#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…