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Eclipse Phase (Private)

Once she realized no one was singing along with her, Abby stopped humming and turned to the vampirate sitting next to her at the bar. "Hi! I just wanted to say I think you're very pretty and you have a lovely purple glow about you!"
 
Wrymwood: Stranger Tides
The Blackgaurd's Cove Tavern
​
“Why, hello,” purrs the stranger who turns to face Abigail. She has the dark, red eyes and sallow skin of a vampire, with a braid of red hair and a smile on her face that is somewhere between playful and hungry. She nods at Abby, saying: “I think I recognize that tune you were humming there...”

A purple glow like a halo surrounds the vampirate, and spreads to envelop Abby’s vision until it is the two of them there in a pocket of space removed from the tavern. The cheering and shanties fuzz out, leaving just the two of them as the stranger sings in a voice like a siren’s:

As I was walkin all a’lane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane,
The tane unto t’other did say,
Where shall we gain and dine to-day…

The purple shroud vanishes with a wave of her hand, returning the two of them to the boisterous reality of the tavern and its raucous patrons; “That's not a song I hear often, in port or otherwise - where’s a lovely bird like yourself hear such a dirge like twa corbies?”
 
Elsewhere aboard The Peculiar Taste of Silence​

Those muses that are still active alert their operators to the camera feeds that Vidar was able to pull up and that they have since been tracking.

Marcus Speidwagon and his team are making their way down one of the Silence’s corridors, still in the faux-gravity of the barge’s drum. His four companions are expressionless - even those with the faces to express with - but Marcus himself looks obviously upset, even with his body armor’s helmet obscuring his features. He stops at close to the center of the hall, turning around and gesticulating wildly at the team, who take half-steps back but otherwise don’t react. A conversation ensures, half out-loud and half on the Mesh, Marcus demanding to know why they “haven’t already found this bitch, already???”

From a side hall on Marcus’ right, a group of scum bargers with the distinctive long faces and thin bodies of Jenkin morphs enters the frame. At first, they stop and make to go around, as though the spectacle in the center isn’t worth their time; it comes as a surprise to Marcus and his team, then, when the jenkins all shout and mob the morphs at once, rubbing themselves all over those in the center and breaking off before any of the mercenaries or Marcus can swing back. Marcus angrily demands to know “what the fuck” they’re doing, but only get laughter from the scum in response. The scum take turns griefing the mercenaries and Marcus, falling into a cycle of insults, provocations, and general harassment that never quite edges over into violence.

[{ERROR}]: Really??? Fucking really??? Did you fucking send scum rats to keep me from finding you??? I thought you were a fucking professional, man!!! What the fuck??? I'm gonna fucking pay you back for this when I find you, you bitch-
 
Whelp. Abby was just going for some casual flirting, not expecting to fall hard for this chick who apparently is a literal vampire???

"Oh! Uh. My grandad taught me some songs from the old country. Most of them were what he called 'cheerful murder ballads'. I loved listening to them, even though my parents super disapproved. Sorry! I'm rambling aren't I? I'm a little out of it, but talking helps. I'll shut up and leave you alone if you want."
Smooth, Abigail, real smooth, she thought looking at her feet, her nails, the table. Basically anywhere other than the absolutely stunning creature of the night who had for some reason decided to talk to her of all people.
 
Dirty shanties, grog, and a lot of dancing... No, this was NOT Mach's party. And he never partied before a race. He needed to get in a garage, a motorpool, anywhere he could get into an engine and out of his own head. He started walking to the door when his original G-rep pinged. Scum rats?

[I know what he's talking about, but are you sure you wanna-]
Show me.

Then he saw the video. How the other him didn't open fire, he couldn't guess. The other him was already unstable as hell, probably on the edge of spiraling. If the other him wasn't taking something to calm down, he'd lose it outright pretty soon. As for the Mach lumbering around in a hardsuit, he was furious. He wanted to say something to the other him, remind him he was at least above shit like this. Hell, who in their right mind WOULD do something like that? Pushing someone that close to the edge was just begging for something to go wrong. As for the Jenkins, they were the sort Mach wouldn't think twice about punching in the face. But they wouldn't just do that to people that heavily armed without pay, so someone definitely did something.

Sleipir-Tacnet: [I dunno who's doing it, but someone's griefing my evil twin pretty hard. If he gets pushed much further, we might see civilian casualties. Or at least a few dead Jenkinses. Can someone figure out who did that and stop 'em from doing something stupid? I already feel really bad for pretending to be friendly with these fake pirates while we plan to use 'em as meat shields.]

