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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadowdancer" data-source="post: 1213806" data-attributes="member: 515">Vasilii crawls out of his bunk and hangs his head low. He is still angry and frustrated about the events of the past 50 hours. He had just signed on with Bray Shipping when an emergency comm dispatch advised that the Imperium had commandeered all starships and a huge number of the able crew personnel in the Sentry star system. When the crew assignments were made, Vasilii's true talents were overlooked and he was assigned to cargo. Cargo! What a disaster! Trying to organize the loading of cargo with the Port Authority was like talking to a plasma conduit. They just kept loading: "Urgent supplies," they said. "To save lives," they said. It would take Vasilii a good 24 hours to sort this mess, to sort what supplies they had and to catalog their locations. And where’s the profit? Not a single container of merchandise was aboard. Vasilii protested, but even the Captain of this ancient merchantman would not hear of it. "The Captain," Vasilii chuckles to himself, "a Scout in charge of a merchantman. What a travesty." As for the rest of the crew -- an odd bunch. This is not the life Vasilii had imagined. Vasilii washes up then heads down to the cargo deck with a PPC (portable personal computer) in his hand. He is surprised to see the Doctor in the cargo deck. Vasilii, feeling much better, decides to lighten up. Inside the cargo bay of the Bray Keavan, Doc Saro stands engrossed in his self-appointed task of compiling a list of the medical supplies that had been rushed onboard amongst all the other cargo. If there is one thing he hates, it’s being caught unaware of what he did or did not have at hand, usually at the most inopportune times, like in the middle of emergency surgery. Hearing someone moving inside the cargo bay, Doc looks up, half-expecting to see the engineer, Martha, again. Instead, however, he recognizes Vasilii from their brief introduction when the crew was pooled together. "Dr. Talbek," Vasilii starts. Smiling in recognition, the Doc addresses Vasilii in Vilani, "I don't stand on too much ceremony, Mr. Kugiikiishshi. Please, call me Doc or Saro." Vasilii nods and continues, "I’ve not heard much details of what’s happening on Aleif. Something about a disease and a quarantine? Do you know anything about what happened? Is the Captain going to debrief us all?" A frown crosses the Doc’s face at mention of the disease, "I doubt I've heard much more than yourself. Based on what I've heard in passing, there was an outbreak of an especially virulent disease on Aleif that managed to spread onto at least one starship, and the local Marquis has quarantined the cluster in an attempt to contain the disease." "I’d love to get a sample of that bugger," Saro thinks. "I wonder how deadly it is to the non-humanitus races? That could give us the first handle on how to kill it." "Other than that, I'm in the dark as to the particulars," he says to Vasilii. "I would hope that the Captain has been briefed and will let us know. But you know how it goes – if you have a need to know, you won’t." Saro chuckles ruefully. Saro waves his handcomp over the containers, "I've just been trying to get an idea of what medical supplies were shoved aboard. I think I'm just about done with the medical stuff. Would you like a hand inventorying the rest?" Just then a voice comes over the ships intercom: "Attention all crew members, this is Marcus Argent. Report to the wardro . . . er, crew lounge if you are not otherwise more involved in other tasks so we can start to get our bearings here. I'm sure some of you could also use a break at this point. Argent out." Doc raises his eyebrows at the Vilani merchant. "Well then, I guess maybe we'll get that briefing after all." Saro makes a few last notes on his handcomp and heads towards the lounge.</blockquote>

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