Nearer my Hegemon to Thee

" ...hydrobuoyant species 37/gamma is was eventually deemed the most robust for large-scale mat construction. Two species of bacteria in competitive cross-cultivation allow for nitrogen extraction from the water and transport into the buoyancy cells. Green strand algae serves as the base genetic template, being incredibly regenerative, and structural components have been spliced in from bamboo and bladderwort species."

Introduction, Cerulean Ecosystem Impact Analysis 602, AS 203

2780.098-113
Riden -> Juice

Ace makes contact with some weapons dealers. There's not currently a lot of speculation in weapons smuggling, as there's a great market in Riden already. Stannis Law and the Well are the likely best places to transfer weapons from Red to Blue (or vice versa), because of the selling-arms restrictions. Since Dr. Kye currently does have the things he needs for the asteroid test on the way out of the system, Ace is talked out of stocking up on explosives now.

On the way out, Max and Dr. Kye successfully blow up an asteroid. (Dr. Kye over-indulges in the after-explosion celebration and goes into the tubes). Also on the way out, Eva and Jayla return from Gateway and rendezvous with the Hippocrates.

As always, the border ships scan the heck out of the ship on the way through, and say that they'll be expected to have the same weapons and ships that they currently have, if they re-enter Red, or have a darned good reason why. Their final destination is cited as Juice, for trade in art and antiquities. The Hippocrates transits to Nurl; again, a Gloryweb escort ship takes them from near the Red jumpgate to near the Blue jumpgate.

Jayla tightbeams a pre-recorded encrypted message to the Gloryweb ship for Commander Branch:

<Skyguard headers from: Hippocrates to: Cdr Branch>

We are certain that New Light blast on 2779.279 was orchestrated by
Terran agents, but no evidence can be presented.  LHH ministries are
understandably skeptical.  I spoke with DefMin Hornberg generally to
discourage further destruction of resources and specifically to
discourage hostilities against Brochoah Protectorate.  He proposed
that transfer of Nurl allegiance to LHH might achieve economic war
aims.  Hornberg claims strong interest in negotiation with Brochoah.
My evaluation is that Hornberg's position was honestly stated.  This
is my first indication that LHH war aims might be limited.

We do not endorse or oppose this proposal.  Our preference is return
to original borders and long-term settlement through negotiation, but
my analysis indicates that OTH forces are losing and the prospects for
greater destruction will increase as OTH becomes desperate and LHH
begins ground assaults.  If I may be of assistance in facilitating
peaceful resolution to the war, please advise.  Primary mission will
take precedence.

[Note:  I am using "I" and "we" carefully to distinguish between
opinions of the crew and Hippocrates' own opinions.]

-Hippocrates
Passing through from Nurl to Highguard, there's another exciting bout of scanning. All the ships and weapons are still there, good good. How was their "shopping" on Riden? What did they buy? Antiquities. Did they sell anything? No, especially not any of the stuff they're not supposed to sell.

The fleet massing in Highguard is larger than it was before - Jim thinks it's about 25% of the Blue fleet, judging by the data he's been going over with Hippocrates. It seems to be mostly transports and escorts. Max decides that active scanning the fleet would be calling a little more attention to the Hippocrates than he'd like to do, and so the ship continues on to Tyrell's Folly.

As always, a convoy is recommended; the next one is due in about 30 hours. Jayla thinks it doesn't matter so much to the fate of All People if they wait or not, so they wait, so that Ace can get some sleep. While waiting, Mirris pesters Max into showing her a sensor scan of the planet - it's this little dot there - so now she can be sure she's seen it, instead of just remembering it.

Ace and Max shmooze with the rest of the convoy, to see what they can pick up. Max is accidentally entangled in the long and boring story of someone's life; Ace hears that the Red attacks have ramped up, and that there have been a lot more serious checks on people in the convoy. Some wilder stories include a cautionary tale in which a Marine picked a fight with a merchant crewman, and then when they got sent through into Red, they discovered that they had a chit saying they had a bunch of weapons that they didn't actually have, so they couldn't come back.

Local news indicates that some of the troops on Tyrell's Folly are being withdrawn, though nobody completely trusts the cease fire. There's some speculation about whether the Reds are in contact with the Tinoori. Or maybe Dr. Cain is - or maybe if Dr. Cain tried, they'd just kill him. Ooh, what if he's the Hegemon of the Tinoori and can trick them now?

