Re: Arkadia/Vilis (0407 - E446845-6) Date: 230-1107 13:30
Jago saunters into the crew lounge wearing a serious expression, and pauses to examine the assembled faces. Wasting no time, the captain begins his address as he moves over to the coffee machine and pours himself a cup.
“The situation is far from clear here, everyone I talk to has a different take on it so we are going into this thing with an open mind. Two ships have gone missing here recently, the ‘Never Say Die’, who’s distress call we heard on the way in, and the ‘Big Deal’, about three weeks ago, the engineer on that ship was Miss Dhakhingzuel’s brother,” Jago nods towards the Vagre. “Both ships were well outside any practical shipping rout, the Big Deal was intent salvaging another ship lost in this system ten years ago, but there is no explanation for the Never Say Die being so far out.”
Jago takes a sip of his coffee.
“What I intend is to head out there and take a look, nothing more at this stage, what we do then will depend on what we find. As I say, we are keeping an open mind here. It is likely that we will find a hostile ship, not necessarily pirates though, and I don’t intend to speculate on the various theories that have been offered up.”
“We will be accompanied by the ‘Ore Hound’ which has a powerful drilling laser that can also be used as a weapon, we trust that ship just as long as it doesn’t point that laser at us and we’ll keep an eye on it at all times to make sure. The government here has put up a reward, if we qualify, we split with the Ore Hound, and I divvy the rest up equal shares between everyone here. A reward would be separate to any prize money that might be forth coming from our ‘letter of mark’, if we were to qualify there, then we’ll do the normal spilt within the ship.”
“Although money is always nice, it’s not the reason we are doing this. If the navy have to deal with it they will need to pull resources away from the war effort, chances are that they won’t and other ships will fall victim, either way, I can’t just walk away if there is a chance that we can do something about it.”
“One final complication is the ‘Shata Lunoqi’, our hostile ship might want to have a pop at here if she’s in a bad way.”
“We’ll be leaving in about an hour, once I’ve cashed this money order, just in case we have to jump the system rather than coming back here for a cargo.”
“So, any questions?” Jago finally lowers himself into a chair and takes another sip from his cup, “nice coffee by the way,” he adds, raising the cup in Shui’s direction.