Category: Uncharted Worlds

#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…