The cargo bay doors had barely closed before Paladin had pushed Audacity away from the freighter with the thrusters, righted her, and put them back on course to Epsilon-Jay as fast as the sublight engines would push her.

Jacob scanned the case carefully, then looked over at Leeda. "Well Doctor, I don't see any sign of traps or anything. Pretty much what it looks like. Just a cargo container. A rather specialized container, but not dangerous, at least electronically. If we pull the control box off," Jacob indicated the box on top of the case. "I can even get it open pretty easily, not that we necessarily want to do that."

Leeda looked over the casing quickly, straining to remember procedures and regulations she had learned in the one medical technology class she'd taken so far. "Well, be that as it may, we do need to remove the control panel. The lid won't come off until we do, and I can't get a better idea of the status of the cryo unit from outside a storage module. I think maybe you should do this part. You've got a defter touch than I, to be sure. At least at this sort of thing. Just..." she glanced up at Jacob and back at the control panel. "Just be careful. There are wires running from the pad to the module, and I can't remember if they're for vital systems or not. If they are, disconnecting them might mean killing the organism inside." She winced even as she spoke, and leaned over the casing, eyes on the display panel, which remained within the same parameters it had been at before the transfer.

Paladin checked the course then were still .6 light years out and 6 gees was going to get them nowhere fast. They had roughly 14 days of fuel left. They’d have to go to warp and go soon and fuel wasn’t their biggest concern, timewise yet. He activated the comm, “Doctor, Jacob the sooner you can give me the all clear on the cyrotube the soon we can get back in to warp.” The moment they went in to warp the transporter would, like most everything else, not work. The target would quickly go out of range.

Then he went ship wide, “Alight everybody we have lots of questions, and the answers are scattered about, so full briefing in fifteen minutes in the lounge, bring what you know on the who, what, where, when and why.”

Leeda looked up as the intercom echoed the Captain's voice around the chamber, then back down at the module as Jacob bent over it, muttering quietly to himself and making careful motions with tiny tools. She assumed he was removing the cover; her assumption was borne out as he slowly, carefully lifted the box from its perch on the edge of the container. The wires spooled out behind, thankfully long enough that they could see where they went without putting any tension on the connections. She told Jacob to hold the unit where it was, and bent down to peer underneath it, following each wire to its terminus, and marking which went where. "Alright, that's good. We can remove this thing entirely and reconnect it; they're just sensor wires, feeding information to the display." She nodded to Jacob to continue his work and straightened again as he removed the panel entirely, and started working on getting the container lid open. She stood by nervously; it felt strange to not be able to monitor the unit, but she knew logically that it wasn't going to descend into irretrivable chaos in the few minutes it would take to remove the lid. Finally, Jacob was able to get the container open, and as the light fell on the cryo unit inside, Leeda sucked in a sharp, startled breath. "Oh. Goodness, that's... well." She quickly reattatched the sensor wires where they belonged, double checked the status of the unit, and turned to Jacob with a stunned look on her face. "We had better get to that meeting. The Captain is definitely going to want to hear this."

Jacob had worked hard to remove everything without damage. He carefully reattached the unit, casting occasional questioning glances at Leeda. It was still hard to think of her as an adult, even though he knew she was, and that made him too uncomfortable to ask what she had seen. Hopefully he would learn at the meeting. "OK, Doctor, let's go."

“I’ll go help with those cards.” Willa said looking over at Paladin. He sure seems a lot more distant lately, she thought as she looked at him. As she went to find Teagan and asked for a few of the cards to scan she considered why that might be. Then headed back up to the bridge and began sifting through the data on them and taking notes of anything that looked important.

"Let's split them three ways," Qamala suggested. "Four, if Lawrence is willing to help."

Lawrence nodded distractedly, deep in thought and uncharacteristically subdued. "Yes...sure. I have my own, in fact. This, I believe, was the manifest," he said, tossing a clip onto the table. "And this one looks like financial records, probably for the cargo business. I can handle those." He looked at Morgan and Jacob and managed a smile as he added, "I don't suppose anyone else here has any experience with balance sheets and cash flow statements?"

