| Renewed Interest |
| Summary: | Van questions Sawyer about Tauron and the Museum. |
| Date: | 03 Feb 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | Derelict My Theories |
| Players: |
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| News Room |
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| This compartment isn't huge by any means, an afterthought shoved into an alcove when the engineer was finishing the final plans for the ship. The long awkward rectangle is filled with several desks and those heavy pieces of machinery that are tools of the media trade — copiers, computers, printers, and of course a seemingly never-ending supply of paper of both the A4 and broadsheet variety. In the far port corner hangs a mulberry-colored hammock attached to the bulkhead — where the head-reporter-in-charge is purported to spent her nights. Three heavy desks have been moved to form an inverted 'U' for the new Editor in Chief's work station, and behind them lies the hatch to the modest closet-sized darkroom. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #342 |
Sawyer doesn't keep regular hours because as the saying goes: the news never sleeps. Therefore the journalist isn't regulated by shift changes or distinctions between morning and night, she just works when there is work to do. Right now one of her staff is standing over her, patiently waiting while Sawyer marks up some photographs with a red grease pencil. "See if we can crop this part out and pull the focus over here."
There's a knock at the hatch. Its an official looking visit as Vandenberg is in her combat blacks - complete with rifle. But the rifle is slung over her shoulder and she doesn't seem to be intending to arrest anyone. Especially not with the light smile on her face. Sawyer might recognize her from the numerous incidents on the Elpis. "Miss Averies?" The Marine looks right at her. "I was wondering if I might have a moment of your time in private?"
Sawyer's eyes first appraise Vandenberg after her entrance, peering at her over the thick tortoise shell rims of a pair of reading glasses before she turns to her lackey and hands the photograph back. "It can wait until the morning. Call it a night." Rather than Sawyer pulling Vandenberg elsewhere, she just clears the room. Problem solved. "Come on in Lieutenant."
The Marine moves out of the way to allow the assistant to exit. She enters the room, removing her helmet and cradling it under her arm. "Thank you, ma'am. I'm here on official business, but probably what you're expecting considering the kind of stuff I've been involved with recently." She stops in front of the desk, keeping her voice conversational. "I talked to a Specialist from Engineering last night that brought up your name in relation to a recent incident on Tauron. I was wondering if you might be willing to talk to me about a certain knife?"
Sawyer motions to a chair with a dip of her hand. "Please, have a seat." Wheeling out her chair so that their eye contact is not obstructed by the monitor of her laptop or the stacks of paper on her desk. "Do you smoke?" A pack is offered to the marine, and one is sparked up by Sawyer herself before she even acknowledges anything about the trip to Tauron.
"Again, thank you." Vandenberg nods in appreciation and unslings the rifle. Sitting down, she leans it across her lap. "Thought you'd never ask." The woman grins and waves off Sawyer's pack. "I won't take yours, ma'am. Brought my own." She reaches into her vest and pulls out a smoke from an unseen pack. Its lit before she bothers to say anything else, waiting for the reporter to answer on her willingness.
"Alright," Sawyer's words are interrupted briefly as she exhales that first delicious lungful of smoke towards the ceiling. "How about a little tit for tat, Lieutenant? I'll answer your questions about Tauron and you fill in some blanks for me regarding the incidents on the Elpis."
Vandenberg was probably expecting something like this. "I'll answer what I can, ma'am. But I think you'll want to talk about what I've got to ask you on. Or you'll just clam up. But I gotta warn," she tilts her head. The northern Cancerian accent isn't something she bothers to try and suppress anymore. "If I feel like I'm being painted into a corner or blames for something, I'll head off. Its not a threat. I just want to be clear." She's still conversational. Friendly, even. Probably not the attitude most would expect of someone on business and wearing a Corps uniform.
Sawyer reaches up to pull the glasses off her face, using them to push the hair out of her face and keep it back like a headband. "Natalie. May I call you Natalie?" Of course she may, or at least that's the liberty Sawyer's going to assume as she just presses on. "I appreciate truth and honesty. And fact. I leave it to the public to decide where they want to place the blame, I just like to give them both sides of the story. So the short of the long of it is, I can publish my story with our without your input, but it'll be a much more well-rounded article with your voice in it." A brief pause as she ashes her cigarette. "So what about the knife?"