He said, and stopped to wonder... What'd happen if he just... Engaged them? Hunters wouldn't expect to be hit by their prey...
[Dude, NO. The whole point was to stop you from getting stacknapped, and you go alone, you DIE alone.]
Not like the cockpit AI was much company. You know we had to do solo runs! You know we had to leg those fuckers before they could get anywhere near us! Risking myself for a ton of people, that's what it was in the fall, that's what it is here, under Firewall!
[Yeah, but we're secret. We can't just break opsec, especially if Nerrix could get an inside look. You know I'm right.]
You know I hate that you are, but at least you're not fucking smug about it.
Went that little thinky-fight. He felt so trapped, so bound-up... He hated it. He stomped out to their ship with the same anger, hoping that maybe there was a liquor cabinet and a liquid intake on this damnable suit. But as he walked, he noticed something. It was a turtle ship, sure, but... It had what looked like fucking spaceship engines. What. All the ships had them. Fucking what? He thought he had gripes with this worldbuilding before but hoo boy. Hooooooo boy. This was beyond stupid. But, eventually, he stepped on board. The ship's wheel, which he expected to be surrounded by steampunky levers and valves, instead looked just like the standard pilot's setup for an actual real spaceship. But with a touch more typewriter and a ton more wood grain. Some UI elements started telling him how to compensate for being a watercraft as opposed to a spacecraft, and it clicked. It wouldn't look like this at all if he chose a higher level of ship stuff, probably. This was 'for his convenience'. He wasn't sure if he wanted to resent the designer for that or not. That's when something else clicked. The engines were probably like real starship engines 'for his convenience', meaning he'd probably be expected to monkey around in them like they were real. He ran down to Engineering, and found the engines. Just as he thought, the maintenance hatches were in all the right spots, the engines were even a make he recognized (though it was a slightly different model year) and he checked the ship's stat screen, actually excited now. What was the max speed? It had to be good, right? 30 MPH. Fucking WHAT? That was 'ramming speed'? BULLSHIT! He could get more out of these damn things, he knew it! Maybe if he changed up the turbines' gearboxes... Wait. No, they were set up as best they could be. He'd need an entirely new gearbox setup to get a more favorable gear ratio, and ordering new parts... Shit, he had no idea where the shop menu was, or even how much money he had. Wait, maybe he could optimize it from the central console?... Shit. There was the problem. This engine was meant for a small ship that would never be in-atmosphere. This ship, while not much bigger or heavier, was facing air resistance, water resistance, and its not-very-aerodynamic shape. He briefly wondered if some magic bullshit could make it just go faster, but...

No. He couldn't. Couldn't be done. It was impossible. It was just so goddamn slow. He could do nothing to help this ship attain something resembling speed. He was helpless. He... He'd have to go slow. He felt tears well up in his eyes.
MachSpeedyBoi{StrangerTides}: [What sadist decided the realistic part should be how slow these boats are? This is... It's torture. They're just so goddamn slow.]
 
Hara {tacnet}: [They aren't being paid to do anything they aren't enjoying.]

Devin patted Vidar on the shoulder and said, "You wanna turn your feed back on, buddy? I'm not gonna go shmooze if I can't find you, you know." He'd seen Vidar like this before, and it was never fun, but he'd found that the less of an issue you made of it, the less of an issue it usually was.
 
The Blackguard's Cove Tavern​

"Cheerful murder ballads..." the vampirate repeats, as though sampling the feel of the words in her mouth, smiling at Abby at the end. "I quite like the sound of that - just the sort of song I want in the air amid battle and plunder..."

Placing her hand on the bar where it is very close to Abby's, she asks: "I'd quite prefer you keep talking, songbird: what's your name?"

The Salty Swallow - The Docks​

TheEighthFrame {StrangerTides}: [20 knots is going to feel a lot faster in a ship like the Salty Swallow than it sounds like! Besides, we tend to cut out the long stretches of sailing at sea for pacing's sake (not enough level 5ers to justify that level of verisimilitude). Most of the time, speed only matters in a fight! Though if you're gonna stick around for a while, we could look into coming up with something lighter and faster than the Swallow?]
TheEighthFrame {StrangerTides}: [In the mean time tho, if you need a little help, I think the ship's engineer for the Helheimr might be the one to talk to? @.NotYourPolly do you think you could help the newcomer with his turtle ship?]
NotYourPolly {StrangerTides}: [sure yeah, gimme a minute to get out there]

Thorir Guldursson {CoveChat}: [@Myeongyang Ahoy! Salty Swallow, is it? I'll wing on over and offer me eye.]

