Tag: RustbucketTales

#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…