GR RP "Adventures in GunRunning" ACT 22

POSTED BY: CapnRahn
UPDATED: Thursday, October 28, 2004 03:16
VIEWED: 19308
PAGE 3 of 10

GEEZER

Saturday, October 16, 2004 3:12 PM

THORNE's Move

Location: Sick bay


...(RIVER) returns to the common room and sits down on the floor with her box of jacks. She smiles up at Thorne. "Kaylee taught me." She opens the box and looks up at Thorne expectantly.

THORNE looks at the jacks. He looks at RIVER's imploring eyes. He looks at INARA; desirable as ever, even when she's trying hard not to grin. He looks at RIVER again, throws back his head and laughs a full guffaw at the absurdity of it all. Returning INARA's now full-blown smirk, he bows to her and speaks.

THORNE: "Demoiselle Sera, It appears that I am called away from our engagement by pressing matters involving tactics and complex game theory. Be assured that I have noted the progress of our collaboration so far, and that upon resumption of our meeting I will be ready to resume it at the point which we have already achieved."

Bowing again, he turns and sits crosslegged on the floor facing RIVER.

THORNE:[to RIVER] "All right, little one, let's play. But go easy on me; I'm way out of practice. And one more thing. No moving the jacks with your mind."

EOM



"Keep the Shiny side up"

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CHANNAIN

Saturday, October 16, 2004 7:08 PM

Rowan's Move
LOCATION: BRIDGE

KAYLEE: “Rowan, you get the least little red light from that diagnostic, you give me a holler pronto. I’ll come runnin’. But I got a couple other irons in the fire, before I can relax tonight so I’d best get to it. I got all night to work, ‘cause I can sleep tomorrow - not much for me to do once it hot’s up, except keep an eye on the gauges.”

ROWAN: "I heard that. Shame there isn't more engaging pursuits on a ship this small."

Rowan looks over to give the girl a wink, only to find Kaylee is already on her way out the hatch, toolbox in hand.

Hearing Kaylee's footsteps fade, she hears another set from somewhere farther off, confirming the pricking of the tiny hairs on her neck. Leaning forward a bit, she realizes it's coming from the Galley and relaxes as those pesky hairs smooth down and turns back to the forward window. It's probably just a crew member in search of leftovers. Hearing the sound of a hatch closing draws her attention back from the star field again just as she hears Reynolds' voice.

MAL: "Dog it."

Turning in time to see Reynolds close the hatch leading into the galley, Rowan frowns. Seems an odd thing to do. Common area hatches on cargo ships generally stayed open unless there was some manner of emergency. Since there obviously hasn't been one, that would imply the captain was up to something. Something he'd rather the rest of the crew didn't take part in.

Instincts on overload, Rowan looks down at her screen again. She touches the area marked GALLEY on Serenity's schematic, pulling that area up in a three-view close-up. A list on the side outlines the systems available in the Galley area and she touches the one marked COMM.

SERENITY (a smooth female voice in Rowan's earpiece): Unable to comply. That system is secured.

ROWAN (inwardly as she lifts an eyebrow): Secured, is it? We'll see about that.

Pulling a platinum stylus from the bottom frame of the sourcepad, she lets her mind fall into a familiar arena that blends logic and creativity. Pulling up Serenity's main comm system first, she locates the common areas branch and follows it. The branch leads her past all the crew quarters first before reaching the Galley. Once there, she finds the code for the security setting and nimbly rewrites it, reversing the quantifiers.

SERENITY (in Rowan's earpiece): Galley comm security deactivated.

Rowan smiles slowly, seeing on her screen that despite Serenity's very helpful notification, anyone actually looking at the comm. panel would see the red light, indicating the security feature was engaged. It's all she can do not to let loose a maniacal little chuckle.

SERENITY (in Rowan's earpiece): Secondary anomalous magnetic signal re-engaged."

Rowan frowns at her screen, seeing that there is indeed a secondary signal, independent from Serenity's main comm frequency. Tapping that area on the schematic, she is able to bring up the statistics. Serenity has been monitoring the signal subversively according to a set of parameters that has no author name attached to them. It looks like she's been doing it for awhile too - six months or better. Unfortunately, since it's an independent system, Serenity has no way of recording what that signal is for.

ROWAN (inwardly): Maybe the captain has his own little monitoring system? Odd... Reynolds doesn't seem the type.