The tavern dominates the scene of the cove from the ships - and from it, a single dot rises, catching the lantern-light like an ember from a fire before making its way out to the docks. It resolves into the shape of a bird, and then eventually a neo-parrot, before alighting on a post near the gangplank up to the Salty Swallow. The neo-parrot wears a vest with pistols strapped to it, runes of ice blue magic illuminating the air around him, his head darting back and forth as he turns one eye and the other to regard Myeongyang and the Swallow he stands on.

"Ahoy!" Thorir Guldursson greets, in a high-pitched rasping Norwegian. "Permission to come aboard? Perhaps ye'd like to talk me through the issue yer havin' with yer ship?"
 
"Oh! I'm Ab- I mean, I'm Rhiannon. Uh, what about you?"
Keep it together, Abby, you can do this.
Despite being buzzed out of her mind, talking was helping her focus. And the fact that it was a very pretty vampire lady she was talking to helped too, because she had to focus on not losing her cool. Not that she had much cool to start with.
 
The vampirate turns her head slightly askance at Abby’s near-slip, her smile widening to reveal fangs and a soft laugh as Abby recovers.

“Gráinne Ní Mháille,” the vampirate answers with a soft laugh. “But you can call me Grace, songbird. Terror of the isles, and now of the eldritch seas, a master of runecraft and death to my enemies. From whence do you hail, Rhiannon Wolf?”

No sooner does Grace finish the question than the din of the tavern is pierced by the beating of wings and a pair of low caws; a streak of black feathers falls between Abby and Grace, past whom there is now a tree were there was none before, in the middle of the tavern that no one seems to notice. On a long branch, two ravens are perched, their eyes red and eyeing Abby as they croak low at one another, somehow audible over the shanties and the cheering of the Blackguard’s Cove Tavern.
 
It had been a good, long time since this particular Mach had a meaningful interaction with a neo-avian. Having it happen with a parrot on a pirate ship made things just a little TOO surreal for him.
“Uh. Permission granted?...”
[Polly got your tongue?]
Shut up. It’s been years, and I have no idea if they’re a legit uplift.
“So... My problem is probably more me than the ship. It’s been a long while since I drove something with a max speed under 100 miles, and I thought I could boost this thing, but... Don’t have the materials for a rework of the engines, or even just a more favorable gear ratio in the turbines, the computer system says everything is optimized, and I have no way to speed this up that doesn’t involve new parts or some kind of nitrous boost. So I’m stuck driving a slow-ass tub fulla guns and drunks. Can’t even TRY to speed in this piece’a’scrap. So. I’m stuck with this, aren’t I?”
 
“‘Stuck with’ seems a touch harsh for a beauty like this,” Thorir comments, as soon as he finds a rail to land on aboard the Swallow. “She’s built quite a bit like our Helheimr. Fast but tough, able to get in quick and hold her own in a brawl; I hear tell the Swallow’s going in against one of the galleons we’re targeting, in fact, which tells me she’s fast enough to evade most everyone else.”

Thorir clicks and whistles in contemplation of Mach’s words: “Alas, you can only get a watercraft weighing several fucktons to move so fast, even with the tricks of the trade. I suppose if you wanted to lighten her up, you could take off the shell, but she wouldn’t be much of a turtle at that point. Dunno that you need to be that fast, when you’re already gonna be fast and agile next to most everyone else.”

A few more contemplative clicks, and then - “Gotta ask: what sort of craft do you pilot that a ship like this is a ‘slow-ass tub?’”
 
It didn't take a long brain-huddle for Mach and Nanti to decide combing through Thorir's dating profiles would be a smart play.
Well, he DOES like Racing...
[Not usually our type of racing, though. Still, lookit this: He commented on that race we ripped from the other you.]
That's the one with the photo finish. Well... You think it's safe to let him have our view on that?
[Eh, it's not like, dangerous probably.]
That was enough. So, Mach went from looking at his entoptics to looking around in IRLspace, followed by ARspace, to see if anyone might be eavesdropping. Nobody else he could see...
"Well... I'mma share some context from a few weeks back. Just promise you won't pass it around too much, I don't want my followers getting up in my business right now."
He said, right before sending an EXP file to Thorir along with a brief message.
MachSpeedyBoi: [Not every day you get a photo finish with Tycho Gracewind, amirite?]
"Like I said, keep it on the downlow for now."
 