The other clips he had taken were in a short pile in front of him. "These are entertainment clips and some food clips I salvaged including a rather sizable supply of a fine white wine. I heartily recommend the vintage.

Qamala brightened at that statement, then sobered when she remembered where it came from. "Perhaps we should crack a bottle of it over dinner and offer a toast," she mentioned quietly.

Teagan nodded. "Since I can access more data than the rest of you, my stack should be largest," she intoned, separating the clips into stacks, hers double the size of anyone else's.

Once she had her stack, the Magellen found an unused terminal and began making the same kinds of notes Willa and Teagan were making, each in their unique ways.

Fifteen minutes later Paladin made sure the controls and course were good and that an alarm would sound if anything changed, and went into the lounge and took a seat. Once everyone showed up or called in if they couldn’t leave for some reason. Paladin gave them each a chance to report what they had found to the group and answer questions about what they found.

Jacob glanced at Leeda, then started hesitantly. "We went over the case and didn't find anything dangerous. It's a pretty standard cargo container, other than the medical part. Not booby-trapped or anything. The doctor can tell you more about the rest than I can.

Qamala grinned at them both. "Come on, you two. What is it? I know it was going to New Home, but not what it was."

"Yeah, give," Willa grinned. "But New Home?" She arched an eyebrow. "Isn't that were Ekhart was from?"

"It was," the Magellen agreed. "But for that to make sense, it might help to know what was in it!" She looked at Leeda expectantly.

Leeda folded her hands on the table in front of her and cleared her throat, unintentionally drawing out the tension. "Well." She paused again, trying to think of the best way to put it. "The... lifeform, within the Cryo Unit... well, I'm not sure if its technically alive or not, it..." She shook her head, forcing herself back on topic. She knew the others were getting impatient, she was just a bit more scattered than usual. What she'd seen had set her mind racing, and it was hard to corral it back to focus. "Within the Cryo Unit is what appears to be a Duranaki female, approximately 18 years of age. Obviously, this is not a Duranaki female, of any age, but whatever it is, it has been crafted very carefully to pass visual examination. It's..." She paused again, spreading her fingers out flat against the table and staring down at them. "If you'll allow me to speculate, it seemed to me to be... a decoy. Or a... clone? A replacement, of some sort." She looked up, her hands still pressed flat against the table, hard enough to turn the knuckles white. "I cannot help but recall that the Princess is about the age that the Simacrulum has been engineered to replicate." She balled her hands suddenly and pulled them back to rest in her lap. "In any case, it appears to be as functional as it was meant to be. It should be able to exist outside of the environs of the unit. I have no idea of what it might have in the way of programming, however." Her mouth twisted delicately in distaste at the thoughts that brought to mind. "It could have an AI, or it could be completely empty, a shell waiting to be set to a purpose. We wouldn't know until we.... turned it on." She stopped, brought to the end of what she knew, and unwilling to speculate any further, though she was burning with a thousand different curious thoughts about the nature of the creature in the box.

The silence drew out after that revelation, Qamala sitting back in her chair, mind now racing as hard and fast as Leeda's. With a tiny shiver, she glanced down at her notes. "The unit was to be delivered to Artificial Biologics, New Bohnn Station, Dock 36B, New Home on or before '63956 to a Dr. Johanus Briechenbalm. The late crew of the Ace of Spades took possession of it from an `M.J. Weisman." Violet eyes lifted to take in the group at the table. "Who is listed as an agent for ITI."

"Doc please correct me if I am wrong but that sounds like very advanced stuff?"

OOC assuming the Doc answers yes
OOC: left this in if Leeda wants to answer.

Paladin carefully listens to the Doctors answer, "I don't know much about cutting edge Alfs or biologics but I do know New Home. The idea that there is one native scientist there doing advanced stuff is quiet a stretch, but a whole company?" The young man did not think that Qamala messed up her findings. Clearly they were still missing pieces of this puzzle

Willa thrummed her fingers on the table thoughtfully for several heartbeats. She'd never been to New Home, but it did have a reputation for being... Weird. "I found no evidence of a hostile, either," he said finally. "Could have been a laser strike that cut right to the power plant, I suppose." She obviously didn't believe that. Most combat lasers were pulse lasers. It took more than one hit by one just to crack a hull -- even an unarmored one -- never mind compromising the thick metal casing of a maneuver drive and power plant. "But I found no evidence of a missile hit or a kinetic energy weapon. All the composite and metal was buckled outward from the breech in the power plant, like it detonated and caused the decompression.

