| Logs |
2001-03-26
| Indigo |
| Realms |
Retired
| Reality Fault |
General Info
 |
Talking to the Alshain From the Egg
The Silver Egg
Stepping through the tall, wide doorway
into the oak tree, you see a very organically shaped room -- elliptical,
high-ceilinged, and well lit with strategically placed mirrors and
wall-mounted skylights. The tables and seats are all sturdy and wooden,
apparently growing from the smooth wooden ground. A fire crackles
warmly in a truly huge stone hearth set directly opposite the
front door, set into one wooden wall, and warming benches inside the
wide, mosaic-tiled fireplace welcome chilly travelers. The walls have a
deceptive shimmer to them; the angle at which they're viewed sometimes
makes them look to be just wood, other times swirling with decorative,
naturalistic patterns. A glossy, wood-topped bar (with a tall door
behind it) extends across one narrow side of the ellipse, and a sort of
trapdoor lies at the other end of the ellipse. The delicious scent of
cooking food drifts lazily through the room.
The morning dawns uneventfully, with the normal patrons who take their late-night or breakfast there, as the crew of the Indigo collects in the common room. Hotspur rummages around in the back, and Aykuh serves customers. Zildjian has just appeared, looking as perky as a snake in the morning does. Well... actually Zildjian is draped across one of the fireplace benches, looking groggy, half-asleep, and almost falling-off-the-bench-tired. "Perky" is probably emphatically not the right word to use for her currently... Sakura covers a yawn with her paw as she sits down at the table, Larrikan sitting down next to her. Kerry pokes his head out of the kitchen as he hears Zil and Sakura moving around. "You folks up finally? It's nearly bedtime!"
Zildjian takes a moment to react... finally her head turns towards Kerry and her tongue flickers once slowly. She hisses slowly, "Y're ssick, Kerry..." She goes back to staring blearily into the fire... although there's a faint hint of a smile at the corner of her lips.
Kerry snorts. "I'm nocturnal, my dear snake. As you know quite well. I've been chatting with Hotspur. If I can just learn to read this stuff I'll be able to communicate again."
Zildjian mutters something about squeaky bats that never hush up, still grinning quietly. Vash makes a noise, somewhere between a grunt and a mutter, as he makes his meandering way to the table, slumping onto the bench. "Mierda... I hope they have something resembling coffee here. Haven't slept that bad in weeks." He wonders if maybe keeping Douglas and Zil up for "one more round" wasn't the best of ideas.
Douglas is himself only slightly tired as he slips down the stairs, catching Kerry's comment. "Now, Pilot, please no being a morning person at people. A good morning, by the way, everyone."
Aykuh stretches a hand in towards Zil in the fireplace niche, with a very large mug of steaming coffee, and the lamia accepts it with obvious relief, "Ooooh... ho-o-o-ot..."
Kerry chuckles at Douglas. "Am not a morning person. I'm a night person."
Sakura stifles another yawn and then smiles at Douglas, "Good morning, Douglas-san."
Vash echoes Zildjian, fairly staring as he picks up the scent of what must be coffee. "Ooooh." He blinks once, and turns, "Oh... hey, morning Doug." Zildjian slowly slurps hot coffee up, and as the tiled niche she's in starts reflecting heat back she starts sitting up more and not sprawling her huge tail quite so much all over the bench. Larrikan smiles cheerfully at the other crew, but senses the feeling of the morning and doesn't say anything perky to irritate them. He puts his arm around Sakura and lets her lean against him, trying not to beam too much about that.
Douglas says, "And since you're nocturnal, that makes it twice as irritating. You know, back in college it was considered perfectly legitimate to batter someone repeatedly up to five minutes after waking up..." His nose twitches with the smell. "Mmm... that smells rather good... good morning, Doctor, Captain, Larrikan. A moment while I ask Aykuh for a pot of that for the table..."
Zildjian raises her head at Doug's comment, "Mmm... we could nibble on him a little..." She grins, her forked tongue flickering again. Vash just nods after Douglas, the cougar having perfectly echoed his own sentiments in more eloquent terms. At this preliminary stage, his own impulse would have been, simply, Kill.
Sakura licks her lips and nods, "Coffee would be most welcome." So, apparently, is Larrikan's arm, because she leans into him and smiles.
Vash nods again. "Yes, most definitely." Douglas goes to the bar, asking Aykuh politely for a pot of coffee for the others and himself.