At first, Stygg Thorir's head snaps back and forth, his feathers flaring up and wings with surprise as he receives the link to Mach's XP. He settles quick enough, winging over to where he can settle in for a moment to examine the file before-
"Ah," he half-says and half-squawks, understanding hitting him like the race cars of Hyperdrive.

NotYourPolly {PM to MachSpeedyBoi}: [Holy shit??? You actually raced Tycho Gracewind??? That's awesome!! I'll keep this under my wing while you're around, but I wanna share it with my chicks - the little ones love Tycho Gracewind and XPing the racer who went beak-to-beak with him will make their year.]

"Right," Thorir squawks, getting back into character, "you're more the sort to fly fast across the waves. Hmm..."
Thorir takes flight once more, making a few slow orbits around the Salty Swallow, taking its measure from the air, before returning to his spot on the deck close to Mach.
"Your ship just might be big enough to support it," Thorir mutters, a wing-hand removing a piece of parchment from his vest pocket and unfurling it to show to Mach: the parchment is blank at first, but words and images fade into being on its surface, drawn in ink like a Da Vinci drawing: it depicts an aircraft like a primitive fighter plane, with skeletal wings and a central cockpit surrounded by light armor and framing, a single engine on the tail of the craft.
"We liberated this from a Company ship, along with the prototype itself, bound for the new world from the old. The prototype itself was damaged in the effort, as was the launcher, but with your machine intuition we could get the craft flying in time for the raid on the Indefatigable. If you can get the craft itself back up and running, work crews could get the launcher repaired and mounted aboard the Swallow ahead of the raid. 'Interested?"
 
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Well. Mach wished he knew who the hell decided this Da Vinci thing fit in with everything else, but... Well. At this point, why bother questioning anything? At least this promised to go fast.
"Of course I'm interested... Though I might make some alterations. I'm concerned about the carrying capacity, and... Well. No such thing as too much horsepower, am I right?"
He said, looking over the plans and deciding he was gonna make this thing fly again... And he was gonna make it fly FAST.
 
"Oh, uh. I'm from-" Abby started, and then crows and a tree happened and she was highly distracted, to say the least.
"Um. Can you see that tree? Please tell me this one isn't just me," she asked, pointing in the direction of the odd tree and its corvid occupants.
 
"Um, tree?" Grace asks, looking sideways at Abby before turning to look in the direction Abby points. The crows look at Grace, head askew, and watch as she searches high and low for any sign of the tree right in front of her. She turns back around, a look on her face between puzzled and pitying, as the crows return their gaze to Abby.

"I'm afraid I don't see any tree, songbird," Grace admits, the crows muttering to each other while watching Abby with ruffled feathers, "are you alright?"
 
"I mean... I feel pretty good, but this is weird. I will be right back! Let me check something," Abby says, excusing herself from the table and walking past Grace to attempt to lay a hand on the tree.
Proxy, can you see this?
[I am afraid so, Abigail. Whether or not it is a hallucination, however, I cannot tell.]
 
The instant Abby's hand touches what should be treebark, the entire tree explodes into a flock of screaming ravens. The birds scatter every which way, disappearing up into the rafters and behind pirates - who don't seem to notice them vanish.

"Songbird??" Grace exclaims, half getting up from her stool, "is everything okay?? What's weird, what's the matter??"
 
"Fuck! The fucking tree exploded and I... wait," Abby says and holds up a finger, seemingly deep in contemplation. "I've been tricked! Motherfuckers!"

ManicPixieCyberHacker to TacNet: [I've been fuckin' hacked, someone is messing with what I can see. Like, for real, not just drugs this time.]
 
Yasmin Al-Rundi is following the plans of the pirate captains carefully when news of Abby's interloper reaches her-

Yasmin Al-Rundi {TacNet}: [Understood]
Marid, follow the game for me - I must assist Abigail.

With Abigail orchestrating the effort - even through the haze of Buzz and the AR illusions that flutter and caw from the shadows - the intruder is quickly ferreted out. Yasmin assists where she can, carrying at least some of the load of tracking down the intruder and locking them. A team effort is rewarded by the successful identification of the intruder in Abby's inserts, who - opting to cut their losses - abandons the effort and disconnects from Abby's inserts.

