Journal 5/6/11

Got another IRC carrier a couple days ago. It was a near thing. There were fourteen of in the fleet, with Silver in the Utopian Spring - she's the Megathron. Word came down that an Archon had made the jump in, and we headed out. Jumped the poor bastard just a few klicks off his own friendly control tower. Got him pinned down and poured the fire in.

Now, most of the other Dronie - Drone region alliance member - carriers we have popped have gone down like cheap hookers. Quick and easy. This bitch though, took something like twice the beating any of the others soaked up. Not only that, we were all under unfriendly guns - and a spirits damned neutralizer battery. Thank the ancestors for cap boosters - which engineering had run out of, by the end of the thing. We didn't even have the power to keep up the internal containment fields at one point, so it's a damn good thing there wasn't a breach.

The Spring makes a stock Megathron look like it is made out of paper mache, but even down in the CIC we could hear the hits a couple of times. We took a hell of a beating, and the operation is probably the closest the Exalted. fleet has come to losing a ship on these types of missions. In any case, it seems the Dronies might be learning their lesson, since traffic has petered out quite a bit since then. It's a relief to Silver, at least.

I ran into Ciarente at Fit to Fly again. She seems to be working pretty hard at her self defense classes, though honestly I'm not sure she quite has the knack for it. I guess she had talked to Silver, she mentioned he told her we had some issues aboard - which we did - and apparently even shared something about his doubts regarding all these carriers. A little surprising, though Cia has something about her that is a bit disarming.

She is getting positively blase about the risks pilots take. I don't know if she is finally just getting used to things up here, or maybe it is the new clone. I talked to her about her father too, about making plans in case we couldn't find him. I didn't mention that I had made it clear to Tanith that finding him is not the highest priority, and to share with me first, if they did find anything. Considering her father's behaviour so far, well. Let's hope he stays hidden and I don't need to consider my options.

As for the problems aboard the ship, we got a Blooder prisoner along with several members of the slavery ring, during the raid to get our people back. We aren't set up for really in-depth interrogation, but we have managed. It was low priority however since the whole operation had been rolled up. At least that is what we thought. At the same time, the entire Ishugur incident had pretty much dead ended. We had the body, we knew he had to have an accomplice or accomplices somewhere - posibly within the crew - but we haven't gotten anything else to go on. despite upping ship-wide surveillance noone has done anything overly suspicious. More in-depth background checks on Ishugur's known associated hadn't turned up anything either.

The blooder was, unfortunately, an underling. Under interrogation he claimed that it was an operation with some Cartel faction providing technical support - though it wasn't clear in return for what. His superior unfortunately was killed during the raid, but the Cartel doctor we captured does back the story up. The doctor didn't know anything, as he had arrived only a short time before we attacked, to replace someone who cycled out back to Angel space somewhere and was still awaiting instructions.

Anyway, another dead end, we came back to Ennur, here in Molden Heath, and that is where things stood for nearly a month. Then a few days back someone broke the doctor out. With inside help. Help that was very similar to the help that Ishugur had with the sensors. This time we were ready though. It is jsut a matter of time until we backtrack who accessed our systems, we had the doctor followed, and now we know that the slavery ring and the Ishugur incident may be linked.