Larrikan nuzzles gently at Sakura's ear and says, "Come now, it's another day. Think of what lies ahead!" He grins, then adds softly, "It can't be as bad as yesterday..." Sakura gets a vaguely goofy grin on her face as she thinks of what might lie ahead for this day... but quickly clears her throat and just settles on a soft smile.
Kerry finds a perch over the group's table, grumbling just a little under his breath and much too high-pitched for anyone to really make out. Zildjian smiles up with sleepy affection at Kerry, "Y'awful cute, y'know..."
Aykuh brings a pot of coffee and a plat full of muffins and rolls. She tut-tut-tuts at the sleepy foreigners and asks, "What are you going to do today?"
Kerry skrees, "Actually... I wanted to ask you about that. We're thinking of trying to use some of the machinery in Zil's shuttle. Would that be a problem for you?"
Vash manages to arch his eye ridge very slightly at the Doctor, but he descends into residual-ethanol-and-insufficient-sleep funk before he can do anything more than that. He grins lopsidedly at Aykuh, "Ahh, thank you, senyora."
Douglas smiles to Aykuh. "Thank you very much..." He looks over -- no, up, to Kerry, nodding. Sakura wraps both of her paws around her mug and takes a grateful first sip of the coffee...
The dryad looks inquisitively at Zildjian, then back at Kerry, before she asks, "Would it hurt my tree?"
Vash says, "I... don't think so... Doug?"
Kerry skrees, "It shouldn't. Zil, do your radios still work?"
Zildjian hoists herself up a bit on the bench, careful not to spill her coffee even as a huge coil or two slide off the bench with a heavy *thud* onto the ground, "Uhh... dunno, Aykuh. Dunno yet what 'zactly they wanna do... uh..." She looks curiously at the group, "-what was that anyways ag'in?"
Kerry skrees, "We need to locate Alshain. We're hoping to get a line on her with your radios... we left her transponder running, and unless the thieves figured it out and turned it off, it should still be transmitting."
Vash just sits with his coffee before him, hands to either side of the mug, and inhales deeply. He sighs a little and smiles. Small mercies. They got good coffee here too. He picks up the mug, warming his hands, before taking a sip. "There shouldn't be any interference at all with your tree, Aykuh. Might want to check out the wiring in the ship though, if we're going to be running current up there." Larrikan doesn't have any coffee, but he does have a muffin with some sort of native berry in it, which he tries to keep off of his white fur. Occasionally, he breaks off a hunk and offers it to Sakura. Sakura takes the little food offerings from Larrikan gratefully, but all in all seems more interested in recaffinating her system. This morning ritual was, after all, one of the first things she learned in med school.
Zildjian says, "Oh! Okay... yeah, that won't hurt Aykuh a'tall... mah radio's usually off, but Ah set up some solar panels, with Aykuh's 'n Schnel'pkebaov'qkgard'dow's help -- oh! An' she wants ta mee'ch'y'all... anyways, Ah keep it off 'cause the telemetry from th' Yellow Rose wasn't very excitin'... an' there wasn't anythin' else to listen to... least with that sorta radio."
Douglas takes a long sip of the coffee in front of him. "If we're just using it as an antenna, it shouldn't even need current, I don't think. But you're right, Vash, better safe to check."
Vash nods. "I want to at least take the time to do a safety check, since we're putting Aykuh out enough as it is."
Kerry skrees, "Easier to use Egg's radio if it works than to try wiring our receivers into her system."
Vash takes a long pull from his coffee, "We owe her the consideration." He picks up a roll.
Kerry chuckles. "We met Schnel'pkebaov'qkgard'dow yesterday, in fact. At one point she looked ready to eat the lot of us, but she got over it."
Zildjian yawns hugely, her bifurcate tongue flickering and her large biting fangs showing... then she looks faintly embarrassed, covering her mouth with one hand, "S'cuse me... ah... oh deah. What'd y'all do? She's a real nice lady most th'time."
Vash says flatly, "We showed up."
Kerry skrees, "She was worried about the effect of the Alshain on the local magic, actually. We were just targets of opportunity."
Vash says, "Lemme qualify that... she doesn't approve of the arrival of heavy machinery on the planet. I can't say that I blame her. I take exception to her near-bullying of my crew, but... as Kerry said, she got over it."
Sakura says, "She was quite upset..."
Douglas says, "We mentioned the Alshain flew, and... that sort of made things go downhill..."
