Midge looked up from the flickering of his wrist computer to look at the bionic elf and snort, shaking his head slightly,"How much is it going to cost us? We've got discounts through the Starfinder Society, we got told a message had been sent?"

Glancing around at the others his nose twitched and he looked at them all,"And if I can get com addresses or other ways to send you guys information and ask questions as I research that would be stellar...since we seem to be stuck together for the time being it's best we work as a nest, at least for now?"

His eyes wondered to Laelyn,"Especially you with, if I'm not mistaken, an Editic memory?"

     The attendant raised an eyebrow at Midge's comment about the Starfinder society, and glanced away again. "Sorry, Sir.  I have no messages regarding your arrival.  However we do provide a discount for Starfinders.  May I see your badges and get your names for our registry, please," they asked.

Kairynn remained quiet. She knew they were not actually members of the Starfinder society and  thus had no badges and probably were not entitled to the discount - but the difference was somewhat academic, and she didn't want to speak up and mess up any plans Laelyn might have - as the human clearly was far more expert at this sort of interaction than the android.

     Noticing everyone's awkward silence, the attendant proceeded to complete the transaction.  "A quad costs 40 credits per night," she explained.

Laelyn shakes her head a little, blinking.  "Sorry, yes, thank you.  We shall, I think, be taking turns in paying, but you may charge my account for the first night."

     The attendant nodded and smiled, typing a few more details and then holding out a scan pad for Laelyn's thumbprint.

     "If you all would like to be encoded to the room, you can place your thumbs on the scanner as well, please."

"Sure, I'd be glad too." Asher said taking off one of his gloves and letting his thumb being scanned.

"Also thanks for paying or the first night, very nice of ya." Asher said giving her an appreciative nod.

Midge looked at the thumb pad scanner suspiciously and then gave his best impression of an innocent smile,"I'm alright, I'll just stick close to the bigs if I need to get in." He wasn't putting no thumb print on record so people could find him, not if he didn't have to.

Kairynn looked at Midge for a moment, her face unreadable, then pressed her thumb on the scanner without comment.

     Once the attendant had received scans from those who willing to provide it, she handed over a small transparent card that had the name of the hotel, their room number, and a small animated map showing it's location.  An arrow on the edge of the card even shifted to indicate which way the room was.

     "Lifts to the right.  22nd floor.  Enjoy your stay!" she finished cheerfully.

Midge met Kairynn's look and gave her a wink, a little weird on a Yskoi but it was something he had learned from humans. Once they had walked away and were in the elevator away from prying ears he spoke again,"Did a little research, while we were walking on this rock that's outside. Any of you know anything about Hardscrabble Collective or Astral Extractions?"

"Nothing that we can't discover with a computer search once we get to our room", said Kairynn-412 evenly. "They sound like the names of businesses, aren't they?"

     Moving to the elevator, they got a car to themselves and traveled up to the 22nd floor.  Easily finding the room and entering, they found it as advertised: two bedrooms, four beds, living space, kitchenette, computer terminals, entertainment matrix and balcony looking out over the station.

Once they were in the room Midge nodded to Kairynn-412,"Yes, they are, they are the companies currently fighting over the ownership rights of the strange asteroid, the Collective owns the ship, but the Astral Extractions hired them to search for potential mining sites...so there is some conflict. Any of you know anything about either of them?"

"Can't say I have." Asher said as he walked around the room, cheerfully impressed with the arrangements.

"Heh I like our digs though" He said as he quickly began moving around inspecting everything with a smile before calming himself down, "Heh sorry didn't mean to get too excited."

Laelyn drops backwards onto one of the beds, looking up at the ceiling.  After a moment, she sits up, looking at Midge curiously.  "Why?" she asks.  "I noticed it on the news, but you've actually been researching it.  Personal interest?  Or do you see some connection to our situation that I'm missing?"

