Run Synopsis
[All players present. This is actually where the identity of "Jordan Williams" - mentioned last run - was created.]
After some amount of travel, the Oort Cloud is reached. Our team spent what time it could during the trip, laying a communication cable "spine" through the ship, working chiefly during 4th watch.
As per plan, Dr. Lanza's students shoot out the 4 converted drones into the Cloud. Laser beams are sent back to the ship from the drones and the data thereby generated is examined for traces of comets. It is in 4th watch that the data reveals a comet. The next phase has the engines turned off for a moment of free-fall, the direction of the ship changed and then thrust obtained to go chase the comet. Once caught, the comet is examined by a landing party and the data is added to the professor's growing base.
This is all a grand excuse for a party (although "Melissa", as junior pilot, gets the privilege of "minding the store." By the end of her watch, "Melissa" (probably due to irregular hours coupled with the gravitational changes of the day) feels a bit queasy and stops by Med Bay to ask for a pill. Apparently the nurse on duty is expecting a lot of hung-over students/party-goers, for she tosses a bottle at the pilot without really listening to the symptoms. This surprises "Melissa" who observes Med Bay a bit more closely and realizes that both doctor and nurse are frantically dealing with some sort of emergency.
She returns to her room and rouses "Katherine" by phone. "Katherine" volunteers to "walk the decks" and check the important staff members; she also agrees to the suggestion that "Val" be alerted to check what's going on via computer. It takes a bit to bring "Val", who was sleeping heavily, to an understanding of what is needed but he does eventually determine that during 4th watch a grad student named Annaea died. He ventures down to Med Bay to find bottles of headache/upset-stomach pills neatly laid out in front of the door with a sign "take one" taped thereto. It does not take much for "Val" to pick the lock and bug the doctor's office. Amongst Annaea's personal effects he finds a lipstick with a false bottom and a lone pill which (presumably) was found (by the doctor?) in the false bottom. The pill is plain and white; "Val" takes scrapings.
During 1st watch all "logistic experts" are summoned to deck 9, a summons that sits poorly with "Ivan" who had just finished his "party-ing". Ivan observes that one of the drones there has fallen off its support and that the stevedores are being asked to carefully lift it back into place. As the operations is being directed by a grad student, "Ivan" manages to arrange it so that the 2nd Officer places the ship into zero-G while the drone is safely lifted. He also notices that there is an almost-rubbed out body-chalk mark near the drone and, once the drone is lifted, one of the security guards is being very protective of a patch of brown and some hair tufts on one of the support shafts thereby cleared. "Ivan" asks Security what happened and receives the information that one of the students had come into work during the party and the drone had fallen on her and broken her spine. "Ivan" and Security both observe that it is not clear how such a large object could have become dislodged and so fallen. "Ivan" also notices that Rizzo is one of the few stevedores missing from this mop-up job.
Once the task is accomplished the "logical experts" are given mops and told to clean up the student rooms (as hang-overs and zero-G manifestly do not combine well.) As it happens, the first room "Ivan" visits exhibits no signs of sickness or even of having been slept in: it is the dead student's room. "Ivan" opts to clean it anyway. He observes that Security has already investigated here as various of the student's possessions are neatly exhibited on her desk. So he hunts in places unlikely to have been checked by Security --- and finds a bottle of piles buried in the soil of a plant. He pockets the find to take to "Jordan" for analysis.
The pill scrapings taken by "Val" match (as much as can be determined) the pills found by "Ivan": it is an experimental drug used to increase intelligence but can have the side-effect of putting the body into overdrive despite whatever pain that might occasion. However, such a "super" state cannot happen spontaneously; it must have a trigger. Later the doctor's report is scavenged from the computer: Annaea's blood and fatty tissues reveal the presence of this drug plus a tranquilizer (not PCP). There were contusions on the head (compatible with her having struck her head on the drone support), broken spine (compatible with the drone having fallen on her), various joint tears and strains (compatible with having tried to lift something as large as the drone in a "super" state), and a contusion on the side-front lower left ribs (compatible with having been struck by something? Perhaps to trigger the "super" state.) Annaea, a Finn, was the 3rd senior student on Dr. Lanza's staff . It is possible that - under the pressure the professor puts on his students - she felt compelled to use INT-altering drugs. However, whoever "triggered" the "super" attack that must have happened to her, knew she was using that drug. Or so we reason.
Note: can we determine where Annaea got her drugs?
EPs: 0
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