Untitled Ship Story 2
*******
Lisa toweled her hair as she stepped out of the bathroom. She had taken the opportunity provided by Taylor going to manually check the matter storage and configuring some harvester drones to go after the Simurgh's clipped wings to take a shower.
After her shower, she had traded her costume for a set of the surprisingly comfortable grey jumpsuits that Taylor had made. It was interesting to realize that the clothes that she was wearing now had been trash floating in the ocean just a few minutes ago.
"Tattletale?" Colin asked hesitantly. Lisa had foregone her mask and was showing her face unobscured to him and he was confused by that choice.
"Call me Lisa," she answered with a small smile, "I figured out who you are in the shower and thought that I should probably give you a little quid pro quo. Thinker remember? I just apologize for not getting it early but other things were pressing me at the moment."
"Are you sure that revealing yourself to me is wise?" Colin questioned, "what about later when we're off the ship?" She could tell that he was uncomfortable with the knowledge of her civilian identity.
"I don't think that either one of us will be getting off this ride until the end," Lisa sighed, "nothing is going to be the same when we finally get home. Even where we think of as home is probably going to be different."
"Do you really think that Taylor is going to change things that much?" Colin said as he began to pace around the room. She shook her head; he was already thinking about it on some level but she figured that she was going to have to spell it out to get him to acknowledge it.
"You know what kind of havoc that this ship of hers could play on a city; even with the beams Manton limited," Lisa pointed out, "and to her it's just a simple unarmed civilian mining ship. Who knows what a ship that she would consider lightly armed could do."
"I don't want to think about it. She wants to be a hero," Colin replied, "it would be best if we encouraged that line of thinking."
"She's also convinced that she can't be a hero, which is something that we should definitely discuss later," Lisa said, "you're a tinker not a thinker but, just think about what she could do if someone was dumb enough to press her. The amount of damage that just this ship could do to a city."
"She could ruin the infrastructure of a city even though the beams are Manton limited. According to how it works, she could probably remove a building from around a person easily," Colin stated, "but, why would she believe that we already have her listed as a villain?"
"It was a lie. At least mostly? She was bullied. Probably by a popular person and she was not." Lisa concluded, "it was almost certainly her versus them and the people who were responsible for her well being probably believed them over her. She had no support from the authorities and nothing that she tried changed things for the better."
"What about her parents?" Colin asked Lisa,"surely they would have done something to defend her." He sat rather uncomfortably in the chair at the desk in the captain's quarters.
"They're dead or otherwise out of the picture," Lisa answered, "if either one of them was alive and nearby; she would have taken them with her and we would have seen them by now."
"You're sure that they are dead?" Colin asked cautiously, "they might be estranged somehow."
"It just doesn't feel like it fits. Taylor is homeless but she's not resentful of her parents," Lisa muttered, "and if they were in jail or something like that. Taylor would have gone there so soon as she could and got them out."
"What if they were being kept someplace that made it hard for her to get to?" Colin asked grasping at straws.
"I don't think that the Birdcage is enough to keep her from her parents if that was the case," Lisa answered, "do you think that it could hold up to a determined assault from her?"
"No I don't. So what, homeless girl, being bullied by someone and the authorities not doing anything about it?" Colin summarized, "and then someone learned that she was a parahuman and fed her that line?"
"Most likely," Lisa answered, "and we've got to convince her that she can be the hero she wants to be. No difficulty there right?" Lisa sighed exasperatedly as she sat on the desk facing him.
"I wish that I could contact Dragon. She's better with people than I am," Colin sighed and looked Lisa in the eyes, "out of curiosity, why are you insistent on making Taylor a hero instead of a villain? I mean you are one yourself."
"It wasn't by choice," Lisa replied, "but, Taylor is scary enough with just what she could do. Her being a villain would be to much and someone would do something stupid that would cost everyone a lot. So the question is how do we make the public think that she's a hero?"
"I normally would be the last person to say this," Colin replied, "but, it would probably be best in the short term if she didn't join the Protectorate. I would push for being an affiliate but not too hard."
"You recognized the name Sophia didn't you?" Lisa smirked as Colin grimaced, "so someone over claiming the influence that she had?"
"It's certainly possible," Colin said tersely, "we'd have to do some serious investigation and cleaning out before we could make a serious overture to her."
"Realpolitik speaking from you?" Lisa said, "I didn't expect it from you and your more correct than you know. Coil has people in the PRT. It's one of the reasons why I didn't just run to you when I had the chance." Colin's scowl deepened at her revelation of Coil's infiltration of the PRT.
"Another problem that needs to be dealt with," he groused before sighing, "so we agree that the best route would be to encourage Taylor to be an independent hero?"
"Yeah that's what I would advise," Lisa answered.
"What would you advise?" Taylor asked as she returned to the captain's quarters.
"We were discussing encouraging you to be an independent heroine," Colin replied guilelessly.
"Oh," Taylor said blankley, "I see...."
"What was your initial plan going forward with the PRT?" Lisa asked her.
"Ah, I was going to offer them the plans for a couple of the simpler things that I could build," Taylor answered, "a flying ambulance and a troop transport with the weapons system stripped out but the hard points still intact. I would offer a contract to make them if they didn't want to make any themselves."
"An interesting start but why would you think that they would be able to build their own?" Lisa asked. Colin sat thinking about it.
"They should be able to make around ninety percent of the craft with just off the shelf parts with little modifications and could buy the components that they needed to finish from me or get some tinkertech replacements from some of their affiliates like Dragon," Taylor answered.
"She would definitely be interested in that. She probably would want to buy a contract to produce them if they are mass producible," Colin spoke up.
"So I guess that's the carrot," Lisa mused, "so what's the stick for your negotiations?"
