Author: Larp Wellington

#RustbucketTales   #Part11  

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…The Shadow clips the prison transfer shuttle stabiliser, sending it immediately into a spin towards the city below…

…Orcha checks BountyNet and sees that he is wanted on Jagatika for murder, assault, and escaping from prison.

…Rustbucket sits in a rocky desert beneath a cloudy sky. Anvil looks at the scorched remains of the proton depolarizer on the top hull and says “looks like we’re not hiding anymore”

…The Shadow approaches Fallow Highport, passing the curved, deadly shape of the Scythe in its docking port…

…Lynard steps on a lizard burrow and is dragged down, screaming. Orcha activates his jetpack, then neatly shoots the lizard through the throat as it bites on Lynard’s legs.

…Kidd tells Kestrel and Anvil “I can get those parts for you, if you make a delivery run for me…”.

…Orcha dumps a bleeding Lynard on the ward-room table and tells Dev and Phoebe “you fix him,” then walks out.

…Anvil tells Kestrel the optimum course to take back to the station to avoid detection. Kestrel notices the course details popping up on the “backup computer”‘s screen just before he speaks them.

…Orcha looks up from gutting a lizard to see the Rustbucket make a wobbly liftoff, turn to the South, and disappear over the horizon…

Orcha had been walking all day. He was almost out of water, and had only the meat from the butchered lizard for food. Other than the burrowing predators, he’d also seen a few of the elephant-sized Fallow Beasts they preyed on, and had attracted the attention of some circling winged scavangers who appeared to fill the vulture niche. Rustbucket had come this way, but now he’d reached a barrier – a huge canyon, wider than he could cross with his suit jets. Hunkering down behind a rock and chewing some dead lizard, he scanned the edges through his rifle scope, looking for a way forward. Five or six klicks to the west, the canyon narrowed to just a few kilometers, and there seemed to be a structure across it. Increasing the magnification showed a bridge, a single span of stone in a perfect inverted catenary – not the sort of thing he’d expect the local rustics to have. On the southern side there was an obviously local tech watchtower, made of stone blocks, with a tethered fallow-beast and a thin plume of smoke showing habitation. Slinging his rifle, Orcha began to creep between the rocks to get closer…

Up on the station, Kestrel and Anvil had just finished loading the last of the parts into the Shadow when Anvil’s comm beeped for attention. Sai had been watching the traffic pattern for arrivals from Georus, the system they’d come from, and had got a hit. It could be bringing a news package, including word of Orcha’s bounty, and could even be transmitting it to the station right now. Sai beeped again: the ship was Nerian registered, the yacht Tanngrisnir. That wasn’t good – the only “yachts” from Neria were owned by the ruling family, and armed, and Rustbucket had past history with them. While Ironclad had got the Nerians to withdraw their bounty on the Rustbucket’s crew, the bounty on Orcha meant that all bets were off; they were free to collect, and Rustbucket might just end up as collateral damage. Definitely something to avoid. As they cruised towards the planet on an “authorised” flightpath, Sai beeped again: the “yacht” definitely wasn’t a yacht, and it had queried traffic control for news of Rustbucket. They were being hunted.

Down on the planet, Orcha hid in the rocks near the bridge until dusk, then began to sneak across, using the curve of the arch as cover. From up close, it was clear that the bridge did not belong here – it was made of a single piece of stone, probably nanoformed, and well beyond the tech the locals used (apart from antibiotics and a couple of long-range radios, they limited themselves to only what could be made by a local blacksmith). He’d made it over the peak and was partway down the other side when a voice called out from the tower: “who goes there?” Introducing himself as “Orcha of Hansar”, Orcha made his way forward, and was welcomed by the hunting party currently residing there. The lizard-hunters were friendly and hospitable, even to a forbidden offworlder. They inquired whether he was from the starship which had flown over that morning, but also insisted that he travel to a nearby village, Tapakiri, to present himself to the Guardians for arrest. One of them, Fortitude, would show him the way in the morning. Since the village was in the direction Rustbucket had headed, and figuring he could always kill or stun them later, Orcha agreed.

Out in the desert, Kestrel frowned at the empty valley. “This is definitely where we left it” – but Rustbucket was gone. Low-light sensors showed some blood, and some tracks heading south, but no sign of what had happened to their ship. Boosting The Shadow to altitude, she had Anvil run a sensor scan – which rapidly spotted the heat signature of an idling starship power-plant near a small village to the south. Rustbucket had been set down in a cornfield, but looked undamaged. Kestrel put the Shadow into a dive, pulled up at the last minute, triggered the docking port, and executed a perfect docking-under-thrust.

Inside, the ship was empty. A lot of blood and discarded medical supplies in the ward room, but the crew were nowhere to be seen, and Dr Westcott wasn’t in his cell. While Kestrel and Anvil speculate about what has happened, there is a banging on the main airlock door; there is a group of Guardians outside who want them to present themselves for arrest. When they ask about their friends, they’re informed that they are currently in the town jail. Kestrel turns on the charm, and arranges safe passage to negotiate with the local authorities.

Shortly afterwards they’re led through the dark streets, past rows of low-tech “houses”, to a stone building and a meeting with the village headman. He reassures Kestrel and Anvil that the others are safe – though one of them lost his leg due to venom from a lizard bite – and demands to know why they have broken the law and landed. Kestrel says they were here on a hunting trip, and that Nakamoto sold them a permit; when one of their party got into difficulties they naturally assumed they could call on the local people for assistance. Naturally, she’ll compensate the village for their trouble, and once the ship is repaired, be on their way. The headman buys it hook, line and sinker, orders everyone released, and starts talking about urgent messages to the capital and demanding explanations from the offworld security force. As she leads them back to the ship, Kestrel tells Dev to whip up a quick official looking landing permit; she’s sure they’ve got some Nakamoto letterhead around they can crib from…

The next day, as Anvil works on fixing Rustbucket (under the watchful eye of a couple of Guardians, who are largely there to keep the curious away), they talk about Orcha. Phoebe thinks (hopes?) that he’s died of thirst by now; she’s pretty angry about Lynard’s leg, and blames Orcha for the whole thing. Kestrel says she’ll make Orcha buy Lynard a new one. But they have to go back and get him; “I wouldn’t trust leaving him on this planet with these yokels. He’ll set himself up as a god-king or something”. Fears of incipient divine tyranny are eased later that evening when Orcha, escorted by Fortitude, arrives at the village. Kestrel quickly identifies him as the missing member of her crew, forestalling arrest, and Orcha gives Fortitude a shiny new rifle as thanks for the company on the trip. As he r-enters the ship, Dev spits at him: “I wish you’d died out there in the desert”. Rustbucket is not a happy ship.

Repairs complete, and the villagers paid off with some handwoven Jagatikan fabrics, Rustbucket lifts off. Orcha persuades them to check out the bridge, and after a scanning run (definitely nanoformed), they land on it. The bridge doesn’t look human made, and they speculate on its purpose – is it an artwork? Anvil hauls out a laser cutter and cuts a sample – which reveals that the bridge is also (slowly) self-repairing; in a year or two there will no sign anyone ever vandalised it. Information on the bridge is probably valuable; all they need to do is get it to the right market. So Rustbucket lifts off and heads for orbit.

