revivalproject | Coming in at last call!

Entry tags:

Coming in at last call!

WHO: Drake Riley
WHERE: Coruscant
WHAT: Angrily bumbling through unsuccessful social interactions
WHEN: March Event catchall
WARNINGS: Language, but only if you speak Goa'uld

Arrival
For the second time in - what, a week? - Drake woke suddenly and with no idea where he was. And it was getting annoying. At least this time, he didn't feel as though he'd been pushed down a cliff and trampled by an upset moose. The ship gave a judder-

Ship? What? He sat bolt upright and staggered to the front just in time to see the planet spread itself out before them, glittering and vast. Astonished, he couldn't take his eyes off it, and only found a seat by fumbling blindly for one.

Later, after being ushered against every protest into the hotel and subsequently his room, Drake spent a few minutes going over his tablet to make sure it hadn't been damaged, and then promptly left. It wasn't like he had any belongings to unpack, after all.

Shopping
Drake's first impression of Coruscant was that it reminded him a bit of Tokyo. Except that he'd never been to Tokyo. But he knew it was vast and crowded and cluttered with bright signs, and he expected he wouldn't like the smell of all the street foods mingling with the steam drifting up from manholes, and he was assaulted by all of that the moment he left the hotel.

The first thing he tried looking for was an adapter for his tablet, both for powering it and for interfacing with new technologies he might encounter. (He didn't have much luck, only finding a few little scraps he could try splicing together later.) The next thing he looked for were any items that could replace what he'd lost in coming here: a proper torch, a canteen, waterproof matches or firesteel, binoculars, water tablets, a first aid kit, a weapon, and definitely some meal bars. Maybe a small shaving kit if he had room. So far, he's only found some meal replacement bars and a flashlight, and his increasing agitation with being unable to communicate with the shopkeeper (who he's sure is holding out on him for a better price, but is actually just getting fed up with his tone) is about to get him kicked out.

Underground
It didn't take long for Drake to get himself thrown out of the establishment, after which he'd yelled "Kel kek, mikta!" which didn't mean anything to the shopkeeper, but was clearly an insult if the rude gesture that accompanied it was anything to go by. They'd squealed angrily and thrown a small, hard bag of something foul smelling at him.

WELL.

It wasn't his fault they were too thick to understand easy-to-decipher body language regarding drinking, shooting, and bandaging (but could, for some reason, understand when he was calling them stupid). Oh well. That was fine. No upstanding citizen would sell a weapon to some random stranger without an identification, mailing address, or even a background to check, anyway, so he'd go looking elsewhere. After asking around here and there, Drake began to get the impression that he could buy just about anything he wanted the further down he went. No one really warned him about the violence down there, though.

That's how he wound up pinned against a wall with a blaster under his chin when he'd made too quick a move to reach into one of his pockets.

Late lunch/Early dinner
If no one came to his aide, he'll have escaped by offering up all of the power bars he'd bought earlier, claiming that they had "sun" in them - which he assumed they did. Vitamin D, that is, which appeared to be distinctly lacking down there. Weapon or no weapon, Drake will have taken the experience as a cue to retreat.

Tired, shaken, a bit smelly, and hardly having found anything on his shopping list, he turned his focus toward dining. He'd have given anything for a P.F. Chang's. Just someplace quiet to gather what remained of his wits, have something warm to drink, and try to calm down and formulate a plan. And have something to eat, obviously. He was starving.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I know," he said. "I know it's a tall order and I'll have to prioritize. But hear me out mate. Where I'm from, part of my job - the very mission statement of the programme I support - is to acquire new technologies and weapons to aid my planet in its defense against hostile aliens. And there are....there're a lot." Drake stopped and turned to face Cal, his face the picture of earnest seriousness.

