Chapter 2: The Wayward Wind

"Alright ladies. Let's do this."

Zuni attempts to slowly ease the craft closer to the Alo'hei, clenching his teeth as he does so.

I have to make it up to the girls.

Seally messes with the data analysis algorithms, attempting to provide more advanced signal analysis to the sensor data stream. "That interference field is intense!"

"Well I think this is the best chance we're going to get! Let's give it a shot!" Fallon operates the sensors, trying to narrow in on the creatures and trying to filter out as much interference as she can to get clean readings.

Zuni gently pilots the ship among the radiant tendrils, carefully avoiding physical contact. The Wayward Wind hands like a dream in his hands.

Alerio gradually floods the sensor's power grid, giving them a momentary boost. Too much power and she could blow the whole array, but not enough and the sensors won't have enough power to cut through the quantum wave distortions. She carefully monitors every aspect of the grid, ensuring stability.

Seally tries to computationally adjust for the interference, but it's Fallon's hypothesis about biological patterns that pans out. She is able to cut out significant portions of background radiation to bring clarity to the readings.

With the ship in the perfect place, the sensors overclocked beyond their limit, and brilliant deduction about the patterns that you're looking for, Fallon manages to pull gigabytes of data on Alo'hei. It'll take a long time to sort through it all, but already Goldie recognizes certain astonishing patterns.

The Alo'hei appears to be something like a living starship. They possess 'regions' for lack of a better word (not quite an organ - their physiology is less rigidly compartmentalized than typical animals, it seems) allowing it to generate a specialized type of Jump field that is tuned to its unique biology. The ship's organic components would be able to create and sustain the subspace field necessary for Jump travel, allowing it to safely traverse the vast distances of space.

While Fallon tries to account for a sudden wave of distortions, you can see out of the bridge viewport a long, thin tentacle reaching out from the blue Alo'hei toward the Wayward Wind. It loosely coils around the ship, wrapping it in a luminous tunnel, without ever actually touching it.

Within each of your minds, you suddenly sense a foreign thought. It grows in strength like a tidal wave and then crashes upon you, knocking you back into your seats. It makes you feel incredibly small, but also brings peace to your heart. The thought is beyond what you can comprehend, beyond the ability of any sophont language you know to describe it.

The tentacle retracts, and the Alo'hei curl in their tentacles away from Forine's star. You realize the Wayward Wind was inside the tunnel for thirty minutes, even though it felt like a blink of an eye. The Alo'hei begin to drift away from the star, gradually picking up speed.

A large cluster of ships has managed to catch up to the Alo'hei in this time, and now surround the Wayward Wind. A few of them dash off to try to keep up with the living starships, but most stay focused on you. You are suddenly bombarded with dozens of comms messages from these ships, asking to know "What happened? What did you see? Who are you?"

Mesmerized by the creatures, Zuni couldn't remember a time when he had been so excited about encountering an alien being. His mouth opened in awe and he hoped they would allow the ship to come closer. He couldn't believe their luck when a tentacle reached out to their ship and wrapped around it. Or at least it seemed like it did.

The next thing he remembers is saying, "Whoa. What was that? I feel so, I don't know, calm. Relaxed." Coming back to a state of full alertness he suddenly notices all the ships hovering around them.

"Oh look. I think we have become celebrities." When he sees the Alo'hei drift off he whispers, Oh, please don't go."

Fallon cheers as the readings come pouring in. "We did it!" She hugs Zuni and Seally and gives Alerio a fist bump. "We just had a close encounter of the awesome kind! You can read all about it on my personal info sheet. The name's Fallon Verde, investigative journalist!" She smiles at finally getting an opportunity to get her name out there.

Alerio, risen from her calm but the sensors lighting up full of ships, she reaches for her weapon.

Feeling light, the paranoia can only creep into the corners of her mind, but she’s aware that they’re sitting on something once in a lifetime. People have killed for far less.

"Zuni… You good to fly?" she asks, shaking her head loose.

"Yeah, let's bail before we get hijacked for the data' why don't we broadcast that we suffered some electrical anomalies, lost readouts for a bit, but we're fine. Maybe they'll back off."

Zuni blushes a little at Fallon's attention and gives her a solid hug. Elated beyond belief, the pilot is still taking it all in; what it means for the crew in terms of income and what it means for his blown mind.

"Yeah sure, I'm good, just still a little blown away by that experience, and Fallon gets the scoop of the century!" Putting his attention into deciding what path they should take to extricate themselves from among the curious onlookers he nods at Seally. "You know, that's not a bad idea."

She smirks. "I'm certainly relieved that it didn't qualify as a bad idea. Come, come, chop chop, we've got an appointment to keep, and hopefully a fat reward to collect."

"Yeah, let’s shake them loose and then plan our next move." she thinks for a minute then.

"Any way to relocate that data? Something we can carry with us while we are off ship?"