…and runs straight into not just the Tanngrisnir, but a Nakamoto interdiction boat. Tanngrisnir wastes no time, broadcasting that Rustbucket is harbouring a wanted fugitive and opening fire with its energy cannon. Rustbucket fails to evade the blast, but the shields take most of it. As damage indicators start flashing, Kestrel turns tail and runs straight for the Nakamoto ship, trying to put it between her and the Nerians. It works, and Tanngrisnir pulls back, unwilling to fire on a Nakamoto ship, but it simply trades one problem for another: the Nakamoto ship scans Rustbucket and gets a solid ID, and the Nakamoto Captain demands Kestrel repay her obligation to them by turning over Orcha so he can collect on the bounty.

This is a problem Kestrel knows how to solve. “You expect me to give over my bounty like that?” Instead, she shifts to a private channel and offers to compensate the Nakamoto captain personally if he looks the other way and lets her collect on Orcha herself – in another system, of course. One cargo of dustspice later, and Rustbucket is running for the jump-point, Tanngrisnir far behind. But as they burn for the outer system, they notice something ominous: Scythe is no longer docked.

Damaged, and with no cargo beyond a slightly depleted haul of guns, and with the Nerians and probably a crew of professional bounty hunters on their tail, Rustbucket jumps. They’ve escaped… for now.

#RustbucketTales   #Part10  

last week they made a mess. This week, they try and hide from it.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…Anvil tries to find out what’s wrong with his hand scanner and connects it to the test system. A massive amount of data downloads, then a message pops up: “Hello. My name is Sai.”

…Kestrel talks to a new passenger, Matha Dowe, in a bar. She’s a turncoat from the Shards of Xa; “I need to get outsystem. My former crewmates won’t be too happy to see me”. Later, Orcha checks out her identity and discovers that she is a bounty hunter…

…Dev tells Kestrel that she needs her to contact her family…

…Orcha reads the file Bryanna sent over: “Dr Lincoln Westcott, Greenworlder priest. Currently in maximum security detention on piracy charges after he and his congregation stole a yacht”…

…Veer tells Anvil “Kanu and Braj would like a word with you”. They loom behind him menacingly…

…Orcha is led, handcuffed, into the prison transfer shuttle. Midflight, he beckons a guard over, then reaches under his seat and tries to jab him with the stunrod. But he’s too slow and the other guard zaps him in the back…

…The Shadow clips the prison transfer shuttle stabiliser, sending it immediately into a spin towards the city below…

…The pilot keys open the hatch at gunpoint, and Anvil hauls Orcha and Dr Westcott out to the sound of approaching police sirens. They board The Shadow and it burns for orbit.

Rustbucket ran. With Orcha now wanted for murder, assault, and escape from prison, it had no other choice. It bypassed Qahwah using smuggler routes, hoping to beat the news to Lyca. But a fast courier and a couple of priority transmissions had put the news ahead of them, and Kestrel judged it too risky to dock. Instead, she plotted a course for Nakhon and kept running. Orcha-37 would have to meet up with Orcha-17 somewhere else. Fortunately, she was able to put Phoebe at ease with stories of Peregrine’s exploits when he was young, and convince her that seeing the universe would be an adventure.

Orcha spent the time debriefing Dr Westcott. Westcott knows what Epoch is up to: trying to crack the encrypted Greenworlder gospel and locate the greenworlds for themselves. That’s why he’d stolen the ship: to try and get there first, to warn humanity’s unknown brothers that Epoch was coming to enslave or dissect them. He clearly knows the location of a greenworld, but he isn’t talking yet, and with a ship full of passengers, Orcha isn’t yet willing to push it.

Kestrel kept running, stopping only for fuel at smuggler hideouts, pushing out into the fringe. But eventually something had to break…

Fallow: a system of two halves. The planet is owned by a bunch of rustics dedicated to living a simpler existence, with nothing but high-powered rifles, vaccines and antibiotics (because even rustics aren’t that stupid). They’re self-interdicted, refusing to deal with the outside world except limited exports through a single port. Overhead, built into an orbiting rock, its the usual starfaring civilisation: a small community of itinerant belters, a maintenance base and stopover for those going further out into the frontier, and the Nakamoto security contractors Fallow pays to keep everyone else from bugging them.

As Rustbucket fell into the system, Anvil knew they had to stop. The proton depolariser, vital to the ship’s stealth system, had been under a lot of stress, and was liable to fail. No stealth would make things much harder if they had to keep jumping, but it looked like they’d finally outrun the news and could spend a couple of days on maintenance. Still, it would be risky – the SectorNet showed that the Scythe, a bounty-hunter ship, was docked; if word reached Fallow while they were still around, and Scythe had connected Orcha with the Rustbucket, things could get very messy. So rather than risk the highport and let everyone know they were around, Kestrel decided to land on the planet, in an isolated rocky desert which looked to have good cloud cover during the day. But their stealth approach was too much for the depolariser, and it died just before landing; if they wanted to get Rustbucket offworld without getting arrested, they’d have to fix it.

Before landing, Orcha had looked up what was known about Fallow on the SectorNet. It turned out that the desert was home to the Greater Fallow Rock Lizard (technically lizardoid), a large burrowing carnivore hunted by the locals for its skin (hence, the rifles: protecting yourself from dangerous megafauna justifies simple firearms). While Anvil checks the ship and verifies that the depolariser is indeed dead, Orcha starts reading up and planning a hunt…

The depolarizer needs a total replacement, which means either buying one or acquiring the parts to put one together in the Rustbucket’s manufactory. Which in turn means that Anvil and Kestrel will have to take the Shadow and head to the highport to acquire it. They take some of the handwoven textiles Kestrel purchased on Jagatika, and Anvil also takes the ship’s backup computer (hosting Sai), spinning Kestrel a line of bullshit about needing to run some diagnostics. After telling Dev to make sure Phoebe is OK, Kestrel takes off and plots a roundabout course which should see them approach the highport from the direction of Fallow’s outer moon.

Orcha meanwhile has decided that he wants company on his hunting expedition. After annoying Phoebe (who is horrified by the thought of killing and eating something), he convinces Lynard. After some quick rifle practice, the two of them set off for some distant rocks, which Orcha has identified as lizard country. When they reach the ridge, the two of them split up, keeping an eye out for lizards. Unfortunately Lynard is too busy boggling at the huge open sky above him, and steps in a burrow. His screams alert Orcha, who sees him being dragged down; he immediately activates his jump pack to get a decent view. As he climbs, he can see that a lizard has Lynard by the legs and is pulling him down; at the top of his arc, he lines up with his sniper rifle and shoots it cleanly through the throat. But Lynard can’t walk, let alone help carry the kill back to the ship, and Orcha will have to abandon his prize to the desert predators to take Lynard back to the ship.