"I have a couple of impressive looking but lightly armed ships for an escort," Taylor answered with a satisfied smile, "without a crew, they can only do simple automated tasks though. So just following the mining ship around." Lisa silently wondered what Taylor would consider lightly armed.
"You've already built them?" Colin asked impressed, "that's impressive."
"I got a lot from harvesting the wings that the Simurgh left behind," Taylor answered proudly, "I've even put some decent shields on this one in case the Simurgh attacks us again."
"Really! That's a relief," Lisa said, she had a feeling that what most people would call overkill would just qualify as decent to Taylor; "all you need now is a good costume and a cape name."
"Why are you helping me to be a hero?" Taylor demanded.
"Someone lied to you," Colin replied, "as far as I know you aren't listed as a villain by the PRT."
"Really?" Taylor asked him; "you mean that Sophia didn't?"
"It's unlikely that she has enough influence to have done that," Lisa responded for him, "you probably wasn't even on the PRT's radar at all."
"Until now," Colin interjected, "something this big isn't going to be missed. I wish that I could get in contact with Dragon. She'd know how to handle this better than me."
"Handle what?" Taylor blinked in confusion at his statement.
"PR, Taylor," Lisa answered, "how to spin this in the best possible light. It would help if we knew what the public reaction to your debut is. A connection to the internet so we could try to influence the narrative would be nice too."
"Well...." Taylor began, "if an internet connection is all that you need; I could kluge up something that could let you surf the web and reply to stuff."
*********
To say that Dragon was worried was an understatement. Armsmaster had disappeared sometime in the previous night when he was off duty and away from the Rig. He had went to a bar in the docks in his civilian identity and had been caught in the crossfire of a three way fight between the ABB, the Empire 88, and some new group of parahumans. His phone had been destroyed during the fighting and he didn't have any weapons or defenses with him. He had not been among the injured picked up in the aftermath of the fight either. The only hope was that his body had not been found in the aftermath.
Her worry for her friend was bad enough but, just this morning the Simurgh had broken her pattern and had broken orbit and had descended onto the Atlantic Ocean. She had attacked an unknown tinker's air craft and after a brief altercation she had broken off and retreated.
In that short encounter, the craft had fired an energy weapon that had done more damage to the Endbringer than any other fight with it had done. People were already panicking about what the weapon would do if it was turned on a civilian population. A very small minority of people in the PRT were already screaming to shoot it down before it turned its attention to the United States. Not that the craft had done anything Illegal for a strike to be justified.
The two craft that had suddenly appeared in an escort position made her glad that cooler heads had prevailed. The original craft had been too refined in her opinion to be the work of a lone tinker just starting out. It looked like something that she or one of the better established and funded tinkers would have made.
The two other craft had put paid to any theories of a single tinker behind the craft. They had similar design elements as the first one but they clearly were of a different function than the original craft. Even more intriguing to her, the two craft were virtually identical and showed the hallmarks of mass production.
That sounded a lot like a large well funded and established group behind there creation. The mystery was that such a group would have been difficult to hide for long. Even if they were a government group; there would have been traces of the funding and supplies for such an undertaking.
She was almost relieved when she was contacted by someone. She was really relieved when she saw the header on the initial handshake from the sender. It was from Armsmaster. He was contacting her in his civilian identity and on an unsecured connection or one that he was unable to secure himself. It was coming from a strange place as well. It seemed to be coming from over the ocean.
"Colin are you alright?" Dragon asked as soon as they were connected, "I was so worried when you disappeared last night. Where are you?"
"I'm fine Dragon," Colin smiled tiredly on the video transmission, "I accidentally hitched a ride with a civilian mining ship and we had a run in with the Simurgh." Dragon connected the dots quickly.
"You're on the flying craft that the Simurgh attacked?" Dragon asked, "how could a civilian ship be able to do that much damage to the Simurgh?"
"We tinkered with some of the mining equipment and were forced to vent plasma at the end of the fight," Colin replied, "then the captain summoned some armed reinforcements to protect the ship in case the Simurgh came back for more."
It was probably the most that he could say on an insecure transmission. He had probably made a weapon from things on the ship and had to vent plasma from the power system to get it to back off.
It also put the final nail in the coffin of any ideas that it was the product of a lone tinker. What Colin wasn't saying was just as important as what he could. These ships could only be the product of a highly advanced culture.
Some people would probably jump to the conclusion of aliens but, given the work of Professor Haywire, it was more than likely that it was a human civilization on an alternate Earth. Though the question was what was a mining ship from another Earth was doing on Earth Bet.
"So what are you doing over the Atlantic Ocean?" Dragon asked curiously. Her avatar raised an eyebrow at his sheepish smile.
"Harvesting trash; mostly plastics," Colin replied. She could see two other people in the background of the transmission but they were not clearly in the camera's view.
"What do they want with plastic?" Dragon asked curiously.
"Mostly to make clothes," one of the other people snarked in the background. The voice was clearly human and female. The unfamiliar design of the clothing that Dragon could see on her added to the theory of them being from an alternative Earth.
"It sounds like you've had quite the adventure," Dragon replied, "I'd like to hear more about it later but, I really need to get into contact with some people."
"I understand," Colin said, "we're getting close enough to the coat of the United States. We should get into contact with the Coast Guard before we cause too much of a panic." He disconnected the transmission after saying goodbye.
"You and your new friends have already created a huge panic," Dragon muttered to the empty room housing her main server. A sigh came from her speakers as she began to contact the authorities to share the data that she had gleaned from her conversation with Armsmaster.
Legend would be appreciative that Armsmaster was still alive and in relatively good shape.
*******
I'm worried that this is too infodumpy. Also I can't get the PHO generator to work on my phone.
So I decided to go with Dragon's perspective for this one.