Following a hunch, she sets the sourcepad to hold onto that secondary signal, minimizes the galley and brings up the captain's quarters. That little venture is quickly finished once she sees that Reynolds has only the usual set up for a crew quarters comm. Meaning he can call the bridge, end of story. As there are no secondary signals in his quarters - or any of the others - she returns to the original site.

Time for some more in-dept

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DECOY

Saturday, October 16, 2004 8:28 PM

Wash's Move:
Location - On the Bridge, looking over at Rowan's console

Wash (To Rowan, who is buisily scribbling on a small computer pad over the gunnery console): "Whatcha' doing? Looks to me like you're hacking into the comm system... I know what it looks like, because on my last ship, the captain nearly spaced the cook for trying to eaves-drop on one of the sleeping quarters, namely his. My brain is getting tired of this course plottin'... Can I help? Rex knows about as much as I do, and 4 hands are better than two."


As the Alliance turns, so do the days of our lives: 19:07AMT (7:07pm). We all really do live in a space opera.

Decoy, they make me go first.

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CHANNAIN

Saturday, October 16, 2004 9:12 PM

OOC to DECOY: when you get here, pop on over to the OOC thread. I left you some notes.

Rowan's Move
LOCATION: BRIDGE

WASH: "Whatcha' doing? Looks to me like you're hacking into the comm system... I know what it looks like, because on my last ship, the captain nearly spaced the cook for trying to eaves-drop on one of the sleeping quarters, namely his. My brain is getting tired of this course plottin'... Can I help? Rex knows about as much as I do, and 4 hands are better than two."

FLASHBACK
"What are you doing?"

She smiled as she watched her screen. Robert was in a hallway with one of the security personnel, a particularly buff and beautiful raven-haired individual named Cordelia. Robert had been fascinated with the woman from the first, but Cordelia barely gave him a sidelong glance, so naturally he made it his singular mission to pursue her. Like a flame to the moth.

"Robert's trying to chat up Cordelia," she said.

Feeling him behind her, she waited while he studied the screen. "Where are they?"

"Two floors up, outside corridor by the lifts," she said, as casually as she could. She looked up to see his eyebrows raised and his little smile.

"You got it to work," he said.

She nodded, and watched his smile grow until he bent his head and rewarded her with a warm kiss of triumph.

END FLASHBACK

Rowan has to stop scribbling on-screen and wait for the twinge to pass, pushing aside the sight of the beautiful smile she still unconditionally adores. She can't think about that now. There's no time for it anymore.

She smiles slowly and twirls the stylus in the fingers of her right hand as she glances up at Wash. She should have known he would be monitoring things on his end. Turns out the flyboy in the flashy shirt has more going on upstairs than she thought. Then again, her thinking is if Reynolds wanted the entire crew to know what he was up to, he wouldn't be closing doors and keeping folks out.

ROWAN: "Much as I appreciate the offer--and the warning--I'm just doing a little tweaking on the comms, see if I can eliminate some of the tinniness."

For good measure, she also pulls up the Cortex access and logs in.

ROWAN: "Checking my Cor-Mail too, as it happens, see if the UBA sent my packet yet."

At least then if he decides to come look over her shoulder, she'll have proof. Spyhopper is already connecting with the wireless operating system on the sourcepad even as she speaks. If she had been in the private sector when it was developed, one of two possibilities could have happened; either she would have won a government contract, or been hauled in and questioned by the Feds for subversive cortex activities. As it was, when the Independent Council learned she had developed the ability to tap into independent video and audio systems, she did get a bonus in the form of a week's leave that she had never been able to take advantage of. The true shame of it was that Spyhopper was finished too late to be of any use to the Independent cause.

SPYHOPPER (a male Asian-accented voice in Rowan's earpiece): "System activated."

Rowan twitches involuntarily and quickly taps the audio to off. She had forgotten that she used Xiang's voiceprint for the audio interface. He hated it, of course, but she found it utterly delightful. Or had, once.

She sets Spyhopper into pursuit mode, and it zeroes in on the magnetic signal almost immediately. Only it isn't in the galley--the signal it found was in the bridge.

Frowning, Rowan asks it to paint locations of all the signals it can find on the overall schematic. Ten seconds later, she doesn't feel her eyebrows lift together of their own accord as Spyhopper gives her a comprehensive map of networked signals, positioned throughout the ship.

ROWAN (inwardly): Well now. This could be highly revealin