Wildcards Year 1 Act 1: The Conflagration Starts Here!

[Jet Jockey]

While in her cockpit Saffron will unzip her flight suit and conceal one of the crystals in her bra and puts the other two in a pocket.   When it is safe she gets out of her VF-171 and will casually make her way to the changing rooms.

[Sketchley]

CG-420 H. Ito - Orbit of Nora, Williams Star
2061.09.02; afternoon

"What'd you pick up?"

Major Stonewall grunts disappointedly.  "I'll find out."

Hartio Cane replies, "you do that.  Captain Daniels is waiting to debrief you."  He pauses long enough to put on his sunglasses, "burn baby, burn."

After cycling through the airlock, Stonewall steps in front of Jacques-Burton and holds out hand.   "Give it to me," he flatly says.

[MasumiX]

  Ro quietly wits out the interaction, letting her CO do his Job.  She not a little surprised to find something out of the ordinary. its not exactly like Safron was beaming for having pickup up the flight recorder She was suprised to watch the Major jump in Safrons face about it though.

  "Give it to me," 

  Ro stopped in her tracks, a pace or two behind Jacques-Burton, her hands in her pockets, curious to see how this would play out.  She took the opportunity to really size up Stonewall, still trying to peg why he seemed so familliar.

[Jet Jockey]

At first she'll try to cover it up with a lie, "It was nothing.  I thought I could reach the flight data recorder but it looked heavy and was too far from my reach.   I picked up the nearest thing there."  She pulled out one of the shards from her pocket.   The other she kept inside and the third was hidden elsewhere.   She opened her hand revealing the crystallized shard to Stonewall.  "Nothing really it's just some pretty rock from the planet."   

[MasumiX]

   "Wow! is that thing real!?"  Roben immediately bent closer to get a good look at the Fold crystal, her hand instinctively reaching out to touch it.

   "Are they really safe to touch like that?"  The flash and colour of the crystal almost reminded her of something familiar, something lost, maybe fun, maybe dangerous. The memory was too tenuous to hold onto, too vague to be worries about.

   "Hey can we keep it?" Roben turned to Stonewall. "Finders keepers right, those assholes got the rest of the crash landing, we didn't even have time to get ID badges or identify the ship."

[Sketchley]

CG-420 H. Ito - Orbit of Nora, Williams Star
2061.09.02; afternoon

Major Stonewall plucks the crystal from Jacques-Burton's hand.  He makes faces in response to Janos's query as he does it.

"She's probably sown half-a-dozen to her panties," he replies.  His voice is laden with sarcasm, but at the same time he's also sincere.  "You'll have to work them out of her yourself," he adds, with a wink.

He turns and starts walking toward engineering, adding, "you two, be ready to debrief in 5..."  Stonewall pauses as he re-evaluates the crystal.  "... 10 minutes."

[Jet Jockey]

"Can we keep it...?   I'm the one who found it" Saffron says in protest as Stonewell walks towards Engineering.   She then mutters under her breath, "Why does he even want it.  It won't even look good on him."

[MasumiX]

  "P`shw, what were you going to do with it? make earings?!"  Janos barks a short laugh, after giving a grimace to Stonewalls wink.

   "And whats the point of a debrief anyway.... " loosening off the collar of her uniform. She massages her left arm, concealing her activation of the broadband connection, she blinks twice pulling up some fold crystals for dummies files to get any details on the safety of handling the crystals.

   "...I mean, what are we gonna say;  Launched, performed entry, locate crash site, farted, then chased off by locals,  bah."  Ro shook her head. "I'm gonna grab a stim-juice before the meeting..." she didn't exactly leaving the statement an invitation, but it could have been.

[Sketchley]

CG-420 H. Ito - Orbit of Nora, Williams Star
2061.09.02; afternoon

Janos accesses the ship's internal library.

A cursory search results in a lot of technical information, such as manuals on fold communications arrays, super fold drives and so on.  There's not very much at all on the actual handling of crystals.

However, she does stumble across someone's blog about being envious of those not so common people who can receive, sometimes even send, fold communications while touching fold quartz.  Given the general lack of information on handling, it can be presumed that fold quartz is fairly benign.


** briefing **

In the Wildcards' briefing room, Major Stonewall, and Lieutenants Jacques-Burton and Janos are joined by Captain Daniels, the ship's CAG, Colonel Gall Hoodang, and his aid, First Lieutenant Taut Chaps.

Major Stonewall finishes his preliminary report, "... just as we were starting our initial scans of the crash site, we were contacted by the ship and told to return.  A few moments later, the 3 SOIT fighters showed up.

At approximately that time, 2nd Lieutenant Jacques-Burton spotted something noteworthy, and descended to investigate.  2nd Lieutenant Janos and myself proceeded to distract the SOIT members with dialogue and Janos also provided timely advice to Jacques-Burton to cover her recovery of a crystal from the crash site."