Kestrel’s story of being on a supply run from lunar survey mission convinces the port authority, and the Shadow docks at the highport. Anvil immediately gets to work, plugging in Sai to the StationNet and doing a search of repair contractors. He can’t just buy a replacement depolariser – its specialist military tech – but the parts are available. Anvil heads off, but while he can get some of the parts, he starts to run into closed doors and awkward questions. Most of the repair shops here are contracted to Nakamoto, which has a virtual monopoly on system trade, and won’t deal with outsiders. Sai suggests that the Scythe is equipped with a depolariser, but stealing parts from a bounty-hunter ship doesn’t appeal, so instead he asks Kestrel for a better plan. Kestrel, who has been hitting the bars and assessing the market, knows just the man: Kidd, captain of the Profit margin, a free trader who works both sides of the line. He might be willing to act as a straw purchaser for their parts, for the right price…

It costs Kestrel both the textiles, and a favour: Kidd needs a delivery made to Fallow, and possibly a collection. Nothing dubious, just supplies for the illegal Iridium prospecting operation he has going down there. And he’ll even throw in the fuel for the Shadow, cos he’s a nice guy. Kestrel agrees – its either this or get used to being a lot more visible – and heads back to prep the Shadow.

Orcha finally drags Lynard back to the ship. He’s radioed ahead, so Dev has already got the first aid kit set up. He dumps Lynard on the ward-room table, orders Dev and Phoebe to fix him up, and heads straight back out again in the hope of retrieving his dead lizard. He’s too late – there’s another one snacking on it when he gets there, but he shoots it through the neck. He’s halfway through gutting the second lizard when he hears the distant roar of the ship’s engines. He looks up, to see the Rustbucket make a wobbly liftoff, turn to the South, and disappear over the horizon…

The prospecting camp is a small collection of bubble-tents, solar panels, and a small dish in the lee of a mountain. Kestrel figures out something is wrong when she makes the first pass overhead – there’s no-one about. Setting the Shadow down, she leaves Anvil on guard and heads to investigate. She finds the first body a little way out of the camp, dead, mauled by animals. She finds two more in the tents. Bt there should be more people here. She calls Anvil over, who notices a few bullet holes in one of the tents, and that the rack where the prospecting samples are kept is empty. Examining the bodies, he finds they’ve been shot before being dumped for the scavengers. This is not what Kestrel was being paid for, so she decides to bug out and take the supplies back to Kidd. Hopefully she can convince him that she’s kept her end of the deal and still get paid. But on the roundabout trip back to orbit, when Anvil is advising her on the optimum course to avoid detection, she notices that the “backup computer” is displaying messages every time Anvil’s comm beeps. Suspicious, she runs a diagnostic, but finds nothing – which isn’t good at all…

Back at the highport, Kidd is suspicious. Not that Kestrel murdered his prospectors – she’s not the killing sort – but that she did something to alert Nakamoto. He’s figured out what the parts are for, and that this means Rustbucket is landed on the planet for repairs, and he wants to know where. When Kestrel says that its somewhere cloudy, nowhere they’ll be spotted, he gets it: “you hid in the desert with the lizards, didn’t you?” But its half a planet away from the prospecting camp, so Kidd is convinced that its not her fault, and that he doesn’t have to make her pay the death benefits for his people. He arranges for delivery of the parts, and Kestrel heads back to the Shadow.

Down on the planet, Orcha checks his bearing. The Rustbucket headed this way, and all he has to do is keep walking to find it. Surely Dev or whoever was flying it wouldn’t be stupid enough to fly it all the way to “civilisation”, would they…?

So, secrets are getting out, and someone has stolen the ship. How are they going to get out of this one?

#RustbucketTales  #Part9

Well, this is going to make a mess.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…Rustbucket touches down on a landing pad atop a vast city, beneath a looming cloud-deck

…Peregrine tells Kestrel that her niece Phoebe has taken up with the wrong sort of man. “I want her taken offworld. Somewhere nice, like Qahwah or Lyca”. Behind him, the towers sparkle in the sunlight above the cloud-deck…

…Orcha-17 tells Orcha-37 “You’re going to have to make it right. You’re going to have to find me another Greenworlder. Let me know when you’ve got someone”

…Dev walks beside Kestrel down a crowded “street” and says “there’s so many people!”…

…Bryanna Steiger asks Orcha to remind Cornell of who he should be paying tribute to, and in exchange she’ll find him a Greenworlds Priest…

…Kestrel tells Phoebe and Lynard “I’ll get you both offworld and we’ll split the money. Everyone’s a winner”…

…Cornell tells Anvil “For 50,000 and six medical suspension pods I can get what you need”…

…Cornell mutters about sending a message of his own while opening a door; behind him, the partially paralysed Orcha drags his stunner out and shoots him. Then crawls over to the twitching body and zaps him right in the back of the head at close range…

The next morning. Orcha has slept off his stun. Anvil is hard at work refurbishing the suspension pods for Cornell when Sai beeps for attention: “The man you dealt with yesterday has been admitted to hospital with a serious brain injury”. Apparently Orcha’s close-range stunner shot had fried a cortical implant, causing significant damage. And while Anvil had a visual record of their agreement (Synths being equipped for visual recording), with no-one to deal with, its going to be difficult to enforce. Anvil packs a toolkit and heads for city-bottom to try and see what he can find in Cornell’s workshop.

Meanwhile, Kestrel has been busy. She’s had a few too many run-ins with the law recently, so has been busy acquiring some fake identities. When she gets back, she finds Orcha-37 poring over a dossier of newsvids and police reports. Bryanna Steiger has found him his Greenworlder: Dr Lincoln Westcott. The problem is that he’s in maximum-security detention on piracy charges, after he and his congregation stole a luxury yacht from the spaceport. Orcha has to get him out and wants Kestrel to help with the jailbreak. Along the way, he lets slip why his employers are so interested: the Greenworlders think there was a pre-cursor race which seeded the galaxy with green-worlds, like Earth. The Epoch Trust is interested in this, but owing to the oral nature of Greenworlder scripture, they need a priest to give them the data. Dev is dubious; why not just ask them nicely? But asking nicely isn’t really how Epoch operates. Orcha decides to start at the Greenworlder church – a hole in the wall on Deck 31 – but the woman there is uncooperative; when Orcha asks for an introduction so they can visit him in jail and plan a breakout, she rejects their offer and tells them to leave. When they’ve gone, she lifts the phone and calls the police…

Down at city bottom, Anvil bypasses Cornell’s maglocks with a hull degaussing tool and enters the workshop. He plugs his comm into Cornell’s secure network and tells Sai to get to work. Sai immediately reports that Cornell did not keep a stock of synth parts, but sourced them from a contact named Veer, normally paying in bone marrow and stem cells. After checking the fridge and getting Sai to give him authority over Cornell’s accounts, he goes to a cafe to think. He can’t just steal from Cornell – that would be dishonest. But advancing payment for the work he’s doing is OK…