"Of course, I didn't have time to do a full on investigation, either."

Lawrence had been semi-reclined and quietly contemplative but a sudden revelation jolted him upright. "Of course! There was no attack!"

He went on to explain. "The ship was devoid of arms, and the crew members I saw weren't doing anything unusual when they bought it. They were just going about their business - no helmets, no signs they anticipated a breach, only the pilot in the cockpit. If they had been attacked, you'd at least expect the co-pilot or someone else to be in the cockpit, too, right?"

Lawrence turned to Willa. "And the kids...there were two kids on that ship, but no bodies. Think about it: if you're a kid with a kid's energy on a ship like that, do you spend your time cooped up in a tiny private compartment? No, you seek out the biggest area you can find to run around, play hoverball, or do whatever."

Willa raised her eyebrow and slowly nodded at the energetic Bourne. It was refreshing to see such enthusiasm from the man who seemed entirely too bored all the time.

"The cargo hold!" he declared. "The kids were in the cargo hold when it decompressed. That's why there were no bodies - they were sucked out into space!"

He stared into the table and wagged a finger as be made another connection on the spot. "That's why that woman had a cable attached to her ankle. That was the mother. She probably tried to gin up some kind of attempt to save them while they were blown out through the breach, but she must have been too late, or it was too sudden."

Bourne sighed like he'd finished a marathon and shook his head slowly, then leaned back in his chair with a self-satisfied smug expression, his swagger clearly returned. He reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and retrieved his cigarette case. As he flipped it open and pulled out a smoke, he continued.

"As for New Home, it makes perfect sense." He lit his smoke and explained, "If I was working on something as cutting edge as this...whatever, where better to hide an advanced R&D lab than on a world where half the population doesn't believe in science in the first place?" He exhaled a cloud of smoke and flashed his eyebrows a couple of times.

"So you're saying it was an accident," Qamala mused, nose wrinkling a bit at the smoke. "That would explain why nothing was stolen from the ship and why the cryo unit was still there."

"I'm not saying anything of the sort, actually," Lawrence answered mildly. "It might be an accident, or sabotage, or maybe that thing in the freezer did it intentionally. We don't know enough to state a definitive cause yet."

Teagan nodded, whispering an endearment to the computer's holo unit, which obligingly complied. A three-dimensional holo of the originating system shimmered into view. "This is Meridian system," she said, eyes following a few of the countless numbers of ships, mostly military, in the scene. "They were just one more blip among hundreds, on anyone's displays. Unlikely to be any pirates in the system -- too much Imperial presence. The chances of any other ship being able to pick out the Ace of Spades to follow into warp would have been astronomical." The flow of words stopped abruptly, then resumed. "If you'll forgive the pun.

"Also, they had no weapons. Their sensor arrays were minimalistic. Even if a ships weapon had locked onto them, they'd never have known it." Her lifeless eyes turn to the ship's doctor. "Did that unit soak up a lot of power?"

Jacob spoke up quietly before Leeda answered. "It's self-powered. It wouldn't take any power from their ship. I haven't had time to measure the power output from the unit itself, I'll get to that once we're done here. Then we should have a better idea of how long it will stay active." He looked over at Paladin. "We need to decide what we are going to do with her, er.. it?" He blushed as he realized he wasn't sure how to refer to the person in the unit. Or even if it was a person.

“I don’t like it. The whole thing stinks of intrigue. If it is a lifeless shell, let’s get rid of it before it can cause any more harm. We have no need of a double of the Princess. It isn’t even alive.” Willa said, barely able to suppress a shudder.

