Levit was as slimy as expected Tepha.  But other than a lot of looks at your chest and ass, none of them done with any subtlety, you freeze him and head up the stairs.

The high passengers are thankfully docile.  They head to their cabins and remain there until Ledo has given the all clear.

Ulie than asks about any restrictions on communications access.

"I want to make sure I have downloaded all my messages before we hit jump," she explains, pushing those large glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. "Also, I have some messages I want to make sure go out before we jump.  About how long do we have until then?"

She seems satisfied when you tell her she has six hours until you reach the jump point Ledo has selected.

Sister Maribell just has one request.  "Show me to this garden of yours please."

Once inside, she puts her hands on her hips and glances around, a large grin on her face.

"You guys have done a good job!  I brought some berry and flower seeds.  Can I plant them here?  You guys can keep the plants.  Consider them a tip. Just wanna have somethin' to do on my trip."

You encounter Calliope wandering the halls.  She's holding a hand comm and seems to be looking around.  She smiles when she sees you.  It's not a genuine smile, but it doesn't seem to be too hostile either.  Calliope smiles like someone who is really tired and trying to be nice because she knows she's grumpy.

"Hi.  Tepha, right?  Sorry.  I'm bad with names.  I don't mean to be a problem. But I was wondering...is there any where on board I can go to get some privacy?"

She nods down the hall.  "Ulie is working in our cabin and that...nun I guess...is in the garden."  She holds up the hand comm.  "I need to rehearse for our shoot.  Just practicing some lines and such.  I'd prefer not to do it in the passenger lounge as people come in and out.

"Also, do you have like an AI or an off duty crew member who might be willing to help me with the line reads?  Just...someone to listen along and correct me when I misread a line?  If that's all a bother, I understand.  Just thought it wouldn't hurt to ask."

---

Of course things couldn't go too smoothly.  Why would they?

You study the sensor logs one more time Ledo.  It's definite.  For the last two hours since you left the Wyltz high port, another ship  has been following your trail.

They're hanging back just on the edge of your sensor range.  About a half hour or so behind you. The pursuer just blips on at the edge for a moment, and then disappears off.

With the number of ships leaving Wyltz high port, it's not necessarily unusual for someone to have gone along the same course as you for at least a while.  But the farther away you get from the port, the more likely the other ship would move in another direction.  No one follows another ship unless they're in the same convoy or they are stalking.

It has only been two hours though.  And with the other ship playing ghost at the edge of your sensor range, you have no detail about them.  You just know they're there.

You have six more hours until you clear the port's jump border, or area Wyltz has not authorized for jump traffic.

That's not saying you can't jump now.  But you have that hang time right before you jump where you'd sit more or less defenseless.  It should only be ten minutes or so.  But...

---

Jeston,

We can't really pretend things haven't run off the tracks any longer.  He's crazy and we both have targets on our back.

I'm going to jump at the next port.  You should too.  I don't know why you've hung in as long as you have.  If you're a cop like they say you're a fool to put your life at risk like this.

I don't care if it's ten million credits. No haul is worth my life.  You're on your own.

Viv

The hard copy was under the bunk Silver.  Come to think of it, you find a lot of stuff under bunks since you moved onto Tia.

You're setting up your new bunk in the cabin you'll now be sharing with Mr.-Better-Not-Snore-Rigan.  When you pushed the bunk frame back to give a little more room, the note fell out.  It must have been stuck under the frame.

The paper is yellowed with age.  This might be real paper and not plaztik sheets too.  The surface of it feels dry and crackly.

There's nothing else on it. Just Viv telling Jeston adios.

Tepha smiled politely and nodded.

"Of course. I believe Ullie was supposed to take her work to our brig but if she is working out of your room then the brig should be open. We can set the door controls so you are not locked in.

We don't have an AI but we do have a pair of excellent computer engineers. They can put together an expert system that you can use. They really are quite talented. I bet they can put something together that you would swear is a living person on the other end you can use night or day."

OOC: I don't know what the general stance on AIs are but the idea is that none of the passengers know about Fritz as an AI. They know that there are more crew and that there are off-limit parts of the ship. If anyone asks about Fritz they just mention he doesn't come out of his room very much.

Unless AIs are commonplace Ledo would be very concerned about whoever "lost" Fritz trying to locate them and an old-as-fuck ship having a sophisticated AI is, I think, weird and would leave a trail others could follow hence the general rule of "Fritz is just a computer junky who prefers to talk to strangers through a screen."

Once Calliope was familiar with the brig, Tepha heads to the bridge to advise Fritz on handling the actress.

"You get to be an actor too, Fritz. You get to pretend that you're just a dumb expert system but this should be an interesting challenge for you. Can you be helpful without her getting suspicious that you're more than a simple system?"