"What is Dr. Cain the Hegemon of, anyway?" -Ace
"Squat!" -Mirris
Jayla can only think of one way to un-Hegemon someone, and she certainly intends to try if she finds Dr. Cain. Of course, maybe Sophia can make a de-Hegemonater! Testing it would be interesting...

"It's a Hegemon! Just add chair, and stir!" -Mirris
Katya is dubious about killing Dr. Cain - he might be needed. He changed the plan, somehow. Hey! Maybe they can include the outworlds too, if they have him!
"He's an EVIL MAD SCIENTIST. And one of those words is bad. It's the evil one." -Ace
Mirris demonstrates the morality skin she's been working on in StarPirates to Ace: you have to choose between saving your loot and doing "nicer" but less profitable things like rescuing prisoners. With Morality set to OFF, you score faster and higher, but it gets harder and harder to win in the end.

Then, it's down to Juice. What's their business? Oh! Right! Whales! They're visiting the whales! Upon landing at Triton's Ford, the crew is instructed by the Civil Defense Agency that it is required to monitor Frequency 1413 at all times, in case there are any emergencies. Jim wants to know if there have been any incidents already - the reply is that people will be informed if there are any incidents of note. The spaceport also has a lot of signs about monitoring Frequency 1413.

Time to one: stock up, and two: hear some gossip.

Ace and Katya head out to a spaceport bar. The bar-goers are clearly trying to impress Katya by how much they know. Some rumors they mention: the Hegemony is getting ready to seize all the ships and conscript them (though Ace thinks this is somewhat unlikely). Second rumor: sea-quakes. Some of the floating cities have been a little wobbly lately. And it smells funny down by the docks. Katya, scanning the crowd, notes that the worry about conscription is legitimate - that is, people are actually worrying about it. Swinging by the docks, yes, the smell is a little worse than it usually is.

Meanwhile, Mirris and "Uncle Max" acquire underwater equipment and a boat for the next North Pole trip.

Meanwhile meanwhile, a guy shows up at the ship, wearing a suit jacket over an aloha shirt. He says he has an appointment with Dr. Kye. Dr. Kye is the agent for Mr. James Powell, is he not? Jim and Jayla head down to talk to him. He understands that Mr. Powell wants to do a local photo op with one of the dealers - it'd be good if he could save someone on camera, but they can arrange that part. The discount that was mentioned before was a 25% discount on a Diluvian scooter (by far the most common on Juice). Jim is a little put off at having all of this sprung on him by surprise, as he had been starting to think a different model of scooter would be better, but Diluvian is clearly useful for the upcoming mission. Perhaps there will be more scooters later.

Jim is instructed to come down to the outfitter's tomorrow afternoon to get set up. Everyone who's been out on data-gathering missions returns to confer. (Max points out that Ace might need a class 2 carry permit for the plasma disruptor, but no one is sure it'll work underwater anyway.)

Max heads to the docks to start scanning things - he gathers some data, but isn't really sure what all the bio stuff means. Jayla checks the news: it is shockingly quiet. There is the occasional disturbance in the mats mentioned, but this is nothing to be alarmed about. Jim goes websurfing for wilder speculation - It's a government conspiracy to sink all the cities to the bottom of the ocean! The dolphins are behind it! As the neighboring planet to the Well, Juice seems to be particularly biased against White, rather than against political inequities. Mirris goes to a White Users Anonymous meeting - they're very supportive. Max gets some kindler gentler shark-repellent that doesn't harm the sharks or the rest of the ecosystem. Jim works on a version of his web site for Juice, tilted against White in particular.

The next morning, Ace disguises himself and Mirris, and most everyone heads to the outfitters with Jim, while Jayla goes off to talk to people. Katya is up for being outfitted too. The guy handling the outfitting doesn't think that Jim's scout uniform says "scooter" - he hands him a piece of cloth (perhaps it's a swimsuit?) and Jim isn't very tan. Can he get in the tannotron? Jim says he's fine, thanks. The outfitter says Jean-Claude has very high standards. Katya nudges the outfitter into thinking makeup would be okay instead, so they compromise on a spray-on tan. Jim undresses and gets a spray-on tan; Kayta undresses and goes into the tannotron.

