LogBrink-Jason-4

Game log for the 2014/10/26 session of Brink, as taken by Jason

We find Torch on Ring 23. Flycatchers are raiding from Ring 20. Torch forces Table to fly him to Ring 20 and starts trying to sneak up on a tower that the Flycatchers use to anchor their cargo lines. He gets spotted and cuts his way into the ring instead, dispatching some random sucker on his way through.

Swan, informed of this attack in mid-negotiation, goes running home, accompanied by Chauncey and Eyeball. By the time Torch has gotten his atrocities started, Swan has arrived back home. Flycatchers have penetrated the docking bay. Swan takes a shot at one, but his enemy leaps out of the way. Swan gives orders to Chauncey and Eyeball to help him get a crossfire going. Chauncey doesn't love the idea, but cooperates and moves with Swan as Eyeball lays down a base of fire. As Swan leaps for a new spot, he gets harpooned by a Flycatcher.

Torch rushes through doors and hatches, making the quickest possible course for the base of the tower. He cuts a dude up and takes his assault rifle on the way, which adds to the carnage. He fights his way all the way to the edge of the bay, then stops for a second to consider his option.

The Flycatcher who harpooned Swan finds reason to think better of it, as Swan shoots the crap out of him with his 9mm. Sadly a different Flycatcher has also harpooned him. If the first guy was alive, Swan would be totally screwed. Since he's dead, this just means Swan's pinned down by a line connecting him to a dead man. The other harpooner puts tension on the line, leaving Swan totally immobilized. Swan scrambles through his pouches until he finds something sharp and cuts himself loose.

Torch cycles the airlock into the bay and leaps. He gets spotted before he lands and driven to take cover in the gantrywork of the tower. He cuts his way into the gantrywork in order to move forward to the top of the tower, but is forced to drop his assault rifle to make further progress.

Swan doesn't like this pinned down crap, so he wriggles loose and tries to run out of the fight, abandoning Eyeball and heading back to the elevator. He takes heavy fire along the way, but gets there and tries to provide some covering fire to their friendlies, but it's not on. The three of them escape through the elevator.

Torch finally makes his way to the top of the tower and cuts up everything in his path. He then grabs a gun and starts to ride a zipline trolley home when he spots enemies boiling out of the other side of the line. He calls Table for help, but he's antagonized the pilot one time too many. Torch jumps, believing that Table will pick him up, but Table doesn't. He misses ring 23 and hits ring 24. Ring 24 is spinning, so that hurt like a nobody's business. The impact sends Torch's cutting tool flying, which is really quite sad. He loved that cutting tool.

Swan orders his crew to grab all the cargo that isn't nailed down, which means re-stealing anything the Flycatchers took but didn't leave with. Torch calls in to let them know he's still alive; they tell him to make his way to a docking bay and wait for pickup. Meanwhile, Swan tallies up salvage worth another 1-barter.

Table tries to get out of picking up Torch, but Swan won't have it, and makes it clear that if Table lies to him again, Table will lose the power of lying, forever. Table folds but complains that Torch threatened him first. We all end up at the doc's, flat broke from the treatment fees. Cipher wakes up to see that he has new suitemates.

Fletch wants to take Torch's mask off so she can fix his broken jaw, but he won't let her. They compromise: she wires his jaw to the mask.

Meanwhile, Absinthe is still trying to figure out what happened to Honey. She finds Florence, and he tells her that Honey kissed him, though it felt perfunctory, and after she did it, she looked over her shoulder. It was as though she was pretending that she and Florence were together for some reason.

She checks back at Honey's place and finds that the door has been kicked in. She draws her bladed baton and creeps up on it, looking carefully to make sure she knows what she's getting into. She turns the lights on and finds that the place is mostly the way we left it, but the snowglobe is gone. She scavenges crap worth 1-barter as she searches Honey's place. As she's leaving, one of the other doors in the hallway slams shut. Three days later, at the Farmer's Market, Calibanos tells her that Florence is dead, killed in a bar fight at the Waxing Gibbous.

Absinthe goes to see Cipher at the hospital, which works great for him says he wants to go drink at the Waxing Gibbous. Absinthe tells him about the suspicious bar fight. Swan decides to go with them, leaving Torch to heal by himself.

The three of them enter the Waxing Gibbous, where Cipher begins questioning the servers to find out what gives. Peanut remembers seeing Florence but not the incident where he died. A few minutes later, Cipher sees Peanut talking to Twerp. At one point she goes to point at Cipher's table, but Twerp swats her arm down. Cipher decides to stay put for now but interrogate Twerp when the bar closes, or at least quiets down. Swan spies someone who looks familiar, but the guy doesn't seem happy with Swan eyeballing him, and comes over and starts talking smack. This guy, whoeever he is, insists that Swan must leave the bar right now, or there will be trouble. Cipher tries to talk the guy down, and ends up defusing the situation by letting him have Cipher's drink. Whoever this guy is, when he goes back to his table, Absinthe sees that he has friends, and all his friends are also keeping an eye on our table. Later on, the nameless jerk comes back, and demands that Cipher buy him another drink. Swan tells the guy to fuck off, and now it's on. Cipher puts the whammy on the guy and instead of throwing a punch, he's grabbing his own head and groaning. Absinthe stands up and offers the jerk a chance to sit back down before he gets the point of the blade, and he chooses the option where he gets to keep his blood.