"That's fine, ma'am. Call me as you prefer." Though that's probably not open to very liberal interpretations. She takes a drag of her smoke with a gloved hand, resting it afterwards on her rifle. "I'll comment how I can, but I would like to say that I certainly do not speak for the military at large. I'll try to answer with as many facts as I can." Vandenberg seems like she's willing to talk about it but presses forward as prompted. "The knife that was discovered at Knossos. I've been doing research on it and it turns out Specialist Wolfe mentioned you prominently in a discussion about it last night. Apparently she had some kind of vision about this knife and said you were some kind of hero in it." She takes a short breath. "There's been a lot of weird stuff in the logs, ma'am. I'm chasing some odd leads. I was wondering if you had anything to add on that front."
"I'm sorry, what?" Whatever path Sawyer thought this was going to go down, maybe this wasn't it. "A hero?"
Vandenberg shrugs. "I have no idea. She said you had acted quite bravely, ma'am. I'm interested in the vision first, then about the knife specifically - which I'll get to in a moment." She takes a drag of the smoke. "I take it this is the first you've heard of a vision, then?"
Sawyer leans back in her chair with a squeak of protest from the furniture. There's a moment when she just stares off into nothing, as if trying to collect her thoughts. "At the time, there were four of us that seemed to share a similar dream. It was centered around Knossos which we were lead to by a bird. In this…dream there was the museum and an old man on the steps. During the course of the dream, the man mentioned what I believe to be Lampridis Falls on Gemenon and then there was a serpeant climbing the pillar to the museum in effort to reach and presumably kill the bird and the bird's family. There was no knife in the dream."
Natalie stares at Sawyer as if she was still waiting for something to be said. "What." Its deadpanned and not so much a question as her affirming to herself that she is actually hearing this and not dreaming. "Lampridis Falls on Gemenon." The Marine wets her lips, looking away in frustration. Apparently she's heard of this place before. There's a ragged, tired sigh as she looks back. "These birds. Were they sparrows? Or just generic birds?" The cigarette is ignored for the time being.
"I assumed they were sparrows, but that might just be my mind superimposing that fact into the vision." Like any dream, the details get more and more faded as time goes on. "Originally I thought the man was implying we should go to Gemenon, but later when we actually visited the museum in the flesh on that mission to Tauron, there was a mural in the reception area that detailed those very falls and that's where we found the entrance to the underground chamber. Your turn. In your estimation, did you and the other marines use necessary force to stop the supposed beating of one Magnus Dekker?"
Damnit. That just opened up a new line of questioning. Natalie succeeds in resisting the urge to ask more but holds for the time. She takes a pull of her smoke before speaking. "I can't give opinions, ma'am. What I can tell you is that after two suspects fled, two more remained and continued the assault. One went down with a single hit. The other refused to back down from his assault and was severely injured - though I am unaware of his current status in Sickbay. We used the force necessary to stop the assault of Mister Dekker, yes." She waits to see if there is more just yet.
As the door is left open, Sawyer presses onward. "Were you familiar with Private Sholty? Was he a man prone to violent behavior?" There is no fanfare, the questions are short and sweet.
"Private First Class Van Sholty is not someone I have had regular contact with, no. I can't comment on reputations or rumors either. Not any more than you would prefer to print things taken out of context." Whether or not that's a shot isn't clear but Vandenberg seems completely even about the words, her voice never changing. "You said you originally thought the man was implying you should go to Gemenon. That there was a mural of the falls in this lobby of the museum?" It seems Natalie has never been there. "This underground chamber contained..what? Be as detailed as you can if you could, please?"
There's a little smirk that appears on the corners of Sawyer's lips. "Do you have the required security clearances for this?" Teasing, perhaps, but if Vandenberg is going to take little potshots, she might as well too. "You know we were accompanied by marines, right? Surely you could have just gotten this information from them." Regardless, Sawyer touches the filter of her cigarette to her lips and then continues. "There was a number pad behind a hidden plate in the mural, the code was impossibly easy too: thirteen. One-three, that's it. You'd think this so-called superior technological race could have come up with something harder than that."