Meanwhile, Ace slips away to the security office to look for tapes of either of them in the security office. There's a single guy in the security office; Ace tells him he's in charge of Jim Powell's security. The guy hadn't realized Jim Powell was here - can Ace get him an introduction? (He archives and saves the video from today upon this realization). The two head out to meet Jim - the security guy admits to not going into the tannotron himself - it has some sort of rays. (Oh, great. The person with the priceless genetic material is the one who got irradiated).

Ace radios down to Jim and Kayta to tell them to distract the security guy for a little while, while he and Mirris go back and remove the incriminating photos. Ace looks to see if he can find any other interesting things - as it's just a tanning hut and swimsuit store, it doesn't have any documents outlining any nefarious plans, just some swimsuit photos.

"You are on your own. I learned about ethics last week." -Mirris
Jim re-dresses in scout shorts and short-sleeved shirt rather than the supplied swimsuit - Jean-Claude does not, in the end, send him back for redressing.
"Do not speak. Just stand. I must know you." -Jean-Claude
Jim and the scooter, then Katya draped over Jim ("Jim manages to not quite look totally uncomfortable") and the scooter are positioned around a diving board, and Jean-Claude eventually calls for cameras, takes some pictures, and eventually "it is done." Jim will get called back to deal with the action shot - it'll take a little while to set up. In the end, he does get a scooter: serial number DLVN001374.

Then, it's off to the whales! Seeker is pleased to see them again. The whales seem pleased to see them too, though the human techies suggest that anyone swimming with the whales take "screamers" in case the whales over-exuberantly drown them. Jayla teaches Mirris to swim.

The whales (Scoot, Tumble, and Tiny) have gotten quite big, even Tiny. Katya tries to read their minds, and Jayla tries to use her universal translation talent, but they're still a little too young for language. Someone comes to tell Seeker that "they're back" - apparently "they" is whale fanatics. Jayla is interested in talking to them, but they apparently don't like people much.

Jim challenges Ace to a hiding-underwater contest. Ace wants to put money on it. Everyone is sure that will make Ace hide better, and Jim says that's cheating. They start hiding.

Max talks to one of the biology researchers about the veggie mat. The researcher thinks the data indicates that it's sick, maybe even dying. How do you fix it, Max asks. Well... you don't. Nobody's made veggie mats in three, five hundred years. They're all self-repairing and replicating. Maybe someone at Civil Defense is looking into it?

Back in the whale pool, Katya throws Mirris at Martan, who completely fails to notice, and they both fall flailing into the water. Max starts looking for Ace and Jim, scanning with his tricorder. Katya tries to see if she can see them too; while she's doing that, Mirris sneaks up behind her and dunks her. Martan dramatically rescues her from the water ("My work here is done." -Mirris).

Max searches for a long time, finally finds Ace (who has hid in an underwater storage container), but doesn't find Jim. Perhaps he's over near the flailing and the splashing. Everyone in that particular area notes that Max is dry. Max sees the way the wind is blowing, and puts the tricorder down, and is promptly pushed in.

"Gotta find out how that boy cheated." -Ace
Jim fails to answer several radio calls telling him he's one, but finally comes back. Where did his radio go? He starts diving for it.

Meanwhile, Jayla tries to talk to the isinglasses. They spend a while trying to be uninteresting, there's nothing to see here. Eventually they stop trying to flee, and seem a little more friendly. Jayla tries to tell them she means them no harm. They seem to tell her "We mean you no harm. The world means you no harm. There is no harm". How nice. Jayla returns to the platform, where Ace notes that she's kinda high. There's definitely a water-based chemical effect.

They ask the researcher about the rebreathers - will chemicals in the water get through? He goes to get Seeker. Seeker comes back, a little distressed. Katya, mind reading him, notes that he thinks the isinglasses do this when they're trying to talk, and that he thinks the party is toying with him.

Seeker tries to convince people not to tell anyone about this, right? The isinglasses would be hunted. There'd be jellyfish farms. Jayla persuades him to explain a little more about the isinglasses - they can be fairly emotive, but not concise. You usually figure out what they want by letting them do it. They're mostly temperate, but there is a big colony up in the Arctic. Maybe telling them about the mats being sick would cause them to try and fix it. But figuring out what caused it would help more.

In the meantime, though, it's off to the Arctic!

Three days later, it's time to go through the Ice Maze of Death. The star is packed up tightly on the scooter, which Jim is driving, while everyone else (including Martan) is using the underwater driving toys, with heated drysuits.