Back on 31, kestrel suggests to Orcha that they’re going about this the wrong way. “How does your fee compare to the income of a mid-level bureaucrat who has authority to order a prison transfer?” Orcha sees it immediately, and suggests that Bryanna might know who’s bent. When they get there, they find that Bryanna is angry. “You were supposed to send Cornell a simple message, not lobotomise him!” Now she has Cornell’s nephews demanding justice from her. Normally, that would mean demoting Orcha down the levels; but since he’s an offworlder, it means shopping him to the police. Orcha finds this convenient; he’ll need an inside man to get Westcott out during the transfer, and it might as well be him. He talks Bryanna into helping him with the break, and he and Evert sit down to hash out the details…

Down below, Anvil places a call to Veer. Veer is suspicious initially, but seems to come round; he’ll sell Anvil a pair or torsos, with payment in biologicals and cash, and tells him to come ot his warehouse on Deck 7 in three hours for the exchange. But when he gets there, Veer is cold; he’s called Cornell’s nephews to double-check, and now Kanu and Braj want a word with him. “You were with the man who injured my uncle. You have value to him”. Anvil spills his guts about Orcha and tries to persuade them that he’s just an innocent bystander. They don’t buy it, but he can see that Veer does and that he might be able to conclude his deal if he gets out of this alive. They escort him back down to the workshop, then have him call Orcha to lure him into an ambush. Orcha is immediately suspicious, and when it becomes clear that he’s not buying Anvil’s story, Braj gets on the phone: “If you want to see your friend alive, you will come to my uncle’s workshop. You have two hours”.

Orcha starts planning how to ambush the ambushers and heads to the ship to get some gear. When he fills Kestrel in, she points out that Kanu and Braj have the justice they want – Orcha is going to jail. She calls them up, and tries to convince them of this. After checking with Bryanna, they release Anvil unharmed, and he scurries back to the ship.

The next day, Orcha is given a cosmetic beating by one of Bryanna’s goons (got to make it look right), then dumped at a distant police station. While he’s being worked over in the cells by Kanu and Braj’s associates, the Rustbucket lifts off, with passengers and cargo, and plots a leisurely course for the jump point. Kestrel and Anvil stay behind with the Shadow, ready for the dangerous bit. The early part of the plan goes off like clockwork – Orcha is sent to a maximum-security facility, then immediately transferred along with Dr Westcott. Bryanna’s crooked associates have stashed a stunrod under the transfer shuttle’s bench for him. At the appointed time, he calls one of the two guards over, reaches under the seat, and tries to take them down. But he misses his initial strike, and the second guard jabs a stunstick into his back, knocking him down and sending his weapon flying. Struggling through the paralysis, he tries to trip one of the guards and knock them into the other, but they sidestep. The last thing he feels is the jolt of a stunstick in his side.

Following behind in the Shadow, Kestrel and Anvil figure that something has gone wrong. Orcha should have taken the flyer an hour ago, but its course is unchanged, and now there is city below them. So, they improvise: Kestrel carefully brings the Shadow into formation with the prison shuttle, then on Anvil’s advice, nudges its right stabiliser. The shuttle lurches and goes into a spin, its pilot screaming a mayday call over the comm. The shuttle lands hard, with the Shadow setting down next to it.

The crash wakes Orcha. He’s piled on top of a guard (neck broken, not a threat), and there’s something wrong with his leg. Next to him, the other guard groans. Grabbing a stunstick in his good hand, Orcha jobs it down until the groaning stops, then rummages for a key for his restraints.

Outside, Anvil immediately disembarks and takes to the shuttle’s rear door with a laser cutter. But its resistant. He’s just reaching for the hullbuster charge when he finds himself staring down the barrel of a stunner and the shuttle’s pilot tells him to freeze. At which point Kestrel steps out of the Shadow, fires a warning shot from his pistol (Jagatikans don’t like actual firearms), and turns the tables. The shuttle pilot keys the emergency release code into the door, but he gets a good look at Kestrel while doing so. After that, its just a matter of hauling Orcha and Dr Westcott into the Shadow, setting a hullbuster to destroy the shuttle’s flight logs, and heading for orbit and a stealth intercept ahead of the approaching police flyers.

#RustbucketTales   #Part8  

Some interesting backstory from this session, not to mention a lovely example of different character agendas making a mess for each other…

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…Kestrel talks to a new passenger, Matha Dowe, in a bar. She’s a turncoat from the Shards of Xa; “I need to get outsystem. My former crewmates won’t be too happy to see me”. Later, Orcha checks out her identity and discovers that she is a bounty hunter…

…Anvil tries to find out what’s wrong with his hand scanner and connects it to the test system. A massive amount of data downloads, then a message pops up: “Hello. My name is Sai.”

….Orcha centres Reverend Klune’s head in his scope and squeezes the trigger. It explodes like a ripe melon and Klune falls to the floor. He looks up to see people pointing in his direction and yelling…

…Fleet Captain Rutland tells Kestrel “you were supposed to recover the ship quietly, not cause a diplomatic incident”

…Sai’s screen says “I am not registered”. Anvil says “Hmmm. I can probably fix that….”

…Kestrel shakes hands with an Ironclad supply clerk in front of a crate of guns.

…Orcha-17 tells Orcha-37 “You’re going to have to make it right. You’re going to have to find me another Greenworlder. Let me know when you’ve got someone”

…Anvil pushes the (full) tiger cage across the landing pad towards a warehouse guarded by armed men.

After their adventure with the tiger, the crew of the Rustbucket decide to do some nice, safe trading for a while. Having traded some dustspice for vegetables on the garden world of Qahwah, they set course for Jagatika, the next major world down the line. On the pleasant journey the crew bonds. Anvil starts treating Dev with some respect, on the grounds that she’s started doing her job properly (meanwhile, she’s established that he has absolutely no romantic interest in her). Orcha bonds with Anvil by showing an interest in the ship’s engineering quirks – which are many. Rustbucket, it turns out, is a converted stealth gunboat – the port and starboard cargo bays would normally hold missiles, there’s a forward weapons assembly which is just empty (well, technically its smuggling compartments). But careful checks of the serial numbers of major components shows that they belong to several different vessels – mostly from the same class, but all marked as no longer in use, stricken, or mothballed. And that, plus a few probing questions and the chance discovery of a cancelled bounty on Kestrel reveals the truth: Kestrel was discharged from Ironclad for stealing. Shipments went missing, even a few ships. Vessels and parts that were meant to be mothballed were redirected – including the Rustbucket. No wonder Kestrel was so nervous about working for Ironclad: she’s flying their stolen property right under their noses.

Jagatika: the most populated world in the cluster, a crowded, filthy pit full of people desperate to get out. The city is stratified, literally ruled over by the wealthy who live in the uppermost levels of the tallest towers. Living conditions, services and infrastructure get worse the lower down you go, and the police rule over everything with an iron shock-baton, afraid the slightest spark could lead to food riots or worse. Most people spend their entire lives indoors, and never see the sky.

