As you all know by now, XL had a huge pile of debt and no longer had any contracts for shipping. Anatalia decided to take the Lammergeier out to salvage the wreckage around Tangerine Dream. Everyone except Eston (Lew) went. Eston was expected to stay behind for the two month round-trip duration and drum up some business.
The wreck near Tangerine was indeed from a Panoply/Military operation. It looked as though 3 cruisers (Panoply) and 2 unknowns had all been destroyed. Salvage of useful parts and metals went quickly, and among the goodies were some intact Panoply armaments, some valuable scrap metal, some useable snap matter, and a life support pod.
The pod was carefully brought on board and investigated. Inside was a Conjoiner, confirming suspicions that the two unknown vessels had been Conjoiner in origin. The Conjoiner (Svaedra, I believe) spun a couple of tales. The first was that the Demarchy was instigating a war against the Conjoiners and the other, that she and her crew were out here to rendezvous with an ancient Lighthugger, one of the originals that had left Earth's system hundreds of year ago on a deep space mission. That lighthugger (long story short) was commanded by Galiana, the founder, so-to-speak, of the Conjoiners. The hive had lost contact with it until recently. Galiana's body had been recovered and Svaedra had been sent to deal with the ship, which was in "interstellar" space just outside the Yellowstone system.
Always in a mood for adventure, the Lamm journeys out to meet the drifting lighthugger. The ship is badly damaged though, and utterly infested by black cubes of all sizes. Black tentacles plunge in to the crew members' skulls, freezing them in mid action aboard the ship. Though the cubes (Svaedra calls them wolves) seem inert, there is no guarantee that they are.
Svaedra wants to either direct the ship into deep space, away from its current Earth bound trajectory, or move it a little ways out and self destruct it. Svaedra seems insistent on this suicide mission.
And that's about where we are right now...
Eston, you received word that the two month voyage has now become a four month one.
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