Zildjian tilts her head puzzledly -- even Aykuh looks intrigued -- and then the big lamia nods, "Oh, that. Yeah... she 'n' Aykuh are old-time frien's... she was worried 'bout th'Egg maybe hurtin' Aykuh too."
Kerry skrees, "She wasn't really upset until we mentioned her tonnage, though..."
Zildjian nods again, settling into a slightly more compact curl of coils, "Yeah... not surprisin'. Ah think most'a th' folks aroun' heah don' realize how harmful magic is t'tech in return... they think it's mostly a one-way thang, an' it ain't."
Douglas blinks, looking to Zildjian. "It isn't?"
Kerry skrees, "Of course not. Remember our compasses?"
Zildjian says, "Leastaways that Ah can see..." She sips more coffee, then sighs hissingly, "Ahhh... okay, Ah'm sapient ag'in..." She grins at Doug, "Nope. Be real careful what tech you use wheah, Doug... you c'n hurt y'self real bad if'n y'ain't careful." Douglas nods slowly, frowning.
Kerry skrees, "Any pattern to it, Zil? Anything that works consistently, anything that interferes consistently? Chemistry, perhaps?"
Zildjian thinks a bit, tilting her head, then shakes it slowly, "Ah'm sorry, Kerry, but Ah tended t'focus on th'stuff that most interested me... th' languages, an' survivin', y'know? Sorry..."
Vash hmms thoughtfully into his coffee, methodically caffeinating himself. "Maybe I ought to see if those trolls've got something I can try a round out of the gun into... better to know if it's going to explode in a lab situation than in a combat one."
Kerry grimaces. "Drat. I'd hate for metallurgy or chemistry to go wonky on us just when we need the gun..."
Sakura frowns, "If it did that to our compasses then we can't possibly trust the beacon readings, can we?"
Douglas frowns slightly. "The Doctor is right..."
Kerry skrees, "Hmm... locally erratic magnetic fields shouldn't bother a radio beam. It's worth a try, at least."
Vash says, "It's all we've got for right now."
Douglas says, "Pilot, it's more than just an irregular magnetic field... but you're right, Captain, we should try it all the same."
Sakura nods, "We just have to be wary..."
Vash says softly, without looking up from the coffee, "We should always be wary."
Zildjian nods to Vash, "Ain't sure you should trust a gun heah unless you're surrounded by tech, Vash. It seems to matter th'most what you're near. If'n you're tryin' to do magic, stay away from tech. If'n you're tryin' to use tech... stay away from magical stuff. That kinda thing."
Vash shakes his head, "I don't. Unfortunately that leaves us with mine and Doug's claws in the event that something lousy goes down. I'd at least like to see how it behaves."
Douglas nods quietly to Vash. "As... intrigued as I am by whatever happened to my claws, I don't have any experience actually fighting with them... or fighting at all, for that matter. And we're clearly about to go into some very dangerous places."
Kerry skrees, "Tech is such a vague concept. Do crossbows work consistently?"
Douglas looks over to Kerry. "Offhand, I'd say the trolls aren't purposely designing a plummeting machine, Pilot. That may be something we need to consider."
Kerry snorts. "I've seen their machine at work. They're actually doing better than they should, given the weight and the power source."
Zildjian smiles slowly at Vash, "Y'ain't defenseless, Vash. Nice thing 'bout quests 'n stuff in this area is that th' Fey Queen believes in raht action. She's fickle an' magical, but not malicious... th' realm tends to reflect her sommat."
Sakura nods at Zildjian, "That's comforting to know..."
Vash grins, a little ruefully. "If I was defenseless, you'd've needed a dustpan to scrape me off the cobbles back there. I'm just hoping for any edge I can get, for safety's sake. I dunno, maybe you're right though." He glances at his fingers. "We'll see, eh?"
Douglas frets slightly, looking down at the table for a moment. "Wait..." he murmurs. "Wait, something just occurred to me... Egg's radio is immobile. We're going to need at least two radios to triangulate the Alshain's position."
Kerry skrees, "If the bearing is consistent from here, we can use that heading to get closer. If it wanders around it's hopeless anyway."
Douglas says, "Radio bearings aren't that accurate. If it's over the horizon we'd have atmospheric effects to worry about as well. Though the only other radio we have that can do this is aboard the Indigo."
Kerry clicks in annoyance again. "Which we can contact using Zil's equipment. For pity sake, where are our brains lately?"