"And, as a matter of fact," Leeda interjected, "We're not sure if its 'alive'. Technically, it does have living cells, so on a basic biological level, it counts as an organism of some sort. As for the mind, we don't know if it was implanted with an ALF. We wouldn't know unless we activated it, which I'm not even sure I could manage on my own. It might be a chemical trigger, there might be a mechanism within the electronic mainframe... I just have no idea." She paused and then continued, doggedly, "And to be frank, it would be an incredible waste to simply destroy such a technological achievement without studying it first. We don't have to turn it on, but I would object strenuously to just... shunting it into an incinerator. Or, whatever." She trailed off, eyes bright though her shoulders were pulled forwards uncertainly.

"Perhaps not, but if it's independent of our ship and can't interface with it to cause any damage, then we may be able to use the double," Qamala said carefully. "Or at least look like we're delivering it to its intended destination." She turned her gaze to Willa. "Like it or not, you're up to your neck in intrigue with this mission, my friend. We've got to find Aldeborahnn and she is the very source of all this intrigue. The closer we get to her, the thicker it's all going to get."

"Can anyone confirm that she is suppose to be a double for the princess? Normally I'd pull a pic of the Princesses out of the ships news archive and do a computer match. However updating a new archive wasn't a priority in getting this ship out the the dock. So unless someone has a personal pic of her or a really good memory we will not know for sure." He paused for a bit to let anyone volunteer to try to id the ALF.

Lawrence sighed through his nose and looked out from under a lowered brow. "I...know Her Highness. I can make an identification if such is required."

Paladin thought for a bit before he replied. "Yeah it is required. If we have a copy, it doesn't mean we have the 'only' copy. Or that others can't be made. If we can't trust our eyes then we are going to need a way to know who is real and who is an ALF copy." He looked over to the Doctor at this. "It will make a world of difference in what we tell the senator, 'watch out for ALF copies of people' is a big thing compared to 'we found an advanced ALF' "

shocked rocked Willa’s body and she sat upright, wondering if her thoughts should be shared. It was a crackpot idea, but there was a copy of a high profile person sitting in their cargo hold right now. It took a moment or two to collect her thoughts, and arrange them in an order that wasn’t just a jumbled mess. “How do we know people are who they say they are now? Wasn’t Senator Anastius dead last any of us heard?” That was all she could get out. The apprehension raised in Willa was extremely unnerving to the woman who had no trouble throwing her body at anything she came up against. She looked around at her companions, hoping none of them were looking back at her as if she was a madwoman.

Qamala looked at Willa as if the Athenian had sprouted tentacles. "That is a thoroughly disquieting thought," she frowned, thinking the idea through.

Lawrence got that stare-through-the-table look he got when he thought carefully. "Mmmmmm...no." He shook his head. "Nasty Pants remembered meeting me as a child. That's too random for something that someone would have programmed."

He looked up at the techno folks. "Isn't it?"

Violet eyes turned toward Teagan and Jacob, the tiniest knot of a frown in between her brows.

"It is unlikely," Teagan finally said. She'd taken several moments to think about it, but her answer, when offered, was firm. "The statistical likelihood is too small to be signficant. An ALF is only as good as its programming. Details such as your childhood meeting with the Senator are too insignificant to be factored in to such a database."

Leeda shrugged, mouth still twisted uneasily. "Indeed. For all its appearance of flesh, this... well, its still just an ALF, in a fancier casing. No matter how much it might look like a person, its personality is completely determined by its programming." She met Lawrence's eyes steadily, her fingers folded calmly in front of herself once more. "It would be incredibly complicated to instill that level of detail to any ALF, even one as advanced as this. And it would require intimate knowledge of the subject, the sort that can only be garnered through years of contact. As difficult and no doubt time consuming as such a project would be, I can safely say that we probably don't have to worry about running into ALF doubles every time we turn around. Also, no matter how advanced, the ALF would still be an ALF, and it would read as such to a biosniffer. So, there would be a way to suss the doubles out, and that makes such an undertaking... a risky proposition, at best." She shrugged, acknowledging the unsatisfying nature of her answer.