"Without our alien allies, I wouldn't have been able to help design Earth's first deep space warship - which was destroyed just months ago, by the way - or improve upon the design for the next class of ships. We just launched Odyssey. She's Earth's flagship battle cruiser, and she wouldn't be possible without technology that doesn't exist on Earth. Point being, what doesn't exist in Temba is exactly what we need to look for. Don't worry about making it work. I've created all manner of adapters. Even engineered a series of interface crystals specifically designed to relay between human and alien technologies. Trust me, I'm an expert in crystal technology, and from what I understand, that's largely what Temba operates on, isn't it?"

When Drake stopped, so did Cal, giving the man his full attention. What he was saying wasn't anything difficult to understand, although from what he'd heard in regards to those he'd met from Earth, it usually turned out that aliens were particularly hostile towards Earthborn humanoids. How strange.

Cal nodded. Maybe someone with better understanding of crystal technology could provide some decent insight. "Look, I get it. We still have to be realistic about what's possible and what isn't. Our timeframe's been dwindling and I'm not sure how long before the Agrii will decide it's time for us to go back. They probably didn't consider how big of a supply run we might attempt to make this. If anything might take too much time to have delivered to us, we'll have to cut it out. I'll say this now, but we may as well leave off excess weapons. The Agrii don't seem to have a high opinion of such, but they also aren't without weapons to provide us if they think we might need it. If we bring too much they might just inconveniently disappear."

Drake rolled his eyes so hard, his whole head followed the movement.

"God, they're that type, are they? Well look, I don't mean lots of guns and grenades, I mean planetary defense. Ion cannons, defense satellites, that sort of thing. Or - you know, the means and the plans to build them. At the very least, I need to be able to interface my tablet with whatever systems exist in Temba. That's the only way I'll be able to run any diagnostics. Now I think I can splice something together with what I've gathered already, but extra analytical equipment wouldn't go wrong. Sensors, probes, that sort of thing, to send into unfamiliar and potentially dangerous areas."

"It's not planetary defense we need to worry about. The Agrii can't even inhabit their own world because of something that's affecting it's atmosphere," Cal reminded. "Analytical equipment will be more useful than defense satellites and ion cannons- not that I don't understand where you're coming from. But we need to get the Agrii home first. If they want help with defenses and anything else after, then we can worry about that. As it is, I don't know that anyone might be interested in a planet if they found out an entire people abandoned it for some reason."

Drake opened his mouth to reply, but stopped short.

"That.......that is a good point." He started walking again, slowly, frowning at the ground instead of looking at the various wares surroundiong them. "There isn't anything left to attack or capture. But since that's the case, why don't the Agrii just find another planet to inhabit? They've got the means, haven't they? They've got ships, advanced technology. Why not find another home?"

Cal shook his head. "I've wondered that too, and I'm sure others have as well. Home is home, especially if their people have lived there all their lives. Prior to this, they've never had to go anywhere, and space is huge. If you had to leave so abruptly as you have, how would you even know where to start?"

He'd heard of people not wanting to leave during the war back in his own galaxy. People were willing to protect what they had, because it was all they had. Here, they couldn't even do that because staying meant they could die. He'd seen it. He'd to an extent experienced it in their memories. Again he found himself shaking his head.

"They were basically given the ship they live on now, evacuated and then otherwise left to take care of the problem themselves."

For a split second, the way the plight of the Agrii was being described reminded Drake of 20th century Earth humans: young, inexperienced, ill equipped for surviving a planetary evacuation. Helpless and homeless.

That thought was overshadowed by his lingering resentment at having information forcibly installed into his mind like some kind of software update by technology that was far and away beyond any neural technology available on his Earth at his time. These people were advanced. They utilized crystal technology. Had the power to overwrite memories. They were spacefaring. Surely, they could have -

"They were basically given the ship they live on now..."

"Given?"

This was the first time Drake had heard of any other races or civilisations outside the Agrii. "Given by whom? And why can't their mysterious benefactors help relocate them? Hell, Earth could help relocate them, there're millions of habitable planets in my galaxy."