[Private to GM: And in the meantime... does Laelyn know anything about those?  I'm not actually sure what skill that might fall under, and since my computer is still out I don't have my pdfs, but I think Culture?  Or possibly her Reporter profession.  Those are both a 7, so the roll works out the same if either fits, in which case she got a 16.]

"As I mentioned earlier, a few searches should give us a good grounding." Kairynn walks over to the room's computer and types in searches for 'Hardscrabble Collective' and 'Astral Extractions'.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:33, Fri 07 Dec 2018.

     Kairynn's searches of the infosphere both initially brought up links to the Acreon and the Drift Rock.

     After searching for a few more minutes (take 20) she discovered that Astral Extractions did mining business all over the Pact Worlds, and was starting to expand their interests into the Vast.  There were various indications that while they put up a pretty front, they weren't afraid to use hired muscle to deal with those who were against their interests.  She eventually found some reliable indications that AE had hired the Downside Kings to coerce the Hardscrabble Collective into abandoning its claims on the Acreon and the Drift Rock.

     Speaking of the Collective, who were a tight-knit group of asteroid miners that worked mostly the Diaspora but had not central headquarters, there was evidence that they had hired the Level 21 Crew to protect their personnel and interests until the Drift Rock incident was resolved.

Midge blinked at Laelyn's question, a twitch of his whiskers and he reached up with his metallic hand to scratch his ear before answering,"I can't bust my way out of problems, I research everything. I need to have an answer, a friend or a solution to every problem you bigs can just force your way out of. There is no such thing as information without value, just information I haven't found a use for...so I collect information."

The best imitation of a smile curled his top lip exposing his large gnawing teeth even further,"Information, bits of electronics and soft scraps of cloth...I collect all of them. So keep an eye out, it would make me happy."

As Kairynn reads out her findings, Laelyn nods thoughtfully.  "All I had was that they were likely to be a good fight...but there's our Kings and our Crew."  She looks at Midge, and grins.  "Useful habit.  If your electronics and cloth collections work out this well, we won't need force."

"I'd say the good news is, this lends a lot of weight to the likelihood that Duravor was just an unfortunate accident, and we were all in the wrong place at the wrong time."

“Allowing that it is so, and there is certainly a strong suggestion from this research, it still does not explain why the shuttle bay at that hour was the wrong time and place. The gangs would not have engaged in a firefight without some greater purpose, and it would need to be one which caused them to both be present at the same moment. We should look at the arrivals schedule for that bay. Obviously our own shuttle will be one of the ships whose manifests we should examine.”
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 05:01, Mon 24 Dec 2018.

     Calling up the daily arrival schedule for Docking Bay 94, Kairynn sees that the Okimoro had been expected at 11:40, but arrived at 11:42.  The public manifest only showed the number of passengers, crew and the name of the pilot, Captain Linhorn.

     Docking Bays 93 and 95 were empty at the time of the firefight, but they received their planned arrivals at 12:10 and 12:35 respectively.

[Private to Laelyn: You think it might be good to investigate more information about the Downside Kings and the Level 21 Crew.]

[Private to Midge: It occurs to you that you don't know much about Duravor Kreel, besides what Chiskisk had told you.]

"It seems unlikely our gang members woud've been interested in a neighboring docking bay; they would not have walked past so far their target to meet in the middle. They must've been waiting for our shuttle, or someone waiting for something being delivered from our shuttle. This manifest is very thin in information. Unless someone recalls having seen someone or something interesting on the shuttle, we will need to acquire the private manifest."

Midge reached up scratching behind an ear and crinkling his pink nose,"Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way, maybe it's not the ship or the place, maybe they got their target? Duravor Kreel was a member of the Starfinder society, but that doesn't mean he didn't have a checkered past...maybe we need to dig a little deeper into his history? That might give us a clue."

Asher nodded in agreement, "I agree, you never know who's got skeletons in their closet. Checking out if this guy had any may be worth looking into just to cover our bases"