Chapter 3 — The Journey towards Marinagua

Victor stood beside Amara and checked all the information that piled up as operation logs. Numerous chemicals and waste fluids were transferred, and the fresh ones were taken in. His eyes continued to check all the notifications that came on the screen.

Chaala moves quickly, but without haste, fingers dancing across her console as she pulls the last thirty seconds of pad feeds into a layered review. The Doctor takes this all in looking at the scans and trying to help from his view. The video itself yields little—standard angles, routine movements, nothing overtly suspicious. The liaison aide appears professional, focused on fuel couplings, intake pressures, waste discharge timing, and crate verification. On the surface, everything aligns with stated logistics duties. But something about the rhythm feels wrong. The tablet angles are too deliberate, the pauses too measured, the line-of-sight adjustments just slightly inconsistent with simple manifest checks.

Shifting her attention from the visual feeds to the telemetry layer, Chaala drills into the live data streams running alongside the refuel and replenishment channels. That’s where she sees it: faint, parallel queries riding the legitimate logistics traffic. Small. Non-invasive. Packet-level polling that mirrors internal system signatures without triggering alarms. Not brute-force intrusion—nothing so crude—but adaptive mapping attempts designed to profile throughput rates, redundancy structures, and hardware identifiers. It takes her only a few more seconds to confirm the pattern. The NSTC liaison aide is using the fuel and supply interface as cover for soft penetration scans, quietly probing the Azure Voyager’s capabilities while maintaining perfect procedural deniability.

As she isolates the anomalous packets and traces their timing, the exterior feed catches her eye again. A NSTC grav car glides back onto the pad, Captain Halsson’s team (Captain Halsson, JEEM, Wilber and Bohdie) disembarking—clean, composed, refreshed. The Captain appears unaware of any irregularities, focused on schedule and departure timing. At nearly the same moment, the liaison aide’s tablet display shifts back to a purely logistical interface, the parallel queries tapering off with clinical neatness as fuel transfer approaches completion.

To anyone watching casually, she is simply finishing her checklist. But Chaala now knows better. The scans are ending because the window of opportunity is closing—and because the Captain has returned.

ACTIONS?

Captain Halsson steps off the grav car with the same measured composure she carried into the lounge, her uniform freshly pressed, expression steady, and eyes already scanning the landing pad for changes. JEEM follows at a relaxed pace, robe exchanged for clean coveralls, posture loose but alert, while Wilbur moves just behind them, quiet and watchful, taking in the rhythm of the pad as if comparing it against what it had been before they left. Bohdie trails slightly to one side, outwardly refreshed but inwardly assessing whether anything in the flow has shifted during their absence. None of them look hurried; none of them look rattled. They appear exactly as NSTC intended—rested, processed, reset. But beneath the surface, each carries away small observations from the lounge: the calibrated calm, the synchronized timing, the way comfort was delivered with precision. As they approach the ramp of the Azure Voyager, Captain Halsson gives the pad one last slow sweep, satisfied with what she was shown—yet unaware that while she was enjoying hospitality, the ship itself was being quietly measured.

When they board the ship, JEEM turns to Halsson.

"I request to be excused for a moment. I will then come to the canteen."

He then goes to his cabin, takes off all his clothes, puts on a new set of garments, and examines every seam and fold of his clothing for markers, bugs, or other unusual details.

Not because he expects to be bugged, but because he wants to know how interested NSTC is in them. If he finds anything suspicious, he will report it, but in any case he will take the neatly folded pile with him to the canteen.

As Chaala recognizes the approach of the captain and team with her, she quickly signals them.

"No immediate cause for alarm, but I just clocked the Liaison doing some soft scanning and testing of out systems. Looks likely she also took video of our exterior as well. All subtle and I don't think she penetrated anything sensitive. I don't know that it justifies a response, especially one that will slow us down and create friction, but wanted you to be aware so you can make the call." The message is sent to the whole team but addressed to the Captain. Chaala wants her people ready for whatever the Captain's decision is.

Captain Halsson listens to Chaala’s report without interrupting, absorbing it as one more variable rather than a provocation. She gives a single nod. She moves with purpose to an exterior panel nd pops it open to reveal a crew work station. She taps a few buttons and motions everyone inside;
"Good catch. I turned on the white noise generator, so we can talk incase there is a bug in our uniforms or the NSTC Liaison placed a bug into the systems to monitor us. Now Chaala log it, preserve the packet signatures, and keep the sweep quiet. We do not escalate over curiosity."

She steps fully into the airlock as the ramp begins to cycle upward, then turns back to the team.

"Refueling still requires four more hours to complete," she says evenly. "Which means we use that time properly."

Her eyes move across the remaining crew—Edrin, Amara, Virel, Chaala, Dr. Shone, Ruiha.

"You six determine how you will rotate through hygiene and a real meal. Not all at once. I want everyone reset before we lift—clean, fed, and thinking clearly."

Then her focus shifts to Bohdie, Wilbur, and JEEM.

"While rotations run, I want input. Subtle improvements only. Nothing that signals distrust. Assume NSTC continues polite observation."

She folds her hands behind her back.

"Rotational schedules. Pad presence. Internal compartment access during refuel. Who remains topside, who monitors feeds, who shadows logistics. If we tighten posture, we do it in a way that looks like routine maintenance."

A faint look of approval flickers toward Chaala.

"Counter-surveillance stays quiet. Comms discipline remains tight. No unnecessary chatter over open channels."

She lets a beat pass, inviting professional engagement rather than dictating every detail.

"We’re guests. Let’s remain courteous."

Then, more firmly:

"We depart on time. We depart rested. And we depart with no loose threads."