Not able to respond to every ship, you broadcast a communiqué that states you failed to find anything. Some ships persist, want to know what you saw, etc. but you plot course back on track for the asteroid that houses the HQ of Nguyen Manufacturing and Logistics, Ltd. to meet with their CEO, Savine Ngyuen. Most ships disperse, but you see a few persistent ships follow after you, although they are unable to keep up with you or the Alo'hei.. You watch through your scopes as the Alo'hei vanish into Jump space to unknown destinations.

Thanks to the Wayward Wind's state-of-the-art M-drive, you arrive at NM&L asteroid in punctual fashion. The large asteroid is dotted with structures, but most of the buildings are clustered around a huge mining laser, which bores into the core of the asteroid, which is now hollow. Small mining vehicles buzz about inside the hollow core like bees in a hive, periodically coming out with containers of ore and precious metals, destined to be transformed into inexpensive electronics and budget starship parts.Automated guidance systems direct you to a docking bay, where there are several empty berths, and two Type-R transports that look similar to the Astrogirl are being loaded with familiar crates that remind you of the shoot-out two days ago.

Once you've landed and secured the ship, a protocol droid greets you at the airlock. It gives you a friendly but brief welcome, and does not prohibit your weapons or armour. It gives you ID badges with and escorts into the industrial facility, where you realize there is no artificial gravity. The protocol droid guides you through the facility, as you navigate by hand holds.

You soon leave the industrial side of the compound and enter the administration and operations wing, which looks like most prefab belter structures you've ever seen - metal, spartan, and bare. Hydroponic plant clusters break up the mechanical monotony, serving as a backup source of oxygen.

You arrive at Savine's office, and the protocol droid ushers you in and follows. Entering the room, you find a small, elderly woman surrounded by screens and strapped into a chair. She turns away from her screens to acknowledge your arrival, her face arranged in a permanent frown.

"Your punctuality is noted. As you are amply aware, I am in your debt for assisting my incompetent crew with their security breach. I would like to resolve this matter. I am prepared to offer you monetary compensation for your heroics, unless you had a more intangible reward in mind?"

Sad to see the wondrous creatures go, Zuni gets back to the task at hand as they close in on the reward. He smirks good-naturedly at Seally's retort while keeping his eye on the hovering ships that persist in following them. When they finally disappear he is somewhat relieved as they close in on their destination.

Once at the compound and unhappy to note that there is no gravity whatsoever, Zuni feels foolish trying to navigate forward in such conditions. His arms aren't used to the ordeal so by the time he reaches Savine's office, he's rubbing his burning arms.

"What are our options?" he asks the frowning elderly woman when she mentions compensation.

Seally smiles at the woman. She probably outranks the woman, or would in Imperial space, but they were not in Imperial space. This woman was the queen of her own little fief and Seally understood that intimately.

"Madame Nguyen, you honor us with this meeting. I trust you have many matters to attend to so see won't take much of your time. We would be pleased to accept what you think is fair compensation," (she will negotiate any offer, of course), "but as my colleague suggests, if you have an alternate idea, such as lucrative subcontracting, then we are outfitted for carrying passengers or cargo as well. The Wayward Wind is more than just a freight hauler, but she's faster than any scow."

Fallon hates Forine. Its about as far away from tropical beaches as you can get. And now with the lack of gravity she was having a hard time navigating the facility.

Things didn't improve when they confronted the Matriarch. Fallon was a quick judge of character from experience as a journalist and her quick mental summary was, "probably not outright evil but best avoided just to be safe." The small woman was curt and factual and without a hint of agreeableness. She'd be happy to take the money and make for another destination that wasn't here.

Seally settles down too hard negotiations. She's interested in further deals that could benefit the Wayward Wind, doing jobs with Nguyen. So she starts with the requested story.

"I am Seally Llewyn of House Llewyn. The Wayward Wind was built by my family and prospered, until it was stolen by House Gagarin. The Gagarins made sport of flaunting this capture, putting this once-proud ship to menial and dishonorable tasks..." she continues on, telling the story of the ship's established name sullied by disreputable scum, until it was stolen once more. When they received word of its whereabouts on planet Walston, they tracked it down, saved a town from an erupting volcano, and began their quest for redeeming the Wayward Wind's once proud name. The Astrogirl was one such mission for her crew of golden hearts.

"Ally with us and you'll be in the ground floor of an epic tale of redemption. Your wisdom and foresight will be a byword in Sector 268.'"

Zuni almost broke out his imaginary violin as Seally tried to tug at Savine's greed strings. Epic tale of redmeption. Such drama! It was also amusing to see his crewmate strut her negotiation talents. He was enjoying it immensely but he wasn't sure about allying with the crotchety old woman. Something about her rubbed him the wrong way. It wasn't her obvious bad humor either, he just didn't trust the woman.

Alerio sits in the back, her H.A.R.C slung up on her shoulder. By now, word will have reached the matriarch about how Alerio ganked those two guys as she was leaving the ship. She wanted to let that be the image of her that these people had.

Cold, hard, brutal. People out in sectors like that knew that kind of world, and those kinds of people; they knew where they stood.