Over the next four hours, Brent and Joxe work together to complete the maintenance checklist. The air raft passes the check with only minimal maintenance required, mostly calibrating the grav lifters' emitters. The craft's flight management system had dealt with the slight imbalance in the system, so Brent wasn't aware of it while he was flying.

Joxe finishes replacing the seat she'd removed earlier, and stands up with a sigh. "I'm hungry, what about you?"

Brent is sweaty and a bit exhausted despite the mostly cerebral nature of the effort.  He's deeply satisfied at having mastered the more sophisticated technology even if it's rather basic stuff.  He grins and wipes his face with the back of his sleeve.  "Sure, I'm ravenous.  That went really quickly.  I hadn't realized at the differences even in something basic like a grav module between our tech and what's in this ship.  Is this more standard to what we can expect on other worlds and ships?"

Joxe walks with Brent as they make their way toward their quarters just behind the bridge. "This ship isn't state of the art, but its components are, or were, more widely available and generally less expensive than the latest Imperial technology. As one example, our powerplant is three times as large, and six times as heavy, as the most up-to-date version the Imperium produced."

They arrive at their quarters, with Brent's to the right, and Joxe's to the left. "I'm going to take a shower." She looks at him, bites her lip in thought, and then leans in to kiss him on the cheek. "I'll be right out, and then we can fix lunch." She steps through her door, and closes it behind her.

"It may not be cutting edge tech but it's a considerable step above what we have back home."  He stopped with her and as she kissed him and headed into her stateroom he stood quietly for a moment and then went into his own stateroom to clean-up and change.

Niamh pauses before speaking up, almost as if she's wondering if it's proper to say what she's about to say. "What was it like, when you lived there...if you don't mind my asking?"

"It was... just home, I guess," Joxe says after a moment. "We had a pretty busy starport. Since we are, were, on the main, we had a lot of traders and other smaller starships come through."

When Brent steps into the crew area, Joxe greets him with a smile. "What would you like for lunch?" Her hair is still wetly plastered to her head from the shower.

Brent nods to Niamh and Joxe; "A sandwich and some caff if you don't mind."  He looked about.  "So what do we know about Poznan?  You lived there did you not Joxe?"  His eyes clouded; "I'm afraid it might be difficult."

Joxe busies herself with the commissary unit, and produces a plate with a sandwich and a side of what looks like fried potatoes. She sets the plate down in front of Brent, and pours a cup of caff from the dispenser.

She speaks while preparing her own meal. "I did live there, but I was aboard ship a lot of the time, too. We had to have enclosed habitats, since the air at the surface isn't breathable. We heard the system got hit hard, so there's probably not much left." She sits down across from Brent with a bowl of chili, and a large glass of juice.

"Thank you," Brent sipped the kaff as Joxe prepared her own meal.  "I know just how fragile sealed habitats can be.  We went through a couple of decades stabilizing the system after the last strike.  It helped that we were spread around the system rather than concentrated on a single planet."

Brent ate as Joxe sat.  "Do you... did you... have family there?"

Joxe sat her spoon down in her bowl and took a deep breath. "Nearly all of them were there, except for my cousins and I. There were some distant family members in some other systems, but all of my close relatives were on Poznan." She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. She looks at Naimh as she speaks. "I'm sorry. I know I'm not the only one here who lost their family."

Brent is silent for a long moment. "I'm sorry beyond words Joxe, Niamh.  You both know that we're here for you however you need."

"Khesanadu was on the main and on the x-boat route too, so, as small of a place at it was, we got a lot of traffic too.  Niamh smiles then, yet there's a clear touch of sadness on her face. "I used to like to take the shuttle up to the highport when I was a teenager, and watch all of the different and interesting ships come in."

"The damage almost makes one just want to hide away from the other worlds."  He glanced at Niamh and Joxe.  "We can't though.  There may be others alive that we can help or there may be knowledge we can take back home to bring light back to the local systems."

"I'd imagine that a lot of the systems are dead," Joxe sighs and shakes her head. "Any planet without a breathable atmosphere or without water is probably a graveyard."

Brent nodded; "Egg is probably a one in a thousand or more anomaly in keeping life going.  We were lucky enough to have small scale manufacturing scattered enough about the system that we could maintain our life support."

Joxe addresses the group at large, since everyone has gathered in the crew area for lunch. "How do we want to go about surveying the systems here?" She brings up a star map on the main holodisplay so everyone can see it.

https://travellermap.com/?x=23...-71.751&scale=64

"There are twenty-three systems on the main, counting Egg, from Possin rimward to Montezuma. Of these," she manipulates the data flanking the star systems, "twelve have to have some tech to live there, again, including Egg."

Brent studied the data.  "I'd say we work our way up the main toward Possin with a focus on the naturally habitable worlds.  Ideally we'd eventually want to jump off the main over to Promise but that's for the distant future."

Niamh nods sadly.  "I suspect that we'll see some pretty nasty stuff along the main, but I agree with Brent.  We should still make the attempt anyway."

Brent sighed.  "I think we are duty bound to try."

"I agree that we are less likely to find anything in systems that need tech to be habitable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't investigate the less likely options once we exhaust the likely ones though."

"Our next jump after Poznan will bring us to Execute," Joxe says. "Maybe they fared better than Khesanadu since they weren't on the jump boat route. Promise, Exeter, and Gorky were hit hard, at least according to the reports." Joxe pulls up the logs for everyone to review.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:32, Mon 08 Jan 2018.

Brent looks over the data and frowns.  He's quiet for a while as he takes in the magnitude of the reported damage.  "I'd be surprised if there was a bit of tech much above muscle power on the habitable planets.  The good thing perhaps is that short of an extinction level impact or a really vicious nuclear bombardment human life is hard to completely exterminate."

Joxe looks at Naimh. "Naimh, did you ever hear anything about the other systems near Poznan?"

"Not impossible clearly."