation. This is getting out of hand a bit, and not in the way he likes it.

Corduroy steps up.

"Hey, guys, chill out.  This is just for some basic scutwork right now, we're gonna run you through the basic shit and then we'll go from there.  Work hard on the tech and equipment transfers and impress us and maybe you'll get a better berth, hey?  Anyone with their own working ship they don't want to cannibalize up come back another time, we'll remember you for later and give you better deals, we just ain't prepared for that."

"Fine."  Mr. Tyrolite stands up and looks at Arkady, "... Sorry, Mr. Dragomirov.  I'm good at moving shit.  And I can stand under hard vac.  We good?"

"Thank you." Arkady sighs and gives Corduroy a thankful nod.
He looks at the hulking elemental who somehow seemed a lot less threatening now than before.

"Yeah man, We good. Actually If you're not too busy, we could use your help in unloading Mr. Corduroys stuff to my ship. You in?"

He stands up and walks to Mr. Tyrolite, extending his hand in a handshake.

"I really can't blame ya'all for being cautious. I bet a miner's life isn't a piece of cake, neither is a scav's life, That's why I came down 'ere. Diamonds are created in shitty conditions and high pressure, or some shit the better folks say blyat."

He glances at the others and gives a meaningful glare.

"And donchu people think I'm one of them better folks. Shit. I've been a solar for less than a month, Before that I was an engie on Paddy wagon. Lost one arm on earth as a kid, and the other one involved engine solvent and a fucked airlock..." after a second of silence, a grin creeps up on his face, and he concludes "Shit. If nothing I'm now privileged to get an even worse ass kicking now that them ghostly shit's don't need to pull their punches. I can't promise that there will be no danger from the dead... But I can assure that when I'm doing my job, we'll have the bigger guns."

"I'm here for it."  He shakes Arkady's hand, unwilling to put too much pressure on it- even though Arkady's could probably match his grip strength. "Yeah, I'm in.  We good.  I got a heavy tug.  Can load up a lot through there.  I haul whole asteroids in for Pandora Bay."

The other miners murmur.  A few start getting up and checking their equipment, while the others start checking datapads.

((Go ahead and make a retroactive Inspiration roll.  The higher the better.  50+ gets the whole bar plus a little extra bonus.))

((Inspire roll: 9, 8, 6, 5, 3, 2 & 2
Clarity in openness: +10 inspire
22 + 15 + 10= 47))

Most of the bar gets up and tries to somehow ingratiate themselves to the solar.  A few don't, though; one of them picks up his phone and starts muttering something on it, staring at Arkady the whole time.

Eh, but hey.  He has a crew now, and they're willing to move some things around.  Corduroy starts taking their names and mentioning little asides about them to Arkady- this one's a bit of a troublemaker; that one's got a nose for finding asteroid fields; that one isn't respected by anyone with half a brain, and so on.

Hey.  A crew's a crew, right?  Even if they're as motley a bunch as Arkady's ever seen, and he's seen some seriously motley crews.

"Alright, get to work,"  Mr. Tyrolite rumbles at a bunch, "You, you, and you- time to get moving stuff from Corduroy's ship!  Where's the Bogatyr anyway, boss?"

((Awareness: 6, 5, 5, 5, 4, 1 & 1
Flowed 41+10=51 to find out what he's saying.))

"It's at the bay where the scav ships dock for maintenance." Arkady answers briefly and waves his hand in the direction he thinks the ship is in.
His attention however is somewhere else. There is something shady going on with that phone talking fella, starting from the fact he has a phone.

He focuses and tries to filter his speech from the crowd, usin his lip movement as a reference. A method of simultanious lipreading and eavesdropping.

"Exalt recruiting... yeah... no?... could be worth... mmm.  Mmmhmm.  Tell.  Watching."  The man on the phone responds, still keeping his eyes glued on Arkady.  "Mmmhmm.  Mmm. Bye."

The man hangs up and puts away his phone, following the others out as they move to empty Corduroy's ship.  Or perhaps just to leave the bar.

He goes with the rest of the crew.
He nudges Corduroy and points a thumb behind him towards the shady fella.

"Hey. you know that guy? He looked me funny. Talked shit on the phone."

He keeps walking with others towards the bay, listening the chatter of others on the side.

"Him?"  Corduroy drops his voice low, "Short hair, was on a phone?  Yeah... he's Kevin, and he's a Contact." Corduroy shakes his head, "Lotta people trade information around here.  Maybe to Ombra Agency, that's a growing group.  Maybe to a buncha people in the Senate.  Or to the Sidereals, or the Demons, or some people in the Machinae guild.  Even a bunch of them are just plain journalists.  Sounds to me like he thinks you're worth someone's attention."

"Well shit. Seems like I'm gonna get famous... Let's see what kinda famous." Arkady strokes his chin.
"Let's see what we can do with your hulk and slam the good stuff on my ship... And see no-one pockets anything. That kinda shit wasn't unusual on paddy wagon." Arkady smiles faintly.
"Once that's done, we can see the crew to get their stuff on board and settled down. That tub is prolly gonna be the new home for the most of 'em from now on. Better make it comfy."

"Why the hell ain't you already famous?  I feel like all the Exalts are.  Big Tits Infernal, Drop the Bass Infernal, Lucifer, that one Nightmare Quiet Girl, you know?  Nothing about you."  He remarks, "Even the new guys usually get news reports, so yeah, better buckle up boss..."

Corduroy follows alongside him.

