Episode 26: The Reward For A Job Well Done Job - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

22-23 Moskva

The team returned from The Drift, cold, wet, nauseous, and smelling vaguely of fish, but intact. Time to collect on the job! They’ve got proof of destruction of the reactor designs and an intact prototype. Vir and Paragon, this was your gig. Vir sets up a meeting with Keren Zot, the Idanian.

The team scans the heck out of the prototype and then destroys it, shooting a video of them smashing the casing with hammers and identifiable bits, then putting the whole thing in a crucible and melting it down. But some of the proprietary bits didn’t end up in the crucible… Star shoots the video, but it’s not flawless work. Now to see if Zot will, literally, buy it.

Paragon had sent photos of Star partying with the Gorn to Avrittas, the hot Andorian bartender at the Tratlen Island restaurant/bar, and she’d responded with a guest visa out to Odaiba Island to come hang out, so Paragon invites Star to come with her and Vir to close the deal. Not even a hot Andorian bartender can lure Carbide away from schematics, though. And probably best not to get Carbide around a telepath, when all he can think of is the schematics they TOTALLY DON’T HAVE. “You don’t want to come have alien cocktails in a place that’s unbearably cold and also super fancy?”

Avrittas chats Star up about a promo event for her offworld fans, at the bar. Star messages Sue to send over a promo package, and a date in the next month or so. They mutually baffle over capitalism 

Vir sees Zot, takes their beautiful blue drink over to say hello, and pokes Paragon in the ribs to come with. Paragon takes Star.

Zot is suspicious: it’s SO unfortunate the camera angles didn’t show the destruction of the proprietary tech!

They try to claim it got destroyed. “It got melted in a crucible! What more destruction do you Federation people do?!”

Star: “That kind of ambiguity is why I don’t make the deals!”

Vir tries to get Carbide on Facetime. “Mr Zot is concerned about our camera angles” Carbide is ready with weaponized technobabble: “Shall I send you before and after mass calculations?” He does, and Zot is appeased – and thoroughly pleased. He asks Carbide if the team would be available for future jobs on similar terms. “Talk to Star!” He hangs up.

Zot connects them with a Betazoid fixer operating out of the Spire, Suuborn Dastek. He’s already gotten Dastek working on tracking down Vir’s father, though any future arrangments will just be with him: given the customs of the planet, he may require some sort of additional compensation.

Paragon handles the payment transfer, cutting Allspice in for a full share. She gets up to leave, but Star grabs her collar. “We are GOING to have a GOOD TIME!” Vir wants appetizers. Star drags them onto the dance floor. There are ice skaters. Paragon uses Dino, who has a scarf and knit beanie on – it’s cold and he wishes to blend in – with his onboard camera to record the attempts at ice dancing. She adds cartoon friction and velocity equations, and sends that to Carbide. She contemplates sending it to the Gnu, but she likes Avrittas, and the place doesn’t usually have townies, so word it gets around, someone here will get in trouble. So no. She’ll just show it to Toledo, though.

Vir used to ice skate on ponds back at the cult, and is totally cutting a rug.

Star keeps an eye on the other two before accepting offers for the evening. There’s an Andorian guy doing figure 8’s around Vir as they go. He draws them out and sees what kind of moves they’ve got. Vir falls, he’s polite about it. Once Star sees Paragon’s going to look after Vir, she’s going to see what kind of hot aliens she can attract. She gets a super hot Deltan guy, Jedda Azhin-Dahl. Everybody gets a text message from her telling them not to wait up. He’s thrilled she’s not a fragile human, and she gets the night of. her life.

Carbide: “is that your hip joint grinding?” “Yeah that was a good time” Carbide's like "you have excellent range of movement on these joints but you STILL EXCEEDED IT, try not to do that on the reg."

Vir contacts Dastek, mentioning Zot, who wants a meetup. They consult with Star about going out again – remembering this is the naked-Betazoid club, Aphelion. Star’s onboard for naked night on the town – and so is Paragon. Stephane-Louis, alas, is not, but is entirely chill about it.