Rustbucket touches down at a vast spaceport atop a huge arcology. Through the rain, they can barely make out the shape of others surrounding it, and as they came in to land they could see them as far as the eye could see. Unusually, Kestrel leaves the customs clearance to the others, skips her customary post-landing bar-crawl / buyer hunt, and catches a rapid transit from the starport to the heart of the city. Once there, she switches to transit elevator to Deck 50, then (after the police check her invitation) a far smaller elevator to the upper levels. Eventually, she winds up at the imposing door of a private apartment in the high 60’s, where a snooty butler (who looks down his nose at her stained and utilitarian shipsuit) shows her in to the living room of her brother, Peregrine.

Peregrine has a lot of space, and a view, huge towers glistening in the sun, with private flyers flitting between them. The lower city is shrouded by the ever-present cloud deck – out of sight, and out of mind. Perry was always a social climber, and he’s come a long way from Deck 31 where they grew up – thanks mostly to his wife. Kestrel thinks he probably wants to lecture her about dragging the “family name” through the mud, and the conversation starts out that way, with Perry needling her about her failed naval career. “Mother would have been so proud of you if you’d been an admiral”. But it turns out Peregrine needs her: he has a family problem, his wife’s niece, Phoebe, who has taken up with the wrong sort of man and is living somewhere in the 20’s. Peregrine wants her hustled offworld, “somewhere nice, like Qahwah or Lyca”. And he makes it clear that he can and will make trouble for Kestrel if she refuses. Naturally, there’ll be compensation if she accepts: ten thousand credits should cover it. After making sure there are no tigers involved – she charges extra for them now – Kestrel makes a show of reluctantly accepting the offer, a plan already forming.

Meanwhile, Anvil has grown concerned about his survivability (synths being hard to treat) and has decided to look for a stock of “spare parts”, a few backup organs in case of a shooting. He’s got a lead on a chopshop owner down on city bottom who is rumoured to deal in synth parts, but thinks he needs help finding them. Orcha offers to help – he worked here for a year as an enforcer to Bryanna Steiger, “the sculptress”, a major underworld figure. And she owes him a favour after that last job. So they head off to her workshop in the mid-decks to look her up.

Orcha’s password is old, but still good; he and Anvil are shown through the workshop and into the back office where Steiger and her lieutenants run the operation. Steiger seems pleased to see Orcha, and after a little reminiscing, they get down to business. Yes, she knows this chop-shop – its owner, Cornell, is a problem for her. He doesn’t make the appropriate payments, doesn’t have a sense of loyalty. She can get one of her people to show them how to get there, but she wants Orcha to remind Cornell of who he should be paying tribute to. That out of the way, Orcha makes his real request: he needs to find a Greenworlder priest. Steiger doesn’t even ask why, but promises that if there’s one on-world, she’ll find them. On the way out, one of Steiger’s bodyguards hands Orcha a concealed stun pistol in case he needs it – Jagatikans don’t like to kill people – and introduces him to Fay, a hard-looking street soldier who’ll be acting as their guide.

Meanwhile, Kestrel has skimmed the file Peregrine’s PI’s had dug up on cousin Phoebe. She’s running a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop on Deck 22, living with Lynard, her business partner, in a capsule apartment. After meeting Dev in an actual sit-down bar, they navigate the crowds to the coffee alcove. There, she gives Phoebe her comm number and convinces her to call her when she gets off-shift, then hangs around with Dev and waits. Dev isn’t used to this – she doesn’t know how to move with the crowd, doesn’t pitch her voice to be heard above the ever-present background noise, and almost commits the ultimate faux-pas of throwing her (disgusting) low-deck “coffee” down a recyc chute rather than handing it to someone who needs it. But Kestrel avoids any major incidents.

A few hours later, after a quick comm-call, they meet Phoebe and Lynard in a “park” – more a wider corridor, where the crowds mill around an abstract sculpture. Kestrel gives them the low-down: Peregrine doesn’t approve of their relationship, and is offering her Cr8,000 to get Phoebe offworld. When Lynard protests, she mentions the actual plan: she splits the money with them and they both go. Everyone’s a winner: Kestrel gets to piss off her brother, Phoebe and Lynard get an offworld holiday, and they all get paid. They’re initially reluctant, worried about losing their business and the lease on their capsule, but Kestrel talks them round by pointing out that they don’t need to come back and could use the money to start elsewhere, somewhere nice. Maybe a farm? And that sells it. Of course, they’ll need to sneak Lynard onto the Rustbucket under a false name, but Kestrel can slip someone a few credits to falsify the records, and Perry won’t know he’s been had until its too late. Phoebe agrees, and Kestrel and Dev head back to the starport to make the arrangements.

Orcha and Anvil catch the rapid transit over a few sectors, then take a series of transit elevators down to the industrial decks, and then a succession of service elevators and maintenance stairwells to the recycling centres on city bottom. There are crowds even here, but now they’re the homeless and destitute, living in the public corridors and scrounging for paste. Down at the bottom, Fay leads them to a nondescript maglocked door – the chop-shop.

Anvil’s negotiations go badly – Cornell names an outrageous price for a “backup chassis”, more than Anvil can really afford even after the Nerian job. Anvil asks whether he could pay for some of it in medical tech, then steps outside and calls Sai on the ship. He has the idea of getting Sai to check whether there’s anything in the junkyards he can repair. After a few seconds and a horrific amount of bandwidth, Sai announces that there are six medical suspension pods available which could be refurbished, that she has already correlated a list of the required parts with what is available in local recyc centres, and that delivery of all components can be arranged to the ship. Would Anvil like her to place the orders? After saying “yes”, Anvil steps back inside and seals the deal: it’ll still cost him a lot of his money, but now he gets to spend three days fixing junk rather than being wiped out. He leaves Orcha to deliver his message and steps outside, his head already full of rebuild pathways. Orcha refuses Fay’s offer of assistance and sends him to wait outside as well, the door’s heavy maglocks making a solid “clunk” behind them.

Alone with Cornell, Orcha delivers Steiger’s demand to pay up, but sees that Cornell won’t buy it unless he demonstrates that he’s serious. So, he slips his knife out, prepared to take off a finger. And that’s when it all goes wrong: Cornell is faster than he looks, dodges Orcha’s grasp, and whips out a stunner. When Orcha tries to take it off him, Cornell doesn’t hesitate to use it. Hearing the sound of stunner fire from inside, Anvil and Fay suddenly realise they’re locked out. But all they can do is beat helplessly against the door.

Inside, Cornell starts dragging the partially paralysed Orcha towards the back room workspace, taking about sending a message of his own, maybe an eye. But he makes the mistake of putting Orcha down while he deals with a retinal locked door – Orcha drags his own stunner out of his pocket, lines it up, and shoots Cornell in the back, then a second time at close range in the back of the head just to make sure he stays out. It takes an age for him to crawl his way through the shop to the door, only to find the maglock has a fingerprint scanner on it. Well, he did need to send a message, and he still has the knife…

#RustbucketTales   #Part7  

You don’t “repossess” a psychotic planetary dictator’s ship, kidnap his daughter and steal his pet tiger without consequences. Amazingly, they managed to talk their way out of them.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…Kestrel talks to a new passenger, Matha Dowe, in a bar. She’s a turncoat from the Shards of Xa; “I need to get outsystem. My former crewmates won’t be too happy to see me”. Later, Orcha checks out her identity and discovers that she is a bounty hunter…

…Anvil tries to find out what’s wrong with his hand scanner and connects it to the test system. A massive amount of data downloads, then a message pops up: “Hello. My name is Sai.”