The first obstacle is a bunch of jaggy ice shards - Jayla and Max vanish to go on up ahead (and Jayla's buffs vanish, including Mirris forgetting how to swim). Mirris and Martan break up the ice trees into floating shards. One way is a coiled Icewyrm. Eek. Back the other way. A dead end (with some Memento Mori sonar equipment stuck in the fissures). The icewyrm is successfully snuck by, though just barely. One icerazor is easily dispatched. Some isinglasses mob Katya.

The final obstacle is a whirlpool; there's some attempt to tie people together, but some are torn free and into the final current. Jayla thinks that it isn't necessary to send the Star through with a Hegemon, just with someone, so it goes through with Jim on the scooter.

As with the previous times, everyone wakes up on a beach. Mirris retells her vision, which involves a lot of Mirrises, and then Jim tells about the visions he had with the Star.


(Click on the thumbnail pictures to see larger versions)
There's the Linked Worlds, and the outworlds. In among them are three large glowing spots, red, green (with a crack), and blue, as well as a smaller glowing puce dot.
Moving them around, there seems to be a natural stable place (like marbles on a rubber sheet, or masses in a gravity model) for red, green, and blue, and putting them in those places seems to give rise to the expected defenses, (excluding the outworlds).
But the presence of the puce dot, not part of this arrangement, is disruptive to that defense.
Is there a way that puce could be included? Perhaps to allow the outworlds to be protected as well? Another arrangement seems possible, though this one is not stable, as the first one is. Here, the colors do not settle naturally to their place, but balance precariously in their places. That would seem to make the solution, possible, but more difficult to acomplish. And the effect is also more unstable - but it does protect the outworlds.
Finally, is there another alternative, were the puce dot not around? Moving things around the inworlds shows no other solution, but then, Jim has an idea, there is another place for the blue dot - and moving it there has a remarkable effect...
After Jim explains this all, Jayla ponders the second two alternatives. The unstable one is harder, but if it works, it'll just work as expected. The other one is simpler, and should work, but afterwards, the universe will be Different (not necessarily better or worse, just different).

The group considers Dr. Cain. Since he may well know what he has to do to rule the world, and ruling the world is hard if it's destroyed, maybe he'll know what he has to do to save it.

"If he lives, he's gotta be here." -Ace, pointing to the dot on Craterrock
There are some isinglasses that can be found near the ice floes - Jayla and Katya play with a couple of them. When they're yellow, that seems to indicate being happy. Jayla can (sort of) talk to them, and Katya can (sort of) read them, and Katya can talk to Jayla.
"Hello, I'm Jayla. I'd like to be friends."
Yellow.
"This is Katya."
Bitey fish!
"No, no, friendly."
Yellow.
"So what brings you up this way?"
Katya thinks they didn't hear/understand/get that.
"What do you like to eat?"
Good water.
"Where would we find a lot of jellyfish to be friendly with?"
Yellow.
They start heading south.
"Where would I find the alpha jellyfish?"
That's another one that didn't get to them.

Ace suggests that they get asked if this is where they spawn. The women think this may offend them. Katya goes back to the first question - something didn't get heard, she thinks. Time for an experiment.

"Can you tell me how to fix a plasma drive."
Nope, that one didn't get listened to either.

Jayla talks them into reproducing, or something like, and they turn around and head north again. The party gives up playing with the isinglasses, and head south again for three days.

Back at the spaceport, the party decides to take a look underneath the city. There are miles of veggie mat - nobody is really a mat expert. Ace manages to pull off a little bit, before being intercepted by a dolphin with a tool belt. The dolphin wants to know what he's doing, and tries to shoo the group away. Katya reads him enough to tell that he thinks humans are, generally, bad, and that he'll be coming back with some other dolphins.

Jayla speculates that if there are dolphins who really really don't like people, they might try to sink the floating cities. The group heads back to the ship, and calls Seeker again to ask about human/dolphin relations. Yes, there's some dolphin racism out there; there are social groups that deal with it, rather than governmental agencies.

Meanwhile, Jim, Martan, and Max are off dealing with the action shoot. There's a dramatic camera accident, with things catching on fire and having to leap through windows. Jim is sure it was all staged, darn them.

Someone goes to rent a fast boat to head to Seeker's place again, but there's an interruption on Frequency 1413 ordering all ships in system to Poseidon's Reef for an emergency evacuation.