Her nerves calmed slightly by the reassurances of the people who should know such things, Willa sat back in her chair, still not feeling right about the entire thing, but at least a little less disturbed.

Paladin listened as people reported. Then when a lull arrived near what he thought was the end he begins to summarize, “Ok so the Ace of Spades was small time family run freight hauler. They took on the CyroTube to get it to New Home. At some point they had a blow out and all hands were lost.” He paused before continuing, “So here is what we are going to do concerning the Ace of Spades. Teagan, I want you to continue looking though the ships mem cards, see if you can find anything on why it exploded. Did they neglect maintenance? Did they ignore warnings? Seems unlikely but you never know. Qamala I want you to look through some of the more personal mem cards and try to find some next of kin.” His face is very sober when he says the next bit, “Some one must care about these people and they right thing to do is to let them know. Hopefully at some point we can do so without risking our mission.”

The Magellen nodded. "I'll try to stay alert for anything else unusual too.

“Now to the CyroTube that may or may not have a copy of the Princess, Lawrence you get to confirm that for us. After that, Qamala could probably use a hand. Either way we are going to be holding on to the ALF for a bit.” He knew some people wouldn’t like that option, but it was his call and he made it. “Doc, keep it under, and keep an eye on it."

Jacob rubbed his head. This was too complicated and confusing for him. Give him a nice simple quaternary circuit board with a short any day. Looking up at Paladin, he asked, "Anything specific you need me to do?" He had some things in his cabin to play with, but didn't want to be wasting time if there was work to be done.

"Morgan and Jacob, yeah. Get it out of the Transporter room. Medical seems best, if there is room. Otherwise the cargobay.” He didn’t give Willa anything because he assumed she would be piloting with him.

"Alright unless someone has something else, I'm going to bump us up into warp. We have two needs in the Twin system. Our mission to find the princess and to refuel. Either way we are going to be insystem for a while so we'll open up comms with the senator and get and update."

"Captain..." Lawrence paused for a bit before speaking. "There remains the fact that we don't know what caused the breach on the Ace of Spades. If it was caused by our frozen friend or the technology which sustains it, it migh tbe prudent to take safeguards. I've seen first-hand what happens to people who aren't prepared for something like that."

"That's what he's asked me to do," Teagan said. "Continue to sift the data on the RQAM cards to see if there are clues internally." She looked at Paladin. "The most likely explanation is sabotage. But I will have an answer and a full report available as soon as I can."

Listening to Lawrence and Teagan Paladin nods, addressing Teagan first he said, “Yeah that is my thought too. Given the resources the best you might be able to get is to rule out everything else.” Then to Lawrence, “Jacob gave it a going over and said it was safe, at least from anything immediate. As for something more subtle, something designed to be more low key, thats... Would the people wanting it transported set something like that up??" He frowned in thought. "Still it is a very good point.” He turned to the security guy, “Jacob keep an eye out for something like that.”

"No problem, Captain," the big man replied. He wasn't sure how the container would have done something like that, but didn't relish the idea of it happening to the ship. A thought struck him and he looked back at Paladin. "Captain, it might be best to put it in the cargo bay. There we can eject it if we need to. It might be hard to get it out of the medbay in a hurry."

”I have no problem with that, although the Doctor might. Move it where ever you need...” Paladin stopped in mid sentence as remembered something. “Ahhhh. The tube is too big to leave this deck. The only way it is leaving is back through the transporter or in much smaller pieces.” Physical realities could be such a pain in the ass sometimes.

"Well, I suppose, if it would make the crew feel more secure. I will point out that there's absolutely no indication that the entity has anything like a consciousness. There's no reason to even believe that the unit was in any way responsible for the malfunction, other than the fact that it has a electro-mechanical component, and we don't know how it works." Leeda leaned back from the table and looked around at the crew. "We fear what we don't know, right?" She looked down at the floor, shoulders dropping from their stiff position. "If it transported once without damage, it can be done again. Of course, I could always just open it up and see if I can get the unit up and running," She added, half-facetiously.

