[H2]Aboard the Tiresias, briefing room[/h2]

"Hey honey," Vance said as Liz took a seat, sliding over to lean against her table, "don't think I've seen you around here before, what do you say we-."

Before he could finish a massive hand closed around the back of his neck, dragging him away and half throwing him back into his chair.

"Mission now, women later," Grant said warning as he retook his own seat, glaring at the younger man. Any complaints vance may have had were silenced as the last two members of his team along with the ship's vice captain and a senior engineer walked in. Eric and Jim were brothers, at least, that's what they told everyone, and tended to be troublemakers in their free time, really only their skill at and willingness to go on scavenging missions allowed them to be tolerated.

The vice-captain, Huxley Winters, was a stern but fair man and son of the previous captain. While the position wasn't supposed to be hereditary it didn't stop the Winters family from controlling many upper leadership positions. As Huxley entered he directed the engineer with him, known simply as Scott, to put a large, cloth wrapped and apparently very heavy package onto one of the tables, which groaned under the weight.

"Everyone here?" Huxley asked needlessly as he scanned the two teams, "good, let's get this started.

"The details of this mission shouldn't leave this room, hopefully the troubles we are experiencing will be dealt with before the general crew notices anything. In short, one of our primary boilers isn't working."

"The boiler itself is fine, technically," Scott corrected.

"I'm getting there," Huxley paused to glare before motioning to the package which Scott unwrapped. It resembled a block of steel as long as someone's forearm, nearly as wide and a bit more than a hand span thick. Oil seeped from several smaller holes drilled in the face while salt encrusted larger openings lined the sides.

"This is the steam distribution manifold from boiler A2," Scott explained, "it stopped working about two days ago, it's supposed to manage steam pressure through various systems but was causing several lines to over-pressure while neglecting others. We've rigged up a stopgap measure, pushing the output from A2 through A1's manifold, but that won't hold long."

"In short, in a few days things will start getting cold," Huxley took over, "we'll have to direct power away from unnecessary systems, heating, lighting, support craft, that kind of thing. Your mission is to find a replacement. We've located three possible places," Huxley paused to pull out a map and lay it out on the table, "the first two are in this town, the ruins of Yonkers. It had two main boiler plants, one located near the port and the other inland to service housing. The city has doubtless been scavenged before, and the steam plants are a primary target of anyone's missions, but we're hoping the manifolds were too heavy and difficult to extract when compared to other parts.

"The other location," Huxley paused to pull a black and white photograph from a pocket and put it next to the map. It showed a distant and slightly blurry photo of another airship, "is this, the Hephaestus, a ship reported lost last spring according to messages we received. Our scout pilots found it drifting near by, frankly I'm surprised it's still afloat but it'll have several manifolds we can use. But it's likely crawling with Touched and who knows what else."

"Have you tried, I dunno, fixing that thing?" Vance asked, one foot up on the table and nodding to the manifold.

"It's a precision tooled piece of kit," Scott answered, "none of the machine shops on board are capable of the accuracy needed, we plan to try anyways, but the chance of it working is low."

"Do you really think anyone here is stupid enough to go to a ghost ship?" Grant spoke up.

"That's why there's only two teams here, Old Man says we're not desperate enough to force you try that. If it drifts over land we might try to force it down by punching holes in the balloons but it's over sea right now and we don't know where it'll end up," Huxley replied, "Grant, your team is senior so you get first pick."

"The port plant," the large man grunted after a moment's thought.

"I've written details for how to identify the manifold here," Scott said, handing out slips of paper, "in short make sure you find the part number on the side and match it to one of the numbers here."

"Finally while the manifold is the most important, keep your eye out for other things, Merc tanks, good food, you know the like," Huxley finished, glancing at Jarrad, "which location do you prefer?"