166-1402 0830

"Does anyone want more waffles," Joxe asks from her station at the waffle maker she'd set up on the counter in the galley.

"Only if there's more of that syrup to go with them," Melina said around a forkful of her second waffle. "I've never had anything like this."

Wanderer had completed the orbital survey late the prior evening. Gareth had just come off duty, snagged a sweet roll from the galley, and disappeared up the lift to his quarters. Malcolm was on watch, and Brent sat at the table across from Melina while Joxe cooked breakfast.

"I'm surprised that we found over thirty settlements," Joxe commented as she expertly slid a steaming waffle off the serving plate and onto Melina's plate. "None of them seemed to be much larger than Melina's village, though."

Although it's not the medical research job that she spent most of her adult life performing, Naimh is more than happy to fulfill this new and very useful role.  As usual, she spends as much time with Veronica as she can, both to coordinate their efforts and to just enjoy her company.

--
Bob K.

Brent nodded and smiled. "Yes please, more waffles if you would Joxe." He helped himself and settled in to eat.  "I'm glad to hear that there are more survivors of the wars on the planet here.  That will give us more to build upon."  He frowned.  "What do you think allowed us to find them this time around?  Did we just not look hard enough?"

"Basically, yes," Joxe says as she starts another order of waffles. "We were looking for larger settlements before, and we had to adjust the filters to find these smaller groups. There were some false hits on groups of animals, which we had to eliminate as we went along.'

Brent shrugged. "Shame on us.  We were being too optomistic it seems.  We'll have to dial down our filters in the future.  It's probably worth the false hits on herds of animals to not miss a scattering of small settlements."  He looked at the planetary information.  "Let's see if any of them are near important resources.  We may want to contact them specifically."

Brent began to make adjustments to their sensor filters to try and scan for the smaller settlements.

Melina sat back from her plate with a sigh. "That is so good, Joxe."

She looked to Brent, who was working on a holographic control panel fine-tuning the sensors. "So we've found more villages. Now, what do we do with that information?"

Brent laughed.  "She's good for a lot of things Melina and cooking is near the top."  He sat back and let the sensors and systems process the data.  "Well, I think we want to contact them and offer help and communications."

"We can certainly do that," Malcolm says over the comm from his post on the bridge. "Question is, should we be the ones to make contact?"

Joxe purses her lips in thought, and then she nods. "I see your point."

Brent frowned and then slowly nodded.  "Perhaps it might be best to bring some of the villagers along and drop them off near each of the small settlements.  Perhaps they could make contact along with us.  It would be less traumatic than dropping in from the sky."

"We can discuss it with the village elders," Melina suggested. "Are we going back there, soon?"

Brent looked down at the sensor feed.  "We have another dozen orbits or so to get all the data we need.  We'll be back in about 18 hours or so."

OOG: If you want to add other activities during Day Three, you can edit them in.

167-1402 0545

Wanderer and her crew complete the remaining orbital scans.

Gareth, who is on watch at the time, pilots the ship back to the open field they had used before. He brings the ship in from the east, and sets it gently down on the wet grass. "We're down and secure," he reports over the comm.

In their bed, Joxe stirs in Brent's arms. "What time is it," she mumbles sleepily.

Brent uses the quiet time while they finish their orbits to continue familiarizing himself with the ship and advanced technology.  He also takes the time to show Melina around the ship and explain the operating systems to her.  Otherwise he relaxes and keeps a close eye on the sensors both those focused on the planet and the passive sweep of the system itself.

Later when the land Brent jerks awake just before Gareth calls out with that sixth sense developed over a life of spacing.  He calls out, "Roger Gareth, we'll be up and come out to talk with the elders in the morning.  Good work." Brent turns back to Joxe and kisses her gently and brushes her hair back.  "It's early, get a bit more sleep while I go get dressed and start breakfast."

"Thank you, Husband," she murmurs. "Computer, set snooze for ten minutes."

The computer responds with the soft tone it uses for "okay", and Joxe snuggles into her pillow. A moment later, she's snoring softly.

When Brent enters the common area, Gareth greets him with his customary stoic look while he serves himself some particularly strong coffee. Apparently, the commodity called "coffee" in the Egg System was the weak little sister of real Imperial coffee. It kept well, and Gareth was hooked on the stuff. Everyone else thought it made great deck cleaner. Well, everyone but Joxe and Naimh. They also had a taste for it, which pleased Gareth no end.

"Morning, Brent. After some wake-up juice," he lifts the cup, "I'll compile the sensor data into a plaspaper map and a printed report for the villagers, along with a datachip for the readers."