…Fleet Captain Rutland tells Kestrel “you were supposed to recover the ship quietly, not cause a diplomatic incident”.

…Orcha hits (naked) Sigfried with his stunstick as he goes for a weapon, then stuns Brigette for good measure…

…The Fenris lifts off and boosts for orbit, under fire from a Nerian guntruck…

…Orcha and Anvil stare at the green-striped hunting tiger in the diamante collar, pacing back and forth. Voiceover: “Grendel hasn’t eaten a Minister in six months”…

…Dev asks Orcha: “So its more important that you beat your brother.. sibling… whatever you are, than not kill someone?”; After a pause, Orcha says “yes”…

…Orcha tries to stun the apparently dozing, escaped tiger. It swipes him with a claw, breaking his leg and knocking him down. Then it pins him, savaging his helmet while he stabs it repeatedly with the stunstick…

…An Ironclad Lieutenant backed by a half dozen marines takes Brigette and Sigfried into custody, promising that they will be taken to the Nerian embassy. On the way to the docking tube, she warns Kestrel: “my father has a long reach”.

After docking the Rustbucket at Lyca Highport, Orcha takes a call from his rival clone-sib, Orcha-17, who is insystem. 17 is pissed because he killed Reverand Klune back on Ashera rather than capturing him; unmentioned, but hanging in the air, is that the Epoch Trust wanted him alive for interrogation about certain aspects of his religious beliefs. “You’re going to have to make it right,” says 17. “You’re going to have to find me another Greenworlder. Let me know when you’ve got someone”. Cursing, Orcha heads off to get his leg seen to and to acquire meat for the tiger.

In the bazaar, after being shot full of painkillers and bone-regrowth agents and fitted for an exocrutch, Orcha buys a lamb carcass. He’s just having it packed when his comm beeps – one of his tailored alerts for the bounty hunter boards, the one for him. It seems that the Nerian Embassy has put a price of Cr 100,000 on his head, and the same on Anvil and Kestrel. Immediately afterwards his comm beeps again with an incoming call from Orcha-17. Suspecting that 17 will try and collect, Orcha immediately dumps his comm, then snags a disguise and heads back for the ship.

On the Rustbucket, Anvil has made an unwelcome discovery. Dev has completed all the set maintenance while left alone and in charge, and in the process ran a systems test against the air-gapped backup comp. Meaning that Sai, his new AI friend, is now loose in the ship’s system. Sai hasn’t caused any damage – she’s mostly been using the ship’s sensors to look at the stars – but its a potential problem, especially if anyone else finds out: AI’s are meant to be registered and safeguarded in most systems. Fortunately he knows people who can fake papers, at least for synths; he’s just started making plans on how to acquire a fake registration when Orcha calls in on a disposable comm with the bad news.

Kestrel meanwhile has gone to work, looking up an old Ironclad friend from Supply who she knows deals on the side. Its not the best trade, but she moves a unit of her low-quality dustspice for a cargo of “mislaid” Ironclad small arms and a half-ton of real meat. Her friend will cover it up the usual way – shipping error, power failure in the freezer, had to be dumped – while selling the dustspice at an outrageous markup to rec-starved Ironclad crews. Kestrel has just arranged delivery when she gets the heads-up; she has a very nervous walk back to the ship, wondering if someone will try and claim for her.

Back at the ship its a nervous wait for the cargo exchange, before a paid of cargo wranglers show up with a couple of containers of “machine parts”. While Kestrel is getting launch clearance to get the hell out of here, Anvil scans the cargo, and discovers the bomb maglocked to the inside of the container. It has a timer, rather than a remote detonator, but some crude anti-tamper units which will trigger if the maglock is interfered with. So Anvil takes to the container with a laser cutter, then tosses it out the airlock after launch.

Kestrel sets a course for a jump point while the crew argue about what to do. “We should have tossed that bint out of the airlock,” “Can we hack the bounty boards and make the notice disappear?” “If we can get hold of an Orcha, we can collect on me…” “if we’re going to be like that, why not find a bent genetic engineer and collect on all of us?” After going round in circles a few times, they come up with an idea: why not trade the tiger to make it go away? Kestrel places a call to the Nerian Embassy and asks to speak to the Ambassador…

Amazingly, it works; Ambassador Leif agrees that he will lift the bounty if they deliver Grendel on his terms. While heading for Lyca Down to make the delivery, they realise that this is only a temporary solution. The Ambassador is almost certainly acting on his own initiative, in response to information from Brigette and Sigfried; who knows what Jarl Egil will do? Orcha suggests simply removing the problem: jump back to Neria and assassinate the Jarl. Or, they could use the information gained from Sigfried and Brigette’s in-flight interrogation to try and support a coup instead. Fortunately, the upcoming landing distracts them from that. Orcha climbs outside during the landing procedure, planning to take up a sniping position on top of Rustbucket to cover the exchange, but miscalculates, busts his exocrutch and loses his sniper rifle overboard. His efforts to avoid falling off a moving starship are very visible, and Rustbucket is fined by the port authority for conducting EVA in flight in the landing zone.

On the ground, things look bad: the warehouse has a pile of armed guards, and they have a SAM team with a hullbuster in a perfect firing position. As Orcha is trying to provide cover and Kestrel is needed in case they have to dust off in a hurry, its left to Anvil to make the actual exchange. As he rolls the tiger cage down the ramp (singing to it to calm it – something which seems oddly effective), Dev says “I’m glad we’re getting rid of it”.

Its a long walk to the warehouse, under the guns of the Nerian guards. And once Anvil gets there, the Nerian military attache asks him straight out: why should he obey the Ambassador and let Anvil live, rather than take his head back to the Jarl and claim the glory for himself? Anvil offers him the data he recovered showing the conspiracy between Sigfried and the Admirals to defraud the naval budget (which led to the whole repossession in the first place). The attache wants to see it. Which means that Dev has to make the long walk under the guns with the valuable data chip. But when its delivered, the attache is satisfied; he lets them go, and the Rustbucket boosts for orbit.

In orbit, and the bounty lifted, Kestrel reluctantly reaches a conclusion: maybe they need to get Ironclad to lean on Neria, otherwise this mess is going to follow them everywhere. “We could probably spin it that Ironclad owes us, given that it was their job”. When the others agree, she puts a call through to Fleet Captain Rutland, and burns the favour she’s just earned. Ironclad will make it clear to the Jarl that the Rustbucket is under their protection, and that there is to be no retaliation against its crew. It might not get them completely off the hook – there may be “rogue elements” – but it should prevent any overt moves like bounties or piracy. Its safety assured, Rustbucket heads for a jump point and further adventures…

#RustbucketTales   #Part6  

We started with a new Jump Point this week – the repossession one I posted earlier. And disappeared down a rabbit hold of tigers and psychotic Viking North Korean-style dictators…

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…Anvil and Orcha scan the package with handheld scanners. Anvil thumps his as it gives odd readings…

…Orcha-37 receives a tipoff from Orcha-17 that someone he is hunting is on Asherah (a file pops up on the screen, identifying him as the Reverend Klune, wanted for inciting a mutiny by Ironclad)

…Anvil is told by a pair of ALF thugs “no-one works on our docks without us getting a cut”. He agrees to boost some parts from the ship he is working on as payment.

