"We want to learn about everything. Especially if we're going to be in close proximity to your people. We're just approaching the situation cautiously. We did not expect pirates with such advanced technology to be here lying in wait for us. We were under the impression humans didn't even have superluminal mass transportation yet, let alone precausal predictive tech. Were it not for the probability compensation with our own data cortex and our energy shielding calibration, we surely would have perished. Why our attackers took us captive after our near destruction is still beyond my ability to surmise. I can only guess there are some humans that are just as curious as us but more hostile and more advanced in their technological and psychokinetic progression."

She looks Skip in the eyes.

"But your captain is already listening."

One of the control panels to in the mess hall scoffed in Jhenko's voice.

Jhenko (on comms): "Hah! Clever girl...erh...alien. You called it Gryftrr, she definitely knew. I guess I owe you 20 credits."

Grytrr could be heard chuckling from the comms too. Jhenko didn't even seem upset that he'd been caught bugging the mess hall and listening in on the conversation. More charmed "ah ya got me" causal about it. Who'd have thought? The captain was bit of a scoundrel.

Gill made a quip, "No observing my bedroom or bathroom habits."

I would be surprised if he wasn't, Skip responds just before the Captain does.  At the mention of Superluminal travel, he almost leapt to his feet with a cry of, "FTL?!  They've cracked Faster Than Light?!"  He may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he reads, and he tries to keep track of technological advances.   But, there has been not even an inkling that FTL has been developed.
He leans forward.  You are absolutely certain that they have Faster Than Light capability?  That means those pirates either aren't pirates, or they have some serious backing.
He turns to the speaker.  Cap'n, I think we are in some deep shit.  And sinking in WAY over our heads.

Lilly scratched her head.

"Well, we arrived using a superluminal communications array that's only a few lightyears from here. It is how our pods were constructed nearby without humans knowing. Once we had a single node, the code was able to decompress, travel into an operable form, and collect more mass and supplies to build drones that would then build our facility and clone pods. After that it was a few months of tissue replication and a cognitive upload and we were here. Sadly, as we worked on constructing our vessels, they ambushed us. I assume they have superluminal tech if they intercepted any of our superluminal messages..."

Lilly stopped. Her mind trying to process something complex.

Jhenko: "Don't worry, Gill, I got better things to do. Namely, process all these aliens. So much for a glorious first contact that the Signal promised. Sounds like they brought some sort of conflict beyond our system to our doorstep. The question is, who is who and which side are we on? I have feeling "not choosing sides" isn't an option since one of them is already trying to kill us. Just our luck."

Gill went back to serious, "Listen very carefully, Lilly, as long as you are on this ship you are a guest. You will do nothing to harm a member of my crew, that includes the blue monkey. That also goes for the kids, tell them now."

Osram's voice came in over the comms in the mess hall.

"Gil, if you got Lilly with you, can you ask her to talk to the kids?  They're down here in the cargo bay listening, and are worried about her for some reason."

Lilly seemed confused.

"I was under the impression you did not want me to do that. May I operate my communications device without having a weapon pointed at me?"

Lilly looked at Skip.

Skip holds his hands up to show them to be empty.  He had holstered the plasma pistol before he sat down.

Lilly sends a communication to the kids.

"Everything is okay. Our hosts have it under control."

Skip closes his eyes and pinches his nose as though he has a sudden and severe headache.  Maybe we should get a new ship, and scuttle and disable this one into a decaying orbit around the Sun, he mutters to himself.

Gill nodded and gave Skip a thumbs up. "I think that's enough for now. We value your cooperation Lilly. Unless you have something else, Mr. Tracer, I can escort her back to quarters."

Andre was bright eyed and bushy… haired. He started talking almost as soon as he walked in, “The kids are, probably, adults of an alien species, Lilly too. Different species, both more advanced than humans, cousins of sorts to each other. They sent devices into… let’s call it Avalon as that is more poetic than Fae Dimension… gremlins and a few others got ruffled about it because it messed with things. Gryftrr stole a ride, dropped its defenses and got it marauded. I assume that group is the owner of the warship we recently escaped.  I want to recover or destroy that tech to stop people here from making more mess. Maybe we can come up with less destabilizing methods to access Avalon, but we can’t really hope to match a warship as we are and I don’t think it is a good idea to spread this info around.” He didn’t know that half of what he knew was public knowledge already.

Once back at the mess hall he quietly found himself a corner where he could easily watch and listen. He only caught a small piece of what Andre was saying but from that small bit he was pretty sure it was mostly what was suspected by many.

Gill returned from escorting Lilly, still wearing his lawyer glasses. "I agree with Rey, and I'll add that Gryfter hasn't attacked us, and since he is integrated into our ship, he should be considered crew. Skip did you feel any deception from Lilly?"
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 05:56, Sat 18 May.

"The kids did make a big deal about how dangerous that newest crewmember and his kind are.  Born to create chaos and all that."  Osram offered.  "Guess we'll just have to trust it now, and hope it doesn't blow up on us."