Natalie dips her head. "I have clearances appropriate. As for asking the Marines, that's not a concern. However I will say that I prefer to talk to people in person than read notes. I can't ask questions to a sheet of file. See a look on a face. Look at body language. Hear the turn of a voice." The Marine lifts the smoke, looking to something on the wall but stops with the number thirteen. "Of course. Complex password, indeed." Sarcasm at its finest. Natalie rolls her eyes. "So what was in this chamber?" The Marine might have an idea but she isn't going to prompt Sawyer for details.
"It was just a single room with a low table in the middle. Nothing terribly remarkable, save the dead body have slumped over it. There was a generator in the back of the room, something we managed to turn on quite by accident by Sergeant Constin tripping over a wire on our initial entry into the museum. On the back wall was another mural, this one more like a three-dimensional relief of a man in a helmet with said knife in his hand while he slayed a bull. The knife resembled a lightening bolt. We took the knife, and that was basically the end of that little adventure." Sawyer says plainly.
Vandenberg doesn't seem too worried about the dead body. There's a lot of those in very strange places. Who knows why some people choose a certain location? The mural catches her attention. "Bingo. Did your team happen to get any pictures of this room or the mural? Do you think you might be able to draw it if you didn't?"
"As a matter of fact…" Sawyer gives Vandenberg the finger, more importantly the index finger to have her hold that thought a moment. The journalist props the cigarette between her lips to free her hands so she can rifle in a drawer. File folders are flipped through, and finally she pulls out one and tosses it on the desk in front of Natalie. She's been tossing lots of pictures at people lately, it seems. "Your lucky day." Inside are several shots of that expedition, obviously taken by Sawyer as she's not in any of them. One just so happens to be the chamber in question.
Vandenberg dangles teh cigarette from the side of her lips as she takes upthe folder, sitting forward and nearly dumping her rifle on the ground. This is definitely something she's interested in. "Hot damn. This is exactly what I was looking for." She lifts the photo of the chamber and stares at it. She's forgotten to ash her cigarette and its reaching grandmother lengths while individual flakes drift to her black gear. "Ma'am, can I take these and make copies? I'll return these originals back to you within an hour of my leaving."
"Those aren't my originals." Sawyer gives another one of those little smiles, like the hint of so many secrets threatening to spill out but they never quite do. "As you like. So tell me what's all the renewed interest? As I understood it the artifact we so painstakingly sought to recover was handed over to the enemy in exchange for some hostages."
Vandenberg chuckles, nodding. "Smart. Well then I appreciate the copies. Thank you. I'll return them anyway." She closes up the file folder and settles it on her lap as the cigarette finally gets ashed with her free hand. "Well that's not something I can go into too much detail on. The 'why', I mean. What I can tell you is that there is a theory I have about the knife that isn't being given much credence by command. But? Because it keeps me busy they told me to run with it. As for the trade of the artifact, yes. That did happen. I was there when it took place. Mother of all ironies? The Cylons wanted to make the trade at the Knossos Museum parking lot." This last part sounds like its really not a fact she enjoys. Things probably would have gone differently had the situation been different.
"You want to investigate something something interesting? Find out why there was a trip wire on the steps of the museum that once tripped, virtually /lead/ us to the room below by the noise from the generator. It was too easy, the whole thing. Someone or /something/ walked us right in there. If you find that out? Let me know." Sawyer says before stamping out her cigarettes. "I've gotten clearance to speak with both Dekker and the assailants. Once I do, I trust you'll be available for a further statement?" Because Sawyer's letting her off the hook tonight, it seems.
Vandenberg nods. "I would actually love to investigate that. But I can' get back to Knossos. Unfortunately everything I have to work with is right here on the ship. Uhm, by the way-" She takes a last drag of her own smoke. "Who was it that thought to try 'thirteen' for a combination?" She reaches out to stab her own cigarette into the tray. "Really? Good. Mister Dekker seems like a really nice guy under all the bruises. Let him know his Marine friend says Hi." She rises, lifting her rifle to be slung around her shoulder. "Thanks for the time, ma'am. I'll have this file back to you faster'n a kitten to milk." Still all smiles. Might be weird that she is the one constantly involved in these incidents. She's … cheerful.
Sawyer tilts her head back to look at the ceiling, searching the foggy reaches of her brain. "Uhhhh. Sofia, I think. And then it was confirmed as a possibility by the priestess." There's a distracted little nod as Vandenberg takes her leave, clearly the journalist's mind is not stuck in the past. "No rush. Have a good evening, Natalie."