Ace pilots the Hippocrates there as quickly as possible - it looks like the main street has suffered a bad earthquake, and is beginning to settle. Boats and starships are trying to evacuate people as quickly as possible. Ace brings the Hippocrates in for a landing in the middle of the settling Main Street, while Jayla takes off in the Elite shuttle. Refugees charge in, and the street starts to submerge. That's about it for the street - Ace tries to hover next to one of the buildings, so people can jump to the ramp. That's very exciting, and he keeps from hitting any buildings. A couple more buildings get picked up, and then two buildings begin to tip into each other, pushing the mat between them farther and farther apart, as water rushes in.

Katya tries to reinforce the splitting street, but it's too difficult. Martan tries as well, and also fails.

Jayla doesn't have the skill to try and pick people up from buildings, so she heads the shuttle to the docks, where it fills nigh-instantly. A guy tries to hold onto the wing, which will make taking off much harder. Jayla orders him off, and eventually browbeats him into letting go. They'll send more ships back, right? Jayla says she'll get back as fast as possible, knowing that it'll be too late.

The ships fly to the nearest city over and unload, and then return, about an hour later. By this point, it's mostly in cleanup and rescue. The mat has broken into about six pieces, tipped over or entirely upside down.

Ace hovers while Martan and Katya go down and cut off large pieces of the mats, which are put in bathtubs and brought to Seeker's. Can the isinglasses heal it? Well, perhaps it should be looked at first. The biologists explain that it grows from the inside feeder tubules, as bits on the outside fall off. The feeder tubules seem to have some sort of industrial and human waste products running through them, which is killing the growing plant. Someone is somehow actively diverting raw sewage. Eww.

As this is a threat to multiple cities at once, the Civil Defense Authority might be the place to talk to, Seeker suggests. Jayla thinks individual city governments are actually a better choice. Another city which has been reputed to have sea-quakes is Turbary. The party proceeds there as quickly as possible, and speaks to the mayor, Milo Hentz. He has learned that the problem is attributed to nutritive trouble in the mats, but his engineering crews have been looking for this sort of problem, and supposedly everything is fine.

He calls Foreman, the dolphin head of the engineering team, up here. Foreman says they checked the feeds, and they're fine. Katya says Foreman is lying. Ace slouches, covering Foreman with the neural disruptor, while Mirris gets a feel for his background - yup, humans are bad, and sinking the cities will drive them away!

Jayla poses as an expert on water mats and tries to conversationally interrogate him about the details. He slips a few times, but tries to claim that they're confusing him.

"I'm afraid that Foreman is lying to you and has been for some time. He's been sabotaging the entire system" -Jayla, with four troth successes.
Foreman declares that it's too late, and tries to dive. Ace shoots him with the neural disruptor, dropping him six whole Pre of Body, and Katya grabs him.

Further interrogation names Swimmer as the leader of the movement. Sympathetic dolphins have been insinuating themselves into the engineering crews of the cities for a long time, arranging for transfers to spread their (somewhat small) forces out, so there's one or two per city.

"You won't stop us, we've been planning this for years!" -Foreman
"I've been here for days." -Jayla
Mayor Hentz summons Sentinel and his deputy (two of the dolphin police), and Jayla briefs them. Sentinel seems non-terrorist, and thinks maybe Foreman is one of those crazy Blue Planet fanatics. Mayor Hentz starts calling the other mayors, to get them to try and run checks on their own dolphin engineers.

Should the party proceed anywhere else now? The Juice city system isn't flush with telepaths to find terrorist dolphins. Mirris thinks there's another couple of possible cities to try, and Jayla thinks one can be saved, the other is already worse. They convince Mayor Hentz to call in the Civil Defense to evacuate the one that's already too bad to save, and proceed to the other city.

To make a long story short, many of the dolphin conspirators are rounded up; many, including Swimmer, are not. The second city sinks, though not before being mostly evacuated.

Seeker is debriefed, and asked if his team wants credit for the bioanalysis. Really, they'd rather not, unless it's necessary - it'll just convince more nuts that the whales are everyone's saviors. He is persuaded to talk a little more about isinglass communication. It's like dealing with infants, basically. There isn't an alpha boss isinglass; they do get a little smarter when in groups, because they can have a more complex chemical environment, but they top out at the level of about a four-year-old. They helped with some of the chemical things the whale project needed, like the birthing pods. They have three factors in communication: light, motion, and chemical. the more complex a concept is, the more of these it needs - and the drysuit blocks chemical/light, which is why Jayla was having trouble before.

Puttering