Douglas nods to Kerry and drains his cup. "Let me get started first with setting up the radio-direction finding apparatus, then I'll see if I can't do a satnet-link to Indigo."
Kerry nods. "Need a hand?"
Larrikan says puzzledly to Zildjian, "Of course she believes in right action. She's the Queen of the Fey. I don't know how I would have said it, but that's pretty good."
Zildjian nods to the fox, "Ah know, Larrikan... but that's somethin' that jus' is fo' y'all heah. It don' work that way back on mah birth world."
Vash pauses a moment, mug halfway to his lips, having just thought of something. "Wait... the Queen of the Fey... are you talking about Titania? An actual person? Or is this something more... primal, like the Wild Hunt?"
Zildjian grins as Larrikan and Aykuh stare in astonishment at Vash. The big lamia hisses softly, "Li'l respect theah, Vash, please? Y'talkin' about theah much-beloved queen... th' reason this place is as nahce as it is. And yeah, 'course they's both primal. They's both immortal."
Larrikan blinks at Vash in astonishment, "Of course the Queen is a real person! I've never had the honor of going to court and meeting her, but one of the elders of my clan was there years ago. It's a strange place. I don't know that I'd like to go there... people tend to forget to come back."
Sakura smiles at Larrikan, "Sort of like this world to us..."
Vash nods, "Right, right... of course. Sorry..." He sighs a bit and scratches his plates with a bit of consternation. Diosmio. This gets more complicated every day.
Kerry chuckles to Larrikan. "That is an advantage to having an Immortal run the government. At least the policies are consistent." Zildjian hisses softly with amusement into her mug. Aykuh hmfs softly, and slides through a wall.
Larrikan looks oddly at Kerry, but doesn't reply. To Sakura's statement he smiles, and says, "Their incalculable loss, m'lady." Vash takes another long drink to stifle a grin. I wish I was half that smooth when I was younger...
Sakura grins a little at Larrikan. "Your gain..." Zildjian looks up -- then almost has to bite her tongue to prevent laughter at the sudden glow on Larrikan's face at Sakura's words! Larrikan beams at Sakura, and cuddles up closer to her. He'd probably do more, but people are watching, and he's not entirely certain that Vash wouldn't interrupt. Kerry is not going to even try to explain elected representative government to Larrikan.
Douglas nods, "I could, yes, Pilot." And before we get anyone else more annoyed... "Zildjian, may we go into the Egg and work on this?"
Zildjian *coughcoughs* softly into one hand, then manages to look at Doug with a straight face, "Sho, Dougie... c'mon, Ah'm warm 'nuff now."
The Egg's control room is a cramped space, with big chairs for the humans of the Texan crew. Nothing is visible for Zildjian, who barely fits in the room anyway. She tends to come partway in and not worry about it. The shuttle is at sort of a strange angle, which gives all the controls a surreal feel -- as if the shuttle is making a hard turn to starboard. The leaves outside the broken viewports and the gentle morning breeze don't make things any less strange.
Douglas squeezes in, looking around as he makes his way cautiously to the engineering position. "You landed here, in Aykuh, Zil?" Sakura slips into the control room, peering around at the stations...
Kerry settles into the pilot's station, grumbling about the controls. "Yoke's too close, and the pedals are too far away. Idjit cowboys." Vash looks around for... well, for what, he's not certain. It's not as if there's really anything here for him to work on, outside of basic electrical work. So he glances around to see if there's a command station.
Zildjian shakes her head, "Nah... Aykuh brought it ovah when she thought Ah was gonna die. She wasn't sure if'n it wasn't maybe lahk magic -- that it'd help me recovah."
Douglas nods slowly, still looking around. "Well... offhand, you were lucky to have landed the way you had. Let's see..."
Zildjian tries her best not to use up all the room, shifting her large coils around a bit, then finally simply backing out and standing in the doorway. "Ah don' really know what'cha want, Doug... but you're welcome to play with it as much as y'want." She settles down comfortably outside the command room, watching curiously, but stays out of the way... the room was obviously not designed for someone like her.
It only takes Douglas a few minutes to get the controls on-line. Power readings are low but fairly steady from the solar panels, but most of the other systems red-light terribly. Having the engines sheared off is apparently not good for the shuttle's self-diagnostic capability. The radio, however, seems intact, and has already tuned in telemetry from the Yellow Rose. Sakura says, "Anything that I can help with, Douglas-san?"