First Lieutenant Chaps' fingers suddenly burst into a flurry of activity as she quickly types Stonewalls last statements into her laptop computer.  Colonel Hoodang stare intently and unwaveringly at Jacques-Burton, watching her reactions.

"We then returned to the ship, under escort... and that brings us to here," Stonewall ends.

The captain mulls over Stonewall's summary until a scientist knocks and enters the room.

The white lab coated, spectacled scientist with unkempt hair, puts the evidence bag with the Fold Quartz in it on the small table next to the podium at the front of the room.

In a geeky sounding voice, he flatly says, "It's Blood Quartz."

Both the Captain's and Colonel Hoodang's eyebrows arch in bemusement.  The captain muses, "could it have been smugglers on a drop-off that went bad?"

He looks at Jacques-Burton and asks," how much more of it was there?"

[Jet Jockey]

How gross a scientist.   Saffron didn't trust their type.   Always wearing glasses and having unkempt hair.  It was never that tough guy, I don't a damn but you know I paid a lot for this messy hair cut.   It was I'm a super nerd who really has no sense of style and that's why my hair is so bad.   Scientist can create weapons of war and cure diseases but they are unable to use a hair bush and conditioner.   Lost in thought she thought someone asked her a question.

"I'd would shave it all off and start over...uh..."  They couldn't have been asking her about that.   Maybe it was about the crystals.   She had to guess the right answer.   She took a wild guess, "That's all I took but the was more.   Maybe enough to fill a hat."  She look towards the Scientist in the room, "like a hat large enough to cover one's head if they didn't brush their hair."

[MasumiX]

  Saffrons apparent random ramblings brought Ro out of her own reverie, imagining interstellar communications with nothing more than a lump of crystal she heard the question posted to her flight mate and let her mind continue unraveling the possibilities; At least until the conversation got weird and then oblique.

  ...Did she just completely fail to follow any sort of structure and decorum...!?  Ro felt herself separate from most forms of common military structure, after all she was M.I. Structure simply bred in the inability to absorb new facts that could be mission critical if missed, leading to death in the worst instance, and political suicide at the other end of the spectrum.  ...really... a "hat-full".... w.t.f...

    Ro kept her mouth appropriately shut, but couldn't keep her lips from crushing into a thin dark line of embarrassment in the face of her team mates lampooning of whatever respect they might have had from their superiors. So taken with the flippancy she only registered the scientists title of "blood crystal" at the last second; she'd heard of it before, mostly as a hot target for down on their luck pirates looking for a quick payoff.

[Sketchley]

CG-420 H. Ito - Orbit of Nora, Williams Star
2061.09.02; afternoon

"I'd would shave it all off and start over...uh... That's all I took but the was more.   Maybe enough to fill a hat... like a hat large enough to cover one's head if they didn't brush their hair."

Major Stonewall's eyebrows arch in surprise.  First Lieutenant Taut Chaps lowers her gaze and smiles briefly.  Captain Daniels snorts and briefly grimaces.  Colonel Gall Hoodang sits impassively, eyes flitting briefly to look at the Captain with a look of 'you put up with this crap?'

The scientist has a bewildered expression.  Something along the lines of this reminds me of high school and but I left high school behind 10 years ago!

Captain Daniels clears his throat.  "So... what's your professional opinion, Major Stonewall?"

Stonewall uhms and ahs for a moment before answering, "Sir, looks like smugglers got into trouble.  Not sure how the SOIT are connected to it.  Though it's troubling that they're claiming this to be a planet they own."

"Not them," Daniels brusquely interjects.  "Aertheold sent us the message.  They were the ones that hired and dispatched SOIT."

The debriefing concludes with a few disparaging remarks on PMCs and Aertheold and Bo-yae's continuing territory grabs in the sector.


After the meeting, Stonewall indicates that Jacques-Burton and Janos should wait until everyone else had left.

"What the hell was that?" he grumbled at Jacques-Burton.  "At the very least, you have to pay attention to your superiors!  I don't know how they did it at the five and dime talent show you used to work at, but that's not how the military does it, girl!"

Stonewall glares at Janos.  "Next time she," he indicates Jacques-Burton with an elbow, "does anything stupid on a mission, just leave her.  There's no use getting messed up, again, over an air head!"  Was that a reference to her past?

Stonewall leaves, and the ship can be felt accelerated faster.  The bass sounds of the fold system charging up can also be heard faintly in the background.

[Jet Jockey]

Seeing Stonewall leave Saffron can't help but to put one index finger under her eye and stick her tongue out at his back after the door shuts.
"My superiors.   Like anyone is superior to this."  She says with her hands on her hips while winking.   Now to think about business.   She tries to get some information about the crystals from Ro.  Only the most important bit of information, "Blood quartz that sounds like it is worth something don't it?"