Yasmin can't help but be impressed by Abby's ability to lead the effort to trace the hacker's Mesh ID, as the trace identifies a great deal of hits around-
-their area.
The ID's activity is traced down into their section of the ship, into the hold hosting Stranger Tides, even into the tavern-

-right in front of Abigail Hammond, where a bewildered Gráinne Ní Mháille looks at Abigial asking: "what- who's tricked you, songbird?"
 
"Yes. Wine," Vid calls after Devin as he heads inside. He gives himself another few minutes of meshless quiet while the nanobots finish up. He thinks he could stand as he flips on his inserts at last.
[Heliotrope] tacnet: A man has a map-attack for five minutes--
It had been more like ten. He catches up on the footage of of the evil twin and the tacnet.
[Heliotrope]Tacnet: You good Abby?
He was not winning best dad award today apparently. But he did get up, and test his leg, wich complained all the way up into his side where that long muscle had been damaged, but he held. the wound wasn't done cooking yet, but then neither was inflamed nerve problem from the cargo hold, so what was new.
 
"Oh. Oh no. Gráinne, noooo," Abby shakes her head sadly. "You were so nice, too. I wanted to like you, and you had to go and mess with my head.”
Grace drops the act practically the instant she’s called out on it, hands in the air in a don’t shoot pose and something like awe in her expression: “Credit where it’s due, songbird - you’re good. I can count on one hand the hackers who could trace me back that fast, and you’re now one of them. Don’t suppose I could ask you how you pulled it off??”
“Most days I could tell you. I am Buzzing pretty hard right now. The code just kinda… whispered to me on the seabreeze,” Abby says with a shrug.
“Whispered to you on the seabreeze, eh- wait - do you mean to tell me you actually caught me out despite tripping on Buzz??”
“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, who hired you? What was the point of this?”
“Hired?” Grace echoes in bewilderment. “No one hired me, Rhiannon - I followed up on your handle as a fellow hacker on my own whimsy. As for the point: i wanted to see if the buzz about your skills was true - which, you’ve certainly impressed me!”
As Grace explains herself, a new rep profile appears in an entoptic window - a greeting from ReteDazzle, the @-rep handle for Sônia Alencar-Vaz, a resident of The Peculiar Taste of Silence who keeps her rep securing ship systems and cracking DRM on hypercorp fabber blueprints.
“Figured you for a fellow traveller, thought i’d introduce myself accordingly?”
Abby rest her face in her palms and shakes her head before speaking again, “Oh damn, I’m sorry. Uh, so let’s try this again. Hi, I’m Abigail Hammond, my specialties are drugs, hacking, and paranoia. Nice to meet you.”
“A pleasure, I assure you,” Sônia responds. “I’ll be sure to greet you like a person next time instead of a black-hat. I gotta ask though, what’s got you paranoid, songbird?”
“Uh. Hm. Tell you what! Why don’t we get to know each other better for a bit, then I may tell you. Sound good?”
“Very well, Rhiannon Wolf,” Gráinne purrs, slipping back into character. “I’m sure we can find a room upstairs to get to know each other better~?”

[Manicpixiecyberhacker] TacNet: Yeah we're all cool. I'm gonna go to a private room with this hot vampire chick. If the next time you hear from me I'm on Venus, check room 12 upstairs.
 
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[hara]tacknet: get it!

Devin left Vidar and headed to the tavern, straightening the lapels of his frock coat as he went. It was a particularly good shade of teal, he thought. Eye-catching. He knew the others could find him exhausting, but that was his job. They needed him to be the loud idiot covered in glitter so that everyone was looking at him while Vidar suck around on the ceiling. The teal was nearly as good as glitter. The gold embroidery that Cris surely would call ridiculous helped. He'd have to save the pattern of it for later.

Inside the tavern, Devin sat at the bar, with only a slight frown at the fact that the seats were clearly designed for someone with several inches on him. He braced his boots against a lower rung on the stool and said to the bartender, "Please tell me your wine list is bigger than 'white' and 'red'."
 
"Oh aye, we've got the standard allotment of wines for your drinking pleasure," responds a lithe, four-armed Mekanix that regards Devin with a dizzying set of lenses. "We've got Rieslings, Gewurztraminer, chardonnay, Sauvignon blanc for whites, for reds we've got Syrah, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and we've also got Poyo palm wine from the african coast! All pilfered from a ship bound for the colonies - more wine than any soul here could drink!"

"We'll see about that!" Booms the voice of a neo-gorilla, followed quickly by laughter from his companions.

"Well, at least enough for a glass or two for you - Silas Reefhide and his compatriots over there seem determined to drink every cask dry."
 
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