…Kestrel talks to a new passenger, Matha Dowe, in a bar. She’s a turncoat from the Shards of Xa; “I need to get outsystem. My former crewmates won’t be too happy to see me”. Later, Orcha checks out her identity and discovers that she is a bounty hunter…

…Orcha centres Reverend Klune’s head in his scope and squeezes the trigger. It explodes like a ripe melon and Klune falls to the floor. He looks up to see people pointing in his direction and yelling…

…Kestrel watches a news report with a fuzzy picture of Orcha and says “we can’t wait; we’re leaving on schedule”. Dev is outraged; “would you leave me behind like that?”

…Anvil tries to find out what’s wrong with his hand scanner and connects it to the test system. A massive amount of data downloads, then a message pops up: “Hello. My name is Sai.”

Neria: a backwater world run by the sort of psychotic feudal dictatorship that crops up when a private colonisation effort goes wrong. Jarl Egil sat at the top of the pyramid, funnelling the planet’s resources to himself and using them to fund a life of luxury and buy the loyalty of the mercenary bodyguard who keep him in power. Of course, he had to have toys too, so he’d bought himself a “grand fleet” – a couple of gunboats and a small squadron of fighters – so he could pretend to be a real power. And a luxury yacht, the Fenris, both as a plaything and in case he needed to blow up anything personally or flee the planet in a hurry.

Unfortunately he hadn’t paid for it. And Ironclad, who had built it, wanted it back. But they couldn’t just turn up in orbit and threaten to slag the planet unless they got their money – that’s the sort of thing the Shards of Xa do, the sort of thing Ironclad is Officially Against. And it would make the nature of their organisation just a little bit too obvious for Ironclad’s command staff to be comfortable with. So, instead, they outsourced…

It went fine, initially. Arrive on a commercial flight in the guise of “technicians”. Scout then infiltrate the starport. Override the airlock security, do a quick factory reset on the ship’s computer to gain control, disable the remote self-destruct mechanism wired to the ship’s reactor… And then, when Orcha was clearing the tasteless, glitzy luxury quarters, they hit trouble, in the form of Brigette Egilsdottir, the Jarl’s daughter, and her boyfriend, Captain-General Sigfried, who were rather… busy in the Jarl’s personal stateroom. With no embarrassment whatsoever, Orcha interrupted them – and when Brigette threatened to have him executed and Sigfried went for a hidden weapon, stunned the pair of them. He was partway through dragging them up to the bridge when the real trouble arrived, in the form of a guntruck and a jeep load of soldiers, and they had to dust off in a hurry and under fire.

Making it to orbit, they discovered more trouble: the Jarl had launched his interceptors against them: a half-dozen fighters, with skilled mercenary pilots. Putting Brigette on the comm got them to back off, but in the meantime a gunboat had arrived on the scene, and ordered the Fenris to halt or have its engines disabled. Figuring that the Jarl would have ensured that his personal yacht could outrun any other ship in his fleet, Kestrel opted to run. The Fenris’ shields held against the long-range bombardment from the gunboat, while Orcha took down half the fighters with the ship’s point-defence cannon. After some more ineffectual fire, the rest broke off, low on fuel.

Having made their escape, and with days to cruise until the jump point, the crew could work out what to do with the prisoners. Brigette had said that her father would ransom them, but an in-system transfer was too dangerous, and dumping them in the escape pod would mean not getting paid, so they decided to bring them along. Anvil cracked their comms, and used Sigfried’s as a backdoor into the Nerian Grand Fleet’s internal systems. Poking around to try and find out what had happened to Ironclad’s money, Anvil discovered that Sigfried had been part of a cabal of senior officers, including the Grand Admiral himself, who had been skimming the naval budget. Exactly what they were doing with the money wasn’t clear, but now the Jarl’s yacht had been repossessed someone would probably be facing a firing squad over it. And with Sigfried offworld, he’d make a very easy fall guy…

They also discovered their other unexpected passenger: “Grendel”, the Jarl’s personal green-striped hunting tiger, pacing back and forth in its cage on the cargo deck, wearing a diamante collar. Fabulously valuable and equally dangerous, and with a reputation for eating the Jarl’s Ministers; apparently the Jarl had been planning a hunting trip – or maybe an execution – and had loaded it on board. While they could ransom it back with Brigette and Sigfried, Orcha immediately wants to keep it. Anvil wants to throw it out the airlock, so Kestrel splits the difference: they’ll steal it, hide it from Ironclad, and sell it. When they get to their destination, they’ll radio Dev in the Rustbucket to come and do a covert cargo transfer, collect their payment from Ironclad, and be out-system before anyone goes “what do you mean, a tiger?!?” Unfortunately, this doesn’t manage to satisfy either party, and the group squabbles about it all the way to their destination.

Lyca: a large, established colony on a warm, habitable world. Safe, stable, and peaceful. And kept that way by a large orbiting Ironclad base. Ironclad’s crews use Lyca for R&R, its yards provide work for Lyca’s economy, its fleet protects Lyca’s extensive shipping. While Lyca is officially self-governing and independent, there’s no question about who really calls the shots here.

Fenris drops into the system and heads for the depot, tightbeaming Dev for the pickup. Meanwhile, there’s a series of messages with Fleet Captain Rutland, the officer who hired them. When Kestrel mentions “complications”, Rutland demands a full report – and when that fails to convince, she dispatches the frigate Churchill to conduct an inspection and escort them in.

Rustbucket will arrive before Churchill, but any docking manoeuvres will be visible (and Dev isn’t a good enough pilot to dock with a decelerating target from Rustbucket). So Kestrel goes for hiding in plain sight: she contacts the Churchill, explains that one of her crew was injured and needs medical attention, and requests permission to have Rustbucket pick them up. And it works! The Churchill gives permission, and Rustbucket heads in to dock. The first thing Dev says on cracking the cargo lock open is “what’s that smell?”

They get the cargo transferred across, and leaving Orcha and Dev with Rustbucket to meet them in orbit, continue on. A few hours later the Churchill docks and sends over an inspection party – which immediately takes charge of the prisoners. The Lieutenant in charge is suspicious of Kestrel – apparently she’s read her file – but Anvil provides thorough data on the ship’s condition and damage sustained, which impresses. The Churchill clears Fenris and escorts her in.

On Rustbucket meanwhile things are not going so well. Dev doesn’t like the tiger one bit and is worried about it escaping. And two months on Lyca hasn’t eased the tension with Orcha one bit. She presses Orcha on his decision to kill Reverend Klune rather than let him escape and recapture him elsewhere. Orcha says something about Orcha-17 getting him. “So its more important that you beat your brother.. sibling… whatever you are, than not kill someone?” After equivocating, Orcha admits that yes, it is. Which is when they discover that the tiger is no longer in its cage.