Brent smiled as Joxe settled back in to sleep.  Heading into the common area he nods to Gareth and goes to pour himself a cup of his usual beverage rather than deck cleaner. "Morning Gareth, thanks for bringing her in and letting us sleep."  He moved over to the galley and began to work on a breakfast.  "Any issues with the last handful of orbits?"

Gareth shakes his head. "No, no problems. In thinking about that, though, we will have to have some maintenance done within the next four months. This ship spent a long time just sitting around."

OOG: Here's the game timeline to date:


Event                               Date
Game Start                             120-1402
Arrival at Khesanadu                 128-1402
Meet Niamh Parker                       129-1402
Arrive Poznan Gas Giant               137-1402
Arrive Poznan Main                      145-1402
Jump Arrival at Execute Gas Giant 153-1402
Jump arrival at Execute Main          161-1402
Explore Mine and find remains       162-1402
Morning at Town                         163-1402
Survey Completed                       167-1402

Brent started to cook and considered the time they had spent aboard the ship.  He smiled as his thoughts went to Joxe.  "Is there anything we can do while here or do we need more facilities?  This might be a good place to sit down and do some work as the natives and the environment are friendly.  We can get fresh food and provide assistance as well."

Gareth serves his breakfast plate and sits down to eat. He's clearly preoccupied, and after a few moments, he sighs and looks at Brent. "I've been looking at this planet during our survey," he begins. "I've never been able to actually stand on one, much less found one that's actually nice enough to live comfortably on."

He sits back and sips more of that gods-awful coffee. "I think I can get that lanthanum mine up and running again. It may not be up to the old Imperium's standards, but what is, these days. Not to boast, but I have the training to handle it."

He pulls up a video clip on the holoscreen. "If I can have some parts and supplies, I'll cobble up a small transporter so I can move around a lot faster. See, they still have some of their old equipment in storage. I'll bet that there's an air raft or grav truck in there, too."

"Yes, and I saw how many young ladies were giving you the eye, Gareth," Joxe says from behind them. The man blushes to the top of his shaven head, and Joxe giggles. "I'm not trying to embarrass you, Gareth." She walks up and pats his shoulder. "I think it's a fine idea. We'd miss you, but someone has to do it."

Brent listens to Gareth and then frowns as he realizes just what he means.  He's about to reply when Joxe steps into the room.  Brent smiles at Joxe and goes over to slip his arm around her waist as they regard Gareth. "I think it would be the right thing to do.  Getting some of the transport working would also help the settlements connect.  With the lanthanum we could get Egg starward in six months or less.  They could really open up the mines with the permission of the locals and start the ball rolling.  The real trick would be to keep Egg from taking over this whole planet for the ore."

"I'm really not trying to quit on you, Brent," Gareth says quickly. "In fact, we will need to train more people to fly, and Wanderer is the only ship we have right now. I was thinking that you might want to take some new people with you when you leave this system."

"I want to go," Melina says from the lift. She and Malcolm step out, and Joxe grins at her. Melina and Malcoln repeat Gareth's blushing performance, causing Joxe to giggle again. "It's catching, I see."

Brent nods as Gareth talks.  "It was inevitable that we'd have to split up somewhat to get things done as we travel.  And training more to handle the return of interstellar travel and technology is another imperative."  He holds out his hand; "I don't take it as quitting.  It's a vital job." Brent turned and chuckled as Melina chimed in.  He shook his head and smiled at Joxe's grin and comment and the reaction from the couple.

"Not like I can complain about taking up together."  Brent gave Joxe a kiss on the cheek.  "We'd be glad to have you Melina and maybe one or two more of your folks who are willing to learn."

Gareth turns his coffee cup in his hands as he thinks for a moment. "I'm still concerned about Keipes, and whomever else might be out there, to be honest. There's not much we can do if someone shows up with something bigger than Wanderer. We can go back to Egg and repair some of their jump-capable ships, I suppose."

Brent frowns.  "I am very worried as well.  I think the best bet is to let you work to build up ore here while we continue to scout the main.  We can swing back in a few months and take enough back with us to Egg to get at least one or two more ships able to Jump."

Gareth nods in agreement. "We have some details to work out, but I think that's the best we can do. I will have my hands full trying to get enough ore. This ship takes one point seven tons of lanthanum, and, at a five percent concentration, that's thirty-four tons of raw ore."

Melina and Malcolm join Joxe in fixing their breakfast meal.

"Maybe you can get some of that equipment running to refine it down," Joxe says.

"I hope so," Garret says. "The trick is getting power to it. If I can't to that, we'll be hauling a lot of useless material around."