"Mercury-class, right?  Those things have almost no armor.  Good thing is I learned something from an old water tanker guy before he bit it.  He called it barnacling.  I mean, the idea is, radiation ain't hard to shield from if you got a good thaumaturgist nowadays, right?  And your armor's shit anyway.  Aerodynamics don't mean much neither.  Why not grow outside the ship?  Bolt on new shit to the side of your transport.  It'll look like a tumor but hey."

"Well, The shit I've done is either classified or just not interesting. I mean, Who up there really gives a fuck about the scav fleet? Most of the folk are either not interested or don't believe that shit." Arkady spits on the floor as they walk.

"Yeah, Mercury class." He fills in. "Bolting shit on the outside is always an option, but we gotta do it right. We used to have a pretty fucking good gunsmith-tinkerer on board PW," He taps his pistol in its pouch "but his little shop wasn't secured on the hull too tight."

"Besides, Bolting shit on the hull in a controlled manner allows growth. Imma turn that tub into a cruiser one day blyat!"

He keeps on walking, checking out his surrounding in the meanwhile. The mention of public interest made him wonder if actually anyone would recognize him from anywhere. The idea amused him somewhat.

"Well, could consider it ablative armor,"  Corduroy chuckles darkly, "Fuck, man.  I never served on the Paddy Wagon but I sold, uh, stuff to a buddy on there.  Was it as bad as they say?" 

If anyone recognizes him, nobody gives it away.  The crowd of men follow Mr. Tyrolite down the hallway, for all the world looking like a big gang.  Which, well, maybe they actually were.

"Could take apart my ship,"  Corduroy offers.  "Bolt on the bulkheads to the outside.  Armor up the Bogatyr a bit more than normal.  In for a penny in for a pound, right?"

"sounds like a plan. Time to get to work then I guess. We can take some tools off the workshop and there should be some basic tools in the ship."

It takes them a few hours to transfer everything from Corduroy's ship to his.  Corduroy even has to take over a tug to bring his ship closer to the Bogatyr so they can potentially scrap it; he leaves Arkady for now to oversee that aspect of the transfer.

Arkady takes a few of the specialty tools from Corduroy's ship and has them transferred to his workshop in Pandora Bay.  He's there for a few hours, tinkering, when his motion sensors go off.  Someone has come down his little stretch of hallway.  That's not exactly abnormal- there are a few per hour- but the sensors are recording a half dozen people, which is a lot odder.

There's an actual no-fuck knock on his makeshift door.  Dainty and short, a rap-rap of someone who wants to be noticed but doesn't want to hurt their hand doing so.

Arkady quits his tinkering and shouts at the door in a firm manner

"Who is it!?! I'm busy so this better be important blyat."

He walks closer to the door and opens it a bit to face whoever is on the other side but stays behind the door mostly. He certainly wasn't expecting company and he thouught Corduroy would have made more noise, hence the caution.

"Quite important, I'd hope,"  The voice says from behind the door- amused, prideful, refined.

Arkady's seen pictures of Shun Xiao before.  Glamorous and terrifying, the hyperintelligent infernal has had a poor reputation in the Last Refuge's science community, but few can doubt that she's a bona-fide genius.  The mercurial Exalt has a polite smile on her face which looks as alien as a blush on a shark.

"I'm here to meet a fellow Exalt, and hopeful fellow researcher."

The others behind her are a half-dozen men and women in labcoats, looking as quiet and serious as possible.

Arkady scans her from head to toe, as he usually does with persons of interest. He opens the door a tad bit more to reveal himself in his scruffy entirety.

"Well you got lucky, you found both. Though I believe because It is you off all people, luck had nothing to do with it. I feel almost honored to earn your attention."

He grabs a rag and wipes his hands on it.

"Soo... Somehow I have the impression this isn't strictly a social visit..." he nods towards the crowd behind her. "Quite an entourage."

"Students."  She says with a slight roll of the eyes, though he doesn't miss the smile of recognition she gave him- happy at the flattery, it seems. "They're always following me around, hoping to glean a little bit of information.  Don't pay them too much mind.

But you're correct.  I'd heard a new Twilight had been Exalted recently but before I could even sound you out you were swept up on some sort of secret mission!  Honestly, it was a bit upsetting, but that's nobody's fault but my own.  Ah.  I'm sure you know who I am, but- I'm Professor Shun Xiao, Chosen of Qaf and Kimbery, head of the Motonics Institute and the School of Infinite Space."

She reaches her hand out to shake his.

Arkady answers the handshake firmly, looking her in the eyes.

"Arkady Dragomirov. Chosen of the unconquered sun and Captain of the research vessel Bogatyr."

Ignoring her modest inquiry regarding the secret mission he looks back at his messy shop, tools and technical drawings all over. He even started browsing some of the books he found laying around.

"I'd offer you a drink, but none of them would be to your taste I think. Blyat, even I can barely stand them and I have like... Like really low standards when it comes to booze." He chuckles slightly.

"Oh, I don't drink.  Water's fine for me."  She says as she looks around, raising an eyebrow at the junk strewn around the room.  "... I take it you've just taken over this bay?  Some of this looks like it's been here for years.  Portlesby?"

"Ma'am?"  One of her students chimes in.

"Do look up the records for this room?  I doubt they've been properly registered, but one never knows."

"Yes ma'am!"

"Anyhow, Mr. Dragomirov, a research vessel?  I've given it thought in the past but never had the courage to try.  Too vulnerable for my tastes!  But it has some advantages.  What do you intend to study?"