Douglas nods as he opens up the engineering console. "I may ask you to help me find antenna leads, Doctor, and the shuttle's computer decks. Ahh... here's what we need. We have a directional radio beacon here. Excellent... the terminal still works too." He closes the console and taps quickly onto the keyboard. "Even better... I should be able to connect to either the Alshain or the Indigo from here."
Sakura nods at Douglas, "Of course..." She begins to hunt around the room for antenna leads.
Kerry grins. "Excellent. Can we access the Alshain directly?"
Douglas taps at the keyboard. "Moment. I need to update the shuttle's com-router tables with our ship's protocols. It figures the Texans would use a nearly incompatible schema..." He studies the output on the screen, running through a couple of screens. "I think I've got it... there! Yes, I can." He hesitates, then glances to Vash. "Do you think this is a good idea? I don't think it'll be noticed by someone there if they don't know what to look for in the system..."
Kerry skrees, "If they're that good, Douglas, I suspect they won't need the hint."
Vash says, "I leave it to your discretion, Douglas. Do what you think's best."
Douglas bites his lip, thinking for a moment, then nods, and opens a terminal session with the Alshain. "Here goes..." The terminal responds reasonably quickly. Signal is strong. The status reports come back that all systems are nominal and in idle-waiting state, as they were left. The connection to Alshain is text-only, so no images are available. Douglas blinks at the readout. "Interesting. I've got good signal, and the shuttle seems in good order. They didn't wreck it at least." He attempts to connect to the navigation systems.
Sakura chews on her bottom lip, eyeing Douglas' progress... the onboard navigation systems give a position, which is nearly useless without knowing where the Egg is. The Egg's systems give a directional location from the radio transmissions, but no distance. They also report strong telemetry signals from Indigo. Sakura says, "Can we contact the Indigo's computers from here?"
Kerry watches over Doug's shoulder. "Interesting. We know her navigational conventions... I wonder if they've invented sextants here?"
Douglas says, "Possibly, Doctor. Let me try that... I think I might be able to link all these together -- Egg, Alshain, and Indigo. We should be able to focus in on the location of the Alshain, then..." He blinks, then leans forward, frowning. "Uhm... Pilot, Captain... how long have we been here on Crossroads?"
Kerry tallies it up. "Nineteen days, I think."
Vash says, "I'm sure they've got ships, Kerry. How else would they know about the Aztekas?"
Kerry snorts. "With magic? I can think of ways."
Vash says, "I'm gonna ignore the tone of that remark for right now, Kerry. Um... almost three weeks, Doug."
Zildjian hisses softly from the doorway, "There're ships heah, yep... air 'n' water. Lotsa trading."
Douglas nods slowly, then leans back, letting out a breath. "They're trying to break into the Alshain."
Kerry blinks. "What, right now? Or an ongoing thing?"
Vash takes a deep breath. "That's to be expected... how far have they progressed? And is there any damage?"
Sakura says, "Into its computers or just into the structure?"
"Ongoing. And into the shuttle itself, Doctor, the hull still seems to be secure. So far, at any rate." Douglas taps the screen. A number ridiculously close to two million is flashing there. "It takes one second to type in the password to the access pad. After five tries, it locks you out for five seconds. Judging by this, someone or something has been attempting to hack the password -- continuously -- for at least the last two weeks, since that's how far back the logs go. It's been going on for longer, though, at least to very close since we've been on Crossroads."
Vash sighs a little, "Well," he says with as little irony as he can, "-at least we know they're not cryptologists."
Kerry gets an evil grin. "Oh, my... can you change the keypad password from here?"
Douglas shakes his head in disbelief. "It's incredible. Someone, something, has been going at this nonstop since they got the shuttle." He looks over to Vash. "Four billion combinations are possible with that pad, and they're trying all of them. Statistically speaking, they'll get it before a very great deal of time has passed." He looks up to Kerry. "I don't know if we should do quite that, Pilot. I would worry about choosing a password that they haven't tried yet, and are just about to try. In this case, it's probably best to leave it be, unless... I wonder if we can just completely lock the system..."
Vash says, "Maybe with my password we can force it to go to lockdown... I am supposed to have authority over the security functions. I've never actually looked to see, though."
Kerry skrees, "Then we can't get in. I was going to suggest changing it to something they've already tried..."
Douglas taps at the console a little, scrolling through the security options. "We'd have a difficult time getting back into the Alshain at all if we do that, Captain. I can't even lock down the security system, since that'll have the same effect. And we can't exactly drag this static terminal all the way with us to the Alshain." He thumps the console a little. "Damn. They're still trying. What the hell are they using to brute-force crack it?"