The deck hums steadily beneath their boots as fuel continues to flow—four hours to sharpen the edge without drawing the blade.

Once Bohdie is back aboard the ship, he takes a moment and lets his guard down, visibly allowing himself slump as he heads to his cabin. Like JEEM, he changes into his sanitized Marine uniform while examining the clothes carefully. After a thorough search, he bags the cleaned clothes in a plastic bag, then into a cloth laundry bag and carries the package back to the ship’s galley to report and talk through everything he noticed.


Search roll:
Recon +1, EDU+2

As Virel steps back aboard with the Captain’s detail, he is still replaying the exchange in his mind. He reads Chaala’s message once and then again. The answer settles into place. He hadn’t missed something. He had been the something. For a brief moment, irritation flickers. He prides himself on reading a situation first. This time, he had been read. The feeling passes quickly. Experience replaces ego. If the liaison believes she extracted something useful while he remained unaware… that belief may now be the most useful thing of all.

As Captain Halsson issues her orders, Virel’s expression remains neutral. He catches Chaala’s eye and gives her a small nod, an acknowledgment and quiet respect for the catch. Then he shifts smoothly into coordination mode, conferring in low tones about rotation schedules with the others.

If NSTC is watching, and he assumes they are, they will see nothing more than a disciplined crew managing turnaround. Let them. They could use that.

"I'm thinking Edrin and Amara go early so they can be ready and refreshed for lift-off. I will go with the last rota, so if anyone misses out because we have to leave early it's me. I'll take a volunteer to go with me. Pairs at a time."

After the team members who've been through the laundry have a chance to check for bugs, she adds, "They're curious about ships complement and, while I'm always a little hesitant to show an unknown curious party my true hand, I'm still in favor of letting them overestimate typical IISS crewing."

...
Wilber, Bohdie and JEEM all find the bug after the careful examination of the clothing. They all three easily find the RFID tag at the top with the label is at in the collar. Bohdie with his experience and when he takes his hand terminal with his unique software finds the actual 'bug' that is a listening device. Wilber and JEEM both found the device a small thread size wire, but it is Bohdie's experience that determined the device was a bug and not something else.

This piece of information confirms what everyone believed that NSTC is trying, just like all Corporations in Imperial Space do, find the edge through corporate espionage. Not as good as what Chaala, Virel or Bohdie have experienced, but still it is what they expected. The Azure Voyager's capabilities at J6 is well above the TL12, Jump-3 capability presence in this sector.

Edrin wants to go at the same time as Ruiha but relents to Chaala's logic.

After four hours and a couple of clothing bugs later, the Azure Voyager is refueled, flight plan accepted and the crew is ready to undock and leave Seital for orbit and then the 100 diameter zone and then Jump Space.

Bohdie doesn't object to the lift time and continuation of the mission to Marinagua. He does, however, file his thoughts about the Star Town away for later. He logs it on his personal hand computer for now, hoping that the niggling feeling in the back of his head is wrong. Still, he waits until the ship is in J-Space to say anything to anyone. Finding the bug in the clothing and other tracking items, he becomes just a bit more cautious (some might even say paranoid). But, as he will later say... ** One. I am still alive. And. Two. Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you. **

When JEEM reports his discovery and the others do the same, he doesn't pursue the matter further. After everything has been carefully measured, he will wear the clothes as normal.

He is satisfied. Everyone is behaving as expected, everyone is looking out for their own interests, and no one is incorruptible. It never has been and never will be.

Asking NSTC what they know about the other ship would be pointless, because then they would have to admit that they are doing more than just what they claim to be doing. And for that, they would need leverage, more than just that.

He limits himself again to engineering assistance and his vacc suit training.

Wibur as folloed his companions.

"Changing power dynamics in the sector have rendered the information we have even more out-of-date than we'd expected. We can assume that what we'll arrive to is vastly changed from last reports and that Harrier and her team would have encountered the same. Since she came in on a much slower approach, anyone actually hostile to IISS would have been able to get out ahead of her. We will have the advantage of moving at greater speed than any information about us, so the first few days on the ground will be vital."

Bohdie has been biding his time and continuing to engage the crew in various downtime activities (skill study Carousing). When the Captain calls the meeting, he allows the meeting to get underway. When Halsson asks for thoughts, and Chaala opens about the changing dynamics, he stands and says, "I was debating how to bring this up, but Chaala’s mention of the changing situation (he nods to Chaala) is, perhaps, more spot on than she intended. There is a strangeness afoot on Seital and I suspect that we will find a similar situation ahead, on Marinagua. The answers aren’t going to be found in the Starport. We need to get out to the Star Town and likely beyond to find the answers we seek. I have been thinking about this carefully and I think we, perhaps, missed an opportunity on Seital. If our mission is to be a success, we cannot afford to miss another opportunity on Marinagua."

With that, Bohdie sits back down and listens to the rest of the crew.

Wilbur proffered to wait and see what the planet has in stock for them.

Bohdie looks at Wilbur, "You know, wait and see might sound nice, but we should discuss what has already been discovered. And we should discuss whatever each of us observed, comparing notes. Did you not observe anything out of the ordinary on our last stop? Oh, And we should have a plan. Right?"

Virel gives Bohdie a small nod.

"I agree," he says evenly. "If answers exist, they won’t be sitting in the open. Star Town will show us what visitors are meant to see. Thus, we should let it seem as though we are satisfied with what is shown to us. Anything beyond that it must look incidental. Personal. Unrelated to our primary inquiry."

He pauses for a moment.

"The moment they believe we are not looking where we should be… that is when doors close."

Then he adds, "But yes let's compare notes with what we know so far."