Turning to Andre he asked, "Could Gryftrr be separated from the ship?  Like say... ejected from us and shunted into a big shiny warship?"

Andre shook his head, “I’m not sure it is correct to call Gryftrr a gremlin anymore. Self described as fey he has also described the connection with NOD as being comfortable. He likes the ship and desires its success and future. I think he will assist maneuvering and attack efforts…

You may be onto something with how to fight them though. Rather than a traditional missile, mine, or cannon a hybrid gremlin might be able to take over that ship. Even a standard gremlin might well be able to wreck it or at least level the playing field for a couple smaller ships. It might be able to be linked to them via a comms wave if we can generate ectoplasm aboard their ship.

I think the largest problem with that being that to get one we probably can’t go through Gryftrr, we would have to trust Lilly and the other Roswellians. I don’t. They may not have actively lied but they were not forthcoming nor instructive.  They were intentionally deceptive after we gave several signs that we just wanted to selflessly help them. Maybe Val can help with the ectoplasm creation or storage..”

As the alien is escorted away, Skip gets up to make himself a cup ot tea.  He, infact, downs a couple as the others begin to file in and converse.  He is on his third cup when he speaks again.
She was very forthcoming after I drew my sidearm.  He takes a sip, and moves to the cupboard to locate something to snack on with it.  He comes up with a pack of creme-filled sandwich cookies of various flavors.
As far as she is concerned, I'd say Lilly believes us to be a hostile sort who can be reasonable under the right circumstances, he says as he brings his cup and the cookies to the table.  I can't sya she's wrong.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:48, Mon 20 May.

Gill looked oddly thoughtful, as if the glasses made him more adult somehow. "Do you remember that bit about experiments? Did you get the impression she was omitting something?"

The engineer raised one hand almost as if throwing something at the ceiling, “Of course. Roswell’s have been thought to perform cattle mutilations and human abduction not to mention probing. Crazier theories exist and if even half of them are true the Roswellians would be more dangerous to more people… though to be fair humans are well documented as messing up each other more than aliens but we can’t be certain of overlaps there, in the name of gods or sciences.”

He took a moment to be ashamed for the species he was born to but there was nothing to be done about it, “Humans with their powers would be undoubtedly bad unless selected carefully.”

"So, that's all well and good, but if the goal is to try and get rid of this stuff so it's not in the hands of pirates, or anybody even, that still leaves the problem of tracking it down."  Osram figured.  "If we can't do that, then figuring out the other part won't matter much."

She didn't really seem to be leaving much out.  I mean, we all have our little secrets, he says with a shrug.  Gryftrr hit a nerve , caused a guilt trip with his words.  And, I'm not sure she was trying to deceive us, once she was found out, as much as she was trying to reassure the kids with a bit of deception.  I am curious to see what they actually look like.

Andre nodded, “Gryftrr is going to be key to establishing trust and cooperation with them. They will be key to upgrading our systems to facilitate our investigation… unless you can already hide us from their systems and track the stolen metal magics, Gryftrr. How are you feeling about that? My metal magic isn’t up to snuff yet, I’m afraid.” he was so familiar with being the smartest person in the room. It had taken him some time to come to grips with the fact that this entire mission plan was stuff that he was not ultimately any better at grasping, then the least educated people in the room. His expression did show he had, what he hoped was a plan.

Gill shrugged, "You guys decide what to do next. It's all the same to me."

Gryftrr's holographic avatar appeared in the room.

"I'm still a gremlin, I'm just...upgraded. Like Osram is still human but also...more. I wouldn't trust the Longneck or Eggheads anywhere near your engineering, bridge, or any control rooms or panels. Keep keep them away from tech and they're just meatsacs like you scrubs."

He skipped closer.

"I can help with what I know of my realm, but if you want metal magic we might need to get the Eggheads to explain to us how all that works. I never really learned. My kind are better at breaking than building. They're the builders. They just like to poke and prod things and experiment on them a lot. I've seen them do the cattle thing. They fly through our realm to get to another one and then just scoop up a bunch of creatures and start poking them with their machines. Then they put them back where they found them and talk about what they learned. It's the weirdest thing! Bunch of nerds!"

Behind Gryftrr, Captain Jhenko was on the video comms listening and nodding.

"We obviously can't let alien tech fall into the hands of pirates...especially not pirates that might have ID'd our ship and could be waiting for us to try to make it back to civilization to "silence" us for good.

Either Lilly and the "kids" can provide us with what we need to fight back or we're going to need backup elsewhere, maybe even ...*shudders*... work with the authorities."

He feels gross even just saying it. Nobody wants to call the Feds because there's so much red tape and convoluted regulation that nearly everyone has unknowingly committed some crimes somewhere. Selective enforcement is how the interplanetary governance gets everyone to cooperate and why most people prefer to fly under the radar, because flying above it is expensive.