Poor Stanley at Gennus Landing (Leviathan)

## Recurring NPCs

Oxana, computer of The Bat'leth

Aryutta, voice of Tsarin

Klaariskees, Iratos female trapped on Gennus Station

"Poor Stanley at Gennus Landing" is the ninth episode of the first season of Leviathan: Distant Stars.

## Summary

All is fine again on board the Bat'leth as the crew, having left the immediate surroundings of Usvedi, waits for Aryutta and Tsarin.

Or almost fine.

Hexie, who can't pardon herself for breaking the rules and flying the Bat'leth finds comfort in a conversation with Kika where Kika's family and the pair's musical tastes are discussed.

Xe'anna confronts Conrad over both his reliance on Space Mountain Dew and his spreading the habit first to Theea, earlier, and very recently to Kika and Hexie. The lieutenant, who has stashed cans virtually everywhere on the ship and even sleeps with ones, despite being sorry he disappointed the captain, remains largely unfazed and secure in his Academy-approved means to *get vertical* when needed. As he later explains to Kika, the 3 steps with fear are the following:

> *Step 1 is to acknowledge the fear*
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> *Step 2 is to master the fear*
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> *Step 3 is to quench the fear ... with* Space Mountain Dew*.*
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In that conversation, Kika confuses Conrad when she announces her intent to *get intimate with your done.* He is not reassured when she continues: *I'm gonna make it purr like it's never purred before. I'm gonna rock its world.* The two agree that they miss Theea, and Kika is upset that she left them behind.

Tsarin finally arrives, the Bat'leth docks in it and all gather in Tsarin. Hexie, who could levitate all the pieces on her own, lets Xe'anna carry what she can to Tsarin's engine room, some portions of which seem familar to Kika, with a *bunch of parts that make sense to you on top of the things that you don't understand: it is cybernetic in essence*.

After a breakfast with Xe'anna that involves a number of meat-o-stik'kos, Kika fixes its thread engine, as she gradually becomes familiar with the internals of the ship through her bond with it. After it is done, Aryutta tells Kika that Tsarin has picked her as her engineer, which means that Kika is now able to understand more of the engine and the construction of the ship. As this discussion goes on, Aryutta explains that, on the Raze, the Hollows *have no conscience of their own but on a Leviathan you have a place*.

Next order of business is meeting Theea on Duranga. They'll first stop at Gennus Landing and check if there is a message for them. They'll go there on Tsarin, which is now faster than the Bat'leth again, but dock the Bat'leth. Ary is welcome to, and also agrees to go on the station with them. As she says: *I haven't left this ship since my whole planet was destroyed. I should leave this ship.*

Xe'anna reminds her crew of their initial plan: fix Tsarin's thread drive (done), acquire weapons for Tsarin, acquire maps to Duranga. Even though they will actually acquire the weapons on Duranga, they will also need to hire an expert to install them. For this, they will rely on leads Hexie and Conrad have on Gennus Landing. Also, while they are at a corner of the sector, Duranga is far away in the same sector and Gennus Landing is somewhere in the middle.

At something during the 2-3 day journey to Gennus Landing, Kika has a conversation with Xe'anna in Tsarin's mess while they start cooking a *family dinner*. Kika explains that the handprints she painted in the gym were a way to show she wanted to stay on the Bat'leth and requests a permanent position on the Bat'leth. Xe'anna welcomes her and Theea to *stay as long as you want to be here: this is your home.* As Hexie arrives and starts making *crème brûlée*, more topics are broached: disease, music in the middle of a fight...

By the time Conrad makes his way with help from Ary and stumbles into the dining room/kitchen area, there are *lovely, perfect, immaculate crèmes brûlées*, a sliced can of third vegetable, some diced and sliced meat-o-stik'ko (edamame flavored), dipping sauces reconstituted from some of the powders, various drinks, some of them fizz, all neon: you really can't tell, even by smelling, what their flavor is going to be.

