#MorningStar episode 13: Shadows
The new age
* The Maintenance Collective now includes some resurrected and Echo crew. The crew have reprogrammed and taken greater control over them. They are currently led by Captain Womas, and represented by Commander Akroll, an Echo of a crew member.
* The Blackout reminded the Keepers of their true calling to protect the Awakened. They are still led by Sister Mercy (old now, and in a walking frame), and represented by Brother Will, a visionary engineer.
* The Enforcers don’t know who they should be working for anymore. Some want to serve the crew and shipboard authority structures, and some want to protect humanity. The result is a growing schism an corruption within the force. Their Commissioner is the almost irrelevant Kovsky, but they are represented by Nika Masova, a PI.
The situation
* 30 years has passed. The Puppeteers’ new economy has taken hold, and while the Keepers’ welfare system eases the worst, there are now significant disparities of wealth and living standards in the City, with a clear division between an elite and an underclass. But control of Life Support has allowed more resources to be directed to the farms, and there are even suggestions of waking up more Sleepers as the ecosystem can support them now.
* There has been a push for more localised systems, maintained by humans, both as protection against another Blackout, and due to distrust of the MC. The Left Bank Power Collective is the strongest advocate of this.
* The MC’s absorbtion by the Crew and its abandoning the City during the Blackout has caused a great deal of distrust, and there is unease about where the ship is going and who is directing it now. A public backlash has seen the return of Humanity First and their establishment as a permanent political force among the underclass.
* The Keepers have kept everyone alive and healthy. While tensions with the Throng have eased, the faction still holds a grudge.
* The Enforcers have buried the hatchet with the Throng, but are now kept busier than ever by inequality-driven crime.
* The Provisional Government has stayed at arm’s length, and been wary of the MC since the awakening of the Crew. They have maintained a traditional economy in their enclave, eschewing internal use of the Star, and there has been some immigration from the City as a result.
* Control of the currency and the economy has given the Puppeteers unprecedented wealth. They’ve grown fat, and the upper echelon have moved into banking.
The growth of an underclass has seen business boom for the Throng, as people need more distractions. But they have also branched out, and built Yang’s Pleasure Palace in the Bazaar next to the crater.
The MC check astrogation, and declare it is decades until worldfall. They also consult the memories of INC-07 and reveal that the ship was originally travelling a lot faster and has slowed significantly since the Awakening.
The Enforcers have heard that there is a group developing a bioweapon targeting the resurrected Crew. They have also heard that Humanity First are planning a raid on the Puppeteers’ loader bots in order to destroy them.
The factions assemble for the usual Call to Order.
* The Enforcers are concerned about how much hidden deathtrap code there still is in the ship’s systems, and want the Keepers to go through the software and scrub it all out. The Keepers agree.
* The Keepers want the Puppeteers to train them some artisans, in the process turning some of the teeming underclass into useful citizens. This would effectively require funding a school. The Puppeteers agree to this.
* The MC is concerned that too many rogue groups of “Cargo” (as they call people now) are roaming around and vandalising the ship and would like the Enforcers to sweep them up. This causes an argument, as the MC blames the scavs for the Blackout, a theory the other families reject. The Puppeteers claim their licenced scavs do not interfere with vital systems. The MC agrees that some form of licensing is acceptable, and the Enforcers agree to enforce it, though it is not clear how committed they are.
* The Progressive Government wants to ensure another Blackout can not happen again, and asks the MC to activate the main reactor. They agree.
After the meeting, Ambassador Sallagara of the PG approach the Keepers on a sensitive matter. They have a long-term research project around identifying certain people who may have been put in the wrong Sleeper pods, and they would like the Keepers’ help with it. Specifically, they think some of those registered as being in Hold-01-Alpha (which was irradiated by MRS-1 during the Awakening) may have been swapped and still be out there and/or been awakened. They couldn’t raise this at the Call to Order as they are not sure who can be trusted. The Keepers think this is an important project and are willing to help. They approach the MC for assistance, calling it a “cargo stocktake” and arguing that a census of the Sleepers would allow them to determine how many pods could be re-used. The MC agree to help for Treaty.
The Enforcers send a few patrols out into the dark decks, round up a few scavs, and “discover” that they have licences.
The Keepers reveal research: they know of a secure terminal in the ship’s core section that can be used to control Contingency systems. They plan to visit it on any mission to engineering to scrub the ship’s code.
Zoom in:
Brother Will, Commander Akroll, plus some pod-techs and Listener data-miners travel to Hold-01-Alpha. The hold is protected by a giant, armoured door, which is currently in failsafe mode as its circuits have been fried by the gamma-ray blast. Brother Will interfaces with it using Brother Signal’s relic, and determines that it needs a hardware key. One is printed off, and they gain entry. Inside, it is quiet as a tomb. The sensitive control systems of the pods have all been scrambled, so even if their inhabitants had survived the gamma radiation, they would have died later due to systems failure. Most of the pods contain mummified corpses, but curiously some contain only ash. The pod-techs set to work taking DNA samples from the corpses and comparing them with the cargo manifest, and learn that about a dozen of the Elite are unaccounted for. When they compare their recorded DNA with their records from the hospital, they get some hits: over the years they have treated two direct children of Shira Kuri, Earth’s under-Minister for Logistics. One of them is Rupesh Kuri, an ambitious, high-ranking banker within the Puppeteers. The Elite are on the ship, and doing who knows what behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, Marsova has a missing persons case: Dr Jane el-Omar, a virologist, has gone missing, and has simply dropped off the grid about a week ago. She works the streets, and ends up talking to one of el-Omar’s acquiatances, Dr Heiko, who seems afraid: dr el-Omar had been approached by people to do some work – there is a strong hint that it was Humanity First – and Dr Heiko suspects they have either killed her to prevent her from talking, or kidnapped her to force her to do the work. They may be threatening to harm her son – Marsova’s client – as leverage. Marsova promises “if she’s alive, I’ll do my best to find her”.