Kerry skrees, "Hmm... untiring, patient, requires no rest... Zil, do the locals have golems?"
Zildjian nods, "Yeah, Ah think so..."
Kerry skrees, "That'd be my guess, then. A golem or some kind of homunculus."
Douglas glances over to Sakura. "Doctor... I would be most appreciative for any suggestions or insight you might have. I'm limited by what I've been taught. A fresh viewpoint could help..."
Sakura looks at Douglas and nods, thinking... "Can you shut down everything but the security systems, Douglas? And then override the passcode to something in English? Or maybe even slang from the Homeworld...?"
Vash sighs and shakes his head. "I don't know, to be honest. But the possibility does exist for me to lock out the security system, and seal Alshain off entirely. It's a thought, in an emergency... actually, Doctora, my command password is in English. I don't know how they store the door passes."
Douglas taps his chin and nods, turning back to the console. "Let me see. At the very least, that would make the Alshain useless to them when they actually got in, if everything was interlocked into the security system..."
Kerry peers at the logs. "Wait... it isn't recording the failed passwords. ###!!#. Well... any way to give it a fifteen-digit passcode? It'd take them a lot longer to get to it systematically."
Vash says, "There's probably a way... but I'm not sure how the policy was set for the shuttles. Doug?"
Douglas does a quick calculations. "As it stands now... the passcode is something between zero and four and a half billion, and they have to try them all. At this rate it'll take them twenty-five years, so we should be all right for the time being. Statistically they're not going to get in within the next month... then again, that's statistics."
Vash says, "All said, though, it'd be a good idea to get their hands off the keypad before that happens."
Douglas mutters, "Whatever hand is on that keypad..."
Vash says, "Or... tentacle or claw or whatever..."
Douglas lets out a breath, typing a few more commands into the terminal. "Doctor, I'm sorry. I could lock out the computer... but they'd still be able to make use of the flight systems. Those don't seem to be directly covered by the shuttle's computer system." He opens up another terminal screen. "Let me try to get to Indigo, maybe we can get a fix as to where the Alshain is..."
Kerry skrees, "And where we are. I don't want to have to depend on a sextant that might not even use the same conventions."
Vash folds his arms and straightens a bit from the terminal. "Doug, I think you can get up there on your own pass, or the maintenance login. We didn't lock down communications extremely tight."
Douglas nods, typing industriously into the terminal. Another window opens up, a graphical computer desktop -- in fact it's his own from the Alshain, complete with STAMFORD UNIVERSITY ENGINEERING wallpaper. He looks over at the keyboard, then starts using a small track-ball. "No, Captain, we didn't..." he says with a bit of a grin. "Let's see..." He starts clicking on icons, bringing up the engineering menus on the desktop's 'dashboard.'
Sakura watches quietly, not wishing to disturb the tech-folk at their work... Douglas nods slowly as he accesses the nav systems. "I can plot both our location and Alshain's. The map's fairly low-resolution though..." He calls up a most assuredly low-resolution map, with the location of the Alshain and the Egg plotted. Alshain is approximately east by southeast at a range of one hundred and fifty five point seven miles. The Indigo seems untouched for the time being, and is not experiencing any troubles." His ears flick and he looks over to Sakura. "Doctor... if I connect you to the sensor systems on Indigo, do you think you could get a better view of the location of the Alshain?"
Sakura says, "I can certainly try..."
Douglas nods, grinning quietly, and vacates his seat for Sakura. "Please do..."
Vash says, "Doctora... can you access the telescope from there? Perhaps give us a look at Alshain's current location?" Sakura settles herself into Douglas' seat and works at the computers, connected to her old station at the sensors. She manages to pull up a fairly good image of the area. Looks like trees from space, as does Kuerlstrazah.
Kerry skrees, "Trees... how helpful. Still, we know where she is."
Douglas nods quietly. "At least we know that, say, dragons are not guarding it." But what is the forest hiding?
Zildjian murmurs, "At least it's not in a cave."
Vash says, "Come to think of it, I'm not really certain I should have expected anything else."
Sakura laughs to herself and pulls up another image -- this one labeled with two large red arrows: "You are here" and "Alshain is here."
Kerry snickers. "Cute."
Vash snrks. "Doctora..."
Douglas blinks at the screen, then grins. "Easy to remember. Thank you, Doctor."