#RustbucketTales  #Part2

#RustbucketTales  #Part2

Ran the second session, dealing with cleanup form “Planetary Salvage”.  This one went rather differently. The lack of a strong opening scene led to a lack of focus, while I never really pushed hard enough to make their problems that big. OTOH, what we did get was character; Anvil doesn’t like people, Kestrel solves problems by talking her way out of them, Orcha by murdering people. And its created some baggage which can come back to haunt them in future sessions.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…A Shards of Xa shuttle strafes the bridge of a wrecked starship; Orcha-37 flings himself away from the blast.

…Anvil finishes cutting an armoured vault door open, then looks down at a significant (and bulky) looking cargo crate.

…Orcha-37 flubs an ambush on a group of Xa pirates, catches a laser blast on the shoulder, and flees into the wreck.

…Anvil and Kestrel haul the crate across a hole blasted in the hull and into the hovering “Shadow”

…the “Shadow” dodges between laser blasts as Orcha-37 tumbles through the rear cargo door with his jetpack.

…Orcha-37 scans the package with a handheld X-ray scanner, turning it to full power at the precise alignment specified by his HUD to scramble the AI core’s short-term memory.

…Kestrel and Orcha-37 wait nervously in the dark on the bridge of the “Rustbucket” as a pirate cruiser passes nearby.

…the “Rustbucket” coasts through space, then engages its jump drive and disappears.

Several weeks later. While the Rustbucket escaped SR-388 without being identified by the Xa (they think), the ship has taken a back-route through the jump network in an effort to keep a low profile. Now it has arrived at its rendevous point: New Perth City on Eanope – an airless world famous for its cadmium red colour, toxic soil, and water rationing. The planetary economy revolves around extracting and exporting cadmium, and the operation is run (through a subsidiary) by Nakamoto Horizons.

Kestrel has past history here. A few years back he beat a local mine supervisor, Alvin Hassani, at cards, at least according to “the wider rules of gambling” (one of which is apparently “its not cheating if they’re too drunk to notice”). He won a consignment of ore that was supposed to go somewhere else, causing Hassani some difficulty. Orcha-37 meanwhile has to make contact with Ito Hiroshi, their Epoch Trust employer, and deliver the salvaged (and covertly lobotomised) AI core. But he works undercover as a science commission leader in the mining company, and can’t afford to have his cover blown. So the crew have reasons to tread carefully.

And they do – mostly. They split up, do their housekeeping (Anvil arranging spare parts and making more permanent repairs to the Shadow, Kestrel arranging a cargo), and let Orcha get on with it. Unfortunately he draws himself to the attention of local police by applying for a weapons permit to bypass restrictive local weapons laws, which puts him on a watchlist and gets him a tail. He makes it to the appointed meeting place, a high end bar in an upper-class entertainment district, and sends the “I’m here” signal: a simple matter of ordering the right cocktail. Then having set things in motion, he ditches his tail in a shopping mall, buys some stims to keep him running, and settles in to watch the meeting place for the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Kestrel has been working the starport bars to find passangers. He finds four – a pair of miners at the end of their contracts, a young girl who is obviously in trouble, and a tourist / intersteller backpacker named Wray. He’s just taken payment from the latter when he’s flanked by a pair of large miners and Alvin Hassani sits down in his booth. Hassani wants his ore back, or the money to pay for it; Kestrel claims he won it fair and square. They go back and forth a bit and Kestrel starts spinning him a line about having a hot shipment of luxury foodstuffs – high-fluid vegetables, real coffee – coming in in ten days. He’ll cut Hassani in for 50 percent to smooth things over. Hassani buys it, but makes it clear: “if you cross me this time, it will hurt you”. And he sticks one of his goons, Rusty, on Kestrel to keep an eye on him. The moment Hassani has gone, Kestrel starts work on Rusty. And before you know it, they’re best of friends, and Kestrel has brought him off with a free passage to start a new, higher-paying career on Ghazan. The moment he’s got his cadmium and Orcha has finished his business, they’re out of there, and screw Alvin.

Orcha spots his contact, but also realises that Hiroshi has a tail: a professional, far better than the cops he lost yesterday. He slips inside the bar, establishes the delivery point (a warehouse near the starport, where the AI will be interrogated), and informs Hiroshi of the tail. They plan an ambush: Orcha will leave first, then Hiroshi will follow about 20 minutes later, taking a specific route which should allow his tail to be neutralised. But as Orcha leaves the bar, he gets spotted by the cops again; rather than draw attention to himself, he tries to talk his way out of trouble. The quick study of local law he did when arriving on-planet pays off, the detective calls his supervisor, and the potential arrest is turned into a formal “character interview” at the station in the morning. But in the process he’s missed his chance at ambushing Hiroshi’s tail, so instead he heads back to the ship to sort out the delivery.

Back at the ship, Wray the backpacker has turned up early. He’s curious, friendly, and just a little bit too observant about the Shadow being a stealth shuttle – which immediately gets on Anvil’s nerves. When Orcha turns up, Wray bugs him about his business. So naturally they recruit him as a temporary cargo handler to deliver their small, high-value package to its destination. That goes well enough, but when Orcha checks out Wray on the SectorNet, he learns that Wray writes about his travels, including the illicit adventures he gets up to (apparently helping someone sell forged artworks several worlds back). So, details of his mysterious secret op may get splashed around in six months. Oh dear.

In the morning, the cadmium cargo finally arrives – delayed due to having to wait behind higher priority bulk haulers, and only half the amount they wanted, but its something. Kestrel oversees loading while Orcha tries to convince the local cops that he’s just an honest bounty-hunter looking for work, and not up to no good. Once he’s done there, he decides he has some unfinished business, a security leak in the mission to clean up. So he tracks down Hiroshi’s address (a nice apartment in a high-class neighbourhood), breaks in unobserved, disables the surveillance the Nakamoto spies have put on it, and when Hiroshi returns, slits his throat. A very professional job, except that he gets seen by a bystander walking away from the apartment and pegged as a stranger. Which means that when the body gets found, and the locals get interviewed, he’ll get noticed, and possibly marked as a suspect. But by then Rustbucket will have lifted and he’ll be halfway to the jump point…