"Because their 'mysterious benefactors' might very well be the cause for the storms in the first place," Cal said, grimly.

"I'm not sure what system or galaxy or even universe Agra Ten is a part of, but I know I've never heard of an Earth in this galaxy. Given what small part we have seen of where Agra Ten is located, they seem pretty isolated. We made a total of two stops, and even in the state we know Temba to be in, it seemed that they might have been more advanced than the first of the two planets we'd stopped at, where we'd stopped for supplies. Very basic supplies."

He shook his head, trying to circle back. "The ships were all provided by the Atroma. I'd only heard about them from some of the others stuck with us- they'd had previous experience with being kidnapped. But the Atroma had far less noble plans for those they'd bring. From what I've been told, they used people as entertainment in some kind of...reality show. There were some recordings on the Agrii ship, and one of them showed when people from the Atroma's show had come to resupply on Agra Ten. ...that's when the storms began."

This was a lot of new information to take in at once, but Drake was well accustomed to processing information quickly. Now if only it were all laid out for him textbook style, because the more answers he got, the more questions he had.

"Well that's unsettling! Are they watching right now?" He glanced around and did a full turn while walking as if he expected to see someone in pink shorts following them with a boom mic. "Is that why we get sent to different planets, then, for entertainment? Or because the Atroma have control over their ships? Wait a moment; the piloting Data Point...are you saying that the Atroma designed that for use with their own ships?"

That was about how Cal and others felt in general when it came to any sort of information they managed to glean about the Agrii and the situation they were in. Always more questions than answers.

"At this rate? It's safer to assume they are, or can," Cal frowned. "In this particular instance, the Agrii seem to have figured there are an awful lot of us from the same galaxy, if not necessarily the same timeframe. So their idea was to send us out here to try finding out why." Which seemed like an impossible task, really. "Being sent to other places and put through different situations was the Atroma's way of doing things, so far as I've heard."

He shook his head. "I think the datapoints are Agrii-originated. I'm not sure how that figures in with the piloting and engineering information though- that's a good point. I just wish I had the answers to explain it."

"If there's a connection there, I think it's important to get to the bottom of it." Drake said. "The Atroma build the ships, the Agrii...what, barely know how to pilot them? But they're the ones who designed the piloting point. And they can't or won't just find another life-supporting planet, somehow, it's easier to collect people from various points in time and space, and I'd love to know how they're doing that but can't deflect the energy storms... Speaking of which, can you keep an eye out for anything that might lend itself to a shield generator? Even just the calculations or schematics. Might be helpful in experimenting with a way to combat them."

With no real answers to offer, Cal could only shrug. There were too many things that made no sense, and the Agrii had been able to offer little enough answers. The responses he got from Ga Re that one time he was able to ask anything only made him concerned that there might be some sort of external influence, even if he wasn't quite sure how to explain that assumption.

Finding parts of some kind of shield generator or the like was much easier by comparison. The padawan nodded. "I'll do that. Probably won't be around here though. We'd probably have better luck looking where people deal in ships and related parts."

Drake frowned to himself and rubbed one finger over his mouth. Ship's shields. Well...depending on the ship, they might be fairly weak or small. Maybe he could expand the radius of a small one, if he found a sufficient power source and managed to hook his tablet up to it for some re-coding.

It was worth a shot.

"Good. Lead the way." He said, completely forgetting (or ignoring?) the fact that Cal was down there for his own reasons.

Cal didn't seem to mind the detour, at least. He certainly didn't mind helping out another 'he row', and Drake's concerns were beneficial to making things better back in Temba.

Nodding, he led on, then. At least the levels in question would be a little less seedy than the one they currently were roaming.

[[ OOC: Yeah, sounds good! I'm sure they'll both find a few things they're looking for. :> ]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Coming in at last call!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Shall we fade off here?

Re: Shall we fade off here?