Carbide’s working the reactor designs into his existing plans for the cat hub. He may be able to show Mango a mostly-completed plan by the end of the week. Construction is going to be the time-consuming and expensive bit.

((It’ll take 1 month at 29 DV to build the thing and cost Very Expensive. Every failed check adds 2 weeks to the creation time))

At the club, everybody coat-checks. Star has found an outfit for Vir – seethrough, but they are pants! Paragon goes naked.

The bartender makes a Samarian Sunset for Vir and takes a bow. Romulan ale for Paragon, who shotguns it and gets hammered hard. “My head is a balloon!” The bartender starts cracking up at her mental images of Dino. “He’s my baby!”

They join Dastek at a back booth. He’s assembled some good information, and thinks it’s likely he’ll be able to pass on Vir’s father’s current whereabouts. But in return, based on Zot’s recommendation, he’d like to hire them for a job. He wants them to infiltrate Izanami’s global monitoring division in Baikonur and erase and physically destroy satellite survey data from precisely 0135 local time on 12 Yamato of last year through 1418 local time on 7 Bezos this year for specific geographic coordinates. No more, no less. It must be done before 9:42 PM on 3 Thatcher. He’ll also kick in NB 4000.

Star sends a recording to Carbide and asks WTF. He texts back, it’s like the last job but not physically melting an object, just erasing specific data. “Why aren’t you asking Paragon about the data erasure?” “She’s super drunk.” “Already?!” “She shotgunned a Romulan Ale.” “As long as she’s not drunk on the job, she should be able to get it done.” Carbide looks up Izanami, and suggests they haggle up. She says they’re taking it anyway, for Vir.

Star totally rolls the guy on the deal. He’ll agree to anything. Para suggests Federation IDs, to get out from trouble, including Netwatch. Since he’s establishing Vir’s claim to Federation citizenship through their father, he can get them legitimate papers. And if Vir would like to marry the other three in a legally binding Andorian quad marriage…

He wants the ceremony in the bar. Star says that’ll remain an open issue. “I mean, we’d save a whole lot on dresses.” “I was thinking of the trouble of getting Carbide into the Spire.”

Is there a time limit on the marriage? He’ll provide a full package of solutions. Vir insists platonic marriage is a perfectly valid group identity. Do not kink shame us Federation!

They agree to do the job plus one favor to be mutually agreed on, in return for legitimate citizenship papers for four.

Star ushers them all out, and sends the whole conversation to Carbide.

dot dot dot, stop, more. stop. three dots, long time. stop. “So I trusted you to broker a deal, and we’re getting married?!”

“It’s legitimate Federation IDs if we need to get off the planet- not even the corps will come after them!”

“WHAT’S THIS ABOUT THE RECEPTION?!” “It’s an Andorian ceremony, I don’t know anything about them.” Once Paragon’s sober, she’ll look it up, or ask Avrittas. “You’re gonna make me sit for clothes fittings, aren’t you?” “Oh no, were having it at the bar, you just have to be naked, or wear these transparent clothes. “ “I’m just going to keep telling myself Federation citizenship is a great exit strategy.”

“You like us but not marriage-like us? “Think of us like a union.” “OK, I can work with that.”

“We basically already have a platonic marriage.”

“Yeah, that’s actually a fair point. I definitely know more about the contents of Star’s underwear drawer than I really want to – that seems like marriage stuff.”

Star’s going to keep it secret, to maintain her image. Vir says that means they can’t invite the Gorn! But Star can tell them it’s secret – they haven’t shared about Spicy. Who also has to come.

But what about getting her out?! Carbide says they can get a ship with a transporter, beam her out, skip back to Fed space, and her indenture is invalid, because there’s no extradition treaty. Federation lawyers will say you can’t do that, and she can apply for refugee status.

It’s kind of an attractive endgame…