Category: Uncharted Worlds: Actual Play

#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?