Ledo kept an eye on things but wasn't too concerned. Thanks to their combat drive he could really pour on the speed. They were only doing a J1 jump to Iderati so he could hit the thrusters for an hour of 4g speed and leave their ghost in the dust and have plenty of time to sit on their jump point.

He had the computer run the numbers to determine when he should thrust and for how long so they didn't overshoot their jump point and then had it set an alert. He didn't bother telling anyone except for Rig and Fritz. No reason to cause concern or prematurely alert a pirate if one of their passengers was stabbing them in the back again.

Silver didn't put too much into the note. Like everything else on the Tia, it was probably something that would have been valuable decades ago but ten million is ten million. She set some queries running on the 'net looking for anything that talked about "Jeston" "Viv" and "Tiamat" in the same article. Or even just two out of the three if nothing hit all three.

Wow!  First you guys give me money and now you're makin' me a star!  Thanks Tepha!

Oh!  That module in my programing regarding con jobs has some stuff about acting!  Think I should activate it?  I've kept it switched off until now.

---

Your ghost doesn't pop back up once you put the speed on Ledo.  You check it several times, but it seems to have disappeared off the periphery.

Either it can't keep up, it figured you made it and moved on to easier pickings, or it wasn't heading your way at all.

It's a fairly smooth ride the rest of the way.

You going to Iderati to Asteltine to Bowman?

---

BB.

I'd like a report on what happened on Wyltz.  Also, where are you?

Mr. Madigan is usually pretty short and to the point in his messages BB.  He pays well but he's not chatty.  He's also not one to waste a lot of time on the hired help.

You can summarize a response if you want.  Just need to know what you do and don't tell him.  Thanks

---

A search of the archive turns up a lot of stuff you already knew about Tia Silver.

Tia was once Tiamat's Rage.  It passed hands between a few different pirate crews.  Well.  That's not unusual.  The crews that had her were Bay Ragers, the Red Teeth Bastards, and some group who are just referred to as Bolengets.  Which one of the three is the stupidest crew name is a matter of opinion.

You have a dim memory of the Bastards.  They might have been active when you were a wee thing.  But none of the three is legendary by any stretch.  You'd never heard of the Ragers<i> or this <i>Bol-a-whatever it is.

Jeston is either Mikhal Jeston, a track star who won twenty two medals at the last March Imperial Games or Jeston Albers.  A retired naval lieutenant. There's an article fifty years old that shows him getting decorated for his undercover work in busting up various pirate crews.  You would guess this is your guy.

There are so many 'Viv's, the system jams.

It has been a while, but waaaaaay back in the 'Got Hit and Got Git' thread, Ledo learned that the body parts you guys found on Tia all belonged to a Jeston Albers.  Not sure if he ever shared that info with the others though.  If he did, Silver knows it

I only need answers on Tepha and BB.  Any others you want to populate feel free.

We will proceed to Bowman in a bit.  Thanks.

Tepha motions towards one of the cameras for Fritz to cool his processors.

"Remember, we're trying to keep you under wraps so you need to pretend to be just an expert system."

Ledo can't help but smirk. It probably was nothing but it was nice to think he had just ruined some scavengers day.

Ledo checked the coordinates into the computer to alert the others as to their overall journey.

The goal was to hop from Iderati to Asteltine to Bowman. Their next port would wait until Bowman so it was just hopping to gas giants and processing fuel.

BB gave a sigh. She had spent nearly a week typing up the report going back and forth about what to include and what not to.

At first she had focused on just the important bits but she realized that if they had watched any of Nero's streams she didn't want to get called out for missing anything so she explained how he got into a bit of a 'prank war' with another group, attached himself to the Pansy Paws without realizing that they were a bunch of eco terrorists. She was quick to point out that the Pansy Paws' own security force was unaware of their terrorist activities.

She then did a run through of how she was able to evacuate him to space and how they are planning on continuing to travel with the Tia for the near future.

With a sigh she attached the "official" report but also added into the message body that Nero had fallen hard for one of the terrorists. It was clear she had manipulated him to gain access and useful cover but he was in a state of depression which was why he wasn't responding or posting videos. Health wise he was fine but it might take him a bit of time to get out of it. As a final note BB mentioned that the Tia was escorting a film crew and she was hoping getting backstage access to the filming of a movie might distract Nero from his broken heart.

Silver put in some contacts with her cop contacts. None of them were very good anymore but she put out a general feeler to pull any information about Jeston and his cases. Maybe she would get lucky.

In reply to Tepha Pezal (msg # 6):

Fritz hesitates a moment.  And then, with a bit of dejection, "Ooooookaaay..."

---

If Ms. Silver can make me a Streetwise/Soc check please.  She would need to really nail it but maybe she'll get lucky.

Now that we're done with set up, let's move along.  Thanks

-_-


16:22, Today: Silver rolled 2 using 2d6.  street/soc.