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Spoiler: Hannabel's Dinner Party
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Things got off to a bit of a slow start, as Hannabel's guests focused on the food. Once they were settled, though, and Hannabel had brought out some of the good amasec, the conversation grew livelier. Hector had plenty to say about the Processional; "Wish we'd had a go at them during the battle," he said, between bites. "Load of bloody heathens, or whatever they were. It was too quiet, too quiet on the ship, except for all that racket through the vox, and when the guns fired. Touch and go for a moment, what with the fire, but no bloody action on decks. Nothing beats a good boarding action, I say. Reminds me of the time old Umboldt's ship caught fire, after that dustup with the pirates. Remember that, Elena? Damn near lost the barracks..."

The story continued for a while, took up most of the second course to finish telling. Montus mostly ignored the tale, likely he'd heard it before. "I dunno," he said, once the soldier had finished speaking. "I spent the whole time in the maintenance tunnels, chasing techsprites. Something not right about that place. Where we were. Was the Emperor's own job, fixing all the shorted wires afterwards. No idea what happened to blow them, and it worries me. I swear I found a junction box I'd never seen before."

"That's just the paranoia talking," Elena said, with a wink at Hannabel. "The old girl performed admirably, I'd say. I.. well, I was worried, when we lost the Stygies guns. There were a lot of good men in there when we blew the deck, but it was better that than let fire take the whole ship." She had a new scar to show for the incident, pale flesh on her arms where the medicae had grafted new skin. She'd been badly burned following the fire, but it seemed to be healing well.

"You never live so long that a shipboard fire can't scare the pants off you," Hector said, and the other two nodded agreement. "Now, what sort of dessert did you have fixed?"

Spoiler: OOC
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While we can only record the choice and move on, if Hannabel's after... company... for the night, either Elena or Hector would stay.


Anika managed to snap a single good pict of the felinid before it vanished, which was lucky. With the way it had seemed to completely disappear like that, she got the impression that it was a little skittish.

Later, Anika stood with Ravia, supervising the installation of the cogitator interlink. It took some doing, but the presence of the old cable mountings in the Shrike helped a great deal. At the end of the process, the interlink was seamlessly integrated with the core cogitators, the archeotech processors and relays drastically boosting the system's computational power. It was a little noisier than it used to be, the half-dozen extra fans attached to the cooling system seeing to that, but the terminals all seemed to be working properly, and all of the linked systems reported a 15.6% increase in effectiveness. If Macharius could find the funds to furnish the crew with extra training, then the small increases would really start to add up.

Viatrames

The Sting had started scanning for vox signals since they arrived, perhaps searching for an ambush - or something to ambush. The new upgrades were working well, the cogitator interlink adding a small extra degree of efficiency to the crew's work. Hannabel had overheard a few of them saying that the ship almost seemed to be anticipating their needs, the new system was so fast. There was nothing to speak of in system, but the planet seemed to have a small handful of vox networks. Most were short-range, probably simple radios and the like, but there was one more powerful signal that probably originated with what was left of the Mechanicus.

Opening a channel and hailing resulted in a short wait, followed by a mechanical voice greeting them.

"Visitors. Welcome, on this auspicious occassion, to the temple of the Vulkanites. What service does your clan require? ... What? Orbit? That can't possibly be... Ah, so it is. Outlanders, then, but the question stands."