IC Inbox

[lastdecember]

This is the after hours contact for Nicholas Wolfwood, Logistics. If this is an emergency, stop wasting everyone's time and page me.

Comments

MED_A_Hilbert to OPE_N_Wolfwood

[tarakan]

L3TH3 has given me information on the captain's status. It is an audio file of the captain's conversation with Dr. Emerwen.

Do you want a copy?

[lastdecember]

[ Why does this feel like a trap? ]

Isn't that sort of thing supposed to be kept confidential?

[tarakan]

Quite probably.

[ Thankfully, Hilbert's concept of ethics is loosey-goosey at best. ]

But there are aspects of the captain's current state that have changed my mind about certain decisions I made before. I hate admitting it, but your attempt at killing Captain Drake was the right choice.

[ Except it wasn't. Except that from what he learned, Hilbert desperately wants to get a sample, to see the Captain in person and get just a vial of blood, a pound of flesh, something he can examine. Because this has potential. This could revolutionize his work.

And it would be a good idea to try and get the only person in Operations on his side. ]

[lastdecember]

[ This is definitely a trap. First the man threatens to space him for endangering them all, athen he pulls a 180 and says Wolfwood was right?

Hilbert wants smomething, and Wolfwood's willing to bet that it's the kind of something that doesn't end well for him. Still -- he has to know. That video Rin showed him is burned into his brain forever. He has to know more. ]

Send it over.

[tarakan]

[ That's the right answer. ]

Audio file attached.
session1.file

ENG_V_Saverem to OPE_N_Wolfwood

[plantussy]

Coffee?

[lastdecember]

[ Saverem's placing orders with him now? Does he look like a damn barista? ]

Sure. Give me an hour. You want the same as before?

[plantussy]

[ Wolfwood's his favorite barista, okay? ]

Oh, I meant if you wanted to have some. You know, with me.

[lastdecember]

[ Oh. Oh. ...Okay, that makes more sense, sure. ]

It's not all fudge anymore right?

[ Somebody's been living on ration bars for the last couple days. ]

[plantussy]

[ Personal messages sent over a few days while Wolfwood tries to distance himself from everyone (again) ]

Coffee?

Lunch?

Looks like you're run ragged with the ship thing, let me know when you get off next.

Coffee?

Are you ok? I mean I see you around but you don't seem to want to talk. Stressed?

Come on, you need a break! Just a little one?

Is it me? The weird eye lines? I understand if it is.

[ Then, after a few days with no messages; ]

Wolfwood, I really need to talk to you. I had another hallucination.

[lastdecember]

[ Every single one of those messages was left on read, although the comment about the eye lines almost got a response -- almost.

But Saverem can't take a hint, it seems, so finally Wolfwood's got no choice but to reply. ]

What does that have to do with me? What do you want?

[plantussy]

[ Vash is a stubborn guy, and Wolfwood hasn't outright told him to fuck off! Hell, he might mot have listened then, either... he really liked the guy. There's just something there that makes him feel drawn to the other man.

Maybe he has his answer why, now. ]

I met a man with your name.

[lastdecember]

[ Wolfwood's also had a couple hallucinations -- or dreams, which is what he's been assuming they are. Things he halfway remembers that couldn't have happened are obviously dreams that he's only now recalling, right? So yeah, it makes perfect sense that folks on the ship are having dreams about the other members of the crew -- he's betting a lot of people are having work dreams. ]

Oh yeah? Was he an asshole too?

MED_B_0 to OPE_N_Wolfwood

[heartofhealing]

[ Sometime before AG-001! ]

Mr. Wolfwood, you said you could possibly help me with some form of access to my daughter if L3TH3 was unreasonable. Do you have a moment to discuss this?

[lastdecember]

[ What? ...Aw shit, bluff called. ]

Come down to maintenance.

[ There's been a small addition to one corner of the maintenance bay. A previously reinforced section that had been used for chemical work -- it's got non-reactive panels on the floor and walls and a big ventilation hood -- has now been completely enclosed with a fourth wall at the front. It looks like any other portable clean room, and in fact that's where Wolfwood got the parts. He's working on a lab bench in the middle of the room if and when the doc shows up, cursing quietly under his breath as he works on a fine piece of soldering in the middle of a chaotic mess of wiring. ]

[heartofhealing]

[ Don't bluff a dad wanting to see his daughter! ]

Alright. I'll be there in a minute.

[ When Baizhu does arrive, he's a bit confused to see the clean room setup going on. Careful to not disturb anything, he stops outside the main 'clean' area and politely calls out; ]

Mr. Wolfwood?

[lastdecember]

[ The room is 5 meters on a side, the walls lined with workbenches -- there's an acid bath, a degreasing tank, and lots of electrical components. Everything except for Wolfwood's current work station is neat and tidy, with everything put away and clearly labeled. Wolfwood, on the other hand, looks like he's losing a fight with a thousand-legged wire beast.

He barely glances up at Baizhu's greeting, intent on his work. ]

Come in, an' close the door.

[ There's seats, if Baizhu wants to pull up a stool. There's one near the door, held to the floor with suction -- no magnetic locks in here. ]

MED_A_Hilbert

[tarakan]

Apologies for delay.
Last month, L3TH3 said that I could contact Operations to retrieve a drone with surgical capabilities from storage.
More information is needed on the captain's status. I believe I can convince L3TH3 to let me send drone to the bridge to get basic medical information. Obviously I would like more information than simple vitals. But mystery diseases were not cured overnight: every little bit counts.
Can you provide drone?