After this meal, nothing important occurs until they emerge out into the Gennus System and see a significant number of ships in the process of leaving, entering thread space at the edge of the system. Kika picks up scrambled, either beacons or distress signals in a lot of languages, some in Official: *Attack!*, *Monsters!*, *Gennus is lost!*

Ary determines that Gennus Landing is being consumed by a Raze scout ship, whose goal is to retrieve information for the invasion fleet en route to the System by turning people into more Hollow.

None of the ships there would have posed a threat to the scout:

> Lauren: *they were at best spirates and mercenaries.*
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> Conrad: *would the Bat'leth pose a threat?*
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> Lauren: *the Bat’leth’s is at best a spirate or a mercenary.*
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With the realization that there is a planet with around a billion inhabitants in the System, that the invading fleet will give up if the scout fails to send information, and that the scout has grappled the top of the station and is stuck to it until its mission is complete, Xe'anna suggests that they look for a way to degrade the orbit of the station and send both station and scout toward the sun.
After they receive a distress call from an Iratos pleading for help out of their hideout in the middle of the station, Xe'anna surmounts her anger for that species and adds rescue to her plan. She acknowledges that it would be safer in the short term for them to leave but:

> *Maybe I'm just sick of letting the few suffer for the greater good.*
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> *Maybe I just want to try and do something.*
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The engineering section whence the Iratos's signal comes is where they needed to go anyway. Despite eveybody's concern that he, and he alone, may be infected by a Hollow, Conrad resolves to go:

> *Respectfully, captain,* <cocking his rifle> *I'll bring my own immunity.*
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Kika and Xe'anna separately order Oxana to record everything in case they didn't return. Kika even instructs Oxana to download herself into a virus and jump herself on another ship in an emergency. In a successful display of authority that both surprises and pleases her, Xe'anba captains Ary and Tsarin safely away, as all hope would be lost for the galaxy if they fell.

   They decide to approach Gennus Landing from below, after cutting power to look like space trash, in what Conrad refers to as the Poor Stanley maneuver. The usually sassy Oxana pleads that they don’t do that again, having just had two back-to-back opportunities of grasping her own mortality.

After this works and the Bath'leth has docked, Xe'anna, Hexie, Conrad and Hexie on Conrad's back, all set to face lack of a breathable atmosphere, make their way from the outer shell where the hastily abandoned common areas and stores are located to the center, where lodging and engineering are located, and then up. They eventually find a couple of dead people. There is no evidence that they were actually attacked and, crucially, they are not turning blue. This is, after all, the area of the station farthest from the Raze ship, and therefore the area there was most time to evacuate.

They stop after Kika and Hexie hear what sounds like several creatures running in ducts above them, and soon find themselves surrounded by three non-infecting hollows. After a slow start with many misses all over and scratches for Xe'anna, the group dispatches the Hollow in a rapid succession of successful hits. Heads are cuts, and arrows are retrieved from eye sockets.

The episode ends as *the quiet of the ship centers around you and you continue forward into the depths of Gennus Landing.*

## Notes

1. ↑ Claudia, 2017. <3.
2. ↑ *They're not made of meat but you wish they were.*
3. ↑ And not the reverse, Kika: *that's not how Tsarin works*.
4. ↑ As Hexie put it: *you're getting meep meeps from the ship*. Still, Lauren added, *you're not getting actual words* but rather *you have a manual, now, in your head.*
5. ↑ This was another opportunity to show that Conrad still needs a translator and have a little fun in the process. After Kika told hom to *show excitement on your face* at the idea that Ary was coming to Gennus Landing with them, Dan made a weird smile which prompted this question from Ary: *Is he drunk?*
6. ↑ *NtfE*: At this point, let me wholeheartedly agree with Lauren's comment at the start of the break, relative to the fact they had not been going very far down her notes for the episode: *You're great at roleplaying, why should I stop that?*
7. ↑ *NftE*: A reference to ICA's official stance, as per Adm. Conrad Carls Sr.
8. ↑ *Would you also like me to record the showers?*, Oxana asks. According to her, Theea is the one who planted cameras everywhere.