#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.