Cipher gets sick of waiting and starts to go talk to Twerp, but Twerp's gone. He goes to talk to Chelsea and finds out that Florence didn't get stabbed in the bar, he got stabbed in the street. Chelsea doesn't know exactly what happened. Chelsea also doesn't know what happened to Twerp. Cipher shows Chelsea a picture of Honey and he says that not only has he seen her, but there's been someone else showing her picture around as well.

Cipher find Twerp and uses his brain powers to aid in the interrogation. He can tell that Twerp needs to have the crap scared out of him before he coughs up the details, and he's happy to do the scaring. Twerp prevaricates, then says, "Well, you see, it's like this," and tries to stab Cipher. Cipher spins out of the way and gets a violation glove on him. Absinthe whacks Twerp with her baton just to get the message home. Cipher continues demanding answers, and applies some psychic whammy, but Twerp will not talk, and says he's leaving. Swan draws his gun and assures him he isn't leaving. Cipher hits him again and he crumbles- "Oh god, you're one of them, don't do it again, I'll obey!" Now Twerp is screaming, so they take him with them to the elevator. In the elevator, he confesses.

Honey was there, at "the ritual." They brought the girl that they were going to use, "to see," but then Honey said that she knew the girl and that this was wrong and bad. Twerp's memory seems a little off on this stuff - he says he always has trouble remembering, after. He knows it all happened in an ag pod but he can't remember which ring - maybe 27, maybe 37. Cipher tries to push him harder and the guy falls over, bleeding from his ears, dead. Ring 37 happens to be where we went to get the magnets. Swan tries to consult the psychic maelstrom and realizes that his crew were pulling magnets off the radiation shield. That ring has hanging gardens that effectively extend to the next ring over. That ring has 12 ag bays. Flint would know how many of them had power.

Swan makes a comm call to Flint and asks for a meet at Swan's place. Flint will do it for the right compensation. Swan's broke but oh look, Twerp had a knife and a stun gun. Swan offers the stun gun as payment for the meet and it's on like Robotron.

They take Twerp's body down to ring 23 and dump it out the airlock. Flint shows up a little later, and Swan gives up the stun gun as promised. Flint explains that most of ring 37 is shut down, depowered, although some parts of A sector still have power. Nobody lives there. Aside from the ag pods, the only thing worth mentioning is the observatory. Dr Oculus' people occasionally come down to take readings. Suddenly Cipher realizes that the voice he heard when he handled the snow globe was Dr Oculus' voice.

Absinthe asks Flint if he recognizes Honey's picture, and he knows exactly who she is, but he hasn't seen her since the last time Dr Oc's people were down his way. He's not sure what she was doing but her boss, Savage, would know. They thank Flint for his help and then immediately begin talking about having a conversation with Savage.

Swan goes back to Fletch's, but Absinthe and Cipher go to Control and ask for Savage. They find in in a room with a giant holographic map of the station and a lot of panels with blinky lights. Absinthe asks him about what happened to Honey, and he immediately recognizes her from Honey's description. He says Honey hasn't been in to work and they're super busy. Cipher tries to shake his hand but Savage spots the violation glove and immediately realizes the fix is in. He asks Farquhar to see them out. Farquhar asks for a moment of Absinthe's attention and then does something with it, but nobody's sure what. Cipher's read is that Farquhar doesn't give a dang about either of them but is loyal to Savage.

They go back to Fletch's medbay and ask for computer access to do some research. Turns out that a week ago, there was a coronal mass ejection, which was expected to strike the station. Cipher consults the psychic maelstrom and gets the impression that the sun pulsed somehow, and the gate somehow pulsed in the same pattern. Cipher tries to ask whether something came through the gate, but nothing answers.

5-6 days later, Swan and Torch are ready to work, but Eyeball's still doing poorly. She can go home and do light work but not go wandering around looking for trouble. When we all get back to the bay, everyone but Table is there, though Table's pod is there. The pod has Woot-style eye and mouth art. Swan also finds three woven-grass rings under his pillow. He tries to open his brain and see what it all means. His drifting minds goes out to the Woot ring and gets sucked in by a peculiar beat coming from their, a beat that pulls him deeper into the maelstrom and Wootness. He gets pulled through the last doorway, into the Witch's chambers, and when he arrives, she looks at him and says, "Wake, and remember!" Swan wakes up and he's bleeding from cuts he didn't use to have.