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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy" data-source="post: 9285315" data-attributes="member: 1412">Gorram 291-1080We were met at Gorram by one Sar Aylen, the station executive officer. She was accompanied by a couple of station crew who weren’t anything like as smartly presented as she was. Sar had some of the stiffness of the Navy, but was friendly, introducing Sasha Dumont (Flight Operations Officer) and “Susan” Gragr (Flight Mechanic), a Vargr,  informally and with a pleasant smile. Sar went through some of the basics as we walked: no personal firearms - personal weapons can be stored on the ship but are not to be carried on station and weapons will be issued if needed, the ship's locker contains snub pistols as a basic security measure; the key cards we will be issued with will get us in anywhere apart from the armoury, the command centre and the main electronics centre; we are expected to give a full readiness report by the station commander; while technically we answer to the station commander we will, in practice, deal with Sar, Sasha or Gabe (Duric, Security Officer, currently indisposed); we will have to undergo a series tedious - sorry - lectures about protocols and safety and then follow said protocols in system; we will be responsible for safety checks on “our” ship; that she hopes we enjoy our time working on the station. I liked her, she greeted crew members with a smile and used first names (for everyone a part from the Station Commander Chrix Derisson, who was always “The Commander”) and often shared some quip or other with the ones we passed. We chatted with the three of them until we were shown into an office and introduced to Gleetheonale, a Bwap - the first I have ever met - who led the small station admin team and asked us whether we thought the courier ship exits jump as smoothly as an A2, what we thought of courier ship storage arrangements and if we knew how to optimise the growth of orchids in artificial gravity. I liked her, too. Sar left us at admin and Sasha and Susan carried on her low-down of the station as they walked us to our ship, a conversation which ended with a brief discussion about the weekly poker game - “which we keep friendly, no big pots” - and that we should let Harry know, one of the skim pilots, if we wanted in.Our ship was a lovely Garis class rescue model. 400 tons and and stuffed full of goodies for rescue and repair missions. It was a little overwhelming for me as I was expected to take a formal engineer’s role. We divvied up the staterooms, stowed our kit and explored. There was some very good sensor equipment, lots of drones, grappling arms, even a couple of brigs (which was a tiny bit unsettling). After a while we did the same with the station, at least as far as the canteen. We met a few others, including Harry and about three hours following our arrival we received an itinerary starting with some talks (orientation “workshops”) early the next morning. We turned in.Orientation was followed by a lecture on our obligations and rescue protocols a lot of which is keeping the surveillance system operating and responding to requests for help. This elicited a few guffaws from the others and it is apparent that we can expect some annoying call-outs and pointless labour on Derisson’s orders. In the afternoon we had a talk on restricted planet protocol (“don’t go to the planet, don’t be visibly from the planet”) which included information on Nay and Dindy codes. Put simply, any ship detected in a restricted system will trigger an alarm. A Nay (No Intrusion or NI) code will cancel the alert by including a recognition code signifying the ship has a legitimate right to be in-system. It will still be registered as present and logged. A Dindy code (Do Not Detect) instructs the monitoring system to ignore the presence of the ship and not even record said presence. These are uniformly restricted to Naval and IISS vessels which do not want to leave traces that could be monitored by sinister forces. Dindy codes can, it turns out, be issued on a system basis, or at sub-sector and even sector level. A bit of a discussion broke out about the existence of “Dindy-All” codes which would be universal and make mask a ship anywhere, if they exist, which they don’t, so we weren’t to worry. We had been joined by a number of crew who had to do their obligatory annual training and it was obvious that no-one likes Dindy codes. They can mess with systems and local buoys might start acting weird. Naval vessels would dock at the station so no one knew why they use them here anyway.We had a full day of that and the next we started looking at our ship in more detail. We had to complete a readiness report vouching for the ship before we started. Overall, we were pleased. Some sluggishness with the tech and yaw controls, but not excessively so, some electronic systems needed an overhaul but weren’t likely to conk out anytime soon and there were signs that few bangs and dents had been put in the ship, imaginatively named “Gorram Rescue One”, over the course of it’s working life but not that many and they had all been appropriately dealt with. Our only concern was the rescue equipment and some supplies and tools were lacking. We spent a couple of days putting GR1 through her paces and wrote our report.Gorram 295-1080We had our first meeting with Derisson. He welcomed us to “His happy little family,” which made us all suspicious as hell. That after he had kept us waiting for 15 minutes and then didn’t look up from some flimsies for another half minute after calling “Come” through the intercom. He spoke about how the station was a well-oiled machine and all we had to do was ask and we would receive. So Adhza asked for require units and new rescue equipment. Derisson went off on one about how no-one puts in their acquisition request on time (so not a well-oiled family then), which meant entire supply cycles get missed, that supply ships are always late and basically blew smoke up our arses. We didn’t take to him. When he pressed for an answer to the question of whether we were space-worthy he had run out of time for us moments after getingt a “yeah, I suppose” from us. Hmm.Our safety and readiness checks had already taken us out of the station in GR1 but only locally. We were dispatched to Gorram's only gas giant to do some routine maintenance on the buoys in orbit. Laura, another of the skim pilots went with us. GR1 has a good turn of speed, up to 4g acceleration, so the journey didn’t take excessively long. The work was simple but there was more of it than we expected - “routine” maintenance hasn’t been carried out for longer than usual as our posts had been vacant for so long. Helena asked a lot of questions about the station and Derisson. Laura seemed a little evasive to me, saying she just does her job and brings in fuel for the station. Re-fuelling at the giant is prohibited and all ships need to dock at the station for fuel so a constant supply is needed. We didn’t ask about this but heard all about it anyway. I know Helena was interested to know why we had been employed by an intelligence officer and that was why she was probing. Laura ended up saying she doesn’t get involved in station politics but talk to Harry if you want to know about things like that.We were out for a day and a half and had hardly managed to get any R&R before Derisson sent us off to the other side of M6 V, the companion star in Gorrma system, to check on some tiny “jump” readings. Apparently he wanted us to check on a possible illegal jump into the system. It looked nothing like a jump energy signature to me but off we went. Even in our ship it took a couple of days to get to the other side of the system and check. We found nothing and were a bit annoyed at having wasted our time, but hey, ours is not to reason why.</blockquote>

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