[lastdecember]

[ As much as he wants to tell Hilbert to go fuck himself -- as much as he wants to just leave that message on read for the rest of time -- the captain deserves better. ]

Once it's contaminated, the drone won't ever be able to come back through to this side of the ship. It'll need to be able to perform your analysis, plus its own maintenance, and if its in there anyway you might as well give it a couple rounds of better medication. Send me the specs for what you need it to do, and I'll get you your drone.

[tarakan]

Specs attached.

[ And attached are some ideas for drone modifications as well as what Hilbert would like it to do. We're starting minimal. At the least, he would want a video link to the drone so that it could transmit footage of the bridge back, as well as basic medical capabilities akin to a P-HYMN-1.A scanner. His ideal parameters are basically what the scan can do: blood chemistry analysis, imaging capabilities, recording baseline vitals, tracking organ function, etc. He also requests the ability to operate across multiple spectrum of light, focused on ultraviolet and x-ray. ]

[lastdecember]

[ That sounds like just embedding a medical scanner into a drone, which is easy enough. Wolfwood figures it'll need some additional protective coating since it'll have to clean itself, and that'll be more of a chemical bath situation than the gentler cleaning it would get on this side of quarantine -- sending over a drone-sized UV decontamination unit might not be feasible, so he'll have to assume the little guy will just be dousing itself with solvents.

So: a medical scanner, plus lensing to allow for the UV and xray light requirements, then self-cleaning sprays and diagnostics, and a basic self-repair module in case it loses a tread. After having seen that other maintenance drone, covered in filth and falling to pieces, instead of the solvent-stable wrap Wolfwood instead adds a note to include a frictionless coating and gap seal the whole thing, to try and prevent this drone from getting as soiled as the other one is.

It's a good project, when he's got all his notes ready to go. It'll be a challenge to get all those parts crammed into the drone's casing, but when he's done it'll do a lot of good to somebody who's been suffering for far too long. It's exactly the kind of project he's been needing.

Not that he tells Hilbert any of that. ]

Give me two days.

[ The ship will lose power before he finishes, but from this side of the mini-event, two days will be more than enough time. ]

[action]

[itdoesntlikeyou]

[So the thing is that this should technically come through a requisition form. But also the thing is that the last time they did this, Wolfwood was very Friendly and Helpful about it, in the most sarcastic sense, back when they were working on a drone for the alien vessel scans.

Current plan is thus: they're filling out the requisition form, but since they're just going to have to confirm that the components match, they'll go down to Operations' storage areas anyway to check, collect the components as is, and be able to send and promptly mark it as fulfilled five seconds later. Clean, easy, neither them or Wolfwood will have to worry about trying to work together, and Rin doesn't have to worry about the headache of 'stealing' from Operations.

A flawless plan that's promptly foiled by walking into the repair bay to the crackle of machinery at work, and the sight of a bright red uniform. And of course the door hissed open just in time for a break in that semi-constant noise, leaving Rin standing in the doorway to promptly snap their CL-10's screen dark. List, what list.]

[lastdecember]

[ There's so many things on the ship that require L3TH3 to operate -- the shields, the blast doors in the hanger, any communications outside of the basic intraship comms, all the computer systems, the fucking lights -- and frankly, it's too many things to leave in the metaphorical hands of an AI that's proven itself untrustworthy. Without L3TH3, they'd be more or less dead in space... but in Wolfwood's opinion, it's really only a matter of time before the AI decides that they're too much of a problem and finds an excuse to purge the ship again.

So he's working on a solution to that problem. Nothing he'll use right away, but something to have in his back pocket in case of an emergency. His first though had been something explosive, something that would put the captain out of his suffering as well as taking L3TH3 offline. But given the limitations of cramming all of Hilbert's medical equipment and a big enough bomb into a drone, he's decided to limit his targets. So an EMP it is.

He's deep in concentration on a particularly delicate process when the doors open, and Lieutenant Joyless stomps in, tablet in hand like always, and with a direct line of sight to the potentially very incriminating coil Wolfwood's been working on. He slaps a hand down on the workbench right in front of the half-finished assembly, and glowers over it at Rin. ]

You need somethin'?

[itdoesntlikeyou]

[There's three full seconds of silence, a suspiciously long period by Rin's usual metrics, especially given the way their attention snaps to the hand that's slammed down onto the bench, then past it - towards the wall, possibly, in their usual avoidance of direct eye contact, though their expression is a pinched frown.]

You don't have to get up. I can find it myself.

[Will that work? Maybe, maybe not, but they're going to start making for the various shelves and containers anyway, skirting around Wolfwood's workstation as they do.]

[lastdecember]

[ Every second ticks by like an eternity. Rin's got about two more seconds, by Wolfwood's count, before he's going to risk his soldering job, throw a shop rag over his project, and get up to escort the bastard out. But Rin moves before Wolfwood does, heading for the nearby shelves like they're got the right to just shop in Wolfwood's store here.

They do, but that's beyond the point. ]

Oi, don't touch anything!

[ Really, what are the chances that Rin could recognize what he's working on anyway? Wolfwood decides in the moment that getting Rin out of the room is more important than (very suspiciously) sitting here and blocking their view of his project, so he shoves back out of his seat and comes around to the other side of the workbench, keeping himself btween Rin and the half-finished electrical coil on the table. ]

You're gonna mess everything up, let me get it! What do you need?