Kyonoke Inquest – part 2
During the day, we learned a few more things, like that Akira Kasara was probably also “patient 7”. There had also been a big number of rumours spreading, the most recurring ones were that someone had been clone-jacked, that the SoCT had been infiltrated and that various factions will sacrifice/destroy where the plague was in their respective territories.
More troubling is that a some points during the day we noticed that some reports went missing. We didn’t knew who did it or when it happened but after that the paranoia in the inquest hall went through the roof.
At the end of the day I had only made a few errands for the gallente and the minmatars but not much actually. There were some guys from a corporation called “Arataka research consortium” (ARC) who had literally swarmed the inquest, you could always saw one or two running doing errands for every faction, asking other capsulleers for their vote token, because yes, the SoCT had created token allowing their bearer to vote for the different solutions of the inquest.
We were here first to help the empires to resolve the crisis. Each second who passed with the cure not found meant thousands of peoples dying. And many capsulleers were more concerned with the festivities onboard the pleasure hub than helping to find the cure.
The first day, we had to choose between the Ammarrian act and the Minmatars’ one.
The Ammarrians wanted to force the injection of the cure on every infected, without their consent. Typical of them, no need to check if the cure was indeed working or if there were any other solutions. At that time, the cure seemed to have worsened the state of patient 7, rendering her extremely aggressive and violent. A mass spreading of the cure as if, could mean a potential disaster.
On the other side, the minmatar’s act wanted to force the four empire to work together. Mainly for the current crisis, but as there was no limit of time, it would have helped the cluster to face all the other dangers: blood raiders, drifters, sleepers, rogues drones, the wars, etc.
It goes without saying that I thought the minmatar’s was the indeed the best one, either for the whole cluster and for the plague. We all placed our token accordingly to our beliefs, the minmatar’s one was winning by a small advance, when ARC representatives came in and poured so many token at once that it was obvious that the winning one was… The Amarrians act…
Judging by all the disapproving noise I was hearing behind me, it seemed like I was not the only one disappointed. After the vote, I talked to some capsulleers and many were complaining about ARC rigging the vote. I felt that it was not the case because I saw them running all day to do errands, but some peoples were just angry because ARC promised them to vote for the minmatar act and they gave their token only for that condition.
Of course, many were upset… I wondered if I should stop the inquest, it seemed that there was no real point in participating if the only things we could do is spreading rumours and doing errands for the factions.
The morning after, I was not exactly enthusiast for the day. At least I could go to some others meeting, apparently, there was a famous scientist, Dr Michel Mayor, who was lecturing about exoplanets and how, in a future not so distant, we could manage the creation of stargate manually and not relying on automated ships for it.
I greeted the capsulleers that I had met the day before, and of course, those of ARC, not even embarrassing themselves about things like “good morning” or “how are you?” and went straight to the point by asking me “Could you give all your token to ARC?”.
I must say that I made me a “little” angry. And by little, I mean “a lot”. So, when we learned during the meeting that the minmatar lab had been ransacked (again) and that the SoCT Liaisons Registry Officer – Krug Maetor – had been killed by unknown aggressor AND that Akira was on place and was likely hurt too (we found her blood on place), I saw my chance. ARC was too focused on finding the cure and gathering token. Ok, I may not be able to save the universe by finding the cure, or influence the whole cluster by my vote. But I knew I could at least help the SoCT resolve the murder of their brother.
I started to ask everybody where they were the night before, and what they knew about the whereabouts of other people. What we knew at the start of the day was rather thin.
Akira, Krug Maetor and at least one other person was inside the Minmatar’s lab. The fight started inside the minmatar lab, then went to the caldari floor, where security panels had been deployed and ended up inside the amarr chapel, breaking the statue (take that amarr’s gods!).
We also learned from one of the minmatar scientist that to make a cure usable, we needed four things. First, we needed a special injector, able to mix the cure. Then we needed the three reagents of the cure. Two chemical products stored in vials who went missing during the night. And lastly, we needed fresh blood from Akira.
The attack happened during some king of electric shortage who conveniently disabled all security on this section of the station. “Convenience” was a weak word in this case and “sabotage” was on every mind.
During the day, many more things started to emerge. First my investigation showed that Riv Netee, one of the SoCT staff had illogical things in his planning. He was saying that he stayed on floor 14 all night long, Dr Veranne said he was on floor 5, 11 and 14 (aka a garbage disposal, the minmatar lab and the archive section) and the caldari officer said that he was on medbay because he was sick.
Some vials were also starting to come in from many locations. The first one was found inside the Amarr “holy water” (which was causing memory loss, yeaa, way to go amarr). Some were found on the gallente hub, I actually got one here and when bringing it back to the minmatar, I was once again disappointed by learning that some capsulleers were asking token first, even if the vial was not a needed one…
A new rumour started to spread too: that the cure could only be made by a pure Kyonoke strain. And from there, my theory started to emerge. If akira was the only patient who went through the recovery, it was because she had been infected by the first outbreak pathogen. But if the plague was natural, the cure would have worked on the others too. And I realized the futility of finding the cure. If the plague WAS bio-engineered, then even if we DID find the cure, as long as vulture and his group was free, they could do a new plague, start elsewhere, and keep bringing New Eden into chaos.