Okay, here goes!
ISC PHOENIX
The Phoenix team have touched down in a town on Nepleslia Prime called Handler's Reach. On the outset, everyone in town appeared to have lost their minds and a gang of Yamataians delinquents had moved in. However, that gang was also under the town's eerie thrall. The only person they met with their wits intact was a pink-haired Yamataian girl who upon being pressed for questions rudely by the team's more uncouth elements, disappeared in a puff of volumetric polygons.
Whilst invisible, she then whispered in Zeta's ear and told her what she knew of the disease and what she'd been doing to try and rectify it not for the townsfolk's sake, but for her friends in the gang. Her only given name was Aoi. Zeta's blood froze for a moment, knowing that a potentially rogue neko was involved in all of this.
While Luca and most of his team were looking around the city and communicating, trying to put the clues together, two of his team (Scott Smith and Panther) were left in Sargasso to work at a medical lab and to have a look at blood samples taken from the Miner, the one who came to the Phoenix team, pleading for their help.
They think that it might not be a virus, and it may in fact be a chemical after pictures and logs were sent back and forth between both parties. Eventually, Scott and Panther were shuttled and touched down with the others. Luca was attacked by poor phone reception and unable to brief them on his latest discovery of medical waste to help solidify their knowledge.
Allison and Echelon, the team's engineer and freespacer were monitoring the utilities and internet respectively. Allison finished compiling a baseline map of the Power Grid, and started looking for fluctuations. Then, she found that the Water Plant sitting outside Handler's reach, while activated and pumping water, is not connected to the power grid. Meanwhile, Echelon noticed a spike in web activity originating from an apartment.
Bronzi and Seiren investigated and the apartment. Seiren was able to spot freshly laid InterNEP cables, while Bronzi was able to discern that someone had been living in one of the apartments recently. They smashed a door open and found the Pink Haired Girl. Plastered on the walls were immaculate pictures of the faces of the Yamataian delinquents. She was an artist by nature, and couldn't stand the thought of killing people - so she ran away from the Yamataian Star Army with her NH body intact, and started learning how to do volumetric installations and solid hologram artwork.
As far as motivations went for running away from the army and potentially getting SAINT on your tail, this was pretty benign!
After a rude introduction (Bronzi's fault), she explained that she was looking for a cause for the problem too, and she was in the middle of trying to break into the water plant's security when Bronzi shot her monitor.
So, an olive branch was extended - The Phoenix team promised to share what they knew about the chemical to Aoi and in return, she fired a communication beacon towards Luca via fireworks. With full reception and a reasonable idea of what's happening, a plan can be formulated...
LSDF AKAHAR
They sent the lowliest ship on the bottomest rung of the lowest ladder of the LSDF to go looking for a ghost ship that surfaced suddenly as a concrete, verifiable distress signal appears in XO Mar'zhaz Keib's lap one day.
With this assignment given, he takes on some new blood for his skeleton crewed ship, including the mysterious and downright nebulous Aiesu Kalopsia; the un-collared and formerly mistreated Helashio, Four-Six; the veteran Akahar Trooper, Bastion; the solitary ranger, Shrie'Keng; the fiery and catty Merril; a pilot named Vathr'dral and a Jiyuuian soldier, Shimakage.
The two strike a relationship up when Keib is asked to do something to her ARIA body that has so much potential for exploitation - he had to go into her brain and physically remove the hard limits given to her by her handler, as well as install overrides that only he has the access to. The surgery leaves him wondering if his past is something that he could escape. Unfortunately, the answer was no as he found out the extent of Four-Six's mistreatment. (I'd rather not tell you what happened here. Its grisly)
The two events drive Keib over the edge, and he ends up hurting himself. He is forced to take ill and recover, unable to keep an eye as to what goes on in his ship. They find a distress signal from an abandoned vessel, that wasn't the vessel they were searching for. Thinking that it was a good 'warm up' exercise, Hakahn, the ship's CO sends a portion of the Akahar's team out.
They find a vessel that belonged to a group of Freespacers. The away team manage to find a server and some bodies intact, and they communicate with them after the Bridge sends them a Lorath to Binary cipher to facilitate communication.
While the away team was out, two things happened: Hakahn took advantage of and raped Aiesu, and the ship was attacked by pirates who sensed the Akahar's deep scanning - or were drawn to the distress beacon too. Fortunately, Keib was woken up by the interruption and started trying to gather survivors. He found Four-Six, having recovered from what happened between them previously, and the two went out.
After finding Aiesu, Shimakage and the ship's doctor, Vithr, the five broke into the armoury that the Pirates were trying to get into, and tried to arm themselves, but Aiesu has a different idea, and all she needs is the trust of the others - meanwhile, the Away team returns, and they're cleaning out the ship bit by bit, hoping to get to the XO before the doors to the armoury give in.
