#RustbucketTales   #Part4

#RustbucketTales   #Part4  

Fourth session. I abandoned my plans to open with a new Jump Point, since I really wanted to find out what happened to the Cadmium. So, another new system opening, with a few basic questions designed to establish threats. The opening was a bit slow as I struggled to turn the mundanity of “we hit the bar” into action. But it took off quite nicely after that.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

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

…Kestrel promises Alvin Hassani a share of a cargo – high fluid vegetables, real coffee. Hassani says “if you cross me this time, it will hurt you”.

…Dev tells Kestrel that she was an indentured servant and wants to go “anywhere far away”.

…Anvil says to his friend “the problem is the declaration of whether or not you’re human”.

…Kestrel’s attempts to sell his cargo are frustrated by a strike.

…Anvil is hit with a hand-stunner by a Nakamoto agent and goes down like a sack of potatoes.

…Orcha shoots two Nakamoto agents with a silenced pistol; a third runs for cover and escapes.

…The Rustbucket soars into orbit from Ghazan.

Asherah is a thick belt of rock and ice orbiting close to a dim red star. A few decades ago they discovered unusual concentrations of radioactives and rare earths, and so now Asherah is the site of a colonisation effort, with a small but determined group of colonists trying to bootstrap themselves into an orbital industrial economy. “Port”, the major settlement, is built into a small rock, spun for gravity. Nearby, there’s the glistening array of the system’s new solar power project – and a garishly coloured, heavily armed Shards of Xa destroyer. As “Rustbucket” negotiates docking clearance and noses towards the port facilities at the axis, the SectorNet is full of nervous talk about the Shards of Xa wanting “tribute” from the new colony…

On the way out of Ghazan, Orcha-37 received a tipoff from Orcha-17, one of his clone-brothers who was just arriving. The Reverend Klune of Green Worlds is probably in the Asherah system. Ironclad has a price on their head for inciting a mutiny, and wants them – preferably alive, so they can hold a show-trial.

After they clear customs, Kestrel heads immediately for a dockside bar, in search of faces other than the four she’s been cooped up with for the last few weeks. Orcha and Dev the deckhand tag along. Its a rough-and-tumble place, full of belters, port-workers, and scarred, armoured pirates on “shore leave”. Orcha starts asking questions about whether there’s any Greenworlders on Port, and a couple of people remember someone. But his clumsy attempt to bribe a customs officer causes offence, and he barely manages to talk his way out of the police being called. Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long for the pirates to cause trouble. A scruffy belter spills someone’s drink, and he’s quickly up against a wall with a knife to his throat. Kestrel decides to intervene and tries to talk the pirates down, but merely makes herself their target. When the pirates turn on her, she dodges out of the way, but it doesn’t come to blows – Orcha has his own knife out and is backing her up. Together, they back nervously out of the bar, as the pirates threaten to cut them up if they ever see them again.

Outside they meet up with Dev and the belter Kestrel rescued. He offers to buy them a drink, and they head up a few levels to somewhere away from the docks. The belter, Europa, fills them in a bit on the local economy and the landscape (the racks, where belters and itinerants spend their time dockside, and Brook Park, which has trees and flowing water – admission 5 credits). They spend the rest of the evening getting happily drunk.

Meanwhile Anvil has been looking for work. He wants to upgrade the ship’s engines, and is looking to barter his engineering skills for some parts which will help. After scanning the SectorNet, he gets a job working on the Kublai, a class-1 refinery ship, repairing its misaligned drive in exchange for a five tonne Necklin Rod. But when he gets in from his first EVA scoping out the task, there’s an unwelcome surprise: a pair of goons from the ALF, the mafia which runs the port. They dabble in slavery, and view synthetics like Anvil as risk-free investments, able to be easily sold on worlds which don’t consider them human. But they haven’t pegged him as a synth yet, and he keeps his engineering suit faceplate closed to minimise the chances. The ALF have a simple rule: “no-one works on our docks without us getting a cut”. Anvil folds immediately, apologises, wants to make it right. So they offer him a choice: he can pay them 10% of the value of his job up front (which would wipe him out), or use his job on the Kublai to boost some parts for them. Anvil weighs the options, and agrees to scam his employer…

Last night Europa had told Orcha that the Housing Office has info on everyone in Port, but he suspects they’re unlikely to be friendly to a bounty hunter, so he asks Dev to make some inquiries. She agrees, but only after he promises he won’t kill his target. Ten minutes later, she emerges from the Housing Office with a scrap of paper with a name and address: the only Greenworlder on Port is a “Lee Oret”, with a single down in the Racks. Orcha heads off to a stakeout, and Dev heads back to the ship.

Meanwhile, Kestrel heads for a cargo brokerage to finally shift that Cadmium. She manages to move one unit, in exchange for some fragile solar panels, but demand is low at the moment. She takes the opportunity to fill the rest of the hold with rare earths and processed ores, and on the way out the broker warns her that she’ll need to pay off the “cargo handlers guild” (AKA the ALF) as well if she wants her cargo to make it into the hold intact. Sighing, she heads off to another dockside bar to negotiate a price. It eats up her profit from her passengers to Ghazan, but she negotiates special handling for the solar panels, and a discount for breakages. Leaving Dev in charge of the loading, she heads off to another bar to find some passengers for their next stop.

Anvil works on the Kublai, scavenging some of its hyper-capacitors to pay off the ALF. Next time they crank up the drive to push a rock, it’ll go “krunk”, and a ship full of people will be left in the middle of nowhere with no power. But Anvil will be in the next system by then. Sealing them into a crate for the ALF, he heads back to the ship to supervise delivery of his Necklin rod.

Orcha stakes out “Lee Oret”‘s space in the racks, and verifies that he is indeed Reverend Klune. When he gets back to the ship, he finds it a hive of activity, with cargo handlers sporting ALF tattoos loading containers into the hold. He asks Anvil about ways to get his bounty aboard without attracting attention, and Anvil points him at the ALF. Sure, they can help him move a human sized “package”. Living or dead? Conscious or unconscious? Having made multiple positive business connections with a profit-motivated criminal organisation with a sideline in slavery pays off; it’ll cost Orcha 10% of his bounty, up front, but he can afford that (though it’ll hurt if he doesn’t get paid). All he has to do is get his target to a particular warehouse near the docks, and the ALF will handle the rest.

Orcha heads back to the racks for the pickup, and intercepts his target as he is coming home at shift-break. Klune’s shoulders sag as Orcha sticks the stunner against his back and declares that he’s collecting the bounty – it was only a matter of time before he got caught. Still, he tries to talk Orcha out of it as he walks him down quiet corridors in the direction of the docks. They’re most of the way there when they turn a corner and almost walk into a pair of police; Klune, seeing his chance, cries out that he’s being kidnapped, and it all goes to shit. Orcha tries to disable the cops quickly with a stun grenade, but gets tagged with a stun pistol; Klune runs for it as the cops call for backup. Orcha gets stunned again breaking contact, but manages to stagger away and hide. He’s lost Klune in the confusion, and the place is swarming with cops looking for a piece of the scumbag who took a go at them. Cursing, he sneaks his way back to the ship…