Dev barricades herself on the bridge with a stunstick while Orcha goes to his cabin to collect some gear. After armoring up, he checks the ship’s internal surveillance footage, and tracks Grendel to the port airlock. Remotely triggering the doors, he fails to catch it in the airlock but manages to trap it in the cargo bay. Returning to the bridge, he tries to work out how to get the live, hungry tiger back into the cage. They hit on the bright idea of lowering the oxygen content of the atmosphere in the cargo hold and waiting for the beast to pass out. It seems to work – the tiger apparently goes to sleep – but when Orcha goes in with a respirator and stunstick to move it, it turns out to be merely groggy. A swipe of a claw breaks a leg and knocks him down, then the tiger is on top of him, biting at his helmet and trying to crush his skull while he stabs at it repeatedly with the stunstick until it falls unconscious.

It gets worse. Orcha’s crude first aid isn’t very effective, and Dev refuses to enter the cargo bay to help move the tiger, even when its unconscious, so Orcha has to do it alone. In the process he makes his leg even worse; he’ll require real surgery now, in a proper hospital. But at least the tiger is back in its cage and he can pass out.

At fleet headquarters, Fleet Captain Rutland chews Kestrel out over the diplomatic incident they’ve caused. They were meant to be subtle, dammit, but she has two unexpected guests and three dead Nerian fighter pilots to explain. Kestrel convinces her that it was the pre-operation intelligence at fault; they weren’t warned of interceptor reaction times, let alone Brigette’s likely movements. And so Kestrel gets paid, while some nameless intelligence analyst gets unjustly reprimanded, and swears vengeance for it…

#RustbucketTales   #Part5  

Fifth session. This continued straight on from the previous session, which had left Orcha in the middle of things while the others were ready to leave. It turned out… messily. But now things are wrapped up on Asherah, and no-one is particularly invested in what happens on Nakhon, so its time for another Jump Point.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

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

…Orcha-37 receives a tipoff from Orcha-17 that someone he is hunting is on Asherah (a file pops up on the screen, identifying him as the Reverend Klune, wanted for inciting a mutiny by Ironclad)

…Kestrel docks at Asherah, under the shadow of a garishly coloured, heavily armed Shards of Xa destroyer.

…Orcha and Kestrel back nervously out of a dockside bar, as a trio of Xa pirates threaten to cut them up if they ever see them again.

…Kestrel and Orcha listen as Europa the belter tells them “we’re not owned by anyone here”.

…Anvil is told by a pair of ALF thugs “no-one works on our docks without us getting a cut”. He agrees to boost some parts from the ship he is working on as payment.

…Kestrel negotiates with the Cargo Handlers Guild, gaining special handling for the solar panels and a discount for breakages. They shake on it.

…The ALF tell Orcha that if he can get his “package” to a particular dockside warehouse, they can get it on board for him.

…Reverend Klune goes to open a hab door, then stiffens as Orcha sticks a stunner against his back.

…Orcha and Klune turn a corner and walk right into a pair of police. Klune cries that he’s being kidnapped, the police draw, Orcha drops a stun grenade, and in the confusion Klune runs off down the corridor…

Orcha-37 headed for the medbay when he dragged himself on board, and got Anvil to dose him up with stims to counteract the police stunners, then disappeared into one of the ship’s hidden compartments in case the police came calling. A few hours later, he drags himself out, still a bit numb from the second shot, and considers his next move. His target – Reverend Klune, going by the name of “Lee Oret”, is probably trying to get off station. He heads for the bridge to try and track down his prey. He hacks into the station surveillance net and scans quickly through the footage surrounding his fight with the police. He tracks Klune as he makes his escape, then follows him as he makes his way to a pre-prepared bolt hole, and then to the docks at the other end of the axis. Catching up to realtime, he finds Klune in a bar talking with a spacer; the surveillance system tags her as Captain Reid of the “Northwest Passage”, a tramp trader currently parked in docking bay 37 and registered to depart in three hours. Grabbing a few things from his kit, he ducks out of the ship and heads into the station.

Kestrel gets back from the dockside bar where she’s been recruiting passengers, and has just started settling down to preflight when she gets buzzed from the docking bay. The station police are here. She goes out to talk to them, and discovers that they want permission to board “Rustbucket” to extract computer logs relating to an illegal accessing of the station’s systems. She can cooperate, or they’ll have a warrant here in half an hour. Kestrel decides to stall for time, asks for details, and says she’ll see what she can find. She heads back up the ramp to find out what the hell is going on. Cornering Anvil and Dev, she asks what they know about Orcha’s current target. Dev spills the beans about “Oret”/Klune and her trip to the Housing Office to find his details. Kestrel quickly concocts a story about Oret booking passage, backing it up with a false passenger registration; according to her (carefully edited) log data he used the ship’s systems for the hack, then left the ship. The police buy it completely and head off. Worried that Orcha’s comms may be monitored and that a specific warning may be intercepted, she issues a 3-hour departure warning, which he should get automatically.

Meanwhile, Orcha has been busy. The police dockside are obviously looking for someone, probably him. So he steals a belter’s coat, changes his posture, and disappears into the crowd, just one of the people shambling from bar to bar. Making his way to docking bay 37, he scopes it out, looking for cover and exit routes. He finds a suitable spot in a stack of empty shipping containers, and starts unpacking his sniper rifle. “Northwest Passage” is still going through preflight, with a handful of crew overseeing the loading of final cargo, checking out external sensors, and kicking the landing legs for good luck. And then, with an hour to liftoff, Oret appears and heads for the ship. Orcha lines him up in the scope and pops his head like a melon, capturing the entire thing on his scope’s data recorder so he can verify the bounty. Unfortunately, one of “Northwest Passage”‘s crew happened to be looking the wrong way at the wrong time and spots him. Chaos erupts as some of the crew draw pistols and try and give chase, while others try to assist the (very very dead) Klune, but Orcha makes a noisy escape under the cover of his stun grenades. And after that, its just a matter of sneaking his way to the ALF’s warehouse. Where they charge him triple for pissing off the cops and for making the hit on their dock.

Back at the ship, the others see the news of the killing on the SectorNet. It’s messy and high-profile, and there’s even a fuzzy picture of Orcha making his escape, captured by one of the docking-bay security cameras. Kestrel decides not to wait – they’ll depart on schedule, and if Orcha isn’t on board by then, they’ll look at sending the “Shadow” back to collect him. Dev is outraged, and wants to know if Kestrel would abandon her like that. But Kestrel is adamant. Anvil heads down to the cargo bay to take a last-minute cargo delivery (for Orcha, apparently), then “Rustbucket” undocks, slowly makes its way past the looming “Xa’s Torment”, and sets a course for the jump point.

Half an hour later, when Orcha calls up to be let out of his package, Dev is pissed. “You promised me you wouldn’t kill him”, she cries, then storms out. Orcha just shrugs, then files his footage to collect Klune’s bounty.