Qamala stared at her heartsister for a moment, then laughed as she intuited that Leeda was only half serious. "I'm glad you already told us you don't know what the triggering mechanism is for it or I'd be concerned," she said, still smiling gaily. "Still -- if you can find out how they were going to trigger this thing into wakefulness, it might tell us a bit more about who is waiting for the delivery on New Home, no?

"And speaking of that," she went on, long supple fingers shuffling the memclips unconsciously, "the Ace of Spades picked up this container in Meridian System, and was supposed to deliver it to New Home. What in the world were they doing out here? any ideas?"

Not wanting to make the Magellen sound dumb, but unable to come up with a nice way of saying it, Willa simply stated, “This is on the rout from Meridian to New home.”

After a beat, Qamala grinned and said "I just used up my allotment of stupid questions for today, didn't I." It wasn't inflected as a question

Willa grinned back, and said, “I didn’t know we had a limit.”

“We might end up in Meridian before to long. So that might be something to follow up on later.”
To clarify why Paladin continues, “We are going to need fuel soon. Our options are to spend about 40 days being bounced around in the belly of Epsilon. While dealing with all the others ship who don’t to get to close to the navy. And we lose our aux fuel tanks. Or we can spend two days in warp, and four hours refueling in Meridian on the Senator’s cred.” With a slight smile he said, “Even with its down sides, Meridian is looking really good right now.”

"If you're really going to open this thing up, I'm going to break out some heavy ordnance." Morgan said. "I have seen a few too many horror movies." He looked back at them as if they were the crazy ones. "I'm just saying ... space monsters."

“My preference would be to not open it up.” Paladin responded to Morgan comments. Then to the Doctor, “If for some reason you must open it, give us enough warning that Morgan can get his guns. In fact if it comes on-line for any reason we are to treat it like a hostile prisoner until we know otherwise.”

Leeda pulled a face at the captain, but nodded her agreement. "Once again, if it would make you all feel safer, of course I'll warn Mr. Morgan in the event that I should try to bring the 18 year old girl out of cryostasis, so he can have his guns on hand in case she should overpower me and my psychokinesis and him, with his rippling muscles."

"I'm 18 and I'd shoot me if I came out of that good." He said under his breath.

Leeda smirked in Morgan's direction, then let her expression soften to a half smile. "She's strange, an unknown factor, but she is biological in nature, and her strength is only as great as natural mechanics could make it. I'm fairly certain she is not, as you say, a 'space monster.' I can understand your unease though, however many jokes I may make, so I will comply with full safety protocols."

“Alright I think we have covered everything that we can?” He looked around to see if there was any more things that that someone might need to say.

“Here is what the ship is going to be doing for the next little while. We will spend about an hour at warp, until we hit the hundred diameters mark. Then we will spend just less then a day moving into Jay.” Paladin knew it was 21 hours but he doubted they cared much about such details. “During this part we will accelerate at three gees and then decelerate at six. During the deceleration we are going to flip the ship for 5 minutes out of every 30.” He grins a bit, “We are not going to do this because we want to make people sick.” It should be much less extreme then the ship docking operation, but still some people might not care for it. “We do this because all our sensors are in the nose and we will be flying tail first into any danger. This will make some of the sensors blind. So for those 5 minutes we will be using everything to see what is ahead of us. This will take us longer then a straight forward 6 gee in and out burn, but given the lawlessness of the system I think it is wise to minimize our blind time as much as possible.”

"Just give us about two minutes' warning before you start the circus act, if you can, Qamala grinned. "Give us time to stow the loose stuff before it all turns into lethal projectiles."

Teagan nodded and rose. "Call when you want me on the bridge, Captain. Until then I'll be in engineering reviewing the rest of the RQAM data." She nodded to the others with the same blank expression she usually wore, then left.

Qamala watched Teagan go, then turned to Lawrence. "After you've finished your identification of the ALF, would you care to join me in a more thorough review of these memclips?" She asked, rising from the table. "I could use the help."

Standing up, and giving the table a quick slap Willa said, “Ok, Captain, sounds fun. See ya on the bridge.”

OOC: I've handed out the tidbits for the next chapter already. So lets get this the close on this one tidied up and move on, shall we?